Asperger's Expert

Can People With Aspergers be Team Players?

2011-04-18T20:51:00.001-07:00

A lot of us with Asperger's struggle in team settings. What can we do about it?

We are more comfortable working as solo operators. It's not just that Aspies are iconoclasts. We tend to value things like honesty, direct speech, and literal explanations that don't always play well in group sessions.
Most teams begin as pseudo-teams, a term I credit to M. Scott Peck from his book A Different Drum. I've written a more detailed explanation on my other blog if you care to drill down.
Aspergians don't do so well on pseudoteams because we fiercely resist the game-playing and social deception that make pseudo-teams "work."
Here's a summary image to explain the pseudoteam. If you have Asperger's, you might be just the person a pseudoteam needs to speak the truth and provoke the crisis that helps your group become a true team. Play on!

Teaching an Aspie to Drive: #3 Perceptive Driving for Safety and Efficiency

2011-04-18T06:30:00.000-07:00

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.
This is the third in a series. Read the first and second posts for context.
PERCEPTIONS:

What does a safe driver perceive?
What must an Aspie learn to perceive and ignore?
What are the cues that can help an individual with Asperger's be the safest driver on the road?

Again, there are some foundational principles to observe about perceptions.

No one perceives everything. Recognizing your blind spots is key to compensating for them. Since we are not bugs, we don't have wide angle vision. There will always be significant visual information outside our field of vision. To capture all the available information, we must drive unsafely—constantly swiveling our head to make sure we don't miss anything. Driving with a swivelhead is dangerous, so we do something different. We accept the necessity of blind spots and use mirrors and quick glances to compensate. Just as a quarterback learns to check down on available receivers, a safe driver can learn to check down a series of regions. I don't suggest this is the only pattern, but a driver might adopt a rhythm of checking these zones: 1) Close in front: What's the next car doing? 2) Further out: What is traffic down the road doing? 3) Just behind: Who is following and how close are they? 4) Blind spot left: Who's approaching or passing from the fast side? 5) Blind spot right: Is there slow or pacing traffic on the right? One idea might be to use some regular feature such as a mile marker, a new song on the radio, an exit, etc. as a cue to scan through the five zones. Setting a safe routine can create both literal safety and emotional security—both of which support safe driving.

Your perception is skewed. Don't rely completely on your own perception of the literal or relational environment. Drivers that seem stable and consistent one moment might change behavior abruptly and swerve to make an exit or accelerate through a gap. I don't suggest that Aspie's should drive with paranoia, but with a general distrust that they can sense everything. When driving with passengers, the Aspie driver would do well to verbalize perceptions and check in with others to see how accurate they are. It is also literally true that driving from the left side of the car makes it more difficult to judge distance to objects on the right side. As an important part of learning to drive, I had my son park next to cones, then stones, then curbs and finally cars. Each time, I had him tell me how close he was, then get out of the car to compare perception with reality.

Ignoring is as important as perceiving. Since there is far too much stimuli for one person to take in, driving is partly an exercise in learning to ignore. Some unsafe practices include reading bumper stickers; scanning roadside billboards; over-focusing on directional signs; being distracted by text or images on other cars; interacting with other drivers; and interacting with passengers in ways that might be distracting. The key strategy for ignoring is to focus on what is essential to safety. This is an important strategy, and worth discussion and reinforcement. Have the learning Aspie think out loud about what to ignore and what to perceive. That will help you as the instructor calibrate their attention and focus.

Be self-perceptive. Recognizing your own state is one key to safe driving. Being aware of the internal environment is as important as the external environment. Being fatigued, hungry, angry or anxious can all lead to distraction and impulsive driving. As persons with Asperger's, we are prone to being overwhelmed by internal and external stimuli. We need to stay on top of our own state so we don't get blindsided by some condition or concern. It is especially wise to recognize our troublesome states. Maybe we are at our most irritable and distractible when we're hungry or sleepy. Maybe the radio makes you crazy or low-angle sunlight is a problem. Know your weaknesses and plan accordingly.

Keep driving and traveling in perspective. The consequences of unsafe driving are disproportionate to the consequences of inefficient driving. Speed kills. Lateness irritates. Keep them in perspective.

Can Students with Asperger's Thrive in College...

2011-04-17T15:43:00.001-07:00

...not necessarily.

NPR has a balanced article on how students with Asperger's fare in higher education. They lead with a program at Colorado State University, but also mention the College Autism Spectrum website which has some free and paid resources.

If you are contemplating going or sending a loved Aspie to college, this is worth a look. I recommend you read the comments on the NPR article and follow some of the links provided there.

Elves have Asperger's!

2011-04-16T19:34:00.001-07:00

I'm watching the special extended version of the Two Towers with my younger NT son when I just realized—Elves have Asperger's.

People with Asperger's have high intelligence. Elves too.
Elves are uncomfortable with physical touch. Aspies too. When the elf-lord Haldir of Lórien arrives, he is clearly uncomfortable with Aragorn's hug.
Elves speak with odd syntax and unusually precise vocabulary. Dr. Asperger would agree. Maybe elves are like "immortal professors."
Aspies have strong and compelling interests—bordering on obsessiveness. Doesn't Rivendell look like it was made by OCD people?
Elves are honest, loyal and literal. They don't obsess about conformity and fitting in. Aspies are the same.
Elves have strong and mystical powers. They think and fight and love with superhuman capacity. That sounds like an Aspie to me!

Teaching an Aspie to Drive: #2 Driving Protocols for Safety and Efficiency

2011-04-11T06:30:00.000-07:00

Teaching an Aspie to Drive: #2 Driving Protocols for Safety and Efficiency

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

So the real answer needs more than 140 characters.

This is the second in a series. Read the first post for context.

PROTOCOLS: What are the rules of the road?

For many Aspies, passing the written driving test will be a breeze. It has limited number of objective answers and they're all available in the drivers' manual. In short, the written test shouldn't be so hard. But that's like saying that reading Emily Post is enough to guarantee relational success. It won't. Use this example to help the Aspie pre-driver keep their test-born confidence in check.

Here are some basic protocols to help the Aspie driver be safe.

1. Driving is not operating a predictable machine. Driving is a team sport with unpredictable humans.
2. Driving is not an isolated behavior, it is a highly social combination of behaviors, attitudes, and communications.
3. Driving safely depends on fluency in a language of symbols and behaviors.
4. The status quo is usually safest.

To elaborate:

Protocol 1. We tend to think that machines are reliable, mechanical and predictable. Because driving is operating such a machine, it is reasonable to misapply mechanical rules to the experience of driving. However, the most significant variable in driving isn't the car—it's the driver. Cars don't cause accidents, people do. Since most of us with Asperger's have a pretty firm grasp on the unpredictability of humans, this approach can be a good entry to the difficulty of driving. The most important part of this protocol is to introduce and reinforce the idea that many drivers don't follow the rules. They change lanes without signaling. They run red lights. They speed, honk, swerve, stop, and cut you off without warning. Driving defensively isn't quite enough. We need to drive with a healthy slice of paranoia about the capability and character of other drivers.

Which leads to protocol 2. Driving is highly social. You can help your learning driver by spending time alone with them in the car articulating all the behaviors you can anticipate, infer, and observe about other drivers. You can show how the speed, position, and stability of a car give you clues to the driver's intent. For example, if I am driving in left lane of a freeway and a driver enters in the lane to my right, there is a reasonable chance that the entering driver will want to merge into the fast lane. That chance increases significantly if the driver enters the freeway behind a semi truck or some other slower vehicle. If a driver enters the freeway behind a semi and starts drifting toward the lane line I can almost guarantee an imminent lane change. The combination of entering driver + behind traffic + drifting to the lane is more reliable than a turn signal.

So then, protocol 3 is that driving has many symbols and behaviors that comprise a web of communications.

Many of the symbols are explicit, such as road signs, traffic signals, speed limits, turn signals, lane markings, and all of the gauges and dials in the car. Many people with Asperger's will rely too much on these explicit symbols because they are more concrete and reliable. The other set of symbols, and arguably the more important set, are implicit. Most of the implicit signals are more subtle and are context-dependent. For example, speed limits are more rigid in the presence of a marked patrol car. Drivers are more aggressive at rush hour as the traffic load slows them down. Mini-van drivers are less likely to cut you off than sports sedan pilots. In addition to all the subtle driver hints (swerving = distracted; slowing = uncertainty; sudden changes = impulsive; tailgating = impatience) there are environmental cues as well. Traffic around schools will slow down before and after school.

Just as human interactions are governed by a multitude of subtle cues from head tilts to eye rolls, driving is enmeshed in a web of signals and symbols that must first be recognized and then correctly understood. People with Asperger's are very capable of learning to recognize implicit signals. They are less likely to interpret them correctly on the fly. That said, experience does make us better at correctly translating and responding to even implicit cues.

Finally, protocol 4 is embrace the status quo. Think in terms of maintaining the safe circumstances. Almost any change can be dangerous. Changing speed, lanes, changing your planned route, changing the radio station, reclining the seat, drinking a soda—all these are changes, and changes are risky. When you are actually practicing behind-the-wheel, introduce imaginary crises such as, "You missed the turn!" or "There's an accident on your right!" or "A ball just bounced into the road." In most cases, the safest course of action is to slow slightly while scanning aggressively for any relevant information. Help the learning driver understand how adding change to the equation diminishes their ability to respond safely to driving dynamics.

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

2011-04-09T12:47:00.001-07:00

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

2011-04-09T12:32:00.001-07:00

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

2011-04-04T18:22:00.001-07:00

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.

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!

Avoid, Ignore, Adjust

2011-03-29T19:26:00.001-07:00

image via kaykays.com

It's irritating.

I don't know what it is. It might be a person, a ticking clock, a fabric texture, a smell, or anything else that set's you off. You can't control the initial stimulus, and you can't be your best self while the irritant is present.

What to do?

A—I—A

There are at least two layers to this problem. First, the stimulus itself is a problem. The sensation or interaction is having a disproportionate impact on your ability to practice self-control. You live in a society that values self-control and in a natural world that offers all sorts of organic punishments for losing control.

Let me share some examples.

While driving a car, bright sunlight flashes off keys or a water bottle.
Still driving, you realize that a bee, moth, or fly is in the car with you.
While waiting for an interview, you smell something that makes you crazy.
At a theater, you can't shut out the ticking sound of the projector.
While taking an important entry exam, the flickering fluorescents interfere with your concentration.

Second, your reaction to the stimulus is a problem. You can't stop thinking about it so the irritation feeds on itself in a crescendo of irritation that leads to a meltdown, shutdown, or blowup. Because you can't manage your response to the irritation you lose composure and lose the chance to perform at your best.

You can deal with both problems, but not without advance planning.

AVOID—As we get older and more autonomous, we have more choices and freedom to plan our life and times. My son is starting college next fall. He has made the decision to request an individual room in one of the dorms. This gives him a lot of interaction with the college community, but also preserves his need for an oasis of controlled environment. You might have a specific irritant that you can avoid. I struggle with bright light, especially diffused light. When I walk into a meeting, restaurant, or library I am very conscious of facing away from the brightest light in the room. I sit with my back to the window if possible and face into a dark space when I can. I wear sunglasses and a brimmed hat when I can. When driving, I sometimes put clip-on lenses over standard sunglasses to get an extra dark function. No matter what the irritant is, if you know it's coming and you can avoid it that's more than half the battle.

IGNORE—It helps to know your options. Is this irritant something you can ignore? If it's a sound, can you put in earplugs, listen to music, introduce white noise or create some appropriate sound yourself? If it's a visual stimuli, do you have the option of covering your eyes, setting up a visual barricade, or changing your direction of view? Ignoring and overriding the irritant is usually the low-cost option. Even smells and textures can be managed with some advance planning.

Most of us know our triggers, so planning strategies and having simple equipment to support ignoring is a viable strategy.

