Comments on Existence is Wonderful: Interview on Growing Up, Autism, and Other Things ...

JimF said:

I, on the other hand, ...

2008-08-06T19:06:00.000-07:00
JimF said:

I, on the other hand, have many memories of creating situations that caused my parents a great deal of embarrassment, for which they lashed out at me in anger.

I know I embarrassed my family as well at times (because they told me), though I wouldn't say they "lashed out" at me as a result -- they would more often just mention it, point it out, and try to convince me to stop doing it, usually with me sitting there thinking they were making a big deal over nothing. My sister Katie also liked to comment that I was "making a spectacle of myself" and would often point out things I was doing that seemed perfectly normal to me, and tell me how supposedly embarrassing or odd they were. Peers my age did similar things, only they were decidedly less "nice" about it.

Some things I remember are:

- Repeatedly "rescuing" a battered, mostly-outgrown red sweatshirt from the garbage/castoff bag my mother kept putting it in. I was told that if I wore it, people would think I was from the poorhouse (or something along those lines), but I didn't understand that at all. I just really really liked that shirt and was attached to it. Eventually it got too small for me to fit into even remotely, and I was able to let go of it, but it took a very long time.

- Scavenging in people's junk piles for interesting objects, like old (but working) baby strollers, crutches, and random pieces of wood and metal that could be used in "inventions". Other kids in the neighborhood used to make fun of this, and would call me "garbage picker". I thought they were being silly because I was the one getting away with obtaining cool stuff for free!

- The kids at the bus stop asking me where I'd gotten my new hiking boots, and then jeering at me when I told them "K-mart". Apparently K-mart had some kind of weird stigma associated with it, at least where I lived. Nobody was supposed to shop there or admit they shopped there, because I guess (as I learned) only "poor people" shopped there.

- People at school trying to get me to swear, even offering to pay me $5 to say the F-word. I never took the offer(s). I am not afraid of judiciously-applied cursing these days, but as a kid I never saw the point, especially since it was something I knew I'd get in trouble for. It was an explicit rule I could follow easily, which I welcomed because of all the occasions when I got in trouble for breaking rules I didn't know existed, that were vague, etc.

There were other things, of course, but those are some examples.

Personally it does sound to me like your father's reaction was indicative of self-absorbtion and perhaps a generous helping of insecurity, though I know from various life experiences now that many people probably would have reacted similarly. One weird bit of social learning I've achieved over the past few years is that sometimes people are very invested in being "the helper" in a situation -- that is, they make a big deal about how important it is for someone to learn something for their own benefit, but are actually less concerned about this than about getting to feel like they had something to do with someone else's success.

It very much reminds me of "marketing" -- that is, something that pretends to want to help the customer, but that would never suggest that the customer might be better served elsewhere. And I've gotten the impression that this mentality/tendency/whatever-it-is is considered more or less "normal" and even encouraged to some extent in mainstream culture.

Re. PDD-NOS, in addition to the Wikipedia article,...

2008-08-06T18:31:00.000-07:00
Re. PDD-NOS, in addition to the Wikipedia article, I recommend reading the following:

What PDD-NOS Officially Means.

Kakalina wrote:

> Sorry I didn't ask...

2008-08-06T16:54:00.000-07:00
Kakalina wrote:

> Sorry I didn't ask this before, but what
> exacty is PDD-NOS? I'm afraid I've
> never really heard that term before.

Well, it stands for "Pervasive Developmental Disorder, Not Otherwise Specified".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PDD-NOS

A child I knew who was diagnosed with PDD-NOS had a cluster of difficulties, some social, some possibly sensory, some motor. He had difficulty learning to tie his shoes, past the point at which kids are expected to learn how to do that. He could "tune out" his environment to the extent that you could be 10 feet away from him, calling his name, and he wouldn't respond (when he did that in school, naturally, he got in trouble with the teachers for it). He was aloof from other children, and a bully magnet. His speech, while very clear and articulate, was a bit odd -- he perseverated, sometimes.

> I remember reading about (though I've
> never read the story myself) a story
> George Orwell wrote once about a man
> who quite accidently found a community
> out in the middle of nowhere (I think
> the story is in Mexico...), in which
> all of the residents are
> completely blind.

