"Tolerating" Asperger's Syndrome

Someone left a comment on one of my Michael Savage posts saying "I don't think there is such a thing as ASD, its just a natural variation that is not tolerated by parents who want it easy."

I think they meant to say that they don't think Asperger's is pathological. In other words that it's not a "disease". Of course that would potentially put this person in the same camp as the "Neurodiversity" crowd and John Best won't like that I tell you.

I will tell you this though - Asperger's Syndrome is very real and can be VERY disabling.

No - I've never been able to get The Old Man an "official" diagnosis. From what I can tell, one of the symptoms of Asperger's Syndrome is a reluctance of the patient in many instances to have his or her atypical behavior labeled as being pathological - the result of a disease.

But I think such language as "natural variation that is not tolerated by parents" is language that is too trivializing.

Aspergian behavior is "not tolerated" very well by adult children of those afflicted either.

I'll give you an example. I was an only child but I have two first cousins who I am very close to. One of them got married in Middletown and I got The Old Man to go to that one by arranging for one of the very few people he trusts outside the family to pick him up and take him home after the ceremony because he can't tolerate the "noise" and activity of a wedding reception. A couple of years later my other first cousin got married in Dayton and The Old Man freaked. I mean straight out freaked. If I understood him correctly he was saying that there was no way he could go as far as Dayton out of the mortal fear that he was going to get stranded there. He also was terribly upset that he had gone to the first wedding because now he was afraid he would think he was showing favoritism towards the cousin who got married in Middletown.

Now, I never thought I was going to get married myself, but Mrs. Axinar had other ideas. We planned on getting married in Key West and then having a reception here. Obviously The Old Man would be unable to travel as far as Key West. He can't even go to Dayton any more he's so freaked out by travelling. And of course he couldn't make it to the reception because it would have been too loud for him.

I was really torn by what to do.

The only logical thing I could think to do was to not tell him we were getting married. I figured if I didn't tell him, he'd have no decision to make and it would be physically possible for the circumstances to come about that my Old Man was SO f*cked in the head that he would not show up at his own son's wedding or reception. If he didn't know, he couldn't diss me.

Of course particularly my wife's family started freaking the f*ck out that I wasn't telling my dad. Then the peanut gallery started chiming in that my in-laws might interpret this that not telling my dad would be interpretted by my in-laws that I was "ashamed" of them or something of the sort.

I swear to God I got to the point that I thought of calling the whole thing off.

Pretty much you don't get much more Aspergian than my Dad without needing to be locked the f*ck up for the rest of you life, and you don't get much more neurotypical than my wife and her mother without needing slapped silly on a daily basis and how in the world I could do right by everyone simultaneously I still don't know.

But Asperger's is real - very real. And, in some ways, it's almost WORSE than severe autism. At least with more severe autism people tend to NOTICE that something is wrong. With Asperger's you can be very, very impaired in all sorts of relationships, but because you may be very articulate and have a very high IQ, people tend not to even take you seriously ...

Quote Of The Day: AnneC On Team Sports

This quote from AnneC's "Existence Is Wonderful" I thought really hit the nail on the head vis a vis the Autistic Spectrum experience with sports:

"I was horrible at sports. Really horrible. I found the 'team dynamic' incomprehensible to begin with, to the point where I often had to be reminded which team I was on."

Yep ... I'd have to say that sums it up pretty well.

Of course what's quite frightening is that SO much of the modern business world is based on sports analogies, it's quite remarkable that, even though those with "high functioning" Autism and Asperger's can be enormously intelligent, that intelligence can't be put to practical use in many professional settings as the neurotypicals pick up cues from people on the Autism Spectrum that are perceived as "unsportsmanlike" or something of the sort.

And perhaps that's why some with autistic traits tend to gravitate more towards collective forms of organization. If you can't tell the teams apart, everyone must be on your side, right?

UK Woman With Asperger's Has Baby Seized By State

Oh here's one that ought to make your blood boil - apparently in the UK having Asperger's can be grounds for having your baby snatched by the government.

