Ask an Aspie: Autistic Adolescents at College

This question was recently asked in Ask an Aspie, and it’s a topic I wanted to talk about anyway, so here goes:

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.

First, I’d like to tell the reader that she’s not alone. Almost all of my friends have had arguments with their parents about how often and how they should “check-in”. My mom and I have discussed this many times.

There are many reasons I wasn’t calling home as often as she would have liked when I reached campus. First, I hate phone conversations. It is so much harder to determine when to talk and to have no lip-reading ability to fall back on. Second, I didn’t have time. With all the social activity, academic requirements, and neccessary zone time, I didn’t think I could fit in frequent calls home. Third, I simply wasn’t interested in what my mom had to say. As bad as that might sound, I just had no interest in or patience for the minutae of her day-to-day life.

We thought on this, and argued, and sent annoyed emails back and forth. Eventually we compromised on this plan:

-I needed to contact home once d ay, whether by email, phone, or voice mail, just to let them know I was still breathing/things were going well.

-I needed to have two conversations a week with my parents on the phone. By reducing the frequency to twice weekly, we only touched on interesting topics: movies seen, big decisions made, relatives visited, etc. It also was easier to schedule two 20-minute blocks of time into my week than 7 ten-minute segments. Finally, I knew if my mom called a t some time other than the scheduled times that the call was important and I had to pick up because there might be a family emergency. Previously I had just ignored most of the calls, which means I had a good chance of missing an important call from home.

That is simply the schedule we use, but any form of organization you can provide for the contact is a good idea. It leaves both of you knowing what to expect, which eases the anxiety and thus increases the chance of the desired event actually occuring.

If phone calls really are out of the question, consider using skype. It is a video-phone service free on the internet that lets you chat while seeing the other person, making body language visible and lip-reading possible, and generally eases the whole phone conversation process.

I also increased the frequency and length of my calls home as the school-year progressed and I settled into a weekly schedule. Maybe your son can only handle 1 call /week right now, but by spring semester will be able to handle two or even three.

When talking to your son about the importance of staying in contact, try to use logical, practical reasons (you know us Aspies and our logic). Things like: It lets me know you are not hurt, and lets you know everything at home is fine. And, from home, I cannot know anything about your life at college unless you tell me. I am curious about your experience and would like to know when important things happen to you. The more rationality you can provide, the higher his chance of listening.

Best of Luck!

Ask An Aspie: Scripting

This question was submitted by @cleopitty, who asked:

“Why do you believe scripting serves a purpose?”

Consider yourself at the age when you were just beginning to talk. Where did your words come from? Most likely Mom and Dad and other individuals having conversations with and around you. You spent several months studying their every move, and then one day you were ready to start releasing some of your own. The neurotypical world is immersed in the social, so the language that spoke deepest to you was that of conversation.

But consider this time for the autistic infant. People and their conversations are not their biggest prioirty; there’s so many physical facts to take in. So the things he pays attention to are those facts about an interest, whether it be insects, trains, or doorknobs. Most of this information (“content-based”) comes from books, movies, and other sources which provide their material on a one-way basis.

So unlike the neurotypical infant who grows in a world immersed in conversation, the autistic infant lives in a world full of facts, mostly provided by television and books. From this point of view, doesn’t it make sense that while NT kids would learn conversational speech first while ASD kids would learn scripts first?

Over time, as the child spends more and more time focusing on the sources of his facts, he will come to generalize to appreciation to television and books as a whole. So he starts parroting more scripts, ones from all assortments of books and movies. He now has a language, developed from the focus of his infancy.

This language, these scripts, become a basis for trust; things connected to the scripts are things to pay attention to and learn, and are awarded the same belief supplied to what has been directly scripted. This makes the language expandable, slowly at first, until the trust has been generalized to the word-instructor (parent, TSS, or therapist), at which point the language can truly explode.

This process can then burst ouwards as the generalization of trust continues. Soon the child has multiple sources of scripts expansions, and eventually the scripts fade to insignificance. They may still appear from time to time, particularly in times of stress, but there are so many other phrases and ideas available that they no longer prevent a more spontaneous conversation.