Sounds like H. G. Wells' "The Country of the Blind"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Country_of_the_Blind

JimF--LOLs my mother and I are also considered "al...

2008-08-06T13:37:00.000-07:00
JimF--LOLs my mother and I are also considered "almost" asperger's disorder by Simon Baron-Cohen's scale (this is probably somewhat compounded in my case because I'm deaf). My father, who spent about twenty years working in Theater, said "I guess you just didn't make the cut."

Sorry I didn't ask this before, but what exacty is PDD-NOS? I'm afraid I've never really heard that term before.

I remember reading about (though I've never read the story myself) a story George Orwell wrote once about a man who quite accidently found a community out in the middle of nowhere (I think the story is in Mexico...), in which all of the residents are completely blind. Ergo, the setup and proceedings that are in this town are all biased towards the needs of blind people. But this man was completely clueless, and thought that since *he* could see, he was therefore superior; completely missing the fact that the town was designed for the needs of blind people, not seeing people, and that he was there fore the "disabled" person in that community. I wish I could remember the title, but even without that the storyline itself is illuminating. Essentially, culture is the disabling factor, not individual capabilities (though the capabilities of the mass majority determine the culture).

AnneC wrote:

> AS folks do develop over ...

2008-08-06T09:38:00.000-07:00
AnneC wrote:

> AS folks do develop over time, and
> many (certainly by your age) end up
> a lot more "clued in" by the time
> they're adults than they were as youngsters.

Yes, that occurred to me, too. It's difficult for me to judge, from this distance, just how "clued in" or otherwise I was as a child. There are bits of evidence, and memories that seem to indicate that my parents were sorely tried on occasion by my lack of social maturity, but until recently I'd tended to attribute their impatience to their own self-absorption, rather than to my own lack of maturity. But maybe they were "right", after all.

In the book I mentioned here in another comment, Robb Forman Dew's _The Family Heart_, about her eldest son's coming out as gay, the author says (on p. 150):

"Stephen has always had astonishing social radar, and I can see now that with horrified clarity that he absorbed the idea of responsibility for the happiness of his own parents like a sponge. I think that it must have been at a huge cost to himself that he made it so easy for us to be pleased as his parents. He detected societal competition from the start and he became what he thought he needed to be in order to ensure our satisfaction with ourselves as parents."

(the quote was conveniently available at http://blog.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.ListAll&friendID=92909909 )

I, on the other hand, have many memories of creating situations that caused my parents a great deal of embarrassment, for which they lashed out at me in anger. Here's one story.

As with all things physical, I was late in learning to ride a bicycle. I did finally manage to do it, and before reaching adulthood (that, and learning to swim -- I've met guys who, as adults, had learned to do neither, but though I didn't take these things in stride as easily as most kids, I did finally master them. Curiously, I had no difficulties learning to drive -- perhaps because that was taught to me professionally, in high school.)

Anyway, so I had a bike, but I kept the training wheels on for **years** after the other kids in the neighborhood had dispensed with theirs. I stuck out so badly on that account that I was a laughingstock whenever I rode the bike in public. My father had attempted to teach me to ride without them, but the dynamic between us was so strained, he tending to lose patience and fly off the handle, and I instinctively setting my face against anything he tried to do with me and pushing him away, that he'd long since given up trying to teach me to ride.

So one summer evening, I can't remember exactly when -- I might have been 11, or 12, or even 13 -- a man who lived across the street from us, Harry G., father of two kids who were several years older than me, saw me riding down the sidewalk on my bike with its training wheels, and I guess he took pity on me. He gently cajoled me into letting him take the training wheels off, and ran alongside me holding the rear fender until I was able to maintain balance myself. Either because he had some knack that my father lacked, or because I was finally ready myself to ditch the training wheels and stop being a laughingstock, or maybe just because he was kind about it and, because he had no particular ego-investment in the outcome, was able to be patient with me, I learned how to ride the bicycle that evening, and never used the training wheels again.

When I told my parents what had happened, thinking they'd be pleased that I'd finally learned something they had given up on teaching me, I was both surprised and dismayed by my father's outright rage. He told me I'd made a fool of him, by demonstrating to the whole neighborhood that I was willing to learn from Harry G. what I hadn't been willing to learn from my own father. He was really mad. His diatribe suggested that I done it all deliberately, to humiliate him.

