Hi – I just discovered your blog & feel excited + relieved to learn the potential joyful life for an Aspie woman. My creative, severely anxious yet improving child probably fits in the spectrum. There are about ten thousand events I wish to recount and then ask for analysis, but…

1 – What suggestions do you have for a part time time job for her? We live in rural northern NY State with access to a mall, fast-food places and parks/YMCA. My sense is that it’s time for my daughter to get more skill building, but it terrifies me that she might go into tailspins, experience traumas etc. I virtually force her to complete some tasks which come easy for most, have her repeat them and reinforce her success – such as pumping gas, using the self-checkout at Walmart. Need I add that she lives on-line, writing lots of fiction?

2 – How can I help her get into the school to sit for the SAT? No, she has no accommodations for her anxiety because she won’t go to a psych assessment (epic fail a couple years ago).

3 – Do you know any phone apps which would help with her executive functioning tasks? All that I have checked out seem only to help already-highly functioning people move from an “A-” to an “A+” whereas moving to a “D” would seriously be success for us.

Thanks a million from Mom of a Fabulous Daughter!

I have a daughter with Aspergers.  She doesn’t know that she has it and if we try to speak to her about it she will not accept it.   I read your article Don’t Miss Diagnosing Aspergers in Young Girls and my daughter also can’t seem to wash her hair properly, nor comb it . . . ever.

She is 14 and doesn’t have friends.  She says that she does, but they are all online friends who have never met her in person.  It is hard to find help for her since she thinks that there is absolutely nothing wrong.

She is not a good student, the only class she does well in is Language Arts. She is disorganized and will just lie on her back with her computer on her lap all day long if I don’t force her to do something else.  She can’t manage time.

What I am trying so desperately to figure out is what kind of help works?  What type of therapist works?  Especially for someone who thinks that they don’t need any help? We live in Raleigh, NC.  I don’t know where to go or what to do.

I am a freelance journalist in Los Angeles with quantifiable success but having trouble getting help moving into a new and more lucrative career, because I am too advanced for a lot of the disability focused state funded services and not successful enough for conventional headhunters and job coaches.

Job advisors I have worked with–both aimed at neurotypical clients and people with disabilities–tell me I am hirable but then abruptly drop me because nobody knows what to do with me.

I was the kid who was told to not set my sights too high. My parents were told that I would not be able to survive in a regular university and I should be targeted to vocational/factory type careers. We did not listen, and I have a Masters and BA to show for that. Before 2001, I spent my young adult life being bullied and fired at a variety of PR companies, and when I graduated, my university placement services would not help me get that important first job.

After a rough 18 months where I went through five jobs, and was told teaching was my only option because of my spotty job record, In 2002, I got lucky and found several freelance writing jobs that led to a freelance career, and supplemented my income with work as a substitute teacher. I got bullied and fired from one of my two districts this past year, but have no recourse and may lose my credential if the woman who fired me plans to place a spurious report with the California Teaching Credential office on why she fired me (this woman is known for trashing past employees and getting away with it, and she breaks a lot of state labor laws and gets away with it). I am still in good standing with another district which I have been with a lot longer, and can probably get good references there.

I tried out for and got turned down for several media jobs, because of my age (46) and the editors admitted to me younger people are more appealing for their looks and willingness to accept low pay. I have reached out to all kinds of Autism and Asperger’s organizations and university programs and nobody will do anything for me unless I pay thousands of dollars I do not have. While friends encourage me to apply for disability, lawyers in the field tell me I will probably not be “disabled” enough to qualify.

My 86 year old father is pressuring me to go into a business though he cannot articulate what that business is.

There is shockingly very little information on good mid career options for journalists looking for more stable work. I was advised paralegal may be a good option, but am not sure if this is another inherently ageist field, and cannot get any help or direction.

If you can offer ideas or suggestions please let me know.

 

I am simply overjoyed to have found your site. The resemblances in our paths seems uncanny, but you’re some years ahead and exactly where I want to be. I am a 21 year old with Aspergers, can’t keep a job to save my life, rarely change, shower or brush my teeth, and the only thing I’ve managed to make work for me is working in my parent’s bookstore.

Now I don’t get hours anymore and I am expecting a child, wondering how on earth to make it work. My partner and everyone around me says I would do best at creating my own job, but I can’t for the life of me figure out what that should be, or focus my energy on one thing long enough to take a project to fruition.

So my question is, when you were first figuring out how to get started at running your own projects instead of finding jobs to get fired from over and over, what was the most valuable advice you received or, alternately would in hindsight have hoped to know then?

I am a police supervisor and I have an officer that I truly believe has Asperger’s. I also have a nephew that my wife and I strongly believe has Asperger’s. The problem is: neither my officer nor our brother/sister-in-law will admit nor knows that Asperger’s is the likely issue in their lives.

With my officer, who is young and new to the job, at first his behavior was just annoying. I want so badly to yank him up and ask him “What are you doing?”, but reflecting on it for a second leads me to see that he’s doing the RIGHT things, it’s just the way he goes about them.

Example: Every call that goes out, he has to respond to. Even with the presence of the beat officer, Matt will take over and apply his own problem solving to resolve the issue. On the one hand, many people wouldn’t mind at all if someone else stepped in and took over their problems, but it seems as if he thinks he’s needed everywhere to solve the problems that we all have to deal with, but his is the only “right” way and if he doesn’t take care of it, it won’t get taken care of the right way.

I, as the supervisor, usually direct the troops to take certain actions at a scene and I will look into specific information or details to determine further actions that we as a squad or the department as a whole will take to resolve the situation. If I radio that I’m going to go talk to a certain person or look into a certain thing, Matt has to beat me there and do his own looking into or talk to the person I need to talk to.

Is it WRONG? No. Is it inappropriate? Kind of. Is it NOT what I wanted to happen? Yes. Do I have specific reasons for wanting Matt to maintain or continue on the path that I’ve set him on (stay here, watch that) while I go and investigate further? Yes. I have specific questions and information for the people I intend to talk to that Matt hasn’t considered and doesn’t have the experience or knowledge to know to ask or know what to do with the info when he gets it.

I can’t outright say, “Matt, you have a personality/emotional disorder”, and I can’t deal with him in his present state, and I most certainly can’t deal with him the way I WANT to deal with him. His typical response to criticism is to shut down, tell others that “Sarge doesn’t want me to (do whatever I criticized him for)”, and then he manufactures an emergency to have to leave without dealing with the problem.

I really like your examples and your perspective and I really need some advice on effectively dealing with this instead of chopping his head off (figuratively) and rendering an officer with good intentions and ability ineffective.

Can you help?