I would hold scripting-expansions responsible for over 75% of Charger’s language gains this summer, and highly recommend it to anyone teaching/hoping to teach their child conversational English. The most important aspect is to start very slowly, sticking very closely to the script but only changing or adding a word or two, and then over time (periods of weeks) increasing the amount and variety of changes until you reach a pace for comfortable development.

Ask an Aspie: Pica

I have a new Ask an Aspie post! Fayezie asked:

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)….

Pica is still an issue here at my house. Carl has eaten a good percentage of his baseball card collection, any stray rappers he finds around the house, the velcro off of both our watches. He really likes to chew.

Mom started with gum, but he’d swallow it. Then mints but he’d chew them and then swallow them. Neither were more than a 30 second solution. We tried directing his attention to the fact that he was eating things (it seemed to be almost a subconcious act). He’d note the fact and throw whatever was in his mouth out, but a minute later he’d have something new up there.

One solution that has sort of worked is frozen washcloths, which I wrote about here. Dip a washcloth in salt water and freeze it. It then provides a new tactile sensation and a taste. This has been quite effective in reducing his chewing habits at home, though it cannot be used outside of the home (afterall, he’s 25). Plus I imagine with small children it can be easily lost or dirtied.

Anyone else have a possible solution? Something more portable or even more effective? Please leave your opinions in the comment section.

For more information and a possible solution, I encourage you to visit the Sneathen Family site, where Michelle discussed her son Daniel’s use of “rubber chewies“.

4 Key Questions: Tourette’s Edition

This post is a continuation of the Ask an Aspie post proposed by Littlefluffycat. She asked the following questions:

What’s the hardest thing? What’s the easiest thing? What do you wish everybody knew? How should parents explain if needed?

Yesterday I answered these questions for autism. Today I will answer them for Tourette’s.

What’s the hardest part?

The hardest part of having Tourette’s (TS) is explaining it to children. Working in the children’s section of a library, I have several curious onlookers a day wondering what I am doing with my neck, or why I am making weird noises. At my friends’ houses it is even more difficult as the siblings have seen me before the TS-onset and know I wasn’t always like this. How do you explain TS to a child in a way that they will understand but that will not make them fear they will get it as well? I usually ask the child to tell me what they think it is, and go from there. One boy said it was sort of like the hiccups, and I agreed, saying it was similar to a case of the hiccups that never goes away. But it seems I should have a more cogent response.

What’s the easiest thing?

The easiest thing about my TS is having it at college. No one wants to look insensitive or foolish so very few people stare or make comments. It does create a weird separation however between campus and the “real world”.

TS has also made some aspects of my life easier. I am less inhibited in action and speech now that I have tics. People are going to turn and stare anyway, so I might as well give them something to stare it. I am much more willing to wear louder colors and behave in a less restricted fashion now then pre-TS.

What do you wish everyone knew?

I wish the general population knew that Tourette’s Syndrome is not deliberate or planned. It isn’t bad behavior or “acting out”. Tourette’s is a neurological condition, which happens to present in an attention-generating fashion.

I also wish people were more familiar with corprolalia (involuntary cursing), and the fact that it is quite rare (only between 8 and 13% of individuals with TS have corprolalia). I wish the media didn’t always present TS individuals as having corprolalia, and that more positive images of people with TS were used in general.

I wish people I associate with knew that it was okay to ask questions or be curious (I know I would be). I also hope they know that if I am really driving them to distraction they can ask me to leave until I get my tics under control. I’d hate my tics to put people under unneccesary duress.

How should parents explain?

I think the public is generally familiar enough with TS that explaining would be rather simple. I think, as always, it is best to put the child first. “This is my son X. He’s in 3rd grade and plays the tuba. He has Tourette’s Syndrome which means he makes noises and movements that he can’t control. He also has some difficulties with paying attention to the task at hand, and needing things just so. Did you know he won the spelling bee this year? Which kid is yours?” This gives the disorder a human face, and prevents the child from being singled out as “The Tourette’s kid.” Instead he is, “X, the spelling bee champ, who happens to have TS.”