ADJUST—Strangely, the most empowering strategy for us on the spectrum is one we are most hesitant to use. Adjusting the stimulus is often simply a matter of taking the initiative to close the blinds, turn down the volume, request a different table, or ask someone to stop a behavior. The problem is that people with Asperger's have a double bind when it comes to adjusting stimuli. We don't have great intuition and social skills—especially for asking others to change their behavior. We hesitate to "impose" our preferences or "intrude" on someone else's situation. That's one reason why it's important to learn how to make requests using "I" statements. It is much more socially acceptable to say, "I can't concentrate with that music playing, could you turn it off please?" than to say, "Turn that down!" I've found that most of the time the irritating condition is not anyone's priority, it's just a status quo or mild preference.

When you have Asperger's, the world is a multiple-bogey environment filled with potential and actual irritants. How you preempt or adjust to the crazy-making stimuli can be the difference between performing at your best or losing composure and opportunities.

If you are or are raising an Aspie, teach yourself or your child to remember A—I—A

Square Pegs

2011-02-02T09:21:00.001-08:00

I got expelled from seminary.

To be accurate, I was gently encouraged to leave.
I didn't do anything wrong; and neither did the seminary.

I had already been teaching for awhile, but there was a splinter in my brain (that sounded a lot like my mother :-) insisting that I should be a pastor.
After a year of study, several theology classes and a mind-numbing sojourn into Koine Greek, I sat down with my advisor. He talked me through a set of interest inventories I had completed. He asked me pointed questions about my heart for different aspects of ministry.

Near the end of our conversation, he said, "Peter—you should not be a pastor. God has made you a teacher. Go and teach well."

I have learned a lot since that conversation in 1991. Mostly I have learned to retroactively appreciate the gracious release from a dream that wasn't really mine. I've learned that I was built to lead through challenging, questioning, explaining and inspiring. Those could have been good pastor-teacher qualities, but I lacked the nurturing, comforting, and caring impulses that make the best pastors minister effectively.

A lot of our students need someone to pull the college splinter from their brain.
A lot of our students need to be told graciously and lovingly that "college is a round hole and you are a beautiful trapezoid. Go be a chef, a designer, a builder, a painter. Harvest lumber, care for children, build a life with your hands and your heart. Let the people who live in their heads thrive at college. You go and live in the world of people and things."

A new report from Harvard University backs me up.
Let's expel students from the falsely universal expectations of college and some high school programs as well.
Let's release them to a different kind of greatness.

Eat like an Aspie

2011-01-10T20:16:00.000-08:00

As a child, there were some foods I could not eat. I wasn't stubborn. In fact, I was fairly adventurous, but some foods were inedible because of texture or taste quirks. For example, I remember cheese being very hard to eat, especially the overly smooth texture of processed cheese. (I still consider Velveeta, Spam, and Miracle Whip the unholy trinity of food-like products.)

Anyway, if you are raising an Aspie like me, you might appreciate some practical tips from the Happy Housewife. Although not directed towards those who manage spectravores, it does have some smart and specific tips for making it through the food wars.

Check out The Happy Housewife’s Guide to Dealing with Picky Eaters:

Will I have Asperger's in heaven? Yes.

2010-12-30T17:29:00.000-08:00

I had a little fun with this question recently by polling several Aspies and their parents. I left the question closed—as a yes-no question. That didn't stop anyone from answering with gusto and applying the answer to their own experience.

Not surprisingly, the trend was that parents experienced Aspergers as a condition/disability that will go away, while Aspies themselves see Aspergers as something that is part of their identity.

Background:

I am a Christian believer in the historical, biblical tradition. I am part of a congregation in the Evangelical Covenant Church which means I affirm basic tenets of Christianity including:

I believe:

•There is an eternal, relational God existing in three co-equal persons—Father, Son, & Spirit.

•God is the standard for morality.

•All humans fall short of God's standard—we call this deficit sin.

•The gap between God's standard and human sinful behavior separates us from God.

•We can't bridge the gap through our own effort or righteousness.

•God offered a bridge in the person of his own son Jesus.

•Jesus is both a real historical person and a divine person of the triune god.

•Jesus willingly accepted responsibility for my sin and yours, dying a substitutionary, sacrificial death by execution on a cross.

•God the Father raised His Son from true physical death—adding "Savior" to his eternal title as Lord of the Universe.

•As Lord and Savior, Jesus' death and resurrection broke the power of sin and death.

•In his sacrifice, Jesus offers each of us individual salvation that can restore us to a right relationship with God.

•Because God loves us and grants us true free will, salvation is not mandatory—we can accept it or reject it.

•Following his resurrection and ascension, Jesus sent a third person of the trinity—the Holy Spirit—to give us power to live in relationship with God.

•Accepting Jesus' offer of salvation is the way to experience eternity in God's presence—what Jesus called "paradise" in his words to the thief who was crucified with Him.

•What Jesus called paradise we commonly call heaven. It is the time/place/condition of eternal fellowship with a personal God and fellow saved believers.

•The doors to heaven are open to all, but God sets the conditions for admittance. His condition is acceptance and commitment to Jesus the Christ.

As I understand them, these beliefs are an important part of the good news that Christians call the gospel. I am probably leaving some things out, but in order to understand what I say about heaven you need to know what I mean.

Implications:

The list above is more doctrinal. Here are several implied or practical believes.

Truth is truth. Even if you disagree with every doctrinal point I made above, you may find some insightful truth about Asperger's Syndrome on this blog. I trust my expression of personal faith will not disqualify me in your eyes, but I take that risk willingly.

Asperger's is no respecter of faith. Being a Christian, Muslim, _________________, doesn't exempt or subject you to Asperger's any more than faith protects you from an earthquake. "The rain falls on the righteous and the unrighteous alike."

So, "Will I have Asperger's in Heaven?" demands a very granular response. I would expect a wide range of answers from my Buddhist, Catholic, Muslim, Atheist, and other friends—just as I hear a wide range of answers within my congregation and family. My answer is only my answer. My wife and son don't agree with me on all points. We are—none of us—monolithic.

Conclusion:

My answer is yes. I will have Asperger's in heaven.

There are aspects of Asperger's that help me relate to others and to God. My personal theology is that those elements will persist into eternity. The aspects of Asperger’s that draw me toward temptation and sin may still be present, but in some way I can’t yet understand, I will have the ability to live in complete harmony with my God and his holiness.

God doesn’t make mistakes. I have a more complex and undeveloped theology of disability than I can articulate here, but the essence is that we are living in a tiny slice of eternity. What happens now may not seem to have any purpose, but everything we experience has eternal value. We just can’t see it yet.

In my own brittle, impatient, Asperger’s way, I can’t wait to understand it all.

Celebration: The Seventh Stage of Asperger's Awareness

2010-04-29T21:03:00.000-07:00

Celebration:

Can it be? Can a person with a neurological [disorder] like Asperger’s [syndrome] really celebrate their [infirmity]? I can. I do. So do others. When I wrote a post about my son disclosing his Asperger’s, he was excited—not embarrassed. When dozens of great bloggers choose to reveal their membership in the Asperger’s nation, they are not ashamed. We may be defensive, defiant, or overly zealous about our identity, but we are not ashamed of the truth. We are smart enough, secure enough, and gosh darn it—some people like us.

Learning to celebrate yourself is part of healthy human—spirituality, psychology and sociability. Whether in response to Asperger’s or something else, the seeds of self-acceptance yield the fruit of celebration. It is hard to live apart from the herd, for isolation is stressful. The laughter and casual affirmation of personhood is a balm to a wounded soul. When denied that social salve, we with Asperger’s can get cranky, dark, and dangerous. We are more likely to harm ourselves than others, but harm we do.

Celebration is the stage of surging up from self-acceptance to self-appreciation. From the steady breeze of acceptance blow gusts of celebration. We optimize the files at work, find the elusive bug in the software or design the perfect flow chart. We are valued, and we add value. That’s worth celebrating. In our Asperger’s we find an identity, not a disability. It is part of who we are; so after the darkness and emerging acceptance we celebrate our syndrome as part of embracing our undivided self. If you have ever fallen asleep with a sense of satisfaction—knowing you have observed, solved or created something new—then you are living in stage seven. Your celebration may be ever so private, but it is celebration all the same. Thank you. By accepting and embracing yourself, you accept and embrace all the citizens of Aspergia.

With celebration we gain a thicker skin and more energy for introspection. Freed from the dangers of darkness, we can explore our motivations and abilities without fear. The window of our blindness shrinks even more. With confidence and the courage of celebration, we come out to the world and our public sphere expands again. We speak, write, blog, and act on our behalf. We tell our story—if only to ourselves. But when we share with others, they respond to our new-found confidence and share back. That shrinks our hidden zone as well. The stage of celebration is good for our psychological development. It makes us better people and better friends.

As you might expect, celebration represents a restoration of appropriate self-esteem. The grid above needs another dimension; because the esteem of celebration is not the saccharine high of dawn. It is a steady faith in our own goodness and value. It is just as high, but it is far more deep.

If you love, serve, or are someone with Asperger’s Syndrome I applaud you. You are valuable and worth celebration. You deserve the love you get.

Acceptance: The Sixth Stage of Asperger's Awareness

2010-04-18T16:11:00.000-07:00

Acceptance

The transition from darkness to acceptance is one of the least discernible shifts in Asperger’s Awareness. Darkness can be so painful that the subject and his/her family go numb in response. Given the options, numb is better than further harm, but it can slow down the process through to a healthy integration of Asperger’s into all aspect of identity. For some, acceptance is the terminal stage of Asperger’s awareness. It is a reasonable and manageable state of affairs, even if it misses some of the psychological and personal benefits of celebration.

Unlike some of the earlier stages, acceptance is a steady state. The shock of being “other” is balanced with knowledge about what Asperger’s is and how it works. The tension of living in the general population is a known, and the last spasms of darkness mellow into a stable, functioning system. Acceptance is not necessarily positive. It can be tinged with resentment and a permanent sense of bitterness or resignation. Acceptance is better than the alternatives though, precisely because it is predictable and static. The pain and negativity of Asperger’s may be profound, but since they are known quantities, the Aspie and loved ones can build and reinforce coping mechanisms. Not all mechanisms are equally desirable, and surely some Aspies develop dysfunctional patterns, but they are at least stable. In fact, the stability of acceptance is what makes celebration possible and begins to guard against a regression in to darkness.

There is no single JoHari configuration that captures the acceptance stage, but there are several patterns. Unlike the unrestrained disclosure that often accompanies dawn, those in the acceptance stage are more reflective about when and to whom they disclose Asperger’s. They don’t try to hide the syndrome, but they may set boundaries to protect their privacy and ensure appropriate disclosure.

In general, those in the acceptance stage have increased their own self-knowledge. This leads to a large public arena, but may also stimulate a reconsideration of what should remain private. Part of the stability of acceptance is managing the message. Some with Asperger’s develop a short script they can use to identify the syndrome to others.

During acceptance—which may last a lifetime—both Aspies and those who love them experience an uptick in self-esteem. Rather than denigrating their self-identity because of the Asperger’s, they tend to upgrade their description of the syndrome to match the level of personal esteem.

Esteem is a tricky thing in any case, but Aspergers complicates the issue because some of the tools that normally construct our self-concept are missing or low-functioning. Many neurotypicals generate a sense of their self-worth by reading how people respond to them. They track affirmation and correction (usually subtle) and build a self-concept from those inputs. Self-esteem is a dynamic idea, with daily and relational fluctuations. Some situations and people bring us down, and others bring us back up. For a person with Asperger’s, many of the cues and signals that feed the self-esteem machine are inscrutable. Consequently, a person who finally accepts Asperger’s may regress to behaviors that they tried to avoid earlier in the process. For example, an Aspie who learns that wearing a variety of clothing is socially normal might decide, as part of accepting her Asperger’s, to wear what she likes. This could lead to some social distancing—and that might be okay. In acceptance, the level of self-esteem is not typically as high as during ignorance, but it is much more informed. The esteem of one who accepts Asperger’s is much more complex, but that complexity is precisely what makes possible the final stage: celebration.

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More insights from the Asperger's Expert are on the main page.

Darkness: The 5th Stage of Asperger's Awareness

2010-03-01T10:59:00.000-08:00

Darkness:

After the journey from ignorance to awareness, stage five feels like a regression. Rather than the burst of insight and support that emerges during dawn, darkness is a flood of realistic pessimism. The first response to all the books, websites, and support groups is grateful relief. The second reading and beyond is more discouraging. Delving deeper into the Asperger’s community reveals a universe of pain, awkwardness, and depression. Asperger’s is hard, unrelenting, and irreversible. At first, Pervasive Developmental Disability is just a category. Now, “pervasive” lands like a curse. That means it won’t go away.

