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Hi,

I'm a mother of a young man with AS. I'm also a special ed consultant with a school district and am currently working on a Ph.D. in autism. I have two questions, please.

1. My son attends university and lives on his own. Unfortunately I'm not sure this is the norm for young people with high functioning autism and Asperger's who often seem to have difficulty with work or college. What do you see as preventing them from having more independent outcomes?

2. Also,I need some help please for one of the classes I'm taking. Could you tell me what sort of books and services related to autism you buy? Are there gaps in the information you can currently find? What would you like to see?

Thanks for your thoughts and your time,

Sharon

i think the way your raised has alot to do with how you turn out when your older. if you have a disfunctional family chances are your gonna be disfunctional, ever since ive been 18 ive tried living on my own, been homeless a couple times and i seem to go through phases of either great sucsess living on my own, or sleeping under a tree. i dont know why this happens as im not really one to blame my childhood for eveything but i think it played a part

There's no inherent reason an aspie can't live on their own. I've been living on my own for many years, and so have a lot of the other adults here. I'd say almost all of us do.

You're probably aware that the professionals weren't able to do a thing to help alcoholics until AA came along. Same problem. The autism experts aren't autistic.

I've been disgusted with the professionals who are supposed to be making my life better. I hope I never again have to use any services.

The big hurdle is the very fact that HFA and AS are social disorders. Because we don't think like the majority, or behave exactly like them, we are often singled out as 'odd' or 'weird' and as a result, discriminated against. Anyone who tells you they have never experienced this is either lying, or too young to have enough life experience to know (or too naive too realize it's happening to them).

I've had 29 jobs in 35 years and been fired from 24 of them (this in spite of a wall full of awards for excellence in my field voted on by groups of my peers), because management types don't understand anyone who can't fly in formation with the rest of the flock and find it easier to eject them than work with them. Of course, in my case neither I nor the bosses who found me so difficult to fathom, knew just what it was that made me so...different. But until there's better public awareness of what autism is and how it affects us, along with more stringent enforcement of anti-discrimination, this will continue to be a problem.

The other problem of course, is that while we do great when we find a niche that jibes with one of our Aspergian obsessions, it's often extremely difficult for us to function in a traditional workplace environment. The stress of constant daily socializing can just wear us down over time, until we psychologically and emotionally implode. It's been one of my biggest frustrations over the years having well-meaning family and friends suggest job possibilities and opportunities of every stripe, only to have me shoot them down while I waited for something in my chosen field to come open. They thought I was only being elitist, or obstinate or lazy - truth was, all their suggestions were for things that would have driven me insane in a matter of weeks, because they all involved lots of interaction with people. Homey don't play dat.

Hope that helps answer your questions a bit.