AskAnAspie

Aspies and Love

Q: Did you think of your first Love as your Last?

My Aspie son of 14 is in the throes of his first serious relationship with a girl. I know this, not because he has confided in me, but simply because of what I have observed. He is smitten and I fear for him. While speaking to him on the issue of his too-frequent text messages to her, I asked the loaded question . . . "It's not as if you're going to marry her" His reply - "You can't know that!" They are far too young for this to last. Will he recover once she walks away? Will he be prepared to one day form another relationship, or will this scar him for life? I fear that the end of the relationship will throw him into deep depression. Is this inevitable? What can I do to better prepare him?

Concerned Mum

A: :( This certainly strikes a chord with me. Before I relate my personal
experience, though, let me congratulate you on having an Aspie with the
emotional awareness and maturity to be in love! I've written to a lot of
parents of autistic kids who can't be sure their children will ever have a
relationship, serious or otherwise. It's great that yours isn't one of them.
That said, it's hard to know whether your son's feelings are the result of
his Asperger's or his humanity. I think most people fall very intensely in
love during their first relationship. (In an episode of Star Trek, Scotty
says of loving the Enterprise: "It's like the first time you fall in love.
You never love a woman quite that much again." I don't think I agree with
him, but he gets the point across.) Especially from an Aspie perspective, if
you thought a relationship had no chance of lasting, why on Earth would you
get into it in the first place?
I got into my first relationship at sixteen. Talk about text-messaging -- I
must've spent four or five hours a day on that computer! I couldn't get
enough of the girl in question. I put this down to a couple things. One,
first love, as I've already discussed. And two, Asperger's. Aspies tend to
perseverate on (obsess about) things that interest them, and there's not
much that's more interesting than a girlfriend! And having Asperger's often
means that you don't often feel like anyone really understands you;
believing that someone finally does is a really special feeling, believe me.
We all have this feeling to a greater or lesser degree, of course, but I
think it may be stronger for Aspies, proportional to our feeling of being
"different." So I was absolutely in love with being in love, and I cherished
my belief (illusion though it may have been) that the two of us had a chance
at succeeding in the long term. No one could ever have convinced me that we
didn't.
When we broke up after a few months, right around Christmas, I was
devastated. I felt like I had lost so many things at once. Partly because of
the Aspie traits I mentioned above and partly because of my emotional
immaturity, I had formed a kind of dependency that was hard as hell to
overcome. I cried a lot, and wrote a lot of mediocre poetry. It was months
before I could even imagine myself with another girl, and months more before
I was really over her (aside from some residual loneliness that comes of
having "tasted the fruit" of love and having it taken away). A lot of people
go through this, again to a greater or lesser degree, when their
relationships -- especially their first -- come to an end. But I gained a
lot of maturity through the relationship and its aftermath, including a lot
of heretofore-undeveloped interpersonal skills. I wouldn't trade what I
gained for not having to remember that evanescent pain.
About two years after my first relationship began, the summer before I went
to college, I met a wonderful girl at Barnes & Noble. She asked me out; we
started dating and fell deeply in love. Our relationship lasted two years,
ending several months ago (and no one can tell me we never had a chance!)
Whatever "scars" were left from my first girlfriend did not, I don't think,
affect my ability to bond with my second. And whatever scars I'm feeling now
will not, I don't think, affect my ability to bond with my third (if, God
willing, there ever is a third).
People grow through love, whether that love lasts or not. Unfortunately,
sometimes pain is the price of growth. But pain is temporary; the maturity
one gains through relationships is not. I can't tell you what's best for
your son. I can tell you that if I had been my mother during the time when I
was going out with my first girlfriend, I hope I would have done exactly
what she did: let the relationship run its course (making sure I wasn't
physically endangering myself, of course), and provide a reassuring shoulder
to cry on afterwards. This might not be what's right for you; it's a
decision you have to make yourself. But the best advice I can give you is to
recognize that your son's feelings are real and valid. It's hard to give up
some of the margin of control you maintain over your child (especially an
Aspie!) that lets you ensure he's emotionally safe; but in the long run,
learning to walk eventually requires not having your hand held. Is your son
ready for that?
--Brian
"For where is any author in the world
Teaches such beauty as a woman's eye?
Learning is but an adjunct to oneself."
--William Shakespeare, *Love's Labour's Lost*

Three questions in one!

Q: I just got an email from one of the support groups I am apart of, with a
reference to your site.