In adulthood, I've tended to look back on that episode and blame my father for his own shocking lack of maturity and self-absorption, but maybe this is, in fact, evidence that I was simply not as sensitive to social nuances as an 11- or 12- or 13-year old ought, by rights, to be.

I can think of half a dozen other incidents that could be reinterpreted in the same light.

JimF said: Anyway, the mom says to me "Jim, the...

2008-08-04T18:35:00.000-07:00
JimF said: Anyway, the mom says to me "Jim, there's **no way** you're Asperger's -- you're way too clued-in to the social vibe for that."

Well, if she's comparing you to children that's something of a mistake there. AS folks do develop over time, and many (certainly by your age) end up a lot more "clued in" by the time they're adults than they were as youngsters. I know I'm less "clued in" (and probably naive) in various ways than most people my age, but I am definitely more clued in than when I was a lot younger, and the same is true for a cousin of mine also on the spectrum.

Kakalina wrote:

> JimF, your entry was a...

2008-08-04T17:39:00.000-07:00
Kakalina wrote:

> JimF, your entry was a very interesting
> read.

Thanks. I sometimes worry about being a buttinsky here.

I see many parallels between my own childhood and Anne's, and yet -- I've certainly never been formally diagnosed with anything. Then again, of course, I *wouldn't** have been -- not in my generation.

I have friends who have a son who was diagnosed in earlier childhood (he's 13 now) with both PDD-NOS and Asperger's, and they have another son, two years younger, who is more-or-less neurotypical (though ironically the neurotypical son has difficulties articulating his speech, while the other son could be a BBC announcer).

Anyway, the mom says to me "Jim, there's **no way** you're Asperger's -- you're way too clued-in to the social vibe for that."

And yet -- there's **something** going on. I am **almost** Asperger's on Simon Baron-Cohen's scale. At times I've thought I had Avoidant Personality Disorder. Other times, Social Phobia. I'm an involuntary celibate (an "incel") as well as being gay (I'm not exactly your typical gay man -- on the other hand, I was never in danger of getting HIV, even in the "good times -- clams on the halfshell, and roller skates, roller skates!" 70s).

And even at my friends' dinner table, I have a very hard time participating in the real-time conversation there. I can really relate to Anne when she says that she deals best with asynchronous communication. Sometimes my **memory** just seems to shut down when I'm being bombarded in real time, and it makes me feel very stupid.

And I've always **hated** the telephone. I cannot think on the telephone. If **anything** happens on the 'phone that isn't in the script that I've rehearsed before screwing up my courage to make the call, I get flustered and very stupid indeed. My friend T... (whom I've mentioned elsewhere in these comments) used to joke "What's the matter with you, anyway? Did your parents beat you with the telephone or something?")

> You're very lucky that you were able to tune
> out the verbal abuse--it's the ones who can't
> who we need to worry about most, and
> unfortunately that's the majority.

That tuning-out comes at a very high price, though. Once you've built that wall, I don't think you can ever get rid of it. I think of that heartbreaking scene at the end of the old _The Outer Limits_ episode "The Bellero Shield" (that was my earlier favorite TV show, before _Star Trek_ ;-> ) where Sally Kellerman, after the Bifrost alien has turned off the shield she was trapped in, says to her husband Martin Landau "You said it was gone." "It is gone, Judith." "No, it's still here -- I can feel it. Nothing will ever remove it. Nothing. Nothing will **ever** remove it. Nothing."

> What I think is interesting in both mine and
> apparently your public school history is that
> schools tend to assume that the students
> who are academically brilliant are fine
> and don't need any additional help. Talk
> about fallacious reasoning...

It's understandable, though, given the bureaucratic mentality. If a kid's sitting quietly in his seat, and not pissing off the teacher in class, and not wandering the halls, and not being truant, and not smoking in the bathroom, **and** getting good grades -- hey, what else is there? (Well, apart from sports, of course. And being prom king and queen. The **fun** stuff, you know. :-/ ).