The story is that a 21-year-old woman with Asperger's Syndrome had her baby taken from her IMMEDIATELY after giving birth because, if I understand this correctly, the government agencies there believed she was at risk of getting post-natal depression, and that there would be a distinct chance she would neglect her baby.

Now, I have never been able to quite figure out if my own mother is on the autism spectrum. She certainly has "malfunctioning" social skills, but she has usually be diagnosed as having Borderline Personality Disorder.

However, I can certainly say my mother has a great many things in common with people with Asperger's. She's very intelligent. She MARRIED someone with an evident flaming case of Asperger's. She's quite outgoing but she is absolutely vacuously clueless about the effect that she has on people. She has a VICIOUS temper and she analyses the hell out of everything.

Now, tying this in with the UK story - yes - someone with such tendencies CAN get a nasty case of post-partum psychosis. My mother had a beut of a case - as I understand it, trying to assasinate the poor little Axinar with straight pins and then proceeding into a 48-hour screaming session. I'd presume this classifies as "neglect".

However, are such dangers justification for snatching someone's kid?

I don't think so.

Are they justification for providing such a person with extra support?

Oh, absolutely.

But heaven forbid we should do such things.

Such things make too much SENSE ...

Have Hyperfunctioning Neuromediocrity - Will Travel

Someone under the handle "abfh" left and interesting comment that said they knew someone who really hated emails - that thought that his coworkers were "too lazy to walk down the hall to have a conversation."

This got me to thinking about the frequent neurotypical need for in-person interaction in order to conduct business.

It reminds me of a comment that I once heard - "If I could travel I could make twice as much as I'm making now."

Generally speaking, in any given group of professionals, those who travel the most are the highest paid.

Why should this be the case?

Well, I suppose the easiest explanation is that it's generally considered the case that the "mirror neurons" in people with autism spectrum disorders are somehow impaired. Much like a blind person sometimes developing much more perceptive hearing, people on the autism spectrum often develop very strong abilities in OTHER forms of communication - 100+ words/minute typing abilities, etc.

But in the neurotypical I get the idea that certain things aren't "real" to them unless they're presented in person. And they don't seem to be sometimes all that much interested in the technical aspects of whatever is being presented to them. They seem much more interested in how the person presenting the material "projects".

Neurotypicals get obsessed with the STRANGEST things - as the creator of the Dilbert comic strip has often pointed out, certainly it can be the case that some management positions are only available to people with a certain style of hair. I've also observed that there can develop an almost obsessive concern with clothing, and particularly SHOES with these people.

Now, you really can't get around true in-person contact to do REALLY big deals with neurotypicals, but, perhaps, for some applications, people with autism spectrum disorders could make use of technology developed for the hearing impaired.

Now the hearing impaired have this really neat service that's just been developed in the last couple of years where the hearing person talks over the phone to an interpreter who translates to and from sign language via a webcam type interface.

PERHAPS we ought to give it a shot one of these days that a person with an autistic spectrum disorder (and I know just the person to try this :) ), would communicate via keyboard with a trained neurotypical person who would send a web-cam image to the intended recipient ADDING all the "appropriate" body language, etc. Yes, there would be some danger of the neurotypical interpreter injecting some of their own information, but, there is certainly a similar danger with sign language interpretation. Plus the notion of course that all translations are commentaries.

Such a set-up just MIGHT allow a great many people to be productive among the neurotypicals who aren't currently ...

The Challenges Of The High-Functioning

There's a really great piece running on Asperger Square 8 about some of the difficulties people with the label "high functioning" run into.

Bev, the author of this blog, puts a fitting name to the Notlikemychild (NLMC) phenomenon. This is the theme that I have been picking up from the writings parents with severely autistic children that somehow someone who does not have the SEVERE self-injury symptoms somehow doesn't fit in the same "class" with their children. She makes an excellent point, however, that less severely autistic individuals may very well have a history of suicide attempts and substance abuse and that these should count every bit as much as someone who beats themselves bloddy with their own fists.

Then she brings up an area that I am somewhat fascinated with - that some would see hoarding and not paying bills as "laziness" rather than as symptoms of an underlying condition.

