What would have helped me as an Aspie child

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wow what can i say
thank you!!

im a parent of 10yr son who has aspie, good balanced answers, and going to think on all what you have said and apply to which i have fallen on.

thank you

I think that having to grow up in today's society would probably be the hardest thing for an apsie....

There is TV - which provides fake social learning
There is the PC - which provides games that take away time and also in some cases provide fake social experiences.
The mobile phone - obvious
The Bleeding Heart save the planet trend - sheep mntality is a hard place to live in for aspies, it makes them even more secluded.

So for parents I reccomend....

No TV or very little - try to make it a family special occasion type of thing - and movies would be better than sitcoms.
NO PC - or if your to use one - use one not for games. Try to use a harder opersting system eg. Linux
No Game Consoles - an aspie kid (like me) may come to regret the amount of time they wasted on one of these things.
No mobile phone - to this day I only use one for work.
-Teach the opposite of the trend for the day - it's is better to highlight being 'an individual' and noting being wrong with it - than tobe a parent then ends up going into the 'Nothing is ever different' group.

-Don't tell your kid they have asperger's - knowing that your different and thinking that you may be different are a different kettle of fish.... it's better to have the kid think they are still normal then to have them give up on ever trying to be normal. - this is also a good tip for ADD kids, actually a good tip for most syndrome effected children. (Yes the arm flayling kid probably will already know they have something wrong with them, and the add kid lighting fires teachers shoes maye told something)

-Drugs - today ritalin and a whole myriad of drugs are being abused by mildly mentaly challenged kids, these drugs should only be reserved for obtuse syndromes. In my case - my parents still don't know about aspergers.- tey just though I was special. They didn't push me into things I didn't like - social siutations hugging etc. Instead they pushed things I did like... my hobby., yet at the same time taking away thing that I could get addicted too... cheese, computer games, TV. - they also made me do things... eg. eat something I hate.

-I highly beleive the parent can have alot to do with exacerbating AS and ADD - they have to let go and think -- they will grow out of it. I also have an ADD freind which was very ADD, everything from lighting fires to smacking adults on the face and driving cars.... he's a fairly normal person today (with the occasional outburst now and then , ADD kids are very smart, the parents just never realise, mainly because it's not the calm type of learning ability which they posess which prompts the parents to push their kidshobbies like in Autistic children) (An add kid will learn through copying very very quickly.... take advantage of this and give them rope learnable tasks eg. mountain climbing, carpentry, hole digging - yes they have to be moving, my friend the ADD kid was a Tree Feller at the age of 10) - note they will learn so quickly that they will get bored and start up again. So it has to be a long term learning activity, like mountaing climbing, where you learn a new techinque every time you try.

some days ago my sun was upset, his lower lip was trembling, so i to toward him and just hughed him ( a discussiont with his father caused it).

I just remember thinking: it would have been nice if someone had done the same to me!!

I just wanted to thank everybody for their suggestions in this thread.

Having read quite a few posts here, I talked things over with my wife, and we decided that telling our 9 year old that he has AS would be the right thing to do.

Both of us have some insight into it, as both of us are on the NT/aspie cusp ourselves. Geeky and uncomfortable with social situations, with fairly severe OCD and hyperlexia running on one side of the family, and some degree of ADD on both sides. If we have to engage in face-to-face social activity, we are far more comfortable with most aspies than with most NTs, and we fit right in. But we get by as merely eccentric, whereas there's absolutely no mistaking our kid's AS. Although he's exceptionally bright, and working at 2-5 grades above his age in most subjects, the social side of things at school (not to mention his frustration at the lack of academic resources) led our underfunded and rather pathetic rural school district to suggest that he be put into special ed, which seemed like one hell of a strange solution for a kid who's at the 99.7th percentile for intelligence, and doing physics and chemistry as a 3rd grader. So he's been getting home schooled, but I digress...

Last night we talked to him about Dr. Asperger and the history of AS, and told him that part of the reason he was different from other kids was that he had it, and that we both had a bit of it ourselves. He asked if we meant the social differences, which kind of surprised me -- I wasn't sure that he would have realized that he was different in that way, if only because he has spent very little time with other kids in the last year. But we gave him the rundown on what the differences between aspies and NTs are, and made sure to cover the strengths as well as weaknesses.