To achieve some sort of stable integration, the person with Asperger’s will need to accept and ultimately embrace the condition. In darkness, that acceptance is still a future reality. In dawn, we have enough information to be encouraged. In darkness, we have enough information to be depressed. And depression is more than a casual description. Especially for adolescents, undiagnosed depression is a risky condition. There is no question that individuals with Asperger’s are more likely than the general population to experience other mental health challenges, including obsessive-compulsive disorder and depression. The technical term for this relationship is “comorbid” which has nasty overtones in relation to suicide. The problem with a blanket statement about suicide and Asperger’s is that diagnostic criteria for Asperger’s are not universally accepted. That makes it tough to make a clear statistical case connecting the two. However, a short tour through WrongPlanet.net or most Asperger’s blogs will reveal anecdotal support for the idea that teenagers with Asperger’s are at elevated risk for suicide.

Since this isn’t formal research or a clinical study, I simply recommend that parents, friends, and those of us with AS be more careful about mental health issues. Understanding how suicide progresses from contemplation through ideation to action can give parents and others some strategies to intervene and break up the suicidal progression. From the perspective of personality disclosure, darkness is a contraction from the openness of dawn. As information and predications about the syndrome become overwhelming, the most natural response is to pull back and close ranks. The openness and invitational spirit of dawn are banished—replaced with less introspection, more denial, less disclosure, and more hiding.

The impulse to draw back from the syndrome is reasonable, protective and wrong. Darkness is best handled in community—not isolation. But the Asperger’s community is a constant reminder of the Asperger’s condition. In a pattern somewhat similar to racial self-hatred, those who are bound up in the darkness of Asperger’s may intentionally avoid contact and association with other Aspies. Call it a form of denial by selective socialization. Whatever the impulse, darkness draws the Aspie deeper into isolation and decline.

Asperger’s misery does not love company, but the depression cause by Asperger’s is best addressed with activity and community. Unfortunately, the dip in self-image and optimism directly inhibits any action to get out and connect with others. This creates an emotional gravity well that traps the Aspie, family and friends in permanent darkness. What to do? (Hint: Prepare for darkness before it comes…)

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More insights from the Asperger's Expert are on the main page.

Dawn: The Fourth Stage of Asperger's Awareness

2010-01-20T19:45:00.000-08:00

DAWN:

I’ve spent a few dozen nights under the stars, as a fisherman in Alaska and an avid camper in all sorts of places. One thing I’ve learned is that spending a long cold night outside makes you appreciate dawn all the more. So too, a season of desperation makes an Asperger’s diagnosis feel like a welcome sunrise breaking over the horizon.

Through a combination of poor planning and excessive ambition, I have hiked, boated, biked and driven into the dark before making camp. I love waking up to see the campsite and scenery for the first time. Discovering Asperger’s felt just like that for me. I’d been living at Camp Asperger’s for years but couldn’t see the scenery.

When we with Asperger’s discover our diagnosis, we experience relief, satisfaction, and a perverse sense of vindication. We’d known for a while that we were different, but now we know why and how. Ahhh and Aha! We are ushered into a community of social nomads, and escape from the wasteland of arbitrary anxiety. Dawn rocks.

(So much of the stage of dawn is personal and emotional, I’m going to complete this blog in the first person plural. Please indulge me—I know I don't speak for all Aspies—and let me come back around to a more detached voice another time.)

By the light of our Asperger’s revelation, we start to read. We read people. We read books. We read blogs. We discover that our Asperger’s family has wise parents, Eddie Haskel-like self-promoters, celebrities, and a planetary reach—even if it is the wrong planet. We read wiki’s and forums and discussion boards galore. Some of us tweet. And retweet (please). There’s a very good chance that most of the people finding this site through a search engine are living in the dawn. To some of us, discovering Asperger’s is like finding out that there are others who speak the language we thought we’d made up. It is like grieving the loss of our twin speech sibling (See the movie Nell if you don’t get this reference) and then finding out we are really triplets or quadruplets or more! Dawn rocks again.

I don’t know how this works exactly, but the dawn of Asperger’s is a simultaneous offloading—of the imposed labels of “freak” and “oddball”—while shouldering the mantle of Asperger’s. We Aspies may be different, but we are not alone. We are not the only one. We are a I.

"I'm 33 for a moment

Still the man, but you see I'm a they"

(Five For Fighting - 100 Years)

The dawn of Asperger’s awareness is a curious place for Johari’s window. What was blind to us moves decisively and dramatically into the public arena. Then, we slide a bit of that information into the hidden pane. We learn that we are Asperger, and some of what that means. But we also learn that some of our nature is best kept to ourselves. We look around the community of Aspies and see a few relatives we might rather keep secret.

At the same time, we find out that there are other Aspies, parents, teachers, and friends who have been waiting to welcome and support us. By discovering Asperger’s and stepping into the public realm, we gain access to all sorts of communities, support groups, connections and resources. (Check the right sidebar) By the light of the dawn, we feel better and more optimistic. Dawn connects us to others. Dawn rocks; and dawn rolls on.

Knowing we cannot be banished to solitude ever again helps us feel better about ourselves. Both we with Asperger’s and the parents who love us feel better about ourselves. We should. Dawn is a needed respite in the stages of awareness. Breathe deeply and relax. Dawn is great, but dark days follow. In a way, the sun slips back below the horizon and all that is found seems lost again. Before midday, darkness will eclipse the dawn.

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More insights from the Asperger's Expert are on the main page.

Desperation: The Third Stage of Asperger's Awareness

2010-01-10T18:37:00.000-08:00

DESPERATION:

Though ignorance is bliss and inkling is promising, there is a dip of desperation before dawn breaks. The stage of desperation is the time when we know enough to be disturbed, but not enough to take action. Sadly, desperation is not the bottom—that comes later…

In desperation, parents move from suspicion to certainty. Rather than wondering if their child is really different, parents begin to catalog and investigate those differences. Since most of the differences are problematic, parents are usually investigating as a matter of self-defense. (Nobody gets hot and troubled trying to “solve” musical talent or prodigious intellect.) Those suffering from what I call Asparent’s Syndrome are more likely to need support and understanding.

In our family, we entered desperation on the first Friday of our son’s first-grade year. Before he went to school, my wife contacted his new teacher and informed her about some of David’s “different” behaviors. Mrs. S., who has since become a dear family friend, responded to my wife and said, “I see what you mean.” The teacher gave us external confirmation that we weren’t imagining things. While it verified our sanity, it also drove us straight into desperation. I can draw a direct line from that Friday message to the day an IEP team determined that David was on the Autism Spectrum. The period between validation and diagnosis was a fearful and desperate time. But it helped us along the way toward a better day.

For parents, fear escalates along with certainty and clarity. For the subject, the path through desperation may look different. To some degree, the subject with Asperger’s is not as motivated to figure out what’s up, but how to get along. As Temple Grandin has famously observed, the child with Autism/Asperger’s must learn how to imitate proper human behavior. Thus, the child’s focus (or teen’s, or adult’s) is less about labeling the condition, and more about learning to live with it. For me, as a child with Asperger’s, I didn’t care what I was. I just knew I was me, and that parts of me were unacceptable. I didn’t have enough ego development to reflect on how different I was from the norm. Instead, I learned (very imperfectly) to suppress the parts of me that seemed to provoke ridicule and hostility. I also tried (very clumsily) to accentuate the parts of me that earned praise and acceptance. The result, common to many with Asperger’s, is the emergence of a survival system of masks and façades and the practice of rapid identity switching. Some with Asperger’s are better than others, but all of us expend tremendous energy trying to cope. It is hard and desperately so, but it is a desperation for doing rather than the desperation for knowing common to our Asparents.

In the season of desperation, knowledge about the symptoms moves completely out of the hidden quadrant and across the blind and public arenas. As parents seek answers, they talk with the child—which makes it clear that the behaviors are under observation. At least within the family domain, desperation is public.

Some aspects of how people—even parents—perceive Asperger’s behaviors may remain unknown to the subject, so desperation is an appropriate time for parents to provide gentle and caring feedback. This feedback should not take the form of demands, accusations, and ultimatums. Instead, parents might choose an inquiry approach. Asking a child to compare his or her behaviors with peers in similar situations is a non-judgmental way to begin identifying and discussing non-standard behaviors.

The reason parents must be careful and protective during this stage is because the child’s sense of difference is now an open issue and has negative impacts on self-concept and self-esteem.

Desperation can be a brief season, but it is real and necessary because it drives the discovery and diagnosis that begins a walk into the light. Fortunately, that light is coming.

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More insights from the Asperger's Expert are on the main page.

Inkling: Stage Two of Asperger's Awareness

2010-01-06T20:22:00.000-08:00

INKLING:

The path from ignorance to awareness is not well marked. There are few mileposts or road signs along the way and it can be hard to discern movement from one stage to another. Everyone exits the stage of blissful ignorance at a different place in a different way. A mother may have a blind spot about her child because she is accustomed to some idiosyncratic behaviors, while a father may see those behaviors and mirror or deny them. Sometimes it takes an outsider to encounter the behavior and immediately place it outside the range of typical.

In other cases, the intimacy of self or parent observation leads to early detection and recognition of Asperger’s symptoms, well before the syndrome is named and researched. As one parent commented on my Stage One post, “I had an awareness from birth…that something was up.” For a parent—often a mom—who is investing massive amounts of intimate time in her child, subtle symptoms like eye contact, muscle tone, distractibility, and even some aspect of how a baby rests (or doesn’t) in her arms can be an early indicator. Though they don’t all have Asperger’s, I have learned that my instinctive recognition that a child is getting sick is usually correct. There is some combination of breath odor, skin “feel” and a general subdued attitude that always precedes a heavy cold or flu. I’m sure there’s some more subtle and subconscious dynamic going on that allows some parents to sense Asperger’s well before any formal diagnostic criteria emerge.

At the other end of the spectrum are subjects who make it well into childhood, teen years, or adulthood without suspecting or raising suspicion of Asperger’s syndrome. Sometimes, the dynamics of adolescence are a powerful catalyst for bringing Asperger’s symptoms into focus. A child who seems normally quiet or withdrawn might be masking AS incompetence that comes to the surface during adolescent attempts at friend-making or romance. I remember clearly that during my fourth-year I had an epiphany about how people think about each other. I was convinced that my looks, my voice, my geekiness, my poor eyesight, etc. were the subject of constant recognition and criticism by all my classmates. One day I realized that I spent very little time observing and evaluating my peers, so it made sense that they spent very little time critiquing me. That realization was liberating (too much so, as I will share when I blog about Stage Five: Darkness). What other may have picked up on through intuition, I only accessed through cognition. The truth is, my self-consciousness was way out of proportion on the high side. Being an Aspergian extremist, I promptly swung my pendulum round to the other extreme.

By sixth grade, I knew I was something. When we were required to write Valentine’s Day cards to all the students in our class, I got some that were signed, “Not Really.” I knew I was intelligent and articulate. I could sing a bit and was tall enough to compensate for being slow and clumsy. I didn’t know why nobody liked me, but I knew it was true. I had an inkling of my Aspergian citizenship that persisted unresolved for 20 years.

Most people, especially in 2010, don’t take 20 years to transition from ignorance through inkling to dawn. There are so many resources and conversations about Asperger’s and Autism that someone is sure to vocalize a curiosity much more quickly. That vocalized curiosity, whether it comes from the subject, parents or someone else, is the beginning of the shift from ignorance toward awareness.

In the world of Johari window insights, inkling is when Asperger’s begins to move from the unknown pane into (usually) the blind spot. Although some teens and adults with Asperger’s may begin to suspect and self-diagnose, it is much more common for the first recognition to come from someone else. Since Asperger’s inhibits the aspects of self-awareness that include comparative social observations, the subject is less likely to observe the package of stereotypical behaviors and interests, social awkwardness, pedantic language that are external markers of Asperger’s. Thus, the movement through Johari is almost always from unknown to blind.