I am a parent of 3 kids, one with Autism. My autistic son is 7 years old. I
do have a lot of questions for those of you who have been there, and can
articulate what you feel and experience. My son is still young, so I hope
that as he matures, he will be able to articulate and express to me what he
is feeling as you all do. Thanks for creating this site, and trying to help
others!

A quick quick glimpse at some of the behaviors that I would love insight and
or commentary from your experiences are, and I did not see the answers in
frequently asked question (My questions are not private, so you may post
them and your answers, but please email me back as well):

My son has a phenomenal memory. Just shy oven 7 years old, he can recall and
recite anything he has heard or seen, especially when it has an order (like
birthdates, or the sequence of U.S. Presidents, songs that he has not heard
since he was an infant etc.). Should I be encouraging his odd obsession with
dates/sequences etc. (by encouraging this talent, (I mean at this age when
he is so little, do I buy the books or engage in the memory games to further
nurture the obsession, or redirect the inclination to more neuro-typical
play?)

My son lacks the interest (or ability?) to engage in conversation, just for
the sake of conversation (i.e. How was your day, what did you do today etc…
He will never be the one to initiate such a conversation, and does not
sustain in the conversation when someone else initiates it. He will just
answer your question, and then tune out, or continue what he was doing.)
How do I teach him how to have interest and sustain everyday conversation?

My son has what seems like an uncontrollable need to verbal stim (except for
when he is on the computer or drawing/writing or focusing on something like
a puzzle). When walking, standing in line, in the classroom, at the dinner
table, even during play my son is constantly singing, making some noises of
something that he might be interested in (now at this young age, the
interest is in trucks, so he makes truck noises, or he loves Gardeners, so
he makes lawn mower and leaf blower sounds). The questions I have for you
all, are is it seems his natural state of being is one that is always,
singing out loud, making out loud sounds, or saying whatever is on his mind
irrelevant of what is going on around him (i.e. in the classroom, while
everyone is listening to the teacher read a book, or give an instruction, he
has to be verbalizing something). How do I help him control his need to
verbalize everything that comes to his unique mind?

With great appreciation for your insight here! From a loving Mom!

A: Hi there! Sorry it's taken a while to get back to you; we've been trying to
fend off a blizzard of emails with a hair dryer almost since going online!
So, you have three questions, and I have three answers. Hopefully they're
answers to the right questions. Let's start at the beginning...
I think it's great that your son is so gifted in the memory department!
Many autistic kids have a talent for trivia, but it sounds like yours is
more so than most. Me, I say that if you have a phenomenal talent, you
should nurture it :) There are plenty of places where such memory could come
in handy, from winning Jeopardy to remembering the contents of his biology
textbook once he gets to high school. Pursuing such an ability at the
expense of other important things, like school, therapy, taking care of the
dog, and so on would be no good, of course. But I think pursuing it at the
expense of neurotypical play is healthy; autistic kids aren't neurotypical,
so why should they act neurotypical on their own time? (I'm in college. The
normal way many neurotypicals "play" here involves drunken parties. I like
to think that sitting in my room reading, the more Aspie option, is a valid
alternative choice :) ) You're right, though, to think about to what extent
your son should be able to mimic neurotypical behavior; this is a theme I'll
return to in the next couple questions.

