Understanding Aspergers (Aspergers Syndrome in General)

Member Name: MandyMinx

Product:	Aspergers Syndrome in General
Date:	22/12/03 (360 review reads)
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Disadvantages: Perception

Once upon a time there was a teenage girl who went every week to the library. She went with her friend and they walked all the way there and all the way back. One day on the way to the library, the girls friend felt a little tired and seeing as it was a hot sunny day she decided to sit on a bench for a few minutes. Well they had only been sitting there a few minutes when the girls started to cry. "What's the matter?" said her friend, "Why are you crying?"

"I'm crying because I can't go to the library" she said. " The library has shrunk and I won't fit through the door!"
Looking down the road her friend, saw the library in the distance. It did look very small. She suddenly realised that her friend had never stopped on the way before and didn't understand how things look smaller when you are further away from them. Her friend was very upset and didn't feel like going to the library anymore. So they went home.

( This is a true story!)







Many people have asked me " What is Aspergers Syndrome ?"

Asperger's syndrome is a neurological disorder that shares many of the same characteristics of autism. A person suffering with Asperger's syndrome will have problems with communication, difficulty with social relationships and limitations in imaginative play and creative play. I could fill you full of facts and figures at this point but I feel this would make it even harder to understand. Let's try and explain this in a way everyone can understand.



We have many skills and abilities that we acquire as we grow, that most of us totally take for granted. If someone stood in front of you and asked you to guess their age, you would probably be able to have a reasonable guess and not be too far wrong. We are able to make judgements about a lot of things without even realising that we are doing it. By listening to the
tone of someone's voice or looking at the expression on their face we are able to work out whether they are happy or sad, or angry and we can then respond accordingly. People with Asperger's syndrome are unable to read these signals and they therefore have real problems in social situations and can get very frustrated when they don't understand.

When two people are talking at the same time, we are able to separate the two voices and if you like 'tune in', to one or other of the conversations. A person with Asperger's may find this much more difficult and may not be able to make sense of either conversation. Where a person with autism would very often choose to avoid friendships, many people with Asperger's Syndrome would desperately like to be friends, but have no idea what a friend is or how to make one.
People with Asperger's take things literally and struggle with things like jokes and metaphors. Telling someone with Aspergers syndrome "'if you eat much more you will burst'' could leave them very confused and upset, wondering just how much food they have to eat before they burst.

You cannot see this condition as you can many others, people with Aspergers syndrome look perfectly normal and because sometimes some of the symptoms are hard to separate, a lot of the children are labelled 'naughty' and very often have had a hard time at school before they are diagnosed. Looking perfectly normal, means that they are really quite vulnerable and also susceptible to bullying.

OK, so I have told you a little bit about the condition. Let me tell you a little more of the problems that a child with Aspergers might face.
My son has Aspergers syndrome. I thought it might be helpful for me to explain some of the problems he has so that you might be able to see the affect that having this condition has on his life and the way he behaves.


James suffers from poor concentration.
Standing still for more than a few minutes is really difficult for him. If I am trying to chat to him he will be hopping from leg to leg, moving his head so that he can look anywhere except at me and sometimes he will do silly things like stand on his own foot. We believe that he actually gets comfort from the sensation he gets when he hurts himself this way. Usually in this situation I would remind him that he is hurting himself and he will usually stop doing it. James is under the impression that we know exactly what he is thinking so sometimes he will stop in the middle of a conversation and expect us to automatically know what he was going to say. When someone else is talking to him he will expect them to know what he is thinking too and if I am in the room he will look at me, expecting me to answer for him.


Play for James is role play based. What I mean by that is if James is playing at something, it will always be a scene from his favourite TV programme and he will get very angry if someone tries to change the scene or move any of the props. If another child comes to play for any reason, James will not know what to do and I have to play with them for most of the time putting structures there that make him feel comfortable. Lining cars up is a game that is played to extremes in my house. So many times I have tripped over a line of cars in the living room as both boys have this habit of making really neat lines with their cars and both of them know exactly which car goes where and in what sequence.

