Asperger's Acceptance and Disclosure—What's the Difference?

I just read a father's perspective on acknowledging that his son has Asperger's. I recommend it, as I recommend most first-person, authentic perspective about AS.

Eventually, we either spend the energy to accept and live with Asperger's, or we spend the energy to deny and live with Asperger's. Both are draining, but one drains us in partnership with the truth, and one drains us by forcing us to repress/suppress the truth.

As I detailed in my series on the Seven Stages of Asperger's Awareness, acceptance is a precursor to disclosure. Acceptance is telling the truth to yourself. Disclosure is telling the truth to others. How much of the truth you tell to others should be a function of need and intimacy, but how much you tell yourself should only be limited by what you can handle.

As with many things, premature or over-disclosure can be traumatic But if you are having trouble disclosing to yourself (accepting your diagnosis) you should seek counsel with a friend, family member or professional.

The Seven Stages of Asperger's Awareness—Complete List

From ignorance to embracing—accepting Asperger's is a process.

I have received a lot of positive feedback about my series on the stages of Asperger's awareness.

Note: This is NOT Tony Atwood's four stages of diagnosis acceptance—which may not exist anyway...

Here are the 8 sections collected in one place.

The Seven Stages of Asperger’s Awareness: Background

Bliss: The first stage of Asperger’s Awareness

Inkling: Stage Two of Asperger's Awareness

Desperation: The Third Stage of Asperger's Awareness

Dawn: The Fourth Stage of Asperger's Awareness

Darkness: The 5th Stage of Asperger's Awareness

Acceptance: The Sixth Stage of Asperger's Awareness

Celebration: The Seventh Stage of Asperger's Awareness

Teaching an Aspie to Drive: #1 Driving with Purpose for Safety and Efficiency

Should people with Asperger's be allowed to drive?

I responded to a twitter question and had the following exchange:

So the real answer needs more than 140 characters.

I think I'll divide this up into 3-4 posts.

Here's my take.
1. People with Asperger's are people, and the default should be that they have the standard suite of rights and privileges of adults—including the privilege of driving.
2. People with Asperger's have a complicated constellation of challenges that make driving a differently challenging task. I don't say harder, but there isn't really a standard I can reference.
3. If some of the challenges for an individual with Aperger's are related to other kinds of challenges we face, then we can assess and adjust to help them be safe and confident drivers.
4. Driving is a privilege. Driving is a privilege. Driving is a privilege. Safety earns that privilege. Unproven confidence doesn't earn the privilege.

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PURPOSE: What is the purpose of driving?
For some of us, driving is utilitarian. We just want to get from A back home to A safely and efficiently. For others, driving is a sports event, a statement of independence or adulthood, a personal therapy session, a time to lecture kids as a captive audience, or a form of mobile flirting. I'll bet I don't have to describe all the types of drivers for you to recognize our varying purposes.
For an Aspie learning to drive, the first thing I would do is define the purpose. I would limit the purpose to utilitarian transportation—both safe and efficient. Limiting the purpose let's you as the driving instructor put a lot of other behaviors off-cue.

Defining the purpose also helps define success. Making sure that the outcome is clearly defined and prioritized is important. Safety is vastly more important than efficiency. If you are in the wrong lane to enter an on-ramp or make a turn, efficiency would urge you to make a challenging and less-safe maneuver to keep on your preferred/efficient route. Safety says, go around, make a u-turn, recalculate the route or find a safe place to reset and recalculate. Safety is number 1-9, efficiency comes in #10 and every other purpose is really a dangerous non-purpose.

When teaching an Aspie to drive, use the cognitive and metacognitive abilities of the Aspie to help shape the thought process of driving to be safety oriented. For example, when teaching my son, I had him think out loud so I could hear him verbalize his observations. By affirming the safety-oriented thoughts and helping his filter out the non-safety oriented thoughts I was able to help him be more focused on safety factors and less distracted by signs, environment, cars, other drivers, etc. Helping the driver learn to ignore stimuli is critical. For an Aspie with hypervigilant senses, ignoring is more important than noticing. The Aspie will probably note everthing. The key is learning what to notice and give extra attention.

In the next post I'll address some Protocols for driving safely. I'll touch on things like literal and mental blind spots, status quo as safety, and the specialized language used for communicating with other drivers.

Stay tuned after that for posts including Perceptions and Programs.

Safe travels!