Number two! Small talk and the like. I know how your son feels... my
perception, which is shared by most of us in the autistic community and many
people outside it, is that an awful lot of human conversation is more for
the purpose of demonstrating our caring about each other (or pretending to)
than for actual communication. This takes autistic kids a while to figure
out, because of what's been called "mind-blindness;" it's not until rather
late in our development that we can figure out what other people are feeling
and why they feel that way. When you say "how was your day?" what you mean
is "I care about you and want to know how you're doing," but to your son it
likely sounds more like "how was your day?" That's a question that can be
adequately answered with "it was okay," so that's what he says. He's
probably not trying to be reticent; he's just answering the question he
heard. On one hand, that's understandable. On the other hand, I for one
wouldn't be able to function socially if I couldn't read subtext! If my own
experience is any guide, this is something your son will grow out of
naturally to some extent, as he comes to understand that information is not
the only thing language can convey! Meanwhile, you can help him learn to
read subtext by explaining to him in real time why people the two of you
encounter are saying the things they say. ("I asked the teller how she was
because it's a nice way to show people that you value them.") The rules are
more confusing than you might think!
I'm pleased to hear your son is so verbal -- plenty of mothers of autistic
kids have the opposite problem :) Your son's sometimes-inappropriate
verboseness is something a lot of autistics have to deal with. I talk to
myself almost constantly when in private, as do many of the Aspies I know --
it's partly to organize my thoughts, and partly to entertain myself! When I
was young, though, the proviso about being in private wasn't one I'd learned
yet. (My first diagnosis was ADHD, because someone who insists on pointing
out what the fish in the classroom aquarium is doing while his teacher is
trying to teach arithmetic can superficially look like an ADHD patient; it
wasn't until later that we figured out ADHD wasn't the issue! To this day I
talk a lot in class, though I've redirected it to asking the professor the
many questions that invariably go through my mind as he explains the lesson
of the day.) Ultimately, the reason why talking aloud in public isn't
usually appropriate is that it disturbs others; this is something you can
try explaining to your son. ("The teacher wants to teach the lesson, and
your classmates want to learn. Being in a quiet room helps people teach and
learn. You can help them by not making noise, so that they can concentrate
better.") At the same time, you might want to be wary of sending the message
that talking to oneself is *never* appropriate; this is another area where I
think autistics are "different but okay." (And neurotypical kids are noisy
too!) Whatever rules you'd like your child to follow about when it's okay to
talk a blue streak, do your best to explain them so that they make sense to
someone who has trouble figuring out what other people are feeling without
being told.
Whew! Hope this helps you! It sounds like your son is gratifyingly high
functioning, and I hope continuing to bring him up will be rewarding for
you. Let me know if you have more questions! Thanks for writing!
--Brian

Why does my son hit people he calls friends?

Q: Hello!  What a wonderful forum!  I'm hoping you can give me insights into my son's puzzling behavior.  He just turned 10 and has high-functioning autism.  Overall, he is not aggressive, self-injurious (is that a word?) or overly rigid.  But he is doing things that have his school team and his behavioralist totally baffled.

 

(1)  My son has never been aggressive before, but this year at lunch he is acting out against 3 girls - all whom he likes a lot!  One he refers to as his favorite friend.  I know there is not an issue of teasing.  But at recess he will stomp on his one friend's foot, or roar in their faces, or call them names.  I think this started when he first roared at girls and they laughed.  So he was getting attention.  But I do not know why he stomps on their feet or calls them names - these are people he calls friends!  We did not see this behavior earlier in the year, but my son typically has problems after Christmas break. He knows this behavior hurts their feelings and is not appropriate - he recites the "rules" all the time.  But he is not stopping the behavior. 

 

(2)  My son typically starts the new school year well, but then has difficulty after Christmas break.  Last year we saw many tantrums that were pretty bad.  This year there have been a few, but no where in intensity like last year.  (His placement is different this year - he is mainstreamed more, with a 1:1 aide).  We cannot figure out why coming back from break and late winter is so difficult for him - he says he likes school.  I'm wondering if he gets much more exercise during the summer - but we got a lot of snow this year and he got plenty of exercise playing outside this winter.

 

I thank you for any insights you can provide.  You are the experts.  The ones who think they are (my school's behavioralist) don't have a clue!

 

Karen

A: 1) To a certain extent, boys pulling the pigtails of girls they like is
perfectly normal.  Guys all have to learn that punching girls is not
considered endearing behavior.  It's just going to take a little longer for
your son.  Talking with him about this girl and asking him what he thinks
she would like, and then steering him to more traditional gestures like
Snoopy valentines and friendship bracelets might be good. He's excited about
this girl (in a cute puppy-love way, I'm sure), and the rules never mean
much when you are excited - but results do.
2)  I always found post-Christmas hard too - gross late winter weather and
too many kids in too small a space.  Many people get the post-holiday blues,
but expressing those feelings may be difficult for an Aspie.  Giving him
something else to look forward to and plan for, and it may help receive the
tension.  This are just suggestions, but perhaps a trip your family is
planning on taking, or his birthday, or a craft project.  Good luck!
-Lynn

Why won't he stop talking about maps?

Q: My 7yr old AS/HFA (not sure which yet, but who cares) son of course has his perseveratory topic: Maps/Geography. He really wants to make friends so I have plainly explained over and over to him that constantly talking about his topic to his peers is hampering him in his quest but it doesn't seem to sink in.