Once it is in the blind spot, Asperger’s is evident to someone. If that or those individuals are parents, the recognition raises concerns and lowers esteem. Without a clear answer, parents are left wondering, “What’s wrong/different/odd about my child?” Answers lag questions by months or years, and the intervening period is marked by decreased optimism and parent-esteem. Often, the subject picks up on the parent angst and misinterprets it as disapproval or disappointment. This is a pattern that re-manifests later on and can trigger a dark and dismal period.

Inkling is a relatively passive stage, but it leads through desperation before an explosion of learning, awareness, and recognition. Stay tuned for some stories about the desperation before dawn breaks.

In the meantime though, please retweet and/or add your comments below about how you first got an inkling that set you on the path towards Asperger’s Awareness. I’m glad to be there with you.

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More insights from the Asperger's Expert are on the main page.

Bliss: The first stage of Asperger’s Awareness

2010-01-04T22:50:00.000-08:00

BLISS

During the first stage of Asperger’s Awareness, nobody knows about the syndrome. Not only is the presence of the syndrome unknown, but neither the parents nor the subject may observe any symptoms. This blissful ignorance may be simply a factor of age. Until a child is 2-4 years old, the basic symptoms of Asperger’s are difficult to detect before the child’s language and cognitive development are sufficiently established.

As an example, a toddler Aspie may not have sufficient social interaction to reveal the impairments that emerge in childhood. While some of the early indicators of Asperger’s may be unusually advanced vocabulary or hyperlexia, with an infant or toddler, those symptoms are still below the threshold of detection.

Blissful ignorance can also be a function of denial, mild symptoms, or sophisticated coping skills. A family with an Aspie member might engage in various levels of denial, either celebrating his intellectual/verbal skills or ability to interact comfortably with adults. Ignoring the challenges of Asperger’s while emphasizing its gifts can be a conspiracy within the family system that keeps the status quo in place. Denial takes a lot of energy, and the energy required to stay in ignorance is rarely sustainable.

In stage one, Bliss, the presence of Asperger’s Syndrome is located in the unknown quadrant of the Johari window. For more information about the dynamics of the Johari Window, please review my earlier post on the background for this stage model.

Logically, anyone who is learning about stage one is no longer in stage one. So why spend time discussing bliss? As with many family and psychological dynamics, the seeds of later challenges are sown early on. Some of the patterns that can cause problems for childe and teen Aspies—not to mention adults with the syndrome—begin in first stage, when Asperger’s is still unknown. Patterns of sensitivity, excuse-making, blaming, protecting, rescuing, denying, etc. can all begin when parents and subjects are still ignorant of the syndrome. In some cases, these family system dynamics are themselves powerful forces that create additional complications later on. Subjects and their families who learn about Asperger’s at any point may find it useful to reflect on ways they may have been responding to Asperger’s without knowing it.

During the first stage, both subject and the family have a relatively neutral level of self-esteem and self-identity. As Asperger’s emerges from obscurity, self and family-esteem is one of the first casualties. It is rare for a family to learn about Asperger’s without suffering some sense of loss and inadequacy. Bliss is temporary, but it is a necessary and universal precursor to Stage Two: Inkling.

Please share your comments below. Have you experienced bliss? Do you sometimes wish you could regress back to bliss?

Check back in a few days for some thoughts on Stage Two.

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More insights from the Asperger's Expert are on the main page.

The Seven Stages of Asperger’s Awareness: Background

2010-01-04T07:07:00.000-08:00

Stage-Based Background:

Many psychological developments progress through a sequence of experiences. Elizabeth Kübler-Ross described the five stages of grief as denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. Others have added stages such as renewal and hope. Understanding the process has helped many of us deal with grief and grieving. C.S. Lewis, in his book A Grief Observed, gave us the gift of a description of grief through the experience and expression of a gifted writer. Sometimes, we can learn vicariously through the experiences of others. That learning can be a comfort and a source of sanity in the midst of chaotic times.

Unlike stage theories, many personality theories (DISC, Myers-Briggs/Kiersey, LIFO) propose that our working personality has a number of dimensions. The number four seems to be common, though there are other configurations. The Johari Window, while not exactly a personality theory, is a way of visualizing the interaction of various aspects of our identity. I have found the Johari window a helpful way of explaining the value of learning, reflection, disclosure, and feedback.

Johari Background:

Here’s a basic look at the Johari Window. (The window is named for its creators, Joseph Luft and Harrington Ingham).

The two dimensions of knowledge intersect to form four quadrants. Quadrant one is variously called the Public, Arena, or Open quadrant. The public arena contains everything about our self that is known to us and known or at least accessible to others. This might include our gender, height, name, and anything else we choose to reveal. Quadrant two is the blind spot containing things about ourselves that are known to others, but unknown to us. I often use bad breath and the way our colleagues regard us as examples from quadrant two. Quadrant three is the unknown, mystery, and it contains things about you that are both true and unknown. The presence of early stage cancer or the capacity for athletic accomplishment are both legitimate examples of information from the unknown quadrant. Often, the revelation and reassignment of unknown information is challenging and traumatic. The final quadrant is the hidden, avoided, or façade dimension. This contains everything we know about ourselves but have not disclosed.

In addition to the major principles of the Johari window that are explained elsewhere, I observe four important dynamics.

1. The choice to disclose personal information increases the public quadrant at the expense of the hidden quadrant.

2. Feedback from others increases the public quadrant at the expense of the blind quadrant.

3. Our window looks different in different settings. The shape of our window with a spouse would has a smaller hidden domain than with our children. That with our family should be shaped differently from our professional or public profile.

4. In the age of Facebook, and other broadcasting social media, impulsive self-disclosure is riskier than ever before.

Application:

Both stage-based wisdom and personality theories are helpful ways to understand the experience of Asperger’s Syndrome. Most of us start in ignorance and end up somewhere along the path toward acceptance. Some veer into self-hatred, while others become so pro-Asperger’s they end up becoming hostile to those in the neuro-typical population.

This series is a way to think about the progress of discovering Asperger’s. I am sure that my insights generalize and oversimplify from my experience as a person with AS, a father of an Aspie, and a principal to many more. So I’ll cede the technical and scholarly ground and speak more simply about how I’ve seen many people experience this process. If you find yourself anywhere in the descriptions, I’d like to hear from you so I can correct and refine the model.

In the next few posts, I will develop a model of Asperger's Awareness that may be helpful to Aspies, their parents, and those who serve them in schools and other settings. Thanks for adding your insights as we go. I suggest that this model is a gentle way to help bring Aspies and those who love them into greater understanding. I trust it will be useful to some of you.

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More insights from the Asperger's Expert are on the main page.

The Seven Stages of Asperger's Syndrome: Preview

2010-01-01T07:07:00.000-08:00

Like most who have Asperger's Syndrome, I am experiencing AS as an unfolding reality. I am starting a series about how we recognize and come to terms with the syndrome when we or someone we love discovers Asperger's.

I have given the seven stages some cryptic names. Maybe you can infer why I chose each name?

Stage One: Bliss
Stage Two: Inkling
Stage Three: Desperation
Stage Four: Dawn
Stage Five: Darkness
Stage Six: Acceptance
Stage Seven: Celebration

I'll start with some background information on stage-based processes and the Johari Window before diving in to the stages themselves. Check back for more info through January.

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More insights from the Asperger's Expert are on the main page.

Asperger's New Year's Resolutions: Part Two

2009-12-31T15:17:00.000-08:00

5: I resolve to give myself a break when I utterly fail to follow through on my commitments. I have some distractibility and am most excited by “the new thing.” That’s part of my personality type as a visionary/innovator. I can modify it or try to moderate it, but I resolve not to wallow in it.

4: I resolve not to spend more than one hour in a funk when I don’t get my way. I tend to pout about disappointments—and I’m sure pouting doesn’t make me a better person.

3: I resolve to start more of my days connecting with God, His word, my faith, righteousness, trying to be Christlike, and trying to bear the image faithfully. I don’t think having Asperger’s give me a pass on walking in truth. I resolve to live like I believe.

2: I resolve not to take people for granted. I love my wife. I treasure my kids. I look forward to celebrating 21 years next week at our favorite restaurant. As the little ones grow up and become my adult kids, I regret time not spent and wish for some more. I have some more with my kids still at home, so I resolve not to waste it.

1: I resolve to do the next right thing. 2009 was a lousy year. All the important things ended great, but there were so many valleys along the way. We had multiple cancer scares, two major surgeries, upheaval at work and challenges at school. Plus, a third child graduated and launched into the world. There were many days when the long view was so cloudy I had to retreat to the front of my nose and just do the next right thing. I want to remember those many lessons and keep doing one right thing in a row. Some year I’ll graduate to at least two right things in a row, but for 2010 a modest resolution, well kept, is sufficient.

Happy New Year! May your 2010 be blessed and may you be a blessing to all.

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More insights from the Asperger's Expert are on the main page.

10 Asperger’s Resolutions for 2010: Part 1

2009-12-31T12:53:00.000-08:00

10: I resolve not to freak out over the probable elimination of the term “Asperger’s Syndrome” from the DSM V. I am not Asperger’s and Asperger’s is not me. I can still be who I am with some other label.

9: I resolve to practice a new social courtesy every day for the month of January. I will greet, make eye contact, thank, indulge, ask after, tolerate, those I live and work with.

8: I resolve not to excuse my crusty behavior as an expression of AS. I control what I do, even if I can’t always control who I am.

7: I resolve to enjoy my trains. Training with my son is a pleasurable and appropriate distraction. I won’t regret the time we spend together.

6: I resolve not to resent people who are acting in their own interests. I act in my own interests all the time, so fair’s fair. If it is in someone’s interests to disagree with me, refuse me permission, correct me, etc. it isn’t necessarily personal. I resolve to get and maintain a grip.

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More insights from the Asperger's Expert are on the main page.

Not As Cold As You Think

2009-12-31T12:04:00.000-08:00

People who have Asperger’s are often very pragmatic about social relations.

For example, I am instinctively less social than I “should” be to workers and people I meet on a temporary basis. My wife is very good about saying hello, and wishing a good day to workers in tollways and paid parking lots. I have learned from her that it is polite and well-received to add a simple “I hope your day is going well.” (I learn a lot from my wife.)

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As a pragmatist, it makes no logical sense to be solicitous toward people with whom you will have no further contact. Unless you believe in Karma or the three-fold rule, you won’t get any benefit out of the exchange.

In a world where people are reflexively polite and responsive, a person who does not engage in small talk or social niceties seems cold and unfeeling. It may be that that person is simply efficient. If you are or love someone with Asperger’s, perhaps it is worth thinking through this simple truth:

Every opportunity to be polite/social is an opportunity to practice the social skills that may someday be critical to success. The payoff may not be obvious or immediate, but it is worth it to take advantage of every learning opportunity.

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More insights from the Asperger's Expert are on the main page.

Ghandi on a Fishing Boat

2009-12-20T13:21:00.000-08:00

Back in high school and college, a series of teachers “introduced” me to Maslow’s hierarchy of psychological needs. The model was very popular in the 80’s, for good reason. The basic logic makes sense, since it is hard to pay attention to membership and belonging needs if you are hungry, homeless, and under assault. (Sorry for the gross oversimplification Abraham.)

However, I always wanted to argue about the claim that the highest level, self-actualization, was so rare and difficult to accomplish that only a few people in history had ever attained it. Commonly, teachers and texts would suggest that only Jesus, Ghandi, and Martin Luther King Jr. were self-actualized individuals.
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I disagree. I think self-actualization is a state, not a level. I slip in and out of Maslow’s levels depending on the context. During a board meeting, if I get hungry I stop caring about whether the board likes me, and I wonder if I can snag some of their spare Chik-fil-a sandwiches. When I am full, rested, and secure, I often skip past the social levels of Abe’s pyramid and jump right to actualizing myself. It’s definitely a human thing and his may be an Asperger’s thing, but I’m not sure.