Speaking of assumptions, I was sitting in the bookstore just yesterday reading Robb Forman Dew's 1994 _The Family Heart_, about one of her two sons coming out as gay. And Ms. Dew talks about a woman friend with whom she'd kept in touch since she'd been pregnant with her younger son (her straight son), and how, coming home from her younger's son's private-school graduation (this was some months after her older son had come out to the family, **except for** his younger brother, whose graduation he did not want to spoil), she found out that her friend's son was in a mental hospital, that he had been kicked out of his own school and had attempted suicide, and that he was considered a danger to his own mother. And Ms. Dew reflected on how she and her friend had pored over the advice books of Drs. Benjamin Spock and T. Berry Brazleton as if they were the most fascinating literature in the world, back when their kids were babies. Everybody was completely at sea about what could possibly be the matter with the boy in the hospital, when Ms. Dew was struck with the sudden certainty that he was gay, too (she says she realizes this was quite a jump to a conclusion under the circumstances, but it turned out she was correct). And she also remembered a cousin of her own who had hanged himself, long ago, during adolescence, and she is stabbed with the realization that he was probably gay, too. So she digs out those old child-care manuals and looks in the indices. Homosexuality: nothing. Depression, Despair: nothing. Anger: nothing but a smug, superficial little paragraph. And she rips the books apart and throws them down the stairs. They **knew**, she says to herself, and they were too cowardly to say anything (their publishers deserve a lot of the credit for that, I'd add, but still. . .).

She comes to the conclusion that a parent's **assumptions** about their children can be fatal.

JimF--you reminded me of a clip of The Colbert Rep...

2008-08-04T09:23:00.000-07:00
JimF--you reminded me of a clip of The Colbert Report (of all things...) I saw on a website (I forget which one) about Neurolinguistics. Apparently he has this word-of-the-day thing, and in this clip he introduced the phrase "psycho-pharma parenting". It's quite apt, though I'd like to note that it seems that in many over-achiever type cases, the drugs are taken without parental knowledge. It seems that we've gone from not paying attention to differences to worrying too much about them.

When I was a freshman I was taken out of Special Ed because I was believed to be doing so well. I remember 8th grade being very stressful in numerous ways, but I also had rather ridiculous standards for myself, so when I didn't meet those standards I withdrew from the rest of the world. Some of it had to do with the classes I'd chosen--Band was something of a struggle, because I do NOT operate well in a cacaphonous environment like Game Band (not to mention I didn't see the point of having flutes in the band--luckily, the Band Conductor realized why I had trouble with Game Band and allowed me to skip the State competitions). Another part of it was that I had some unrecognized pressures that are very typical among deaf/Hard of Hearing (HOH) students, particularly high achieving ones. Finally, I was an undiagnosed narcoleptic, which can really debilitate someone's life if they don't know it ;).

After Freshman year, I attended an ASL immersion program at Gallaudet, was placed on medication to re-orient me from my naturally nocturnal existence, and was placed back in the Special Education department. The main reason for Special Ed. wasn't that I needed help in my classes, but so that my teachers were aware that I needed particular help in some areas, such as placement in the classroom, and making sure that their face is always visible.

Basically what I'm saying is that I know a lot of deaf students throughout my state, and we vary as far as academic capabilities go, but we all need similar access and similar assistance--interpreters, FM systems, it's mostly about communication, not psychiatric help. People often are amazed at how well I and my classmates do in a mainstreamed environment, but they don't realize that we work *really* hard to follow and communicate with others. And some of it is luck. HOH people are often expected to be able to listen to someone and watch an interpreter and line these two drastically different styles of communication up in their brains. But it's really luck of a draw in whether or not one can do this. Another ongoing issue with HOH students is that people often assume that (a.) They can lipread and (b.) because they can lipread, they are essentially hearing and therefore need no additional assistance. This is NOT true! Some I know are inclined to write off my Freshman year struggles and attribute them almost entirely to narcolepsy, which was only part of the problem. A lot of deaf/HOH students (HS and College) I know say that, like me, they went through an identity crises in varying degrees when they entered a new school, whether that was HS or College depended on the student.

I think part of it is that Deafness is often accompanied by other physical/mental conditions that are considered in some way or another to be atypical. For example, hearing loss is ubiqitous among Turner's Syndrome patients, all girls, whose symptoms vary from hardly noticeable (with the exception of very small stature and almost all patients exhibit progressive hearing loss) to extremely debilitating both mentally and physically.