Even when he is home alone with Mom and Dad and is not nervous about "how to act/what to say" he will keep talking about it even after I tell him point blank I don't want to hear any more and change the subject.

I know it is difficult for him to pick up on nonverbal cues, etc. but why isn't telling him plainly unsuccessful? Is it due to short term auditory memory difficulty? He has other outlets for expressing his "passion",he draws maps, makes up streets, etc.

A: I think the best analogy here is to remember the first time someone asked you out on a date, or when you opened the first acceptance letter to college, or some similar time when you were incredibly excited about a piece of information and were just bursting to tell somebody about it. Now imagine that that piece of information was the etymology of the word "doubt", or a series of baseball statistics, or the capitals of South American countries. It's not that you don't understand intellectually that the other person doesn't want to hear about it, you're just really excited and need to tell somebody about it. And it seems so incredibly interesting to you that you can't imagine that anyone else would not want to hear it. Sure, they said they didn't want to hear any more about the Great Vowel Shift, but that's because they didn't know this particular fact about dipthongs.

Like with most Aspie problems, this does get better as kids get older and learn more self-control. But even now, as a 20 year old, I once and a while come across a fact that is so cool that I have to call my mom up and tell her. Or if it's too late to call her, go tell one of my roommates. Having other outlets does help, but one important thing to remember is that there's a difference between an outlet for wanting to think about a given subject and an outlet for wanting to inform people about a given subject. Depending on how you feel about your son using the internet, I would recommend finding him some Geography related message boards online where he can go and talk about geography with other people. If I've just learned about a particularly amusing branch of neopaganism, I can read about it all day, but that's only going to increase my desire to tell someone about it. Luckily for me, one nice thing about having Aspie friends is that even when emerging religions aren't their personal perseveration, they do appreciate interesting random facts and will usually sit still for a brief lecture on Wolf-Age Asatru until I can get it out of my system. And that's the key: find some outlet for his desire to talk about his perseverations, even if it's just online or even into a tape recorder, and he won't feel that need to keep telling you all about it.

Wiley

How can I teach my son not to go up to strangers?

Q:I have a 7 year old son with HFA. Up until a year or two ago, he was not very social. Now he is very social, sometimes to the point of going up to strangers and holding their hand or hugging them. How do I help him understand a person's personal space without regressing him socially?

Thank you,
Wendy

A:The idea that people come in different catagories, and that what is appropriate for some people is not appropriate for others can be a very confusing one. The trick is to make the different catagories as clear as possible. For example:

"If you don't know someone's name, don't touch them."
"If someone is in the process of telling you their name, or you know their name but you don't see them very often, it is ok to shake hands with them, but the only touch should be hand to hand."
etc.

The trick is to make it as comprehensive as possible while remaining as simple as possible. And it is the sort of thing you'll need to spend some time explaining and teaching. Keep in mind that our society's rules about personal space are really quite complicated, and when you can't pick them up instinctively, they can be very confusing. If you suddenly found yourself in Japan, you would need somebody to explain the rules governing bowing. It would take you some time to figure it out, and you'd still probably make a lot of mistakes.

Wiley

Why are Aspies so bossy?

Q: Why do Aspies always have to be in charge when they're playing with other kids? Why can't they see that from the perspective of the other kids they're being bossy and ruining the game?

A: I started a lot of clubs in my day. At one point in second grade I started a lemonade-stand style jewelry business selling simple beaded necklaces, and at the highpoint had actually hired nearly half of my second grade class. I even drew up contracts specifying job descriptions and payment details.

At some point, I would put it right around fourth grade, I did figure out that most people didn't like play that was that structured. It's another aspect of the giant "I am living in a society of crazy people" realization that aspies have to make before they can move into a more sophisticated understanding of how neurotypicals work. One point that I think tends to get botched in a lot of the literature written by professionals is that it's not as much that aspies aren't trying to see things from other people's perspectives as that they are working from a different set of assumptions from neurotypicals. Neurotypicals can build their understanding of other people's feelings by building from their own feelings. But aspies tend to react to situations differently than neurotypicals, so they have to a) realize that they can't use their own emotions to predict the emotions of others and b) start from scratch. To an aspie, structured play with defined rules and a particular type of fairness is more fun. Given that the structure is not inherently there and none of the other kids are providing it, the aspie steps in to make the game better. The other kids see this as being bossy and ruining the game. But eventually most aspies eventually figure out that they can't assume other people are going to think the same way they do, and after that they tend to make a lot of improvement in predicting other people's reactions to things.

