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Hi everyone,

I posted in the Parent forum but probably should have posted here first to introduce myself. I'm a single mom with a 9-year-old son and a 6-year-old aspie daughter. It's taken me a little while to even recognize that there was anything different with my daughter besides being strong-willed, as my ex-husband has brain injury so I've been used to more daily stress than what living with an aspie generates.

Now that I've read a little about Asperger traits, I really believe at least one adult relative on my mother's side has this, but because he was strangled as a child and went without oxygen to his brain for a few minutes, we have always attributed his odd behavior to that incident. However, this is a side note unrelated to my post.

For a long time I didn't realize how smart my daughter was, partly because my son is also smart and older than she is, and partly because she is smart in an entirely different way. While he is right-brained, empathetic, mature for his age, and quite good with words, she is physically clumsy, confused in conversations, and arrives at seemingly odd conclusions. Once she was old enough to go to school, however, I saw that she was every bit as bright as her older brother and is really thriving in the structured environment. While she comes across (at home) as strong-willed and defiant, she will sometimes be very hurt over a misunderstanding and I once again realize that she's actually a very good-natured and sensitive child.

I'm hoping to learn a lot from other parents of aspies here as well as vent to empathetic ears, to save my sanity.

Welcome to WP!! !! ! I hope coming here help you understand your daughter more and helps you help her. Luckily you found out at an early age so as a mother you can help her fix her issues instead of finding AS as an adult and saying OMG this describes all my behavior issues!! !

You cannot 'fix' autism.

No medication, no cure. Behavioral therapies can only alter external behaviors to make them more acceptable to NT society. Internally the issues and reactions will always be the same because the wiring in the brain does not change. We can be forced to put on an NT costume and behave differently than we actually are, but that doesn't 'fix' us.

Welcome to WrongPlanet.

Autism is one of those things that can't be fixed, and nor should it be fixed. Let kids be kids.

Hello inkative, welcome to Wrong Planet!

Welcome to WrongPlanet!

Thanks for the welcome!

You know, I don't consider there to be anything wrong with my daughter, either...but I want to have the resources and provide her with the resources to help her adapt to the rest of us. I used to work for a call center that facilitated phone calls between Deaf and hearing people, and my manager was deaf since birth. What impressed me is that his mother not only sent him to a Deaf school to immerse him in the very rich Deaf culture, but also taught him to lipread and speak. She allowed him to have both worlds.

I guess that's what I want for my daughter. I want her to feel perfectly accepted as she is, but to know how to maneuver the differences between her and other people.

Welcome to WP!

I didn't neccarsarily mean "fix" I know autism can't be fixed persay but help her learn about her issues what not to say and what not to do so she DOESN'T make the mistakes I've made in life!! !! !! !!

Welcome to Wrong Planet!

I am forever grateful that my mother explained so many obvious things to me patiently and never made me feel stupid. In fact, I did not find out I had been put in special ed my first few years of school until I was in college. I still wonder what all those teachers thought I was doing with all those books I was reading.

To WrongPlanet!! !