My parents occasionally remark that my brother and I are diametric opposites--everything one is, the other is not. It's mostly a superficial thing--below our initial interests and characteristics we have similar traits, the most obvious one being a tenatious and long-lasting interest in whatever it is that we love. Also, we struggle a little in social interaction, though in distinctly different ways ;)

JimF, your entry was a very interesting read. You're very lucky that you were able to tune out the verbal abuse--it's the ones who can't who we need to worry about most, and unfortunately that's the majority.

What I think is interesting in both mine and apparently your public school history is that schools tend to assume that the students who are academically brilliant are fine and don't need any additional help. Talk about fallacious reasoning...

AnneC wrote:

> And furthermore, it amaze...

2008-08-01T08:43:00.000-07:00
AnneC wrote:

> And furthermore, it amazes me sometimes
> how little attention is paid to the
> problem of bullying, relatively speaking,
> and how much that sort of thing is still
> tacitly condoned (not by everyone, but
> certainly sometimes by schools) even
> in the face of all the involvement...

I very much suspect that there's an ideological component to this. I'm pretty sure that it's a part of **conservative** ideology (conservative fathers, particularly) that kids need to learn to defend themselves in the devil-take-the-hindmost arena of life, starting with the schoolyard, and that protecting them from such harsh lessons simply makes them less fit as adults. And perhaps even further, along the lines of social Darwinism, that the world contains both winners and losers, and the sooner everybody sorts out who's who, the better off everybody will be.

I'm reminded of descriptions of the even-more-calculatedly brutal world of the British "public" school system, as described by C. S. Lewis in his autobiography, or by George Orwell in "Such, Such Were the Joys" ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Such,_Such_Were_the_Joys ), and of the scene in "Another Country" ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Another_Country_%28film%29#Film ) in which Guy (Rupert Everett) says to Judd (Colin Firth) "If only our parents knew what goes on here." to which Judd replies "They **do** know. The fathers, anyway."

This idea of kids having to run a gauntlet comes up in unexpectedly "enlightened" places. There's the business in Olaf Stapledon's "Last and First Men" of an advanced race preserving a "Land of the Young" in which their kids spend a thousand years recreating the bloody history of the race, and the survivors are thereby (presumably) better fitted to participate in mature public affairs. I was thumbing through one of those rather trashy Star Trek novels in a bookstore once -- something containing chapters about Spock's adolescence on Vulcan, and came across the notion that Vulcan kids have to endure a sort of "Outward Bound" experience in the desert, a life-or-death coming of age ritual, which not all survive. And of course many real-world human cultures have coming-of-age rituals, some of which (at least for males) involve demonstrating "manhood" by stoically submitting to pain or humiliation. Seen in the modern world in fraternity hazings (some of which can be quite brutal), that sort of thing. And in the notion that in any hierarchical organization, a newcomer has to "take his licks" before deserving the respect of the more senior members of the organization. There seems to be a dual notion of filtering out the unsalvageable weaklings, and building the self-confidence of the rest by putting them in touch with their "core of inner strength". Oh, and of course, sports teams are supposed to foster this sort of "character building". And the Boy Scouts. And the military.

No, I don't think we're going to get the Republicans to relinquish bullying anytime soon. ;->

Ed: Yes, I think they were good questions a...

2008-07-31T20:49:00.000-07:00
Ed: Yes, I think they were good questions as well, in part because somehow I felt "ready" to answer them...I haven't always been able to articulate as I can now on the points covered, and a few things came out in answering the interview that I have been wanting to put into words for a while.

JimF:

I definitely agree that there ...

2008-07-31T20:41:00.000-07:00
JimF:

I definitely agree that there is more "involvement" in kids' lives and schooling these days. When I was growing up there was certainly more than when you were growing up, but I am seeing now that levels are getting even higher.

Certainly sometimes a lot of involvement is merited, but I am not convinced that the types of involvement commonly seen today always benefit. It's one thing to recognize where someone needs extra help, but it's quite another to extrapolate from the need for help to an "emergency", developmental or otherwise.