What happened next was so cool... we didn't know how he would take it, but he was really happy. It made sense out of everything, and meant that there are non-relatives out there who are like him. Before he felt kind of isolated and freakish, now he feels like he has a community, and looks forward to meeting other kids with AS -- this is the first time since preschool when he's expressed much interest in interacting with other kids at all, so it's a real breakthrough for him. He's seen me on this site, and I told him about the kids' area, so I wouldn't be surprised if he heads over there looking for other kids who obsess over physics and chemistry.

Again, thanks for the great advice!

Frankly I don't know. It's like when beeing a teenager with three dogs and suddenly fall in love. You have absolutely no clue to what to do. You have suggested partner #1 and #2 and it´s a complete meltdown as in all situations of Love. Feel free to correct me.

I have one female friend who's my only and I will never change that fact. She's the mother of my three children.

Sometimes I wonder why the hell my parents allowed explosives. Just that they saw I took precautions was good enough. A interest of combustion engines was not enough. I've been riding motorized vehicles since I was 6 when I first figured out how to start my 11y older brothers moped (swedish 50cc vehicle allowed from 15y)

Overall, I think my parents did a pretty good job.

The one thing my dad did that really bothered me was that I'd have art/craft supplies spread out all over the floor, and he'd yell at me for being a slob. No matter how hard I tried to clean, it wasn't good enough for him, and it still isn't. I wish he could appreciate the things I'm good at instead of insulting me for the things I'm not good at.

My mom always encouraged my interests, was confident that I was smart and talented, believed in me, and fought for me to get the most out of my education. Of course, this was before anyone had heard of Asperger's, so I was never diagnosed, never had an IEP, etc.

In some ways, it would have been easier if I'd been diagnosed, it would have made many things much easier to understand.

There are MANY things I wish the school had done differently. The number one thing would be to protect me from getting beaten up. So many beatings happened when there was an adult around, just not paying attention. On top of that was the constant teasing, and the combination of verbal and physical bullying made me hate school.

Some of the things I wish the school had done differently are more picky. I hated gym class, because I sucked at team sports, and everyone knew it, so my teammates' main objective was to make sure the ball never came anywhere near me. Gym class is supposed to help people develop skills and get more physically fit- instead, for me, it was an hour of standing in a field and daydreaming while a game went on around me. It was a waste of time for me, and my presence just annoyed everyone else.

In the classroom, teachers would frequently have kids take turn reading aloud, and everyone else was supposed to follow along. I just could not read that slow, so I'd end up either listening (and lose my place) or read at my own pace (and end up a couple chapters ahead of where I was supposed to be). It wasn't that I wasn't paying attention, I just couldn't read that slow. If I'd been assigned a paragraph to read and then told when it was my turn, that would have been no problem. It was just the following along when someone else read very slowly that was difficult.

Another thing I hated was when EVERYONE had to master a unit before anyone could move on. In 7th grade, we had a geography unit, and we needed to be able to identify 60 countries on a world map and know their capitals. It was easy, and I aced the test the first time. No one else did, most people failed the test. We had to keep studying the same unit until everyone had passed. If the teacher had found ways to make it more challenging (like learning the major bodies of water, mountain ranges, major imports/exports, or anything else related to geography) and then tested the people who'd passed the basic unit on the extra credit stuff, I would have actually learned more instead of just being bored out of my skull.

Some people have mentioned difficulty with dating in this thread. I learned about dating/sex/love the same way I learned about everything else- by reading books or watching movies. I practiced flirting, and found that if I made eye contact and smiled at a cute boy, I could usually get him to smile back, and sometimes he'd talk to me. That was pretty easy.

Of course, in most of the movies and books, things went pretty predictably- flirting led to kissing, kissing led to sex, then they were in love and lived happily ever after. In real life, I could handle flirting, kissing, and sex, but it took me awhile to understand that just because a guy wanted to have sex with me, it didn't mean he wanted a relationship with me. My parents did try to protect me, but it was all "Sex before marriage is WRONG" and "Guys just want one thing", and since I did want sex, and didn't see it as wrong, I ignored their warnings. What I needed was some way to tell if a guy wanted a relationship or just sex, without coming right out and asking, which can only result in the guy lying or getting offended.

