Ask an Aspie
Hello and welcome to the anchor page for the new Ask an Aspie feature.
Here you will have the opportunity to submit questions as comments, and each Sunday one question and my take on it will be responded to in a post. Feel free to submit as many questions as you’d like; I promise to get to all of them eventually!
Week 1: How did I choose my current college? Question submitted by Amazing_Grace.
Week 2: Stories from my younger years. Question submitted by Natalie.
Week 3: Should you force your child to socialize?
Week 4: Motivating the ASD child to study
Week 5: My Valedictory
Week 6: Picking a Dorm, Moving In, and Living in a Dorm
Week 7: 4 Key Questions about living with autism and Tourette’s
Week 8: Adressing Pica
Week 9: Getting in contact with your Away-from-home Aspie
[...] Ask an Aspie [...]
Why did you choose the college that you are attending?
I’d love to hear more stories about your early childhood-as early as you can remember anyway. How you coped with social interactions during your preschool years would be very helpful to me.
Natalie
I have an eight year old sone who is going through a lot of behavior problems right now in school. Officially, he is PDD-NOS, unofficially, I think he might best fall into an Aspergers/Hyperlexia classification. I want to talk to him about why he might be having problems, why he is different & doesn’t need to feel bad about being different. But I’m not sure how far to go. How old were you when you learned about your diagnosis? Was it handled well? Do you have any wisdom from your experiences that you could share with me?
I have a four year old son with high functioning autism. He is very bright intellectually (he began reading with comprehension at 2.5 years and is now teaching himself multiplication.) He struggles a lot when playing with his peers; he is very inflexible socially and gets frustrated when friends won’t follow his “plan.” He is in ABA therapy 18 hrs/week (including two facilitated playdates each week), plus two social groups and two speech therapy sessions each week. My question is: how often should I push him to play with peers? He seems to get very exhausted and frustrated when trying to “play” with friends and I fear that, if I push him to play with peers too much, he will react by withdrawing farther into himself. On the other hand, I want to give him enough practice to develop skills in dealing with peers. Any advice? Thank you so much for your insightful blog.
I’d like to know if you had trouble motivating yourself to study when you were in highschool. My 14-yr-old either thinks she has already mastered the topic of her next test (which is often not true at all) or else she decides it’s just too difficult and it’s no use trying to study for it. So either way not a lot of work gets done…
Thanks for considering this for me.
[...] Therapy: The facts Choosing Colleges March 8, 2009 This is the first entry in the Ask An Aspie Series. This question from Amazing_Grace [...]
[...] Ask an Aspie: a new feature where you can ask questions in the comment section, and each week I’ll [...]
I have a 13 year old Aspie that no form of discipline works. He continues to act on impulse no matter what the rules are, and he knows the rules. He can control himself because his school and home behavior is quite different. What can we do to make him stop lying, stealing, hitting…making the same mistakes over and over and over?? Thanks so much.
I have a 15 year old step-son who has Aspergers. He has no personal accountability for his actions, if he hits someone he reasons it is always their fault. His hitting of the younger children has escalated in recents months and we do not know what to do anymore to help him learn to take responsibility for his actions. At home he is out of control and at school he is able to maintain a certain level though his language is very foul which is not allowed in our home. I concur with your frustration regarding discipline not working. For us he views anything as us just not wanting him to have any fun.
[...] you push your child to socialize? March 15, 2009 Today is the third installment of “Ask an Aspie“, a feature where you can ask questions about autism, me, or life in general (as a comment on [...]
Do you know of any good resources for a parent of an elementary-school child who just received an Asperger’s diagnosis? He just got assigned to my caseload and I figured I’d ask the expert for resources.
I didn’t see an email addess, so I figured this was a good place to catch your attention.
I’m curious about your experience with Topamax that you mentioned in my blog comments. Would you email me?
Hey Cale – you mentioned that you were Valedictorian of your HS class. Did you give a speech? What did you talk about? I’m curious about that.
Do you have any dorm tips? What have you found that works in your room, how to get along with your roommates, how do you lock up your things (laptop, wallet, etc.), what you absolutely need to bring, how you decided on your dorm, etc.
Thank you!
[...] 4 Key Questions: Tourette’s Edition May 26, 2009 This post is a continuation of the Ask an Aspie post proposed by Littlefluffycat. She asked the following questions: What’s the hardest thing? [...]
Pica!?! anyone!?! is there a magical answer to pica? my daughter is compulsive about getting anything small and malleable into her mouth…. dirt, paper… yum…. nothing has really posed a harmful risk to her, well I worry about parasites when she’s eating dirt/woodchips/pinestraw/leaves…. but I guess when I look at the big picture it is more of an annoyance to me, mom, cause she goes to my magazine pile and rips them apart to eat, or she picks at wicker baskets around the house…. (that can be a danger because little wooden splinters could pierce her esophagus)….
My 11 yr old son with autism has huge trouble writing any kind of narrative (he also finds it impossible to do reading comprehension where the words in the question are not literally in the text for him to find but that’s a question for another day!)
When asked to create a story from scratch, or give his opinion, he sits there frozen and writes nothing. He describes it as his “brain exploding”. It quickly escalates to the point where he can’t even speak. So to his teachers it appears as if he’s just sitting there, doing nothing, and ignoring them when they ask why. Even when they give him the answer he won’t write it.
We’re all at a loss. Any ideas?
Your son sounds a lot like me. I’ve got a lot of thoughts on a lot of things, but it can take me hours or even DAYS to arrange them into a coherent sentence. Perhaps it’s a form of perfectionism or fear of saying the wrong thing, I don’t know.
I suspect your son is feeling a lot of pressure to “perform”, and in that case it’s no surprise (to me) that he shuts down. Try easing off a little bit and let him know it’s OK to take the time and sort out his “exploding” thoughts. It’s not a bad thing. If only more people would think things through before responding, the world would be a better place.
My 18 year old aspie son left for college in August and has not initiated any sort of communication with any of his friends or family. Is this a usual aspie response to a new situation and should I be frequently checking up with him. I almost have to say I will show on his doorstop to get a response and then it is extremely limited. HELP.