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Hello!

My name is Lindsay, 36 years old, and I am new to, well, all of this, heh. I live with my boyfriend, who has two wonderful girls, the oldest (age 13) of whom is Aspergers. Unfortunately, there is a very nasty custody battle taking place over these girls (my boyfriend was recently awarded full custody because of safety issues at the mother and step-fathers house), and they are really getting caught in the middle of it. All I'm really trying to do is make their lives as normal as possible. However, as I have very little experience with Aspergers/Autism, I'm reaching out for any help and advice, even if it just comes in the form of reading about others' experiences (viewpoints from both those with Aspergers and those who have friends and family members with Aspergers) and how they work with this gift, so I may better support my soon-to-be stepdaughter to live a great life. Any direction towards reading material (I am a Masters student right now, I do very well with books and articles!) would be great too. Thank you, and I look forward to talking with you more!

Welcome to WP!
Seeing as I am a teenager I am probably not one to offer advice on parenting, I am however autistic and can offer advice on that. There really is no "how to" guide for helping teenagers with autism. We all tend to have our own specific and often unusual quirks/preferences. The best advice I can give is to sit down with her and ask what you can do to help her, she may be hesitant to talk but let her know you care and go from there. As far as getting perspective on the disorder, here are a few helpful links:
Center for Autism:
This is a good place to find information on the spectrum as a whole, as well as more specific expert advice.
Temple Grandin:
If you don't already know who Temple Grandin is I highly suggest browsing her site and/or reading her books. I have found her writing to be informative and insightful.
[url=http://autismdoggirl.blogspot.com/]:
This blog is written by an adult woman with autism, it provides app reviews and other information that many may find useful.

Hello, and welcome!

I hope you're ready for the firehose of information. This site is chock full of insight, and beyond these walls exists more information on the subject than any one person could imagine, let alone process & assimilate.

I'll start it off with what I believe is the most important premise: Autism is to normal minds, as blonde hair is to black. It's not wrong or broken, just different.

We have deficiencies, and we have strengths. And even among Autistic people there are differences. There may be co-morbid conditions, one Autistic may be more logic-oriented, while another may be more creative, etc. You can try to put short people on a rack and try to make them tall, you may even have some success, but inside we're still not tall. And you will have just put a short person through a lot of pain to make them like yourself.


Understanding and accepting our differences is fundamental to successfully interacting with us. We are not broken. We don't need to be 'made right.' We are simply different.


So, one of my weaknesses is my reading speed. Also, I tend to think everyone thinks & perceives things as I do. In keeping with my perceptions, I'll wish you luck with assimilating & making sense of the informational firehose.

Asperger [Ahz-pair-gur] Syndrome, (Hans Asperger was Austrian) or just AS.

"Ass Burgers" sounds so insulting (IMHO).

Autism is essentially a sort of hypersensitivity to sensory stimuli. The data stream of sensory input (light, sound, taste, touch) that humans are bombarded with on a moment-to-moment basis comes into the Autistic brain virtually unfiltered. A "normal" (neurotypical) brain has a natural filter that assigns a value or a sort of 'psychic volume' level to each element, so NTs can pay attention to the important things without being distracted by the irrelevant.

For us, that filter is faulty and functions at best intermittently. The more stress we are under, the less effective the filter becomes, until sometimes - for example - it's difficult to follow what someone is saying to us because the hiss of the air coming from the AC vent is equally as loud as the voice. As a result, social interactions are a challenge. Voices, facial expressions, body language, are easily missed, confused or misinterpreted because of all the distractions. That, in turn, only raises our anxiety level as we struggle to keep up.

Maintaining eye contact can become physically uncomfortable, because when we look into your eyes, our brain may become so focused on the features of your face that we don't hear most of what you just said. These difficulties make socializing awkward and impede our comprehension of subtle social skills, so that we may often seem clumsy and inappropriate in our communication.

That does not mean that we have problems with words - in fact, our intelligence is unaffected by our autism and we many of us are quite bright - it means we may not always instinctively know what the appropriate thing to do or say is in a particular social context, so we may say things that seem rude or insensitive out of blunt honesty, or seem to ignore another person's emotional distress, when in fact, we simply don't know what we're expected to do or say.

When meeting a stranger for the first time, we may go momentarily mute and have absolutely nothing to say (at least until asked a direct question). Once we're comfortable around someone, we may babble incessantly about a subject of personal obsession, without noticing that everyone in the room is bored and waiting for us to shut up. We may fail to answer a phone or return a call or email for extended periods of time over high anxiety about initiating a conversation, or because we're immersed in a personal obsessive interest, or simply because we need to be alone.

Because socializing is so stressful (even when it's pleasant), we often need extended periods of solitude afterward to decompress from the tension. Sometimes the anxiety over our poor social skills can incapacitate us and make it literally impossible to face an important task until the panic attack subsides. Sometimes it never does.

The sensory hypersensitivity is also the reason why many autistic people do not like to be touched and why many of us are extremely sensitive to loud or unexpected noises. In fact, some of us have visual and/or aural capacities off the neurotypical scale, so that we may hear sounds outside the range of normal human hearing, or notice light phenomena that normal people do not pick up on.

That's a thumbnail sketch of the condition we live with. There are several personality traits and behavioral quirks commonly associated with Asperger Syndrome, pretty much all of which can be traced back to this central sensory issue, but you'll pick up on all that as you study the condition.

Good luck with your situation, it sounds very stressful.