What would have helped me as an Aspie child

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I'm an undiagnosed Aspie mom with a 12-year-old son, for whom I am currently seeking diagnosis (also have a 10-year-old son, seems more NT). Not sure if I want, or need, a diagnosis myself, but I might get one someday. I'm eccentric and trying to find a balance; I'm having a hard time trying to figure out how to help my son reach his true potential (as opposed to the potential he'd have with no understanding or answers to questions he doesn't even know he has, like I had when I was a kid).
As a child, I spend school days walking around in circles, hiding in my blue jacket, and thinking. Never cared much for the other kids, except being upset that they teased me. Mom had 5 kids in less than 7 years, divorced, weight-obsessed, alcoholic, perpetual teenager. She had no interest in helping us become productive adults. Years of poor grades went by, until some psychologist Mom was "relating to" took enough interest in me to convince her to have me analyzed. IQ 2 st dev above the norm, getting straight 'F's. All that got me was extra ridicule for not "trying" and being "lazy". No follow-up.
What might have helped me when I was a kid is some PARENTS. Someone who thought of my needs first, even if it meant giving me up, or sharing me with another responsible adult, and actually making PLANS on how to help me, instead of taking diet pills to try and be 'sexy' for men. Might have been good if Mom was more concerned with helping me succeed in school and less concerned with making me clean house (I've always been lousy at it, anyway). Would have been good if she hadn't have had a whole litter of kids, too.
She'd tell me things like "Don't you ever shut up?"
Grandma just called me "the little ret*d girl."
Nice. NOT.

I have friends now, it would have been easy if someone bothered to help me be around other 'geeks' and 'nerds', but Mom was such a... well, she never let me socialize because she thought I'd meet some guy and get in 'trouble' (she was, after all, the master). She might have helped me try make-up when I wanted to, asked the girls at the mall what sorts of clothes the other kids were wearing. The freaky, yet popular kids, so I'd have had a ghost of a chance at fitting in.
She tells me "I just didn't know what to do to help you". So she did nothing. Zero.

Here's what I'm trying, because I'm certainly not going to do "nothing":
- I help my kid with his organizational skills, and focus on his school career. Laundry comes second. Room cleanliness comes third. He needs to learn HOW to succeed, not be ridiculed for not succeeding. He can't know how to organize and focus unless someone gives him the tools to do it. School is most important because someday he has to work, and school is the kid version of work. He can eat fast food and survive, he can survive in a messy house. He can't survive without a job.
- I help my kid look 'cool'. Not because he cares about being 'cool', but because he needs to blend in to avoid ridicule from bullies. I've juggled it in my mind, and I've decided to help him with a low-key "Industrial" look. He wants to wear all black, so that works. The reason I chose this over say, a "Prep" look is because I doubt "Preps" would accept his eccentricities as much. Besides, he's into anime and video games, so it fits with what he is into. The way I do this is by asking the girls in the shop to help me, because I have little fashion sense of my own (I don't even wear make-up very often).
- I give my kid 'pointers' on how to be better in social situations (as much as I can). When a kid says "hi", look into their eyes and say "hi" in a full voice. Try to learn kid's names. Ask them questions about themselves (like which class they like best). Make them feel important. I also make sure he goes to school functions to socialize (luckily he enjoys this). I pre-emptively make sure he is often in mixed company, so when he comes of age, girls won't seem so scary (like the earlier post said about guys with no clue ending up lonely and depressed...)
- I listen to him talk about his interests, and try to give him extended information. Whenever he learns something new, and clings to it for a week or more, I get him more information about the subject, and how it relates to other subjects. Aspies are excellent at specializing, so I am going to work with his strengths! I'm determined to make sure he finds something he wants to do with the rest of his life that he can be motivated by. Right now, he wants to be a Veterinarian. Close second is video game programmer. (Secretly, though, I think he'd like to be a mad scientist with a time machine.)
- I respect when he becomes overwhelmed. Sometimes I have to lecture his teachers because they just don't get it. I know how disgusting it feels to run and sweat and have my heart trying to pound out of my chest and be out of breath! It isn't laziness, it literally causes distress! Emotional duress is not good for anyone's health, so how's that "Physical Education"? I try to find things he enjoys doing with his body (I like Dance Dance Revolution, he prefers bounce houses). I let him take his time on things because I know that he sometimes has a hard time processing instructions, or transitioning from one thing to another. Respect. Understanding that he isn't lazy or defiant. Something that sadly he doesn't get from most other people.