Here’s an example of a self-actualized epiphany (SEA). When I was 20, my brother died at sea and I inherited his set-net commercial fishing license, boat and gear. (Set-netting is a small-scale fishing method using open skiffs and small crews) That summer, I was a rookie captain with Meric Overman as my main crew and partner. During an opening in July, we decided to take a risk and set our nets at a distant location called Riley’s Wreck (Note to prospective captains—avoid being in places named for past shipwrecks.) Riley’s Wreck is along an exposed section of coastline that faces out across the Bering Strait to Siberia. To get there, Meric and I left Kotzebue and drove south around Cape Blossom.

From the time we passed the airport beacon, Meric and I were on our own with nothing to block the swells rolling across from a Siberian storm. It was intense, cold, and scary. As captain, I had the wheel of a 22-foot open skiff, driving twin outboards into the storm. I had reason to be scared. For one, my mom had lost her only other son just 5 months before—in a storm—at sea. Death and drowning was not abstract to me, and I was churning with my own grief and fear. For another, the waves were big, intense, and growing. But the best fishing was through the storm, around the cape, and down the coast. Mostly though, I was afraid because I was inexperienced, undersized, and completely in control. The waves were nasty, the wind was ripping, the summer sky was starting to dim as it does in late July in the arctic. Our little boat was outmatched, and our little crew was insignificant. And then it happened. Ghandi arrived.

Somewhere just North of Cape Blossom, we synced up with the storm. I started powering down the waves and easing off on the crest. We stopped jumping and pounding and started gliding. Working the throttle and the relaxing on the wheel, we started surfing the swells instead of powering through them. Meric felt it too. He stood with me and we knew without speaking that we could make it through. The next 30 minutes were the most pure expression of capability that I have ever felt. In the midst of real danger and adversity, we were up to the challenge. It was something like the “flow” that Csikszentmihalyi has described throughout his career.

We made it through and set our nets for a modest payday. I remember building a fire on the beach to dry out our gear, then spending a cold night in the storm until fishing the next day. I don’t know how many salmon we caught, or how much we made. What I do treasure is the memory that on that night, in that storm, I had what it takes. That is a touchstone that matters in a world that burdens Aspies with a sense of their abnormality and insufficiency.

I am posting this here at AspergersExpert because I appeal to all of us who are or love an Aspie to adopt a new concept of self-actualization. The tendency of spectrum dwellers to immerse in a challenge and focus intensely on an experience is not anti-social—as we are often told. Instead, it is an experience of self-actualization that is memorable and motivating. Once there, we want to go back. If you get there once, figure out the conditions and go back often. Find what you love and do a lot more of it.

For me, fishing commercially was a season of life that has ended. I haven’t set a net in 20 years. That doesn’t matter now. What matters is the memory and the recognition that I can go back to that metaphorical place when I need to.
A few years ago, I read a book by John Eldredge (Wild at Heart) that contained a quote by Howard Thurman.

"Don't ask yourself what the world needs; ask yourself what makes you come alive. And then go and do that. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive."

If you have Asperger’s, don’t ask what makes you more like the world—more “normal.” Ask what takes you to your place of greatest self-actualization. Once you have that answer, do a lot more of that—because our world needs you.

Our. World. Needs. You.

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More insights on the main page.

The Asperger's Express: Why Aspies Love Model Trains

2009-10-28T21:15:00.000-07:00

I’ve noticed that one of the most common search strings that leads to this blog is Asperger’s and model trains. Since I’ve learned a little bit about this topic, I thought I’d share my observations about the connection.

In the Asperger’s universe, model trains have advantages over life. As I have written elsewhere, the proportion of people with Aspergers in the general population is eclipsed by the number of my fellow aspies to be found in a model train store on a Sunday afternoon. Why is that?

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Model trains are much more than little machines. They are the centerpiece of a microworld where the engineer engineers the entire creation. In a lot of ways, the owner of a model train layout is a lot like the protagonist in a 1941 science fiction story by Theodore Sturgeon called Microcosmic God about an iconoclast who creates and controls a new species. If you love someone or are someone with Asperger’s, I highly recommend you read the text or a scanned version. Sturgeon didn’t know about Asperger’s because the label didn’t exist in 1941—but he knew enough about they syndrome to paint an accurate picture.

The world of a train modeler (often called a layout) has many advantages over the real world.

Real life is unpredictable, but a layout is highly predictable. If you want them too, the trains can literally run on time. The weather never interferes; and virtually all problems can be solved. The train set is mercilessly, relentlessly rational.

Real life is filled with humans, human emotions, human idioms, human impulses and human ambiguity. The train layout is also filled with humans, but they are plastic and permanent. If a scale-size worker is standing next to a depot, he’ll be standing there again tomorrow—he’s glued to the layout! This kind of routine predictability is comforting and calming to a person for whom the word is constantly disquieting and stressful.

Where human interactions are complex and inscrutable, trains and train operations are complex and completely knowable. Those who model trains can specialize in locomotives (which they like to call “motive power”). They can be expert landscapers, historians, or archeologists. At their most creative, train modelers are artists in four dimensions. They bring the entire physical world to life by operating the train on a scale approximation of an actual train line operation.

For an adult with Asperger’s, playing with trains is not play. Trains satisfy the need to think deeply and drill down to minute details, but model trains are mostly free from the challenges of anticipating and adapting to the social environment. To see a room full of train enthusiasts is to see an environment where a person with Asperger’s can shine. The emphasis on technical knowledge paired with genuine enthusiasm for arcane details is genuinely exciting. The de-emphasis on social sophistication and divergent conversation creates a safer place.

I’m sure there are many people with Asperger’s who don’t care for model trains. I’m certain many model train enthusiasts have no trace of Asperger’s. But where the two domains overlap, you will find a world where people with AS can relax into themselves and experience joy without anxiety. For someone with Asperger’s, that can be a gratifying way to spend time.

The Aspies you love might not be into trains, but I'll bet they're into something. Maybe they need to spend time in another world because the normal world wears them out.

Escaping the Monversation: Three ways to Redirect Obsessive Aspie Discourse

2009-10-12T18:14:00.000-07:00

Have you ever found yourself halfway attending to a conversation with your Aspie child/spouse/friend when suddenly you realized that your “uh-huh’s” and distracted nods have committed you to a one-sided stream of consciousness monversation (my term for a monopolized, monotopic, monologue) about trains/pokemon/zoology/dinosaurs/natural disasters or some other fascination of the moment? What can you do?
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First, it helps to understand a bit about our psychology. While we don’t discount the importance and pleasure of social dialogue; we with AS tend to find great satisfaction/pleasure/comfort in the recitation/repetition of stylized facts and information. They are a safe conversational “place” for us, free from the vagaries and unpredictability of typical human conversation. We don’t intend to be disrespectful, but we do—at least subconsciously—act to protect/preserve our own interests. Therefore, transitioning us out of our singular topic is slightly risky and is best attempted with explicit clarity.
Here are three ways to escape the monservation:

1. PREMPT the monversation by helping your aspie child/student analyze a typical conversation. Analyze means to “break down into its constituent parts” so, this exercise is designed to calibrate your Aspie’s sense of what normal conversational interchange look like. As with many cognitive approaches to Asperger’s symptoms, the point of this exercise is to make explicit the intuitive or implicit social rules that most humans learn without direct instruction. How is works: choose a sample of conversation with two partners (work up to three or four as the person with AS can handle it.)
Have the child track the conversation for turn-taking, making a tally mark each time the conversation switches speakers.
Have the child track “echoing” which is a technique we use to synchronize our response with the speaker. This involved repeating or rephrasing a concept or term offered by the other conversant in such a way to amplify, extend, or affirm the original speaker’s idea.
Have the child track non-verbal agreement and attention indicators such as eye contact, “uh-hum’s” postural changes, nods.
Have the child diagram the “conversation train” showing how topics shift over time and trying to see when the conversation jumps the track. For many of us with AS, it is hard to understand how a conversation about the weather can end up in a political debate. (Strangely though, we can turn almost any topic onto our obsessive cul-de-sac.)
If possible, videotape a conversation with your child/student and have them analyze then compare. As much as possible, have the child treat the typical conversation as a template.

2. DISRUPT the monversation by using specific coded cues that only you and the child understand. I like to use proper nouns, such as the speaker’s name. If the child is conversing appropriately, then I use pronouns such as you, he, or we. For example, I might point agree with a statement saying, “We had a similar experience.” But if the child with AS is monopolizing the conversation I might say, “David, do you know if Mr. Jacobsen has ________________________?” This disrupts (hopefully) the monversation by reintroducing the other partner, and by inviting the other conversant to lead for a bit. You could also use colors, numbers, etc. depending on the standard obsession. I like to use the names of people as a way to get my child’s attention and redirect it back to the other person.

3. CONCLUDE the monversation explicitly by setting an end point. I like to choose a set number of facts or stories, such as: “David, you may tell me two more facts about Pokémon and then we are going to have a two-way conversation about some other topics.” Alternatively, for an adult with whom the previous approach would seem condescending, I would be more peer-oriented and say, “John, your interest in hurricanes is more extensive than mine. I would like to change the subject and talk about several other topics as well. While this might seem intrusive and impolite to most people, we Aspies tend to prefer direct conversational direction versus hints and indirect overtures. Key phrases like “change the subject” or “talk about something else” are hard to miss. Even someone with AS will learn your conversational preferences. Asking guided questions is rarely effective at dislodging an Aspie from their preferred conversational track—it is simply too subtle. Making a request or even a polite direction is much more likely to work.

Happy redirecting!

_________________________

Asserting for an Excellent IEP: Seven Non-Threatening Questions

2009-08-04T10:31:00.000-07:00

Parents, as you prepare to go back to school, you may participate in IEP or other meetings to build support for your child in the new school year. Since IEP and other meetings can degrade into adversarial contests, here are some questions you can ask to assertively clarify your expectations right from the start.

1. What has worked well for other students with Asperger’s at this school?

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2. What strategies can we put in place to help teachers and my child de-escalate conflict?

3. What kinds of self-calming behaviors or objects will you support?

4. My child needs a “safe person” to go to in times of stress. Who can fill that role?

5. My child is especially interested in ________________. How can you leverage that interest for academic success?

6. What plans do you have to protect my child from social trauma during unstructured time such as bus rides, lunch time and recess?

7. What information or access can I provide to help you support my child?

Confessions of an Inconsistent Aspie

2009-08-03T23:09:00.000-07:00

I have a quick thought about why people have trouble not misunderstanding Aspies. (I know there’s an implied double negative there, but bear with me.)

Two of the characteristics that lubricate social interaction are predictability and reproducibility. We create an interpersonal dance of action and response based on how we behaved last time and the time before. Like literal dancers, some of us are better at anticipating and improvising with our partner. Some of us are not.

I worked for a principal who was egotistical, imperious, image-conscious, and a workhorse. Most of us who worked for him found him cool and impersonal, but consistent. If you worked for this man, you always knew exactly where you stood, what he thought of you, and what your boundaries were. He wasn't particularly likable, but he was easy to work with.

I also worked for a superintendent, who was most effective at building emotional connections among the egos and quirks of district leaders. She could curse like a sailor to get a construction foreman moving, but she could also get on the floor with a nervous first-grader, dropping her voice and shrinking her body to facilitate interaction. She wasn’t inconsistent—she was consistently adaptive to the people around her.

This brings me to myself and other Aspies. We seem capable of high levels of observation, sensitivity, and cognitive awareness—but not always. We see details in the environment or in our friends that other miss, so we can be excellent observers. But we don’t always act on those observations with sensitivity or compassion. We feel, but we don’t always seem to feel for (compassion) or feel with (empathy).

In my limited experience, I am at my best when I observe correctly, adjust my affective stance accordingly, and provide an appropriate response to the other person(s). The problem is that this takes a lot of energy and focus, and sets an expectation that the next time I might get it right again. If I do, kudos! If not—condemnation.

This isn't an apologetic for people with Asperger’s Syndrome. I am one, and people like me drive me a little batty.

A lot batty.

So if you are or love someone on the spectrum, please don’t misinterpret our inconsistency. We might not even see the pattern that offends or disappoint you. I know this is crazy-making, but it’s true. We are sometimes as mystified by our interpersonal successes as we are frustrated by our interpersonal failures. We don’t learn from our mistakes as well, because we don’t always understand them. The energy it takes to autopsy a social failure isn't always worth the effort.

