Book one is great, I was plugging it here just the other day.
I would sum that one up as discovery and understanding through explaining. It is very good because it is clear and simple, suitable for younger readers, yet packed with information for parents and others to get an inside view.
Your writting has greatly improved, and your view. Your range of perceptions, inner dialog, set the stage for understanding the words, Asperger's Syndrome.
You can walk the reader in your shoes, perceptions, reactions from others, the amount of sense input we have, ask most people about a room they were in for a few minutes, and it was just a room, we get more, hence process more, and sometimes too much, too fast, and overreved brains meltdown.
This idea that we are not social does not fit, we are not totally social, and the ride there, the front door, the signs, books, carpets, the feel of the place, images, Defective brains fixed here, and in this swirl of perception, the thing not described, which was the center, but given less than the tiles on the floor, was the Therapist, who would be the center of a NT description.
People are just other things.
A woman. No age, dress, look, no personality, face, look, no content of the eyes, glancing at the parents to see if they had questions, nothing about manerisms, tone of voice, body language, a voice that you only asked about inkblots, a bit off the point of the day, then ignored and looked at the folders in a basket, and only responded when your parents were not sure what to say about spinning things.
I did get an image of them, sitting on the floor of the garage, spinning a motorcycle wheel and adjusting the bearing clearance, for a real long time, as the bright chrome an shiney spokes spun and spun, and hesitating to answer the question, wondering what a normal amount of watching spinning chrome things was.
When asked about what they thought of their sons future, the parents said, in a couple of years one of the low slung Honda 250 cc bikes, the lightest safe for the road, and in a few more years, a 650 BMW. The Therapist just stared, her eyes blank.
On the way home everyone was lost in their thoughts, Mom reading her book, and getting home it was just another day. A bit here about the replay of events, after the fact, your perceptions as they come wandering in, late again.
I think you do catch the perceptual differance well.
The Therapist has had all sorts of reactions from families, denials, screams, tears, casting blame, but this group just accepts, functions as a unit, and wanders out as they came in.
Parents glad their son had an uncurable condition, for they liked him the way he was.
Then comes Asperger's at work, you tracking down an understanding of things adult doctors had written fifty years before, and seeing where they got it wrong. Making your way to Wrong Planet, where almost everyone was much older, and becoming a valued member. Then the normal childish reaction, writing and publishing a book about it.
Now with growing perceptions, and writing skill, giving minute by minute narratives of life as you see it. The first book did lack something. This showing of the Asperger mind at work, the range, speed of processing, and the delays in processing, is very insightful.
A lot of your development is directed by the calm accptance of your parents. As a good deal of your readership is likely to be parents, and yours seem good role models, you should point out what you like about them, and how their actions have helped you.
Many here have said, I took my kid for a Dx, and got two. The acorn does not fall far from the tree.
So the readership of parents, who would bother to read a book, are seeking a group identity, family function.
All of Science has yet to define what Autism is, or how much social is normal. Parents at Autism Speaks have said that having their child has made them isolated loners, but maybe they would have made it there alone. Your family seems to have a social life based around machines, Hmmm.
Context is everything, you are, but within a group, and the differences are more noticed outside your group. Your family fits in at BMW bike rallies. There is a range of life that seems OK to you, and some that seems ununderstandable.
So your innerview, family dynamic, and the larger groups they fit in, and the places where they do not.
It is not like this is a known and defined thing. I would not give an NT much of a chance of understanding from the outside. Tony Attwood said, when ask about his great knowledge of Autism, and where he got it, well I asked autistic people, and they told me.
Explaining autism can only be done by explaining how the brain works, from the inside. What I see coming out of this is a greater understanding of how all brains work.
All I can tell you about writing is write lots, editing makes it better, and the more you have, the more you have left. I take several rewrites, letting the story form around it's self. Sometimes a page only becomes a sentence, but it is a good one.
Keep us posted, I will follow your blog.
19 Apr 2008, 2:50 pm
What I think you, and ANYONE here should talk about is...