Even if I did get into a relationship, I'd frequently get dumped for vague reasons, and wouldn't understand what went wrong, and ended up feeling like there was something wrong with me that no one was telling me about. (Yes, there was, and they weren't telling me because they didn't want to hurt my feelings, but maybe knowing would have allowed me to actually deal with it.)

Any parent who's reading this is already doing the thing that would have helped me as a child... realise there's something 'wrong', some reason the kid's like s/he is, it's not just bad behaviour. Punishing a child with Asperger's for not being able to act normal is as constructive as punishing a deaf child for not responding to your voice.

In my situation, being an only child didn't help - my parents had no other children to compare my behaviour and development to. Looking back, I was one weird kid, but nobody noticed.

I think reading Roger Bannister's story when I was younger might have helped me. He went through all the things I went through as a young child, plus things I never had to experience, like war. Knowing that someone had the same feelings as I did, and accomplished great things, would have helped me immensely at about thirteen years of age. It would also have been an inspiration for me to stay physically active. I think phys. ed. classes killed my desire to run. I was pretty active and even somewhat athletic as a small child.

Hi, I am a single parent of an 8 year old aspie son and a NT 11 year old daughter. I have aspie tendencies but was never formally diagnosed. We are all in karate. My son HATES it. I tell him it is important to know how to defend himself (and martial arts teaches so much more, like self respect, etc.). He wants to do the flippy extreme stuff, but hates to spar or do any other martial arts related karate.

I have noticed that when he gets upset, he reacts physically (but not with the lethal karate things he has learned). He doesn't seem to relate karate and what he is learning with self defense. I have also noticed that he uses extreme force when only minor force would be needed (we have rescue dogs and our own; sometimes one brushes against him and he strikes the dog without thinking, it seems). He says sorry but I am concerned that he may not be able to delineate a minor to a major threat. If he did learn to use what he has learned in karate class as self defense, would he be able to determine the threat level (as opposed to his overstimuation level)?

Just so you know: I love this child and would not change him. Being an aspie is a part of him and I love him just as he is. He is so smart and incredible. I just want to help him navigate the NT world (with bullies and all) and come out happy with who he is!
He loves chemistry, geology, natural science, paleontology, geography, astonomy, and more (he is standing here listing them to me!! !).

Thanks for your input and I am excited to finally get other perspectives!

Kir

I wish my parents acknowledged that I had a few problems with socializing due to autism and not a weak personality. During my teen years the biggest bullies I had to face were my own parents.

All's good now. My patience (sorta) with them paid off and now my mother is now very supportive. I guess it was the denial talking.

Would've made life much easier if they didn't have to go through that phase though, a lot of hurt and anger on both sides could've been avoided.

It would have certainly helped to have never punished under the reason "You know what you did wrong." Seriously, why would I have done it if I knew it was wrong? and why the hell would I be asking what I had done if I knew what it was?

if my parents knew...
I had horrible problems with bullying and they obviously knew something was up
I hated them being involved with my school work I just wanted to be left alone
these days-even as they know-they don't care
my dad is the worst
he thinks I can be normal if I simply try harder
(my brother also thinks I should just "obsess less")
my mom is the only one who gets it
growing up was crappy-at school and home
I was constantly put down where ever I went (and its still like that)
I am 18 and am miserable all the time
I wish I could live on my own-but lack of funds and friends prevents it
I am very distant from my father especially-I will go days with not saying much of anything to him
I avoid him as he is an ass hole most of the time (all he cares about is his computer)
I have always been the black sheep of my family
never fitting in or being the son they wanted me to be-just a jumbled mess
I can tell they aren't too proud of me...mind you I haven't done anything for them to be proud of anyways.

- To have been given the benefit of the doubt, even when I had no evidence to back myself up. Adults bullied me as a child. They underestimated me, they refused to believe my account of virtually any situation (which still makes no sense to me), and they basically viewed me in negative lights that I did not care for at all and lost my childhood trying to disprove.