Thank you for gently and graciously pointing out the deficient patterns in our interactions. We can learn. When you help us scaffold our emotional behaviors with cognitive awareness, we can do better than just avoid mistakes. That’s a negative worth undoubling.

More insights from the Asperger's Expert are on the main page.

Coaching Cognitive Empathy: How To End A Conversation.

2009-07-29T09:06:00.001-07:00

As a spectrum citizen, I have spent my life in a state of perpetual uncertainty about how to read other people. This series will explain some techniques that I use and have coached others to use. In most cases, the techniques replace intuition (a non-cognitive behavior) with observation (a cognitive behavior).

Credit to my mom and a friend of hers for turning me on to the term “cognitive empathy.” Daniel Goleman (Emotional Intelligence) has a nice article on three types of empathy—cognitive, emotional, compassionate—over at his website.

When and how to end a conversation

The Problem

As a high school principal, I experience a constant stream of “gotta minute?” conversations. I appreciate these because they keep me connected with people and issues, but some of these conversations are inefficient or intrusive. I’m especially bad at ending these conversations. Partly because I’m in a position of authority, my colleagues often feel like they need to stay in the conversation until I end it and sort of “dismiss” them. The military protocol makes this very easy, but that doesn’t work so well at a school. As a consequence, I sometimes think the conversation is over and turn to my desk to start a new task, while my poor colleague is left in limbo wondering when we finished. So, at the start of the year I tell my staff, “I’m very bad at ending conversations, so don’t be offended if I seem to leave something hanging or don’t know how to stop. I won’t be offended if you need to end abruptly and get to class, etc…” Usually I am not very good at asserting my need to end a conversation or recognizing my partner’s need to leave and go to the next item on their to-do list. This happens all the time in settings other than at work, so maybe you can adapt these techniques for your needs.

What I am learning to do:

During a conversation, I observe closely for a state change. This could be my partner packing up his materials, closing up his binder, putting away his pens, etc. The state change could be more overt, such as standing up from a chair or edging towards the door. Usually, the indicators are subtle, such as eyes flickering towards the clock or watch, a partner checking their cell phone (when no call has arrived), or a change in overall body posture from relaxed and informal to slightly tensed in anticipating of leaving. I can observe these signals when I remember.

(As a rule, I can avoid some of these tensions if I explicitly negotiate an end time for the conversation in advance, but most of my meetings are not that formal.)

If you are learning, or are coaching a child to recognize these patters, try watching an interactive movie (the Austen movies, & many Tom Hanks films work) or just about any group setting such as a party, a church social, lunchtime at school. While watching, see if you can observe indicators that the conversation is about to end. If a movie conversation seems to end unexpectedly, rewind to see if there were cues. Make this a game, like accurately predicting when the traffic signal will change. By explicitly watching for these cues, even those of us with citizenship on the spectrum can learn to observe what others intuit.

When I see a trigger:

The first strategy is to check my understanding. If I see my partner packing up or checking her watch, then I ask, “Do we need to finish our conversation?” Usually, they are relieved that I have broached the subject and they agree to conclude—sometimes rushing out the door. If I misread the signal, then I known, and I can stop stressing about orchestrating an immediate conclusion.

If I read them rightly:

The actual conclusion remains the most difficult thing for me. I am adding a script to the ends of my mini-meetings. I try to pair this script with stage directions such as, [Peter rises from his chair and steps towards the door]

1. “Is there anything else that I need to do or tell you?”

2. “Thank you for dropping in. I appreciate what you shared/your concern/this plan/our talk/working with you. (This should be genuine gratitude.)

3. Some type of totally appropriate “connection.” This could be a very appropriate light touch on the shoulder, an appropriate handshake (I’m learning that one) strong eye contact with a nod, or whatever is right for the norms of the setting. If you don’t know the norms or are working with someone who is learning those norms, ask someone who seems “easy” with interactions. There are always people like that who will let you observe them or ask questions.

4. A clear “goodbye.” Nobody misunderstands goodbye.

As an aside, when I used to consult quite frequently in Latin America, it took me quite awhile to get comfortable with the practice of brushing cheeks/air kissing as a gesture of friendship. Once I got past the unfamiliarity of the gesture though, it became a nice little social puzzle to anticipate and participate correctly.

You’ll notice that this post is not about how not to monopolize a conversation with my special interests. That’s another topic, and well covered by others elsewhere. This is about the specific need to end a conversation efficiently and appropriately.

What if you are ready to end and your partner is not?

I’m already laughing at this, because it is what we aspies do to NT’s all the time, yet it can happen to us. Just for fun, wander into a model train store some Sunday afternoon. Don’t initiate conversation, but see how long it takes someone to approach you and start telling you details about the model/landscape/electronics nearest to you. There is no proof that all model train enthusiasts have Asperger’s but I’m just sayin’.

So, if you are in a conversation and don’t want to be trapped, here’s what to do.

Least instrusive: Wait for a pause or breath and transition to the conclusion thusly:

I’d like to know/talk/think more, but right now I’m going to shift to another meeting/task/location/activity. (I avoid the phrase “I need to shift” because it seems to pass responsibility to the next task or person. I use “I’m going to…” because it projects appropriate, assertive determination.”

More intrusive: Interrupt the other person while they are talking with, “Excuse me, I’d like to let you finish that thought and then I’m going to shift to another…”

Most intrusive: Stand up while your partner is talking and begin the interruption at the same time.

If your partner complains, “But I’m not finished” then you need to make an appointment for more time in the future.

This is not a perfect approach, but many of us with ASD conditions have substantial powers of observation and cognition. We can use these to complement and strengthen our less-developed intuitive empathy.

Happy conversing!

Redirecting the Motivation for Undesirable Behaviors

2009-07-21T20:36:00.000-07:00

Once upon a time I worked at a school on the campus of the Minnesota Zoo. While there I learned that a lot of the work of zookeepers involves training animals how to move on and off exhibits so the keepers can manage their routines and maintain their living spaces. They make liberal use of cues and reinforcements.

It may seem disrespectful to use animal training techniques to manage the behavior of children (not just students with AS by the way), but this tactic only makes explicit the motivations that are always present in human behavior.

One of the ways to manage undesirable behaviors is to replace intrinsic motivation with extrinsic motivation and then remove the extrinsic motivation.. Here’s why that might work.

In a number of studies with human subjects and simians, the following pattern emerges:

1. The subject does a behavior voluntarily and repeatedly (playing a game, solving a puzzle, moving an item.) indicating that they prefer that behavior and are intrinsically motivated to perform it.
2. The researcher reinforces the behavior with food or some other extrinsic reward. Essentially, the subject is now being “paid” for what they did before for “free.”
3. The researcher withdraws the extrinsic reward.
4. The frequency of the behavior drops to a level less than the original. Sometimes the behavior is extinguished.

Try this with your child. If there is a behavior that you would like to decrease, try explicitly reinforcing that behavior for a time, (I know it sounds crazy to reinforce an undesirable behavior—but finish the process) then remove the reward.

I think this works because the subject experiences unmet expectations once the reward is removed. As a result, the negative experience of frustration balances or negates the intrinsic motivation and decreases the frequency of the behavior

How Old are You in Asperger’s Years?

2009-06-07T20:45:00.000-07:00

I have noticed that the dominant paradigm of personality development expects us to “mature” or “grow up” on a fairly specific schedule. The English language is filled with idioms and protocols like “Act your age.” or “You’re old enough to know better.” Given the strong and constant pressure to conform to age-cohort expectations, why do those of us with Asperger’s sometimes seem an odd mix of precocious knowledge and social immaturity?

The answer is relatively simple. We don’t care (at least as much as NT’s) about conforming to social expectations. If forced, we might be able to express those norms, but that doesn’t mean we’ll follow them.

My son loves Pokémon and Neopets, long after his peers have moved on. It doesn’t bother him that his friends have other interests and consider some of his passions childish. He is secure in the solitude of himself.

I remember being interested in news and politics long before my classmates cared or even knew anything about the political process. It’s no wonder I ended up as a political science major and spent a semester in Washington D.C. Maybe if I’d been more NT, I would have supressed my passion for things political and derailed one of my lifelong interests.

So while Aspie’s may develop on a different pace than the dominant culture expects, perhaps we should commend ourselves for being more loyal to ourselves than to artificially imposed social expectations.

Double Whammy! Managing Disappointment and Asperger’s

2009-06-04T20:10:00.000-07:00

This is a very first-person account of how I experience disappointment. I think it is related to Asperger’s Syndrome, but I could use some feedback to understand it more.

When I was a child, probably about ten, I was excited to see the late Doc Severinsen (the band-leading trumpet player from Johnny Carson’s Tonight Show (kids, before Conan hosted the Tonight Show, it was hosted by Jay Leno, who took over from Johnny Carson))

My father is a trumpet player, I played that instrument a bit before landing firmly on the trombone and baritone horn. As a consequence of our family’s attention to brass music (we had a quintet with Dad and four children on two trumpets, baritone, French Horn and tuba) I was especially interested in hearing Doc play. I looked forward to that concert for what seemed like months (probably weeks actually.)

We planned a trip to Anchorage, we travelled across Cook Inlet on a ferry, drove five hours through an Alaskan winter to the only big city around—then disaster! Doc Severinsen got sick. The concert was cancelled. My stomach tightens just now as I write about it. I was as close to devastated as a ten-year old knows. I was sick, angry, and desperate to change reality. I was equally overwhelmed at my absolute impotence to change anything. I couldn’t call Doc and plead with him. I couldn’t persuade my Dad to intervene. I simply had to absorb the loss. I went through stages that I now recognize as grieving having experienced the full force of that emotion with the deaths of my brother and sister.

I don’t handle disappointment well. If I am expecting X and I get not-X or Y, I can descend into a funk pretty quickly. When I do, I don’t want to be around myself and I doubt anyone sane wants to be around me much either.

I’m thinking about this because tonight I had to skip an event when scheduling conflicts made it impossible to attend. It wasn’t a major event, and my bad mood was way out of proportion to the minor change in plans. But this is who I am and how I experience disappointment. I really dislike it, and I react accordingly. I know enough not to attack the persons who may have caused the disappointment, but I still don’t know what to do with the stew of frustration.

If you love someone with AS, you may have seen this behavior without knowing what it is. In a way, I am like a very young child who doesn’t get his way and throws a tantrum. The difference is that I know my reaction is disproportionate. I just don’t know how to deal with it. That’s part of why I’m writing—because thinking and analyzing is my default way to deal with emotional turmoil.

Just as we with AS strongly prefer routine and predictability, we also have deep passions held with irrational fervor. I think my problem with handling disappointment is related to both: I am both overly living in anticipation of the future event, and I am overly infatuated with the specific timing and organization of the event as I anticipate it. When the event is cancelled, changed, etc. I react to both the loss of the event and the disruption to my anticipated schedule. That’s a double whammy.

At least that’s how I feel. So the next time you or someone you love with AS seems unusually out of sorts, track back and see if there was some minor disappointment or change of plans that is souring the rest of the day/week. It may not cure the problem, but understanding the source can help manage the symptoms.

I know other people feel intense disappointments for other reasons, but in my case it feels very wrapped up with my Aspergian character. Do any of you feel the same?

David Can't Come Over Anymore: Rationalizing Rejection

2009-05-30T13:26:00.000-07:00

“David can’t come over anymore.”

Those five words ended our family’s friendship with a couple and their children.

Our son David was approaching adolescence, and his good friend A_____ was still years younger.

A___’s mom had been our Maid of Honor, our daughters were good friends, and our two sets of sons were frequent playmates and got along well. Our families were close—in our case, they were our closest friends.

Then the bombshell.

A___’s parents were concerned that David’s Asperger’s behavior might influence their son. They proposed a solution. Our families could continue to be friends. We could continue to alternate sleepovers and share holiday meals. We could trade hand-me-downs and toys as before.

Except David.

If David came for Thanksgiving—say, he must remain with the adults instead of going off and playing with the kids. If we wanted him to play freely, we had to promise direct and constant supervision. Sleepovers were out of the question and unsupervised time with any of their children was verboten.