James has difficulty with words. We had a problem at school recently where James was getting really angry and disruptive in the classrooms at school. It turned out that some of the teachers called the children by their surnames. Now James found this very difficult to cope with. He had be known as James or James Haxby, never just Haxby. He couldn't understand why the teacher was calling him by a name that was not his. So you see James was be
coming upset because this teacher was looking at him but calling him by somebody elses name. Does that make sense? I hope so.

We have watched other children the same age as James shy away from him. He can be very strange at times but I have also watched them bully and be really nasty to him. James is always bullied. He has no idea when someone is being nice or being mean too him,so sometimes someone will hit him constantly and he will call them friend.
When James started his new school it was not so much 'if' James would end up getting bullied and hit, it was more a case of when, as he seems to attract the bullies where ever he goes.

This makes my son very vulnerable as when someone speaks to him he immediately assumes they are his friend. It is for this reason that I never let him out of my sight, that and the fact that while most children learn not to speak their mind as they grow, James will tell you or anyone he meets exactly what he thinks of them. If a fat lady walks past, James will tell her she's fat. If a man with a big nose walks past, James will tell him he has a big nose.


New places and situations are difficult for my son and these are the times that people make judgements about him and label him 'naughty' or me a bad mother. I have had people come up to me and ask me why I haven't given him a good hiding. After I have taken a few dozen deep breaths I walk calmly away. I mean, should I stand there and shout at my son for feeling confused or afraid? Would you hit out at someone just because they were lost and didn't know where they were? This is what I would be doing if I hit out at him for showing me in the only way he can that he is not managing a situation very well.

Thats not saying that James isn't naughty at times. He most certainly is, but I have to be careful that I make sure that his punishment is both relevant and immediate. I have to make sure he knows what he has done
wrong or else I am actually doing him no good at all and will just confuse him further.


James's world was very different from ours once. Now we are starting to feel the need to share it with him so that he might feel that his is as right as we feel ours is. James thinks very differently from the way we do, and yet his thoughts are strange but so logical.

I had a conversation with him the other day about The Bill. His favourite TV programme. He wanted to know if we could go and say hello to the policemen at Sunhill Station. I explained that it was actually a set and just a TV show. He looked at me and said. "I don't get that."
So I explained how the show was made up of actors who pretended to be policemen because that was their job. James then said that they shouldn't do that " Because pretending to be a policeman was wrong."
So I explained how it was OK because they were actors and they were just pretending. " When they die, they don't really die" says I.
" Of course they do mum" he said. "If they didn't die they'd have come back to work at the station the next day and they didn't, so they must have"
I gave my son a big hug and gave up.




I hope by sharing some of this with you I have been able to help you understand a little more about Aspergers and maybe helped you think twice the next time you see a child 'kicking off' in a supermarket or on a bus.


If you feel your child might have Aspergers Syndrome I would suggest that you start a diary as I found this really helpful when I got to see the doctor. I forgot to say so much but the diary gave the doctor a fuller picture of what was going on at home.

I have found when talking to my boys that it is best to keep it simple. Sometimes you can say too much and the message can get lost in the words.


Learn to take that deep breath. I can
9;t tell you the number of times Mark has pulled me back kicking and screaming because someone has questioned my parenting skills. The National Autistic Society can provide you with cards that some people may find useful. They state that the child has Aspergers Syndrome and gives them the number of the NAS if they want further information on the condition. (Please note that these cards do not fit up the nostrils of these ignorant people no matter how hard you push!)


Enjoy your child. It's not the end of the world and I know that my boy is so much more than this diagnosis. OK he has Aspergers Syndrome, but he has so much more too. James is a really sweet child who loves to be cuddled.(The harder the better) He has a precious smile that lights up the room and he has the sweetest little freckles on the planet.
Someone once told me to draw circle and section off a little piece of the pie for all the things my child was good at or enjoyed. I was then told to save a section which I labelled 'Aspergers'. When I got down, I was to take away the section that was 'Aspergers' and look at all the great thing that were left to celebrate. After all, Aspergers is a part of my little boy, but it isn't all of him.


I hope this has been helpful to someone. If anyone would like any help or information...Feel free to ask.

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