And furthermore, it amazes me sometimes how little attention is paid to the problem of bullying, relatively speaking, and how much that sort of thing is still tacitly condoned (not by everyone, but certainly sometimes by schools) even in the face of all the involvement...

(Mind you, I am not claiming here that this is all the fault of parents or even teachers, and am certainly not suggesting anything about any of the parents who have commented here - I am just talking about observed trends and particular cultural features that seem to exist, and that I am sure pretty much everyone who would read this blog is already well aware of and concerned about.)

I like your unicorn example. And in fact, there r...

2008-07-31T12:13:00.000-07:00
I like your unicorn example. And in fact, there really are unicorns everywhere; they're not mingled with horses, though, but with goats and deer and other horned animals. Sometimes these animals have a genetic variation that causes them to develop one central horn, rather than two.

Y'know, the thing that strikes me about all this i...

2008-07-31T11:40:00.000-07:00
Y'know, the thing that strikes me about all this is how much more involvement there was in your generation, both on the part of parents and school authorities, in the psychological development of kids.

I **guess** this is a good thing (though I can certainly imagine circumstances in which the constant monitoring and worry might not be).

I'm about 27 years older than you are.

When I was growing up in the 60's, in northern Delaware (the well-off part of the state -- the land of the DuPont Co. and the University of Delaware), none of this stuff "existed". There were no diagnoses of ADHD, PDD-NOS, or Asperger's. Nobody got Ritalin, or anything else (like antidepressants). There was certainly no support in the schools for subtly non-neurotypical kids. Yes, there was special ed for the low-IQ unfortunates, and there was 3-tier ability tracking for the rest (I was always in the "first group", whatever it was called, so it was never a factor for me). There were always the behavior problems -- the "juvenile delinquents" who smoked, or got in fights, or cut up or were disrespectful in class, and I guess there was a bureaucracy set up to deal with them.

I remember that one guy I got to know in junior high school, who came out to me as "bisexual" in his 20s (I had come out to him as gay about 6 years earlier) told me once that the authorities in the elementary school we'd both gone to (though we hadn't known each other then) had "warned" his parents that he might be pre-homosexual because of his gender-atypical deportment, and as a result he was sent to the doctor (not a psychiatrist) and had to take hormone shots.

But it was basically sink or swim. I somehow managed to be OK (or more than OK) academically (at least up until college, at which point I crashed and burned spectacularly), but I was a total disaster socially. I mean, I was the kid who cried for the first hour or two of the day every day in first grade. At recess, I sat on the curb on the playground and cried some more. I remember once, one of the other first-grade teachers (not my own), an old, large, rather wrinkled woman (in contrast to my own just-out-of-college young and pretty teacher -- age and wrinkles also scared me at that age), took me by the hand one day and just walked me around the playground, singing to me ("The bear went over the mountain. . ."). A girl who knew me from first grade up through college once told me something I had no memory of -- she said that once, in first grade, she sat next to me on the curb of the playground, and saw that I was sharpening a stick. She asked me what I was doing that for, and claims that I replied that I was sharpening the stick so I could kill my mother with it. But none of these things merited intervention by any sort of mental-health specialists, in those days.

Like I said, I was a disaster socially -- I only survived by building an impenetrable "force-field" around myself and tuning out the rest of the world utterly. I managed to escape most (if not quite all) of the physical bullying, and I simply ignored the (constant stream of) verbal bullying. There were other kids who had it as bad as I did -- one guy in my grade throughout junior high and high school was terribly clumsy, had a tremor in his hands so bad that his grades suffered as a result (nobody could read his handwriting), and couldn't to anything in gym class to save his life (of course, neither could I). He also had peculiar speech patterns (and pronunciation -- he pronounced "doubt" with a non-silent "b"). He now has a Ph.D. in physics and works for Los Alamos. But he had a miserable time of it in public school.

In fact, so far from being identified as needing special help, I was astonished to discover -- either in junior high or high school, I can't remember which anymore -- that I had been put on some kind of "principal's list of best-adjusted kids". I was flabbergasted! I mean, what the hell were these people thinking?

Ah, well. How times have changed, eh?

AnneC,
Thanks for writing about your experienc...

2008-07-31T09:56:00.000-07:00
AnneC,
Thanks for writing about your experiences and thanks to Marla (she asked good questions) for interviewing you.