We pushed back. What had happened? The worst example they could give was that David led their son in a game of loading toys on their treadmill and then turning it on to see the toys fly off the back. Their son wasn’t allowed to play on the treadmill, so our son’s corrupting influence was clear.

David begged for a second chance. Faced with his grief, we tried to talk to the parents, but they would not budge. He wrote them a long and personal letter about how he felt and what they had decided. He was not rude, but he was blunt. They replied with a thank-you note and gave him a gift card.

The parents later told us that they never read David’s note, believing it was disrespectful for a child to address adults so directly. They earnestly claimed that the issue had nothing to do with Asperger's, but was only because of the age difference. Of course that standard didn't apply to siblings or other family friends. Just our socially different son.

David has never forgotten, and observing his heart from outside, I suspect he has never fully recovered. Our good friends rejected our son. They were genuinely surprised that we wouldn’t relegate him to second-class status. They were surprised that we valued our son’s dignity above our family friendship. They thought we would endorse their rationalization.

I am sad that they didn’t have room in their hearts for our whole family. I am sad that my wife is estranged from her college roommate, maid of honor, and one-time best friend. I am sad that our daughters lost years of friendship. But mostly I am sad that David lives with a message that he is unwanted.

No rationalization can make up for that.

Physical Frustrations #2: Protecting those Affected

2009-05-28T18:28:00.000-07:00

Many of us on the spectrum struggle with physical environments and tasks. Here are two strategies to help students in classroom and other school settings.

1. Help me control environmental stimuli. Light, sound, odors, and textures are not simply preferences as they may be with some others. These environmental factors can be incapacitating. For example, whenever I enter a classroom or meeting space, I always find the direction of the most sunlight and then sit with my back to it. When teachers assign seating, they sometimes forget to consider that sitting by the clock or next to the hallway can be very distracting for me. I can adjust, by shutting down, but this affects my performance in class. The stimuli in even a normal classroom can be too much for me. I need a way to block out at least some of those distracters. Special seating, a “calming spot” or the option to leave can all give me the security I need to cope. Even when I don’t exercise these options, knowing they are there is calming and helps me maintain composure.

2. Recognize my physical challenges. Distractions are minor compared to the potential catastrophe of physical performance. In classes where physical competence is expected, I can fail with spectacular and miserable results. P.E. Classes are a major culprit, as motor clumsiness and social awkwardness combine to make me especially inept at team sports. Situations where I am expected to learn by trial and error are an invitation to meltdown. While others might learn from striking out or missing a shot, I spiral into a cycle of futility and frustration—sure that I cannot succeed. This is usually reinforced by the snickering assessment of my peers. Don’t join them. Warn me in advance when you plan to introduce new skills or physical tasks. Give me a chance to prepare for the science labs or art projects that require fine motor control. Plan roles for me in PE that protect me from being the odd one out. Please.

I wouldn't trade you for your twin...a free-form letter from this Asperger's Dad to my Asperger's son

2009-05-26T18:16:00.000-07:00

David,

I wouldn’t trade you for your twin.

The day you were born, your average twin disappeared

I spent nine months and more planning for your twin

He was the child with a bright mind and ordinary senses

Certainly he would be above average, but not too far

He was predictable and normal in every way

•Reading at a normal pace,

(not instantly like you)

•He would drift from enthusiasm to interest

(without your intense commitment)

•He would see some possibilities and creativities

(but not all of them)

When I planned for your twin, I failed to plan for you.

I didn’t expect your amazing powers of perception.

Your ability to find mistakes in every textbook

Your ability to hear a ticking clock from across the room

Your ability to detect minute differences in fabrics

Your care and compassion for people who don’t expect it

I didn’t know a person could be so creative, finding music in materials, a rainbow in paint swatches…

Your insight and intelligence were a complete surprise. You think on such a different level

I planned for a child with normal senses—with dull hearing and a soft touch.

I didn’t know to hope for someone with super-sensitivity and super intelligence.

It took me years to figure out that we had David, not your twin.

But knowing that, I wouldn’t trade you in.

Dad

Physical Frustrations #1: My Body Betrays Me

2009-05-25T20:07:00.000-07:00

Asperger’s syndrome is a neurological condition. It isn’t a psychological disorder like depression or anxiety that might go away with time and therapy. Asperger’s and other Autism Spectrum disorders are in a category the American Psychiatric Association labels Pervasive Developmental Disorders. The name itself reveals that this syndrome is a permanent, physiological condition. We have general motor clumsiness, especially for large-muscle coordination. This is part of why we tend to dislike and avoid sports, especially team sports which put our social and physical clumsiness on display.

It may be hard to see, but those of us with Asperger’s have a disability. It may be masked by superficial normalcy, or adequate intelligence, but we are disabled just the same. Most of us with Asperger’s also have overly effective senses. In fact, Asperger’s Syndrome is often comorbid with Sensory Integration Deficiency or Sensory Defensiveness, conditions that arise from a nervous system that is too proficient. Every sense can give us trouble. For many with Asperger’s, sounds are the biggest distraction. Ticking clocks, booming pipes, buzzing fluorescent lights and the 60-cycle hum of electrical equipment can be as intolerable for us as fingernails on an old-fashioned chalkboard may be to you. Imagine trying to attend to a lesson, read a book or concentrate on a test while someone was dragging fingernails down a chalkboard. Would it be enough to tell yourself, “just ignore it.” “Just ignore it.” is the universal first response when someone with Asperger’s raises a sensory complaint, but that just isn’t possible. Part of the syndrome is an inability to selectively block out undesirable stimuli. My personal issues tend more toward tactile sensitivity. I cannot wear any shirt with a perceptible tag in the collar. Clothing with “rough” or “scratchy” fabric is intolerable. I love the feel of microfiber, flannel and silk, but don’t ever want rough nylon, wool or textured cotton against my skin. It drives me crazy. We Aspies know that some forms of lighting, or glare from surfaces can have the same effect. We sometimes change our seating or request to draw blinds or shades to even out the lighting. I don’t mind fluorescents, but I always sit with my back to windows if I can. Even on overcast days I wear sunglasses. Smells and taste are less likely to show up as classroom distractions, but it might help to know that people with Asperger’s sometimes have a condition called Synesthesia, where sensory input is crossed up. In that condition, intense colors can evoke smells, abrupt sounds can causes visual hallucinations etc. If I tell you something like that is happening, please take it seriously and help me adjust.

Social Incompetence #2: Coach Me Please!

2009-05-14T06:00:00.000-07:00

Be my coach. Like the coach of an athletic squad, you can help me improve my performance through careful observation, constructive criticism, guided practice and getting me in the game. The difference is that while everyone else seems to know the basic rules of the game, I’m playing with different equipment by a different rulebook. I need explicit direction. I need word-for-word scripts. I don’t know how to shake hands, carry on a conversation or read the cues that tell me it’s time to move on. Temple Grandin, an accomplished engineer, professor and author with a Ph.D. in Animal Science from Colorado State University is one of the most celebrated individuals with Autism in this era, and she describes the social challenges this way: “Figuring out how to interact socially was much more difficult than solving an engineering problem.” (Sedran 2006)[i]

Translate intuition into cognition. People with Asperger’s have capable intellects, and can process a great deal of information quickly if we know what to look for. If you can help us by reflecting on your intuitive perceptions and decisions, we can learn how to observe what you perceive. This distinction is critical. For example, I studied communications in college and was liberated by the concept of non-verbal communication. The coursework gave me a long list of postures, behaviors, expressions and intonations that meant something. Rather than the inscrutable “sense” that others relied on, I could count the number of folded arms, check the amount of facial responses, review the general level of energy in the room and adjust my speaking or teaching accordingly. As a teacher, I need you to watch me flounder a bit in a conversation, then intervene with quick feedback to dissect my struggle. I have learned that comments and postures that scream to my wife or colleagues are lost on me. However, once I learn the cue or clue, I can usually remember to watch for it in the future. Your coaching can help me grow from oblivious to observant.

Set me up for success. When forming groups, initially put me with students who are more patient and tolerant. Be cautious about letting students select their own groups. You might even consider coaching the rest of the class on how to give me explicit feedback to help me stay in bounds. Since peer approval is important to me, give me opportunities to be socially successful by telling me explicitly how to initiate, continue or terminate interactions. Redirect me when I don’t get it right, and reinforce me when I do.

[i] http://www.leadershipmedica.com/scientifico/sciefebbr03/scientificaing/2sedrane/2sedraning.htm

A 6th Grader with AS Advocates for Himself

2009-05-13T20:26:00.000-07:00

When my son David changed schools and enrolled in sixth grade, he wanted to explain to his classmates what Asperger's Syndrome is and how they could best relate to him. For many in the room, (including his teacher) this was the first time they had heard of the syndrome.

That day was a big day for David. Just now I asked him if he still had those notecards. He knew instantly where they were—five years later—and brought them to me immediately.

David sat on a stool in front of the class and read from these six notecards. The words are his and the idea to explain himself to his class was his as well. Two of his classmates from sixth grade remain very close friends five years later. I wish I had video, but picture a 12-year-old boy, new to the school, sitting on a stool in the front of modular classroom. This is what he shared:

There is no silver bullet for explaining Asperger's, but giving this short presentation to his classmates gave David a voice. More importantly, it gave his teacher and classmates permission and guidelines to help him be his best self.

Social Incompetence #1 Persistence & Pain

2009-05-13T06:44:00.001-07:00

Unlike people with classical autism, I am not satisfied to live in my own, isolated world. I want to be part of your world, especially the social universe. Unfortunately, I am an alien. I don’t have the communications sophistication, emotional control or general intuition your society requires. I am a social incompetent–eager but awkward. Consider the book titles authored by people with Asperger’s: Freaks, Geeks and Asperger’s Syndrome by Luke Jackson; Pretending to be Normal by Liane Holliday Willey; Asperger’s Huh? by Rosina Schnurr. These titles reveal the distance we feel from normal society. They are matched by websites like WrongPlanet.net and Aspergia.com, a decidedly defensive Aspergian community.

We with Asperger's are intelligent enough to perceive our difference–acutely. Our sense of abnormality is a persistent gloom, and many of us fight daily to pierce it. I distinctly remember at age five learning that my normal conversational impulses were unacceptable, and had to be replaced by socially proscribed scripts. For you normal folk, the ones we Aspies label “NeuroTypicals (NT’s), that might be part a normal process of acculturation and maturation. For us, it is a gap that widens through childhood and explodes in adolescence. I need your help to bridge the gap. I need friends, and more importantly, I need explicit coaching on how to be a proper friend.

Charter Schools are a better model for special education: A Principal's Perspective

2009-05-12T08:00:00.000-07:00

This entry is cross-posted from my more general blog on Charter School Insights.

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The same market forces that bring charter schools into existence help them stay focused on the needs of their clients. The financial constraints facing most charter schools keep them frosty when it comes to pleasing parents, hiring intrinsically motivated teachers, and doing right by kids.

At the Classical Academy in Colorado Springs, a group of nearly 20 teachers, resource staff, former teachers, principals, school psychologists, ad parents showed up for my daughter’s final IEP meeting. That meeting was a celebration of her progress through special education and her return to general education. As a principal, I have attended many such meetings. I know that teaching and leading at a charter school is mostly a labor of love. I suspect that a few teachers in charter schools are “paycheck pros” who take an acceptable wage and deliver uninspiring service. But I’m certain that most of the teachers, tutors, assistants and administrators who staff over 4,000 charter schools around the country do so because they find value and significance in nurturing children. Witness the growing number of charter schools aimed specifically at students on the autism spectrum. These students can be tough to teach and emotionally draining—but we love them. The parents who start such schools, the principals who lead them and the teachers who staff them are noble idealists. Their kind have been represented on every school staff since we started ringing bells and gathering at the front door.

The difference with charter schools is that there is a higher concentration of student-focused, customer-oriented, principle-driven adults than in a normal school. You will not find any “rubber rooms” or “reassignment centers” in charter schools. In part, this is because you rarely find a thriving union at a charter school. Charter schools may struggle to attract and retain the most experienced professionals, but thanks to excellent professional resources and the flexibility of RtI, they have many ways to help special needs students be successful. Traditional schools don’t always know what to do with twice-exceptional students. They don’t typically have a neat program that maximizes these students’ abilities while scaffolding their deficits. Charter schools don’t have a program either, but they are much more likely to have an intimate relationship with a parent who is making a specific choice to bring a challenged child to a public school. That parent has a lifetime of insights—and access to school staff who are eager to hear them.