Other than that, I just love him and try as hard as I can. Sometimes I feel like the blind leading the blind, and I cry and lament that I don't have better skills because I wasn't ever taught any. But then I dry my tears, and I remember that loving him and genuinely caring about what he needs is the most important thing, and then I tell myself that I'd rather get a 50% 'F' in parenting than a 'zero'. Maybe I suck, maybe I fail, but the only real failure is the failure to try.

As Dory says in "Finding Nemo": "Keep on swimming, keep on swimming, keep on swimming..."
Not sure I'm gonna get "there', but at least I'll get somewhere.

I was a latch key kid from the time I was eight, and my shyness (I now realize I'm an aspie) at school compounded by my isolation at home was probably not good. However, I also look back on those long, quiet afternoons between school getting out and my mom getting home as the best time of my life. Go figure. I never have become comfortable around people, and I wonder if more "training" at an early age would have helped.

It would've helped me if there had been a diagnosis to point to so that schools wouldn't have blamed me for my problems. It would have helped if my father had believed my mom that there was something wrong with me and not treated her like she was causing my problems. My mother did everything humanly possible,it would've helped HER greatly to have heard the term Asperger's before I was 40 years old. It wouldv'e helped if we had understood moving from school to school was not going to solve the problem,it was absolute hell trying to adjust going to 7 different middle schools in my mother's misguided effort to find someplace I would "fit in". IT would have been wonderful not to have everyone think I had some psychiatric thing going on and sending me to all sorts of therapies as a kid and teen,which I now think was sort of like taking someone who is paralysed and telling them the phsyical therapy would work if they were trying harder. Nobody ever understood how hard I was trying,how hard things were for me. It would have been nice to have a name for it and to know there were other people like me out there.

My 17 year old daughter just officially diagnosed this week. These posts are an incredible help. Yes I encouraged theater, ballet, clubs at school..hoping each time they would lead to friendships outside of that environment. But in looking back, the theater she does still as well as the Kung Fu have been great for her. As a 17 year old, she'd tell me if she hated it. It's amazing that this went undiagnosed all these years, even asking for help with the inability to make friends. I think the schools have seen her great grades, her perfect behavior in class, loved by the teachers that they never saw the red flags. Thank God we know now it's AS.

If my parents had been more understanding of things...I was very sensitive of textures and fit in clothing...if clothing didn't fit right it could send me into a tantrum. I would be hit for this. textures of certain foods made me nauseous...I was forced to eat them anyway and yelled at for being picky...

If my parents had been more understanding that I was a bit more sensitive that my sister it would have made a world of difference.

If my grade 1 and 2 teachers had let me read more advanced books instead of making me stay behind with the rest of the class, that would have been good.

Also, I wish NEVER to have been told that I shouldn't think myself better than the other kids because I was brainy. I didn't think I was better and these comments destroyed a lot of the confidence I once had.

I wish my parents had believed that my problems getting along with other kids at school were something I couldn't help and not just a case of me being a jerk on purpose. I shouldn't have had to obsess over learning to pretend to be like everyone else.

My son is six years old and was diagnosed AS, ADHD, OD summer 2006. He is our only child. When he was in daycare, from age 2 1/2 - 5, he had 3 different teachers. All three of them told us that he was having trouble sitting during "carpet time" when the kids had to sit quietly and listen to the teacher read or discuss something with them, and that he didn't seem to want to play with the other children (no one said anything about suspecting autism). We had him tested with a child psych for ADHD, which she found him "negative" for. We still suspected something else was wrong, but, as he was our only child, we never really had anything else to compare his behavior to and consequently just tried to stay patient and "deal" with him as best we could.

We had extraordinary good luck, however, when my son started kindergarten. It turns out his wonderful wonderful teacher had 3 sons who all had either AS, extreme ADHD, and/or obsessive compulsive disorder, amongst other "issues." (I am still in awe of the fact that she worked full time, took care of her sons, and was one of the best teachers I've ever met (I'm also a teacher)). She immediately saw that there was something different about our son so she brought us in for a conference. After a brief "get to know ya" conversation (where I know that she was "checking" to see how much she could trust to tell us), she laid it on the line and told us her thoughts, that basically she KNEW he was ADHD and that she strongly suspected some form of high functioning autism. We got him on Concerta for the ADHD and took him to a different psychologist, who did an extensive battery of tests on him, and eventually came to the Asperger's diagnosis. He now goes for monthly social skills lessons. His 1st grade teacher was chosen because she had worked with Asperger's children before and accommodates him without mollycoddling.