I'm sure lots of people can relate and are encouraged by your willingness to share.

Some of your experiences are very similar to mine and the way you communicate is very familiar to me except when you write a really long scientific post. But even those I'm more able to follow than most other people's writing like that.

Also, you are able to connect with a lot of people that I and others don't, you come up with lots of unique ideas that people wouldn't think of otherwise, and we are all better off for you doing that so your advocacy is especially important. Thanks

Marla: Eeek, no, I do not intend to throw you into...

2008-07-30T20:57:00.000-07:00
Marla: Eeek, no, I do not intend to throw you into a category of people who thought autistic adults were mythical! You seem very down to earth to me in your appraisals of human reality and that definitely comes through.

I just sometimes find it a bit overwhelming to get a lot of compliments all at once, and while I am glad I can do something useful with my writing, I like to make sure it comes across that I do not think I am somehow "special". Not that I think you thought this -- I don't -- but I wanted to make that comment for the sake of other readers who come across this blog and who might be less familiar with this kind of writing and the demographic from whence it comes.

(Also, I was trying to respond to comments while rather tired, so that probably affected the coherence of my words...apologies for any miscommunication)

Joe says I am not understanding your comment. Ugh...

2008-07-30T20:47:00.000-07:00
Joe says I am not understanding your comment. Ugh. Sometimes 'compunicating' is so hard. ;)

Anne, I am not saying that it is incredible that y...

2008-07-30T20:15:00.000-07:00
Anne, I am not saying that it is incredible that you can write. I am saying it is incredible/ wonderful that you are willing to share this personal information with others.

I say they are well written because they are. Not because I think it is amazing that you could write so well. Sigh. Do you know what I mean? A lot of people write about growing up and such and don't really get to the main points. You do.

I certainly don't want to sound like I am comparing you to an amazing mythical creature. Ugh. Please don't throw me in that category. I grew up with a sister with severe physical and mental special needs. Even as a child I knew she was far wiser and a better person than me for various reasons.

Catana: I totally agree with you on "social...

2008-07-29T23:44:00.000-07:00
Catana: I totally agree with you on "social phobia" being the default interpretation these days for any social difficulty - I would suspect that this is because if something is a matter of someone being "scared", it's easy to chalk it up to them having something "wrong" with them or possibly needing medication, when in fact it could very well be that they are just processing environmental and social stimuli quite differently than average.

In my case I did end up becoming pretty defensive for a while, but it wasn't really all that irrational, as it was based in facts about how I tended to be treated. I found social situations confusing and overwhelming, sure, but I wasn't obsessing over whether or not people thought I was "cool" or not, or fretting about my social standing. I was actually extremely uninhibited by nature (still am in many ways) -- in first grade there was a class presentation in the auditorium, and my family ended up making jokes for years about how I just sort of wandered around spacily holding my skirt up and not even appearing to realize it! And while I am introverted, I am definitely not shy - I can actually be/seem quite outgoing in some contexts, and if you get me going on a favorite subject I can monologue like nobody's business. :)

Trish: Well, best of luck to your son in sc...

2008-07-29T23:36:00.000-07:00
Trish: Well, best of luck to your son in school - hopefully he will have a good teacher and a decent environment to learn in. And thanks for stopping by!

Casdok: You are welcome. This is not someth...

2008-07-29T22:53:00.000-07:00
Casdok: You are welcome. This is not something I plan to do very often but I didn't mind this time and it was good to get some of this stuff finally articulated.

(Not that we're mythical creatures or anything, of...

2008-07-29T22:51:00.000-07:00
(Not that we're mythical creatures or anything, of course!)

Marla: Thanks. Though one thing I hope beco...

2008-07-29T22:50:00.000-07:00
Marla: Thanks. Though one thing I hope becomes evident someday is that this kind of thing (such as I've written) is not actually all that incredible! I've had a number of discussions with other people I know whose experiences (and ability to write) are quite similar to mine, though of course we are all individuals with our own styles who have not led *identical* lives by any means.

Sometimes I almost get the impression that much of the world is reacting to the realization that autistic adults exist in a manner similar to how they'd react to the discovery that there were actually unicorns everywhere intermingled with horses. :)

I've been wondering about that whole motor skills ...