In full fairness, there are parents who have had bad experiences with special needs education at charter schools. There are parents who disagree with my perspective or level of service. But those parents have had many hours over many years to press their case with me and others. They have aired their concerns and got most or all of what they felt their child needed. We who have poured our best into the charter school movement are motivated to be resourceful, responsive, optimistic, and diligent. We are exactly like the pioneers who settled the American West. We cannot afford to ignore the gift and potential of a child or her family just because they come intertwined with learning challenges and struggles. We want to succeed together, and every solution we develop prepares us to attract and serve the students we need to mature and thrive. Parents, by partnering with us to serve your child, we are both strengthened—and strengthened schools and parents are good for all students…especially the most special among us.

Charter Schools are a better model for special education: A Dad’s Perspective

2009-05-11T08:00:00.000-07:00

This entry is cross-posted from my more general blog on Charter School Insights.

Charter Schools are a better model for special education: A Dad’s Perspective

As a parent of six children—three with IEP’s, three ELL’s, one 504 plan and one ILP, I have some familiarity with the parent experience of special education services. My exposure as a parent began when my firstborn was offered an IEP in Minnesota. It continued as I adopted three children with no English skills, fathered another son and daughter with learning challenges, and ended up seeing my special needs children learn skills, make honor societies, graduate, attend college and generally accumulate many of the benefits of a free and appropriate public educations.

Unfortunately, there have been some serious hiccups along the way. There was the principal in North Carolina who said indignantly of our Ethiopian-born ESL daughter, “You can’t expect us to find someone who speaks her language!” (We actually wanted someone to help her speak our shared American language.) Then there was the school whose idea of occupational therapy was doing jumping jacks and wall sits in the principal’s office. Don’t make me talk about the teacher who forced our physically impaired son to attempt 20 pushups in front of his classmates as punishment for a missed attempt at throwing trash in the wastebasket. There was the Colorado school where scoring a 5 on the ASVAB (30 is the minimum score for entry into the armed forces) was good enough to graduate. Like most problems with special-needs education, the issue was often that the well-meaning educators didn’t have the resources or expertise to differentiate instruction and classroom environment effectively.

On the other hand, there have been sparkling moments of grace and compassion that helped our children grow and thrive. Mrs. H. gave our son permission to go into a classroom phone booth to manage his sensory overload. The ESL teacher in Minnesota attended evening school events with our daughter to help her use English in context. Mr. A. formed a international tribe of English-learning students through the sheer force of love and optimism. His self-fulfilling prophecies of success made a cohort of young learners thrive. Many of them—after only a few years in the country, were initiated into the National Honor Society at a major public high school. Our daughter was there because Mr. A. cared.

So, since these positive example include traditional public schools, why do I claim that charter schools are a better system to support special needs learners? It is precisely because I bring a father’s heart and experience to the principalship that I can speak to the difference between traditional and chartered public schools. Tomorrow, I’ll pull on my principal's hard hat and explore some of the student-supporting characteristics that I’ve observed across the charter school community.

Emotional Frailty #2 Protective Practices

2009-05-10T08:00:00.000-07:00

Here are three things that classroom teachers can do to protect my emotional frailty:

1. Provide a quick exit. If I feel trapped in a situation where my emotional state is spiraling downward, I must have a safe and guaranteed exit. Give me a code word, a permanent pass, or a “get out of class free” card. No matter how important the academic or social lesson may be, there is absolutely no way I will learn or retain anything if I am frantic to preserve my composure. Robert Sylwester points out that emotional safety must precede learning. (Sylwester 1995) Psychologists know it too. If I fear my social/emotional safety, learning is already forfeit. Please don’t sacrifice my emotional identity for a lost cause. Let me retreat and learn another day.

2. Designate a safe haven. Depending on the school environment, I might need a quiet corner of the classroom, a special chair, or removal to a resource room, counseling center or library chair. Pre-determine the acceptable locations, in a cascade order and teach me the order. “Go to the resource room first. If it is empty, go to the library. If Mrs. Grey is not there, wait in the front office.” Assure me that I will not be penalized or punished for going to my safe haven. Protect me from ridicule or stigma by explaining to my classmates that I am permitted and encouraged to manage my learning needs by relocating when necessary.

3. Protect me from emotional injury. In the emotional herd called school, I am the weak and crippled. Other students can sense and see my vulnerability, and at their worst, they act like emotional predators–attacking my weakness. They mock me subtly, to avoid detection, but I’m too literal to get it–so they escalate the insults and sarcasm until I break down or you break in. In most cases, you discern the pattern before I do. If you tolerate the bullying, or worse yet, participate in it yourself, you make it clear that I am fair game. Please do the opposite. I’m the endangered species in your class, deserving and needing your protection. I’m not confident or sophisticated enough to guard myself. I’m counting on you.

Disclosing Asperger’s In Childhood #1: Start with the Truth

2009-05-09T06:00:00.000-07:00

In our family system, we have a major emphasis on truth. We try to know the truth, speak the truth, and accept the truth. Even when the truth is painful or unwelcome, it is better than the alternative—which is to live in deception or denial.

With children, our commitment to truth must be developmental. When a child asks where babies come from, we don’t break out a birthing video—but neither do we subject them to nonsense about storks or cabbages. Like many sensitive subjects, there is a developmental arc to discussions about identity and conformity. This has been especially true in our life with Asperger’s Syndrome.

We began our conversation with our son by explaining some of his unique strengths. We praised his ability to spot aircraft when we saw only clear blue sky. We affirmed his “super-hearing” and sensitive fingertips. We constantly reinforced both his thirst for knowledge and more importantly—his effort at attaining information. But we also used his powers of analysis to help reflect on ways that he lived life differently.

For our boy, environmental and social stimuli were so overwhelming that he often withdrew into a seated fetal position, tucked inside a sweatshirt. We called this “turtleing.” We helped him see that turtleing was a unique behavior—not something he would see other students doing. Since his intelligence craves categories and dichotomies, we split his classroom behaviors into things that integrated him into the group and things that isolated him from the group. This helped him see that monopolizing conversations, insisting on rigid rules in games, and non-standard (never “abnormal” or “odd”) behaviors set him apart from others, while mutual conversations, playful flexibility, and mimicking the behaviors of others made him more welcome in the social circle of the class.

So far, I’m focusing on things we shared with our son. Next I’ll explain some of what he shared with us, and I’ll finish with what and how he shared his unique identity and special needs with his sixth-grade classmates.

Emotional Frailty #1 At-Risk

2009-05-07T10:00:00.000-07:00

My emotions undermine me. Intellectually, I can be a survivor. Emotionally, I am often the first one “voted off the island.” I may present a flat affect most of the time, but that is only an attempt to keep control on the most erratic aspect of my personality. I have learned that emotional control is prized by every teacher in every classroom–the cardinal sin of our school culture is to lose emotional control. My inflexibility and insecurity mean I live in constant fear of catastrophic failure. As Karen Williams observes, “Children with AS rarely seem relaxed and are easily overwhelmed when things are not as their rigid views dictate.” Living with the constant fear of the next embarrassing failure can be incapacitating. This is partly why the incidence of depression and suicide is elevated for individuals with Asperger’s. Given the Hobson’s choice of keeping emotions unexpressed and succumbing to depression and self-injury, many Aspies accept the social stigma of losing composure and social status. This is why so many of us with Asperger’s embody “fragile vulnerability and a pathetic childishness.” (Wing, 1981) Because I am so vulnerable, I need you to assertively protect me from emotional assault, and the consequences of my own emotional frailty.

Brittle Intelligence #2: Some Solutions

2009-05-06T06:00:00.000-07:00

Teachers, What can you do when your student with Asperger's can't handle basic academic content?

1. Use concrete language. I misunderstand abstractions, allusions and idioms. They distract and confuse me. If you must, explain them to me in literal terms and check to see if I can translate them into useful understanding.

2. Incorporate visuals. I am so literal that the symbolism of language can escape me. Adding visuals–drawings, flow charts, maps, or pictures will amplify and consolidate my comprehension.

3. Be consistent. I crave sameness. I invest so much energy figuring out how to navigate your expectations, homework formats, lesson style and classroom management that I will give up and withdraw if you change things up. What may seem boring and predictable to you is life support to me. I appreciate repetition and redundancy–they give me the confidence I desperately need.

Brittle Intelligence #1: The Problem

2009-05-05T05:44:00.000-07:00

My intelligence is brittle. It may be strong, but my knowledge is inflexible. I may know more facts and details about a subject than even you do, but that does not mean I comprehend them. Like the Star Trek android Data and his antecedent Mr. Spock, I combine voluminous informational capacity with spectacular emotional ignorance [immaturity]. I think and learn in ways that are so rigid they become irrational. I may know every math fact on the timed test, but if you change the color of the paper on which it is printed, I lose composure and can’t concentrate. My speech seems unusually adult, because I hear and mimic phrases and intonations perfectly. Then, when I go off script, my literal thinking and failure to grasp idioms make me seem like an English language learner who lost his phrasebook. Not only can I not think “outside the box”, I spend most of my time trying to figure out the box. There is safety and predictability in the box. If I can only figure out the size, texture, social rules, schedules and dozens of other characteristics that govern the box called your classroom then maybe I can get through another day without a major meltdown. If not, watch out. Fortunately, there are specific strategies you can use to scaffold my brittle intelligence:

Tomorrow: Three steps teachers can take to scaffold my intelligence.

To my teachers: Asperger's Overview

2009-05-04T17:40:00.000-07:00

This is a repost of a series I started over at another blog I share with Doug Hering. We are focusing more on operational and financial aspects of charter school management, but I also want to create and share information about Asperger's in education. That's the genesis of this blog.

I welcome comments, especially those that tell your stories of learning with and about AS.

Here's entry #1 in the series:

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Mr. K. probably didn’t know how piercing his jokes were. After one of my clumsy moments he pronounced, “Peter’s the only one here who needs a seatbelt on the toilet.” Mrs. L. told me almost daily “you’re smart enough to know better.” Mr. H. was so offended by my intellectual arrogance he described my success as “unfortunate.” When I won recognition from a statewide group, he read the announcement and added his postscript, “They don’t know you like we do.” All these teachers, and dozens others, were good people, effective educators, and profoundly frustrated by the challenges of teaching a child with Asperger’s Syndrome. On most days they were appropriate and supportive teachers, but unrelenting frustration can push any of to be sarcastic and petty. I can’t dial back the calendar and help those teachers see past appearances, but perhaps I can give a voice to the “different” child that arrived in your classroom this year. The smart girl who just does not fit in–the boy who masks his insecurities with showy intelligence, they are me and I was them. Somehow, I made it through and returned to schools as a teacher and principal. What I now know professionally is that no teacher can develop the expertise necessary to fully support every student’s needs. Instead, teachers need guidelines, principles and links to further resources. That is what I offer.

A Consensus Definition Wordle

2009-04-20T19:21:00.001-07:00

If you've never made a Wordle, then you will enjoy this. I assembled definitions from

DSM IV
OASIS
Web MD
Autism Speaks
Autism Society
Wrong Planet
National Institute of Neurological Disorders
Cigna Healthcare

to create the following image. I extracted the words "Asperger's, Syndrome, and Disorder. The result is basically a visual form of a linguistic frequency analysis with cousins as tag clouds and auto-summaries. This image makes clear what are the consensus elements of an Asperger's definition.

Welcome to Asperger's Expert 2009

2009-04-20T17:16:00.000-07:00

As an educator with Asperger's Syndrome, a son, father and brother to persons with Asperger's Syndrome, and a school principal who supports students with Asperger's, I am launching this blog to collect and distribute practical insights for supporting educators. All of us serve students on the Autism Spectrum, so I look forward to finding and sharing the best material I can discover or create.

I am well aware that there are many people already blogging and tweeting about Asperger's, and for that I am grateful. My specific goal is to become a valued resource for teachers, principals, and other educators who are eager to serve students as well as they can.