I think it must be more difficult to explain it to the actual child. I was fortunate to have a late-onset Tourette’s, so I was already generally aware of the syndrome and able to do most of the research on my own. I would speak as positively as possible to the child, avoid bringing exessive negative attention to the tics, and emphasize your child’s strengths and similarities to others rather than his differences.

Do you have something you are dying to know about autism or TS? Be sure to ask on the Ask an Aspie page to your right.

4 key questions: Autism edition

New Ask an Aspie post. This time the question comes from littlefluffycat. She asks:

What’s the hardest thing? What’s the easiest thing? What do you wish everybody knew? How should parents explain if needed?

I think I’ll answer these questions twice, today for autism and tomorrow for Tourette’s.

4 Key Questions: Autism Edition

1. What’s the hardest thing?
This, one, I believe, requires two answers.
Physically, the hardest aspect is my auditory defensiveness. How do you explain to a group of teenagers that their loud music is physically painful and actually get them to respond to you? How do I manage days like one which occurred over Springfest where individuals were screaming in a non-predictable pattern two seats over from us in the cafeteria and I needed to be escorted out by a friend? Where is the middle ground for television viewing between myself and my near-deaf father?
Socially, the most difficult aspect is my blindness to people’s discomfort. I find it nearly impossible to tell the difference between someone pretending to be annoyed in a joking manner and someone being actually bothered or troubled by what I’m saying. Because of this I’ve inadvertently hurt    people I care deeply about. My whole family is made of line-pushers by nature; unfortunately none of us can tell when we’ve pushed it too far.

2. What’s the easiest thing?
The part of my life which my ASD has made easiest is entertaining myself. I’ve developed enough hobbies and activities that I can do alone that having all my friends out of town or otherwise occupied is not particularly troubling, except perhaps to my over-anxious mother. Some people cannot go more than a few hours without seeing another person; I find it impossible to go more than a few hours without ample private time.
I also think having an ASD makes it easier for me to connect to other individuals with ASD. Lawrence and I seem to understand each other intuitively; Charger and I had interactive play with spontaneous speech less then an hour after I met him.

3. What do I wish everyone knew?
I wish the general public knew how hard people with ASD have to work to appear “normal” and to fit society’s expectations. How stimuli which is distracting to an individual with ASD might go unnoticed by most neurotypical people. How complicated society’s rules are and how difficult it is to learn the nuances. I wish people could appreciate this fact and thus be slower to judge those who might appear spoiled or rude.
I wish parents of kids on the spectrum knew that the notion of a window period is false. That some kids simply need to develop in their own time. That some kids really do start talking or signing at 6 or even 10. That even if your child never learns to speak, he can be vital to a society. I hope they know to never give up on their children, and to dream big.
I also wish that parents knew that adults on the spectrum are not their enemies. That even though some of us can communicate and interact seamlessly now that we may have been in the same place as their son or daughter just a decade or so ago. That we cannot speak for their children, but we can offer valuable insight. That few of us doubt that every parent’s wish is to do what is best for their child and will provide their child with the most limitless future, but we simply want parents to know that growing up to be an adult on the spectrum is not a terrible outcome. That there are adults with autism living happy, productive, fulfilling lives, both independently and with assistance, and that autism is not something to fear, but rather something to embrace.