2008-07-29T07:06:00.000-07:00
I've been wondering about that whole motor skills thing. Like you, my fine motor skills were always good, but other than that I'm moderately clumsy even as an adult and, looking back, I realize that I probably had more accidental injuries than normal.

"Social phobia" seems to be the default interpretation for any difficulty with or avoidance of social interaction. I'm still teed off by that interpretation as a result of taking an online test for aspieness.

Anne, I have thoroughly enjoyed reading Part I of ...

2008-07-29T05:34:00.000-07:00
Anne, I have thoroughly enjoyed reading Part I of your interview and am so glad you were willing to share so much of your personal life.

I am very interested in helping my son learn to advocate for himself as he grows up. He is six now and getting ready to start kindergarten - we waited a year so he would have a better awareness of himself and what is going on around him before moving into that environment.

I will be back to read more (have to go to work now). It's so nice to meet you via your blog!

Wonderful interview! Thank you both very much doin...

2008-07-29T01:08:00.000-07:00
Wonderful interview! Thank you both very much doing this so we may continue to learn.

Comments on Existence is Wonderful: Interview on Growing Up, Autism, and Other Things ...

JimF said:

I, on the other hand, ...

Re. PDD-NOS, in addition to the Wikipedia article,...

Kakalina wrote:

> Sorry I didn't ask...

JimF--LOLs my mother and I are also considered "al...

AnneC wrote:

> AS folks do develop over ...

JimF said: Anyway, the mom says to me "Jim, the...

Kakalina wrote:

> JimF, your entry was a...

JimF--you reminded me of a clip of The Colbert Rep...

AnneC wrote:

> And furthermore, it amaze...

Ed: Yes, I think they were good questions a...

JimF:

I definitely agree that there ...

I like your unicorn example. And in fact, there r...

Y'know, the thing that strikes me about all this i...

AnneC,
Thanks for writing about your experienc...

Marla: Eeek, no, I do not intend to throw you into...

Joe says I am not understanding your comment. Ugh...

Anne, I am not saying that it is incredible that y...

Catana: I totally agree with you on "social...

Trish: Well, best of luck to your son in sc...

Casdok: You are welcome. This is not someth...

(Not that we're mythical creatures or anything, of...

Marla: Thanks. Though one thing I hope beco...

I've been wondering about that whole motor skills ...

Anne, I have thoroughly enjoyed reading Part I of ...

Wonderful interview! Thank you both very much doin...

Comments on Existence is Wonderful: Interview on Growing Up, Autism, and Other Things ...

JimF said:I, on the other hand, ...

Re. PDD-NOS, in addition to the Wikipedia article,...

Kakalina wrote:> Sorry I didn't ask...

JimF--LOLs my mother and I are also considered "al...

AnneC wrote:> AS folks do develop over ...

JimF said: Anyway, the mom says to me "Jim, the...

Kakalina wrote:> JimF, your entry was a...

JimF--you reminded me of a clip of The Colbert Rep...

AnneC wrote:> And furthermore, it amaze...

Ed: Yes, I think they were good questions a...

JimF:I definitely agree that there ...

I like your unicorn example. And in fact, there r...

Y'know, the thing that strikes me about all this i...

AnneC, Thanks for writing about your experienc...

Marla: Eeek, no, I do not intend to throw you into...

Joe says I am not understanding your comment. Ugh...

Anne, I am not saying that it is incredible that y...

Catana: I totally agree with you on "social...

Trish: Well, best of luck to your son in sc...

Casdok: You are welcome. This is not someth...

(Not that we're mythical creatures or anything, of...

Marla: Thanks. Though one thing I hope beco...

I've been wondering about that whole motor skills ...

Anne, I have thoroughly enjoyed reading Part I of ...

Wonderful interview! Thank you both very much doin...

JimF said:

I, on the other hand, ...

Kakalina wrote:

> Sorry I didn't ask...

AnneC wrote:

> AS folks do develop over ...

Kakalina wrote:

> JimF, your entry was a...

AnneC wrote:

> And furthermore, it amaze...

JimF:

I definitely agree that there ...

AnneC,
Thanks for writing about your experienc...