Hello Penelope,  I love to read your blog. I got a copy of your book and I wondered if this book still applies to the employment scene of today. I cant seem to help my son find a job. He wont look.He has a BS in Communications but seems to be an Asperger s person although he would deny it. He has never dated, hardly leaves his room and hangs w his high school buds about 5 guys who have girlfriends and wives but still manage to hang w him. I d say he acts about 14. He is vegan, we buy his food and he lives w us rent free and we pay for his car. He is hard to deal w and his decisions make no sense to us. He wants to be an internet millionaire or Amazon affiliate millionaire but has neither their outgoing YOU TUBEY personalities or the money to purchase any of their courses where they teach you how they all became millionaires. He refuses to do most jobs which are available in Southeastern Virginia, like grocery store stockers or big box store workers like Costco. The thing is, I lost my job and my husband became sick and had to retire at 50 on disability and we are older now and struggling financially. We worry what will happen to him, he has noone w any substance in his life to take care of him or help him. He works about 1 month a year I would say. He would never take career advice from anyone, but I would. He is difficult, but a wonderful, good person. He wont go back to any school except internet. He graduated in 2014 and really does nothing but sleep til 1230 and go out w friends surfing and skateboarding . Our dog died in 2016 which hit him very hard for she was his closest companion. We had to go to an apartment for financial reasons and cannot get him another dog. Do you have any advice for me ?? Thank you, Penelope. I pray for you and your sons and I hope you can become fantastically wealthy. My married daughter and I refer to you by your first name , as a friend or confidant as we discuss your latest blogs!

I am a female with Aspergers. I think my mom and my sister have Aspergers, too. And we all have the same problem: we can greatly offend people by the things we say and how we say them. In talking with each of them, they have no idea that they are doing it and they say they don’t mean to offend. I physically cringe when I hear how they talk to people – even though I know I accidentally do it, too.

I don’t tell colleagues and friend groups that I have Aspergers. I know to look people in the eye when in conversations. I am pretty decent in one-on-one conversations when I pay close attention to personality type and what the other person needs from me and the relationship. I am very bad at reading people’s intentions.

In my adult life, I have jumped from friend group to friend group. My mom used to tell me that I wore people out. I’ve gotten fired from every job – which I think is a combo of me being an ENTP and having Aspergers. I feel like I leave a wake of destruction in my path from saying exactly what I am thinking. I’m generally a friendly and enthusiastic person, so my harsh comments tend to really catch people off guard. So, people who liked me at first will distance themselves in a hurry. Or, I’ll be so embarrassed that I hurt someone’s feelings, that I’ll distance myself.

I’m getting better at keeping my mouth shut by understanding personality type and group dynamics, but I know I will always make this type of mistake. Sometimes I will know immediately that I was a jerk by the look on someone’s face or shift in body language. Other times, I think I was just stating the obvious and everyone sees the same thing I do, but later it will become clear that I’m out of step with the rest of the group. So, I need to learn how to mea culpa gracefully to someone in the moment or later when I’ve realized I’ve deeply offended someone.

Do you have suggestions?

I have two questions for you, but first I want to tell you our story to put the questions in context. My boyfriend and I have been together for 3 years.  When I met him he had just started graduate school (at age 43). A month after we started dating his father died and his whole life unraveled before my eyes. He withdrew from school and went into a depression. He didn’t look for work, didn’t go back into his program when the time came, lost his place to live, and had to move to some family property four hours from where I live.

I could see how much he struggled and I knew there was some genuine and significant barrier to him getting his life together but I couldn’t put my finger on it (PTSD? An attachment disorder? Pervasive developmental trauma?). In any case, I have been loving him as best I can without trying to “help” him or “fix” anything. (I am a mental health counselor, and majorly co-dependent, so believe me this has been a herculean act of restraint.)

A few months ago he mentioned that he really relates to the way Temple Grandin explains thinking in pictures and he thinks he might be on the autism spectrum. I considered this. I have been racking my brain for three years trying to understand what is going on. I am a counselor, for pete’s sake, how could I not recognize this? (Possibly because we studied the autism spectrum for 10 whole minutes of my 60 hour master’s program—but that is the topic for another day).

I began reading everything I could find and suddenly everything made sense. After I read Tony Attwood’s Complete Guide to Asperger’s I told my boyfriend that it was like someone had taken all the individual puzzle pieces of observation I’d been collecting over the past three years and fitted them together so I could finally see the whole picture. Now we were onto something, something big, something that explained all the trouble he was having and had been having all of his life (and why he couldn’t say “I love you” with words although I felt more loved by him than I ever did by my ex-husband who said “I love you” every day.)

I encouraged him to read about it, too, (which he is doing) and I have continued reading and reading and we have been talking about it a little bit at a time since then. One thing that just about every article and book I’ve read repeats over and over is that the Aspies who have some measure of happiness in life are the ones who have someone (almost always a mother or wife) who helps them structure their days and navigate the intricacies of the neurotypical world.

I began thinking that my strategy of not “helping” which I thought was so healthy of me (finally, for once!) was actually, in this case, the opposite of what was needed. So, I am beginning to offer help with his job search, depression, and unbearable living situation. In the course of my research I came across your blog. So, finally, I get to the first one of my questions to you: Do you think this is an appropriate thing for me to do? Or would you tell me, as I have read in your responses to parents, that I should just love him and do things we enjoy together and let him figure out the rest?

And my second question is: how can someone with Asperger’s develop an internal locus of control? Tony Attwood says it is quite common in Asperger’s to have the sense of an external locus of control and I think this is what holds my boyfriend back even more than executive function problems or trouble dealing with people (although that causes him a lot of trouble).

He feels completely at the mercy of outside forces and seems to have no idea that he actually has any power to play a role in creating a positive future for himself. Any hint of a suggestion that he can make positive changes in himself and his life seems to make him feel quite hurt and even angry. If he can’t realize he can change his life for the better, he can’t feel any motivation for taking steps to do so and that seems like a hopelessly stuck place.

Did you once have an external locus of control and, if so, how did you overcome it? Do you have any suggestions that you think could help him? I love this guy so much it makes my heart hurt. I want so much for him to have a happy life and for us to have a fulfilling relationship something like what you seem to have with The Farmer. Do you see hope?

Thank you for sharing about your Asperger’s syndrome.  Thank you for sharing about yourself and your son.  Your article resonated with my wife and I and helped us see our adult son more clearly.

He denies that he has any sort of autistic tendencies, but everyone around him seems to see otherwise.  He appears to have blinders on . . . which is scary for those of us who love him dearly.  If I may presume to ask,  when did you first come to realize you had high IQ AS?  What helped you realize that?  Was it just getting older and more mature?  Could you have seen it sooner, with help from anyone else?  How do you separate your perhaps quirky tendencies as a person with a high IQ from those stemming from AS?

Our son has a very high IQ (160ish), and easily obtained a college degree with honors in literature and Spanish.  But he changed dramatically in college.  He came out very cynical and maybe even delusional.  He claims he is a poet, but he only wrote one major poem in college, and never had it published (although it was awarded best senior writing piece).

Since graduating three years ago, he has been unwilling (or unable) to get a job and says he is just waiting for the next poem to come to him.  He lives with his girlfriend, who is employed, with very few other close friends, which is precisely what you described in your article.  So what appears to be missing is his ability or even willingness to accept he may have AS and to get a paying job, maybe one not using his high IQ capacities.

So . . . any advice for worried parents?   Would love to hear from you!  Thanks again for sharing your article with the world on line.  That was a brave step in my view, and one I commend you on.