We first knew our son was different when he was 1 and just walking. Immediately his favorite toy for the next two years was a toy shopping cart that he played with almost exclusively. Then came a deep obsession with traffic lights, poles and wires that eventually morphed into mazes and roadways (he still draws the occasional pole and wire/roadway combo on his worksheets at school). Now he talks a lot about trains and train tracks.

He has a bit of trouble making eye contact, and he gets frustrated fairly easily when he feels that he has been slighted somehow. His frustration will grow quite quickly into full blown ugly tantrums and, even though he has been taught for years how to calm himself down, it still takes him a while to calm down. We always talk about why he had a tantrum afterwards, how he felt, what he thinks he can do to stop it from happening, etc. and he always feels remorse for letting his anger get out of hand and says he will work hard to calm himself down. Still, in spite of this, he has 2 loyal friends (non AS) who maintain that he is their best friend and who accept him for who he is and think he's "cool" because he likes to build/invent stuff (he's a mini Rube Goldberg!).

I guess this whole long ramble is that I wanted (needed) to share my experience. My son is extremely loving and good natured,the tantrums aside, and my husband and I have ALWAYS supported his passions, no matter how eccentric they have seemed. We let him know how proud we are of him and how much we love him on a daily basis, and always try to be available to talk about any questions that he has or just to "hang out." I feel, and often tell him, that I'm so glad he's in the world. He makes me very happy and I wouldn't change him for anything!!

Social Skill lessons and NOT being placed in special ed.

I don't think there is a lot that could possibly have been done different. I would not have overracted to things as a kid. I would not have spent so much time talking about my obsessions. I keep them mostly to myself now.

One thing that helped me growing up was having animals, especially my cats. They were friends when I really needed them.

If I had been taught math the regular way, instead of with a bunch of stupid methods geared mainly toward the slowest learners in the class, I might still be interested in it today. Luckily, I was taught to read well in first grade, and scored well above grade level on reading tests.

Well, what would have helped me was the existance of AS as a disorder when I was a kid!

Since it wasn't, there was no way for my parents to understand me, or what I needed. They held on to the old fashioned belief that "bad" behavior could be punished out of me, or I just wasn't trying hard enough. I was totally lost and confused, and there was nothing they could do. I'm not faulting them, they didn't have the knowledge. I'm 33 now, seems I was born just a little bit early.

So, the thing that would have made all the difference was understanding parents, who cared, and made an effort to figure out what was going on in my little head. Very much like all you concerned parents, and I commend you for it, and I'm happy for your children.

I wish I hadn't been so apologetic, but I assumed most peoples day-to-day functioning was as laboured as mine....if I had more self-confidence, and didn't a f**k what teachers, parents or kids thought. As you grow up you'll find that many adults(and in this case authority figures), are just as insecure and foolish as the kids they scold. They don't always act by what's right, and a lot of the times out of pure self-interest....I was too afraid to be myself even when I wasn't at risk of being punished. It was like an eagle eye that constantly watched over me.

If I could give advice to parents, it would be to tell their children that adult's can be selfish, cruel, and downright idiotic, and to take what they say with a grain of salt.

About what people have been psoting about making/not making an Aspie kid go to summer camps, etc: From my experience, looking back I would say the best policy is making aspie kids join camps/clubs etc only when they have some interest in the activity or are genuinely willing to try it (at least willing to try it instead of other possible activities), rather than forcing them into something they have no interest in. my parents got me into a hiking club when i was a teen, (an activity i was genuinely willing to try) and in my early teens i went to a summer camp i had a mild interest in going to. they were both enjoyable and positive experiences. i was also made as a child to go to acting lessons to see if i liked it and i hated every minute of it, and it did nothing for my social skills (or acting skills!). likewise for dancing lessons i also ha dno interest in. in all cases they were trying to do what was best for me, it's not that they wanted me to be an actor or anything, it was just a mistake.