4. How should parents explain?
I think this is the toughest question. I wish I had a good answer. How do you explain autism to the well-meaning grandmother at the park or the disproving cashier at the store? How especially can this be done in full hearing range of the child or his friends or siblings? I haven’t yet come into a situation where I needed to defend Lawrence, or Josh, or Charger to Joe Public, but I imagine the day is not far off.
It seems that in situations where the individual is not likely to be met again (like a fellow shopper at the grocery store), no explanation is necessary. Ignore the starers and complainers, and thank the grandmothers for their advice and carry on. When browsing the aisles at Walmart, Lawrence was being, well, Lawrence. He kept asking for my hands for him to bounce his on, and he was flicking his fingers and humming a tune. Did people stare? Probably. But I kept my eyes and attention focused on Lawrence, on keeping him happy and not overstimulated. So people may have seen a teenager and a child acting rather bizzarely, but they also saw two people having a good time and embracing the moment. The idiosyncracies fall to the way-side when you’re simply watching a child have fun on his own terms.
At times when you will see the individual again (like a fellow mom at the PTA meeting), remember this is your change to educate someone. Don’t confuse the person with jargon and throw needless information out there. Talk about your child. Talk about what makes him exceptional and also what makes him just like other kids. Something like, “That child you’re staring at is my son, X. X is in kindergarten and he has autism. For X, this means he is particularly good at noticing details and building towers, but he has some difficulties with sharing with his peers. You’ll notice the flourescent lights above us are flickering; they are most likely distracting him, and he is using that hand motion to calm his overwhelmed nervous system. And those yellow plugs in his ears are to block out the rebound noise from the speakers. Which kid is yours?” This gets out the information you need without sounding insulting or defensive. But I imagine it doesn’t work in all situations.

Tune in tomorrow for the TS edition. And don’t forget to submit some new questions to the Ask an Aspie page on your right.

Ask an Aspie: Living in a Dorm

Welcome to Part 3 of the Dorm Life series. You can find part 1 (Choosing) and part 2 (packing) here and here, respectively.

In order to live in a dorm, you first have to move in. The school will supply the times during which you can get your key and when there will be people available to help you move. If you are uncomfortable with the notion of other people handling your stuff, get the key and then leave. Come back after the upperclassmen have dispersed and move your items in peace. Of course, when you are lifting the refrigerator, you might wish you had two senior football players to help you…

Once your items are in your room, do not, under any circumstances, unpack! Remember that you will be living in this room for 10 months. You need to carefully choose how it will be set up, and will not be able to make these decisions on the spur of the moment. If you followed my packing directions, you’ll have a bag with what you need for 2-3 days. Live out of that until the last possible moment. Then set up your room according to your detailed plans. It will save you the hassle of trying to shift everything around in a room fully unpacked later.

Meeting people: In college, it is customary to leave your door open when you are not studying or working. This lets people know that you are available to be spoken to. If you are consistent, it will also let people know that when the door is closed you are not to be bothered unless there is an emergency. You will likely attend some sort of gathering of all the people on your floor where rules will be set in place such as quiet times and the single or double sex nature of the bathroom. This will be the time to introduce yourself, probably with your name, intended major, hometown, and hobbies. This would be a good time to mention your special interest, but keep it down to less then three sentences. Keep an ear out for other students who might have a similar interest; this will be an easy conversation opener. Now would also be a good time to mention what videogame systems you brought, and indicate that people should drop by if they would like to play.

Dining: Although it might be stressful, and loud, and otherwise unpleasant, try to get to the dining hall once a day. It guarantees you’re having a meal not consisting of solely Ramen noodles (perhaps you’ll even eat a vegetable), and it makes for easy socialization. You ask what the person is eating and if it’s good. If it is, you mention you might try it, if it isn’t, you make a derisive  comment about school food. Then you go and actually get your food. You sit back down and ask about their classes; they ask about yours, and the meal ends peacefully. If your night is free, you might ask them to come over for a movie or some video games, or to go see a concert at the coffee shop. Good friendships can be cemented over good food.

Noise: Dorms tend to be noisy places. Parties, radios, television, video games, and friends just hanging out tend to create quite a bit of noise pollution. But there are a few things you can do to prevent it bothering you:

• Study in the morning. If your classes don’t start until 10, use 7-10 to get some homework done. No one will be up to bother you and there will be few distractions.
• Study outside. Most colleges have a lawn and a forest patch somewhere on campus. Both will likely be quieter then your dorm on a weekend afternoon, and if you don’t need your computer, you can spend an entire day camped out under a tree.
• Request a quiet (“study”) dorm. Here you’ll tend to find all the other kids who hate noise and who need silence to study. Typically harsh punishments are meted out to those disturbing the peace in these zones, so you’re sure to get the quiet you need.
• Leave the dorm during sports events. No matter where you live, the dorm is going to be loud during the Superbowl or Stanley cup. Go to the library or downtown and skip the interruption entirely.
• Bring earplugs or noise-canceling headphones to wear to bed.
• Try asking nicely. Most people tend to be reasonable provided you’re polite. If at midnight you knock on a door and request they lower the music, they’re more likely to comply then if you bang on your wall at 7pm.
• Don’t let fear of noise prevent you from living in the dorm. Dorm life is a once in a lifetime experience you don’t want to pass up. Using the above techniques, you should be able to survive the noise of college. Moreover,you’ll need these skills for independent living later on, as most apartments will also have noise pollution issues.

These tips should cover the basics for living in a dorm. Any more questions? Ask away in the comments. Also, be sure to post new questions on the Ask an Aspie page (I’m out of ones to answer). Tomorrow, we shall return to regular autism blogging.

Ask an Aspie: Moving in

This is part 2 of a three part series on dorm life in college.Part 1: Choosing a dorm, can be found here.

Once your dorm is chosen, your roommate contacted, and your room sized, you have to actually begin to pack to move in. This should be done in a series of steps:

1. Measure your car. Determine exactly how many cardboard boxes it can accomodate. Acquire this many cardboard boxes and set them up in your living room.

2. Clothes: Clothes will vary by climate. Remember where you are going probably has vary different weather than where you are coming from. Email someone who lives there and ask about the weather. How many months will you need a winter coat? What about a fall/spring jacket? If you are not living in a Northern area, don’t waste space packing a comforter or winter coat. You can have it brought up at Thanksgiving. Pack a week’s worth of pants, shirts, socks, and underwear. Then when you get to college, but another two week’s worth of socks and underwear. Washing machines and dryers eat these like mad, and you can never have too many.Don’t pack hangers! They waste space and at 8/$1, you can afford to buy two sets when you get there. Also bring two sets of sheets. You never know what might spill on them in the middle of the night, and you don’t want to be waiting two hours for your only set to be fully laundered. If possible, bring new sets. They are much more compactly packed. Most college beds are twin XL, but be sure to check with your particular college ahead of time. If you must, bring pajamas. But note that most college guys wear an undershirt and either boxers or pajama pants to bed. A matching flannel set might not go over well.

3. Hygeine items: Bring 1 shampoo, 1 soap, a few washcloths, one toothbrush, one hairbrsh, and one thing of toothpaste (aka enough to get you through 2-3 days). The rest can be bought once you’re at college.Wait to buy detergent until you’re already there; you won’t need it until the end of the first week anyway.

4. Entertainment: You’ve already decided with your roommate who’s bringing the TV (unless you’re living alone, and then it’s you). Consider whether you will have time for video games. If you know you will be tempted and skip doing work to play the games, leave them home. I’ve seen far too many college lives ruined by World of Warcraft obsessions that prevented class attendance. Also think about how your video game habit might add to or inhibit your social life. If you only play 1-player games, you won’t have much cause to leave your room. If you own and play multi-players, you could become the must-invite kid to all the gamer parties. Rockband and similar games are a no-effort socialization technique. Use this to your advantage.

5. Odds and Ends: Fold-up hampers are very, very, very useful. Invest in one, and if you can find the space, buy two (one to hold dirty clothes, and one for the clean clothes you haven’t put away yet). Splurge and buy a nice one; you need it to last a whole year. Garbage cans are useful. You can buy one there.Key rings are a good idea. The louder your keys are when they fall, the more likely you are to notice. Ear plugs and eye covers area solid investment for sleeping. Things to lock up your stuff have been mentioned;  beyond a key for my door, I didn’t use any additional locking containers. They do make laptop locks which could be a good idea is you tend to leave your unattended when at the library or dining hall, but I never found one necessary. I’ve heard of colleges with safes in their room, but neither of mine did.

