What about checkers? 
(Although I suppose it is technically possible to hack checkers… hmph.)
Hey, Czarcasm, may I ask you a question?
Do you think the social emphasis on “well-roundedness” is harmful to people with Asperger’s?
It depends on how it is taught, I guess. If a single method is used for all children, it’s like trying to run a PC program on a PC, a Mac and a Linux, then declaring that the Mac and the Linux are defective when it doesn’t work.
I have nothing to add for your friend.
But, the mention of dyscalcula made me do a search of it (i’d never heard of it) and I think I might have this problem. ( Oh, please, let me be labeled…I couldn’t be that stupid.)
Um… what was that, Czarcasm?
“Well-roundedness” isn’t a teaching method, it’s a sociocultural goal of the educational system. Y’know, the idea that everyone should be able to do a little bit of everything, and that focusing on one skill or ability is unhealthy.
Sorry, but “well-roundedness” as a sociocultural goal isn’t really emphasized in the program Czar Jr. is currently involved in. They realize that some children with Asperger’s tend to focus on certain skills as a means of coping with society, and teach them how to apply those skills in ways the children might not have thought of before.
My mom’s job is to look after a kid in grade school. He’s got Asperger’s. He is a total dickwad, and so out of control that they hired my mom to look after just this one kid! He drives my mother completely nuts every single day. The kid’s father has it too, and is apparently a fine fellow, so I guess they learn how to deal with it as they grow older, but the kid is a jerk.
Now it may not be the same thing as being mentally handicapped, but it’s definitely socially-handicapped, and social disruption is definitely an impediment to a strong educational environment. A kid with Asperger’s needs some sort of extra attention, and frankly needs somebody to keep him in line and prevent him from disrupting things constantly, because the class teacher is either unwilling or unable to give the extra attention required just for that one student. I can see why an underfunded school district might decide that shuffling the kid out of the main classroom would make things easier, though hiring somebody to do what my mom does is probably the better solution.
BTW, isn’t there something a bit… odd… about using the term “aspie”? I mean, autistic children don’t call themselves auties, children with leukemia don’t call themselves leukies. Why exactly did the whole “aspie” term come into use? Just easier to say? And it seems to imply some sort of group-identification, is there a benefit to identifying as a group with others of the same malady?
I find that it’s an easier way to identify ourselves, a form of shorthand. It probably came into popular use to identify each other without the negativity of syndrome following it. Syndrome makes you think of something negative, a problem, which Asperger’s isn’t always. The term aspie gives you a sense of being part of the group, without all the negativity, IMO. And the unification helps people who have trouble connecting with other people greatly.
Regarding other groups not identifying themselves with nicknames… Asperger’s is sort of a thing to be proud of (at least from the eyes of some who have it), versus cancer being something people would never, ever want. Cancer doesn’t provide any benefits. Severely autistic children would probably be unable to understand such a thing.
Ah. I should make the question more specific:
Do you think the emphasis on “well-roundedness” commonly found within the general educational system is harmful to people with Asperger’s? Particularly since they’re so often good at one thing and quite bad at others.
I think the emphasis on “well-roundedness” is harmful to all children within the educational system. It is one thing to try to teach children the basics on all subjects, but it is quite another to teach them that excelling in one particular subject while not doing just as good in all other subjects is something to be ashamed of.
Ah. Presumably you’d think it’s especially damaging to Asperger’s kids, although it’s bad for everyon
Many thanks.
Asperger’s is in a way like belonging to a club you didn’t mean to join. Everyone with this condition has certain world view that is unique to this population and, as was said by Aslan, some of the symptoms of Asperger’s are very positive.
I always knew I was wierd but until I was diagosed with Asperger’s as an adult I thought I was alone in my wierdness. Now, in a way, I belong. There are others who can say, “I know just how you feel” and really mean it. After walking around feeling like an alien in my own world for 30+ years that in itself causes me to feel an affinity for this group.
Aspies are my people, in some ways more so than my parent and syblings. I think the only way thing that might be similar for neurotypical folks would be spending a long time in a foriegn country and then returning home. After struggling to get on with a unfamiliar language and customs you don’t entirely understand you are suddenly in your own culture again. You don’t have to explain your idioms anymore. You don’t have to worry about making a gaff when out with friends. You can just relax and rely on your gut to do the right thing. Well aspies spend their lives in a foriegn country and it is only with other aspies, or those who love us, that they can be home.
I find this slightly confusing…are there skills that Asperger’s gives the person that compensate for the difficulty with social skills?
I guess I just want to clarify the nature of the pride. For instance, there are deaf people who are proud to be deaf (remember the series of ER episodes about his a half-dozen years back), but being deaf is entirely a handicap, there’s no direct benefit to being deaf. Those who are proud to be deaf are simply proud to have overcome obstacles and suceeded despite a severe handicap, and I can see how that creates a unity and sense of accomplishment amongst some of them. Is it like that, or does Asperger’s give some extra benefit or skill to those who have it?
