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?

I’ve recently been reading your posts on Aspergers to help understand how to support my oldest son, and frankly to better understand my own personality as well. I suspect that I have Aspergers as well, and feel that this understanding could have saved me years of confusion, struggle, depression, guilt about my isolation/avoidance tendencies and life choices. 

Re: your recent education post about the dinosaur dig conversation when noticing another kid(s) on the dig had Aspergers, but the parent probably didn’t know. That gave me a zing — I connected with that — that you had this casual, shared observation with your son about Aspergers. (No big deal — it’s just what it is. Oh look, there it is.)

My questions: at what age did your son learn of his Aspergers? How did you tell him? What made you choose that timing/age to talk to him about it? Do you have any guidance to share on this?

The advice our pediatrician gave us, years ago (diagnosed PDD-NOS, sensory integration, mild/high functioning) was that he needs to stay immersed amongst “typicals” and to keep him engaged, to support him with his sensory integration with OT, but not to worry about the label. Not to identify with it. That labeling could cause more issues to the developing self esteem. But we were also told that as he got closer to middle school, he would probably exhibit more as Aspergers, and to re-evaluate then if it starts impacting his school life.

Well, sure enough… He is now eleven, becoming more self aware, and (outside of our home) his social skills are often awkward and off the mark. But as homeschoolers, and as a quiet home-body rural family, his Aspie stuff isn’t impacting us, nor his educational path. His siblings/family and dog are his close companions, but he only skims the surface with his homeschooling peers… No close pals. (he says he really wants a close friend, but he still really only ‘parallels’ with others outside of family.)

It should be noted that it was public school that was impacting his self esteem. It was disrupting our entire family life. As soon as we pulled out, after struggling for months about IEP issues, then we finally pulled out after a significant bullying episode (violence against our son), our lives as homeschoolers quickly became peaceful and interesting. We pulled out during his 1st grade year. We never looked back.

He doesn’t remember all the IEP/intervention/classroom assistant/social support stuff, plus the two years of private therapy. Quite frankly, I wish I didn’t remember half of it, it was overwhelming. I feel like a lot of it wasn’t even needed — like we were sucked into some huge early-intervention/diagnosis/insurance loop/IEP/public school funding machine. But we just never really talked about it.

Other than “everyone is different and unique and sometimes we need some extra support sometimes.” So, no. I’m not at all psyched about possibly re-evaluating or identifying him as autistic when his only real reference so far is a severely, low functioning autistic teen who is our neighbor, and who holds a soft spot in our hearts — but that is currently what “autistic” looks like to my son’s eyes.

The kids take other homeschool classes too (tennis, martial arts and violin), so they are out and about a few times each week. But I’m a major introvert, and I could stay at home for weeks and weeks and be happy as a clam. I have my kids, my husband, one good friend, my books — that’s all I need. But I know that my kids need more. Yet, I don’t value all the attempts at park days and co-ops, because they burn me out after just a few weeks — and I don’t see the benefit of putting up with all the crap involved for the little bit of social reward/balance that is gained.

Ultimately, I feel like our comfy cozy nesting days are coming to a close. My oldest is now a tween. He is realizing that he feels like a fish out of water more often than not. How do I start the conversation, referencing the more accurate Aspergers label, which isn’t even recognized anymore?