6. Meds: If you’re an Aspie, you’re most likely on meds. Anxiety, depression, OCD, sleeping problems, etc. are all very common among us. But there’s a secret: these problems are very common among all college students. Your psych meds will not be a big deal, so don’t worry about taking huge efforts to hide them, or needing to excuse yourself to take your meds before rejoining an outing. If you have meds that can be abused however (sleeping pills and ADHD meds immediately come to mind), do be sure to keep those out of sight when you have visitors, especially if your visitors are premeds.

7. Lists are quite useful.Make a list on each box detailing what’s inside, a list for yourself of what has been packed, what still needs packed, and whatshould be purchased once you get there. You’ll thank yourself later.

8. You will overpack. Don’t feel ashamed, everyone does. You will also forget something essential. Between walmart and fedex,it will cease to be a big deal.

Remember once you finish packing and moving in, it’s all uphill from there!

Ask an Aspie: The Pre-Dorm Situation

I realzied I had forgotten about this page and the fact that there were still some unanswered questions. I thought I’d pick up again with a question from Amazing_Grace1 who asked:

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.

I’m going to split this one into two posts, because the answer is rather long. This post will be devoted to things which occurred before I reached school, and then another post will cover actually living in the dorm.

Your living situation is one of the single most important contributing factors to your college success. Living in a loud smelly building with few windows won’t be conducive to studying and getting good grades. Unfortunately, most freshmen dorms fit that description.

I started my dorm search on the school’s website. I looked for the building with the most furniture in the room (which would suggest more physical space), and extra amenities like carpeting. Then I went to the facebok group for my school. I determined which dorm everyone seemed to hate, mostly because it was the kids least like me who were vocal in the group, and created a list based on dorm popularity. It turned out that the dorm with the biggest nicest rooms was a bit of a hike from campus, and surrounded by woods.  I had my dorm chosen.

Next, I joined the facebook group for that particular dorm. There I was able to determine who else would be living there (and send emails ahead of time to people who sounded interesting), and also get a layout of the room and the building. Thus I was able to determine which storage bins would fit and which would have to stay home.

Once my room was assigned, I sent an email to my roommate. We discussed who was bringing the fridge, television, microwave, coffeemaker, and printer, splitting the items so that each of us were bringing about $100 worth of shared goods.

I cannot stress enough the importance of the internet in these exchanges. I know that I am most coherent when writing, and I had the chance to make my best possible first impressions via email. For this reason, sending out emails and facebook messages to other kids living in my dorm was a god first step. Some of the kids emailed me back and we began exchanging emails, so that by the end of the summer, we were already quite familiar with each other. Then once we reached school, it was only a matter of finding the kids I had already “met” on the internet. I met one of my best friends now when she walked into the bookstore and said, “Hey, I think I know you from facebook.” I wouldn’t recommend overusing this tactic because it sounds stalkerish, but if you’ve been exchanging emails, it works quite nicely.

I’ll be posting part two in the next day or so.

The Adult Aspie Meltdown

When we think of autistic meltdowns, we tend to picture children. We see screaming, and crying, probably some self-injury. The words “sensory overload” and “finding a trigger” immediately come to mind.

In adults with ASD, you’re likely to find all the same components. But at first glance, it might be hard to recognize.

I melted down Sunday night. I was angry for reasons unrelated to this blog, and I let the thought get lodged and stew until the anger had built so high I couldn’t control it. And I melted down. For three hours.

From an outsider’s perspective, in the midst of a meltdown I look nuts.Yesterday’s looked sort of like this.

• Trigger
• Anger
• Suppressed Screaming replaced by lung-aching sobs
• Go outside, where I can cry louder, scream softly, bang my head into trees until I know one more hit will leave a mark
• Rant at online friend. Most of it was incoherent. plenty of cursewords, not a ton of actual speech. He’s taken me through three of these in the last two years though, so he didn’t mind.
• Listen to the same song at full volume on media player, computer, and headphones. Hold headphones in ears so end result is music far too loud to think.
• Go back outside to repeat earlier process.
• Take long scalding shower
• Climb into closet where it’s dark and quiet and I can lock the door. Stay there for an hour atop the pile of clothes until I’m calm enough to sleep.