We don’t have any skills that make up for or compensate for social skills.
We usually have a skill of some sort that helps us practically. Some can repair computers, some can compute advanced math calculations in their head, for example. We also tend to have good rote memory for things we’re interested in, which is helpful for school if you’re interested in something like hisory.
I am 60 years old. I have Asperger’s, an IQ of 173 last time it was checked, and a Ph.D. I have published 23 books with major publishers, and I was a certified latent fingerprint examiner until I let my certification lapse.
I wish I had had a school system that could have diagnosed my Asperger’s as well as my high IQ and put me into a situation in which I could have functioned better. But since I lived in a very small town and had an unqualified guidance counselor, I found myself encouraged to become a nuclear physicist despite the fact that I am lousy at math (that was the most important thing the counselor could think of, and I had the highest IQ in the school) and discouraged from taking typing despite the fact that I already knew that whatever else I did, I was also going to write.
My autism (my psychiatrist says that it’s nonsense to call Asperger’s “a developmental disability related to autism”; he says it IS autism) was not discovered until I was past 50 and had, by then, been in psychological/psychiatric care for a year or thereabouts for major depression and memory loss–we thought for a while that I had Alzheimer’s. My psychiatrist says that there is absolutely nothing that can be done to cure Asperger’s, which is 100% biochemical, but he could treat the constellation of other symptoms that had grown up around the Asperger’s.
I have most of my memory back, but will never again be able to do anything involving numbers. I always was pretty bad about anything involving numbers. My husband has to track my medical appointments, and I had to surrender my checkbook entirely. I will never again be able to drive because I am too absentminded, and also (unrelated to Asperger’s) I have a condition in which I can suddenly become too dizzy to see with about 30 seconds of warning.
The diagnosis of Asperger’s was the most liberating thing that ever has happened in my life. Suddenly things that I had been kicking myself for (in some cases) 50 years now made sense. My father and his mother also clearly had Asperger’s, and now I could understand and forgive really horrible things that had happened to me because of them, my father especially.
The meds the doctor put me on–three antidepressants–have calmed my brain down. I am discovering, to my amazement, that there are words I have mispronounced my entire life because I never stopped long enough to sound out the words. Now I do. Because I know I have Asperger’s I know that I have to stop and try to figure out why people are saying or doing things I don’t understand, and as a result I get in far fewer quarrels. I am able now to stop and say, “Okay, does Anne want to say this, or does Asperger’s want to say this?” I still get in trouble from things I say, but not anywhere near as much trouble as I used to.
The psychiatric profession owes a lot of apologies to a lot of people for waiting 50 years after Asperger’s had been discovered to list it in DSM. I realize that when it was discovered, in Austria, the United States and Austria were not on what one would like to call friendly relations with each other, but all the same, other diagnoses that were discovered elsewhere during WWII were accepted in the US relatively quickly.
I cannot speak for all people with Asperger’s. But it appears to me, from what I have read (and I have read a lot), that in general people with Asperger’s tend to be high IQ. The reason, I think, is that a person with a lower IQ will not be able to construct what my psychiatrist calls “the walls” that allow the person to function fairly near to normally in most situations. Therefore that person will be more obviously autistic and more seriously influenced by autism. There are some professions in which a touch at least of autism is actually helpful. I would include crime scene investigation, fingerprint examination, most laboratory sciences, and computer programming and design in that. But heaven help a person with Asperger’s who tries to go into marketing of any kind, or any profession that requires a hail-fellow-well-met type of personality.
I know I’m writing a book here. Back to the original question, of the person who is in special education because of autism and is studying long division and once to get into algebra, I don’t know. I can’t do algebra and never could, though I managed to get through it with a C. I would say that the kid should be allowed to try algebra. There is not a relationship between autism and an inability to do algebra; it’s just that that was one of the ways MY ailments expressed. A person with Asperger’s should be allowed to function in regular school as much as possible, because s/he is going to have to function in the real world; however, where a little extra protection and/or education is needed it should be available, as it should be for anybody with any type of mental or physical or emotional problems.
But we live in the real world, which doesn’t work that way.
If I had had access to a decent library, or to the Internet, when I was a kid, I would have done wonderfully in homeschool. But I would have missed out on some advantages of school as it was.
If you have Asperger’s, hang in there, life isn’t as bad as it sometimes feels. If you know somebody who has Asperger’s, don’t judge what that person should or should not do. Help, quietly, to educate the person on interpersonal relationships, IF the person wants to be educated. If not, leave well enough alone.
I would far rather not have Asperger’s, but since I do, I’m glad I finally know it.