How can I help my child find friends?

Q: My son has Asperger's, and he has a lot of trouble finding friends. What can I do to help?

A: It's always hard for Aspies to find friends. If possible, try to set up a social group with other Aspie kids in the area. The important thing to remember is that while most neurotypicals see aspies as being "weird", when you're an aspie, it's 99% of the population who's weird, and it can be incredibly liberating to finally meet a group of normal people. If that isn't possible, try finding groups in your area that focus on one of his special interests. Even if the only groups available are aimed at adults, by the time the average aspie is ten or twelve they can often get along alright in a relatively acedemic social setting, like a bird-watching or book club, with adults. Another social activity popular amoung aspies is Dungeons & Dragons, which is a tabletop roleplaying game usually played in a group. It's popular among teenagers, and it's a good way to find aspie-compatible groups of kids. Don't worry too much if these sorts of groups consist mostly of older people. A lot of aspies do better with older people than with kids their own age.

What should we do about bullies?

Q: My son gets bullied a lot. Did you have problems with bullies, and if so, how did you handle it?

A: I dealt with bullying in a rather unusual way. I figured out pretty quickly that as a short non-athletic girl, fighting back rarely worked, so I got incredibly good at not fighting back. Not only did the bullies usually leave me alone when they couldn't even get me to change facial expression, but other kids and teachers were much more likely to intervene when they saw one of the parties in a "fight" sitting calmly crosslegged on the ground than when there was a more traditional fight structure. And you'd be amazed how quickly you can stop a game of 5th grade keep-away with the sentance "Is your life really so devoid of amusement that you have to resort to stealing other people's headwear?" Although it's pretty much impossible to stamp bullying out of a group of children, by 7th grade I had changed the general attitude of the kids in my grade to the point that most of them thought picking on me at least was morally wrong because of the way I wouldn't fight back. There was one incident in particular that I remember in which a display of origami that I had made for the student lounge was torn down, and when they found out about it a small group of popular girls marched right into the offender's homeroom, slapped him, and dragged him in to apologize to me.

Obviously this isn't a stratagy that works for everyone, it takes quite a lot of self-control and I had to endure a lot of physical and emotional pain before the tide finally turned in my favor, but I think in the end it let me get through it all while still feeling like I was in control of my life, with my self-esteem intact, and without a lot of resentment towards my classmates.

Wiley

"You're not my friend anymore."

Q: Hi Wiley and Brian,

This is great!!!! I have a 7yr. son with Aspergers. He was diagnosed at age 4. He is starting to make friends, but when they do something on accident he tends to hurt their feelings by saying he's not their friend anymore. What advice could you give to help him with this? Another question, do you know any married couples where one spouse has Aspergers and the other doesn't not? What advice would you give to the one with out Aspergers on how to communicate to that person?

Sincerely,

Amy
Rockford,IL

A: It sounds to me, in my unprofessional opinion, like your son is going
through a stage which a lot of kids have to deal with, but which might
be worse for Aspies. It takes us so long to develop a "theory of
mind" -- that is to say, to understand what makes other people,
especially neurotypical people, tick -- that it's very possible your
son doesn't really understand that other people make mistakes and that
he is hurting them by telling them they're not his friend. It might
be worthwhile to sit him down after something like this happens and
explain to him quite directly that people make mistakes. Remind him
of a mistake he's made (nothing too emotionally charged), and explain
to him that just like he sometimes does things by accident, other
people do too. This may seem obvious to you, but autistic children,
including Aspies, have trouble figuring out in what ways other people
are like them and in what ways they're not. While you're at it, you
might ask him (kindly, not too forcefully) how he would feel if a
friend told him they didn't like him anymore, and help him understand
that that's how his friends feel when he does the same. Don't get
frustrated; it may take several tries to get him to understand.

While I don't know of any couples where one spouse has Asperger's and
the other doesn't, there are a number of books that have been
published on this subject, treating the problem from both
perspectives. I haven't read any, unfortunately, so I don't know
quite what to recommend; but it might be worth your while to check out
"Asperger's Syndrome and Long-Term Relationships," by Liane Holliday
Willey, and "The Other Half of Asperger's Syndrome," by Maxine C.
Aston. I'm sure both books emphasize "patience" as a key theme!

Hope you find this helpful! Best of luck with your son and husband alike!

--Brian