This morning I was able to get the apology/explanation I deserved, and also to speak to the friend from last night and thank him for putting up with my nonsense. He told me that despite my protests to the contrary, everyone needs to vent to a friend sometimes, even the great Cale Irwin. He’s probably right. And then I was able to relax enough to look at yesterday and figure out what happened.

Although I looked like a raging bull in a china shop, let loose and bent on destruction, that wasn’t what was really going on. What was occuring wa a natural human defense mechanism.There was a giant ache emotionally that couldn’t be resolved, a problem that couldn’t be fixed. The only way to drown it out was to create a serious of worse pains, all of which were external, and easily fixable. Head hurts? Stop banging it into a tree. Ears hurt? Turn down the music? Body hurts? Turn on the cold faucet. And then I just needed to get somewhere private and quiet and dark to cool down, and the closet was the perfect location for that.

And today, I’m worn and exhausted, but I’m also okay. I made it through another hell and was able to keep going. Perhaps next time I’ll reach out sooner or hit the closet sooner, or find some other way to burn off some of this steam, but for now, I’ll pat myself on the back for getitng through it.

Fellow adults on the spectrum, what do your meltdowns look like? Can you offer some insight/perspective?

Loving to Learn: Motivating the ASD student to study

I apologize for my absence of late. I was home for Spring Break, and my mom only lets me on the computer for 30 minutes a day! So I wasn’t able to write much. However,it is now time for another Ask an Aspie, this one from suzymom:

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…

Hmm. Motivating myself to study in middle/high school was not a challenge for me. I used my intellect as a way to display my superiority over others, and I was willing to do whatever it took to ensure that I remained at the top of my class, even if it meant six or seven hours of homework nightly. (All the work did pay off; I graduated valedictorian in a class of 600). But that’s what kept me going; knowing that I had a goal to shoot for and a purpose for my endeavors (namely being viewed as the smartest student in my high school).

But for Carl, it was a different matter entirely, and still is. He couldn’t see the purpose of homework or studying; if he could float by on a C+/B without doing any work, why should he put in the effort to get A’s? For him (and for most teenagers, I think), money was the best motivator. For getting an A on a report card, he got $20. So a report card of A’s was worth more than $100 dollars, which is enough for two new video games, or five old ones. Now that he’s in college, a different tactic is used. At the beginning of the semester, he pays the tuition (roughly 2,500/semester). If he gets nothing below a B at the end of the term, mom gives him the money back. Several of my friends who are attending state schools (and thus have the money for such a plan), have the same agreement with their parents. It provides more of an internal motivation and puts more at stake than the reward for good grades.

Some other things that helped to motivate:

• an excel chart with a list of all my grades for each assignment for the term. This way I could clearly see where I was doing well and take pride, and where I was not passing muster and work harder.
• small rewards for each success. An A on an exam meant a trip to the movies paid for by mom or an extra hour of computer time one night.
• Finding a successful study method. Trying out all sorts of options (what type of chair? music or no music? type notes or write them? study every day or cram all at once?) Once you find the right method, studying becomes less of a painful chore and more of a means to an exciting end.

On the issue of things being too difficult, I found it best to reason things out. For example, fall of freshman year I took Organic Chemistry. The class, in my opinion, was very close to impossible.  The teacher gave “learning tests” designed to teach you to think rather than rate your understanding, meaning at least part of each could not be filled out based on knowledge alone. This was disheartening. I considered giving up and dropping the class as there was no way I would ace it. But instead I reasoned out that if I could understand at least a fraction of the material (say 1/4th) really well, I could use that knowledge to buffer the rest. At least the prof would see that I had some understanding and made the effort, which would get me some brownie points, as well as make me feel self-satisfied for knowing that much of a really rough subject. In the end, I left a quarter of the final blank, but I got a B in the course and felt pretty good about myself for making it through a class that was so tough my first semester at college. Plus I can still tap back into that information as needed, since I knew it back to front.

I wish I had more concrete suggestions to offer, but Mom is still working on motivating Carl to do his work and study at a higher level.