The next section has me thinking even more that I myself may be a part of this spectrum. She speaks of unemployment and underemployment being common among the high-functioning and specifically having difficulty relating to co-workers and mininterpretting business culture.

Yep - I'd have to say these are pretty good points.

Although how to accomodate Asperger's and high-functioning autism in most professionals settings has been something that has escaped me for a number of years.

I used to think that some of the "social mechanisms" in a work environment were somehow just an extension of what's sometimes thought of as "common politeness". After a great deal more thought, however, I've come to the conclusion that there are some deep discrepencies between very basic assumptions about work between the neurotypical and the high functioning.

I think some of it may be due to the very high levels of intelligence often present in the high functioning. The high functioning very often get lured by family members into doing "tricks" - complex math problems and/or memorizing whole poems in foreign languages by age 4 - and then the high functioning get lulled into this notion that such abilities have some practical monetary value.

Nope - your average workplace environment is all about appearance. Are your shoes shined? Do you have on clothing of an "inappropriate" color or design?

I'm still not 100% sure why the neurotypicals react so strongly to clothing issues? Is it actually a leftover autistic trait that someone showing up without the proper "uniform" is "disrupting a routine" in some way? Perhaps.

But, overall, good point - yes, someone capable of writing thousands of Internet messages and producing YouTube videos DOES have different abilities than someone who can't communicate complex ideas even with technological assistance, but does that detract at all from the fact that both are disabled to the point of needing extra assistance?

Hyperfunctioning Neurotypicals

Very often people speak of the "autism spectrum".

The general notion is that both a little girl so intensely autistic that she nearly beats herself to death and someone, by some views, merely intensely eccentric suffer from different manifestations of the same condition.

Sometimes this is expressed as a line that extends from "low-functioning" to "high-functioning", with - if I understand it correctly - the lowest functioning being those utterly incapable of meaningful communication with speech, signing, or computers, and the higher functioning being individuals who can speak but would be utterly incapable of knowing what to do if a smoke alarm went off.

Now, suppose we extend this line. Suppose we extend this line through the "hopelessly average" - the ones called "neurotypical". Of course here we find people who CAN speak, CAN order food at McDonald's, CAN make eye contact, CAN make small talk, but - if you want to think about it this way - actually start to pick up some "deficits" - the inability to precisely remember long lists, for instance.

Now, suppose we extend this line even FURTHER. Of course this is a little difficult to get a handle on because, when contemplating autism issues one might speculate that if one has conquered the issues of Activities of Daily Living AND employment that one has "gotten to the finish line", but, just as one person can be hyperglycemic and another can be hypoglycemic, I'm wondering if one actually can go too far "the other way" on traits associated with autism.

Believe it or not, there is a group of people that come to mind.

What I'm thinking of course is that as we contemplate, say, one just starting to slip from "neurotypical" to "autistic" (and, unlike certain people, I DO believe this can happen in adolescence or adulthood), usually the first thing that starts to break down are issues associated with employability.

In other words a person can be PERFECTLY capable of driving a car, paying taxes, ordering food from a restaurant, making a speech in front of hundreds or thousands of people and yet be UTTERLY incapable of understanding or coping with the BIZARRELY complex set of relationships that go on particularly in a white-collar environment.

That being the case, in our quest for what might be the "opposite" of someone with low-functioning autism, we are possibly led not to the hopelessly average neurotypical, but rather a HYPERFUNCTIONING neurotypical - someone who does exceedingly well at the very first thing someone with an autism spectrum disorder would have trouble with - work issues.

Now who would be a candidate hyperfunctioning neurotypical? Well, of course someone who is exceedingly good at forming complex social relationships and good at making sickening amounts of money. Many sales managers come to mind as well, of course, as President Bush.

Now I got to thinking what's remarkable about these individuals is that they actually start to pick up some traits ordinarily associated with autism - communication issues for instance. They tend NOT to be terribly eloquent. They certainly have SEVERE issues working with the written language.

And yet somehow they are absolute masters of non-verbal communication. Somehow through a skillful combination of clothing and projectile vomiting, in their own choppy use of the English language, reactionary tripe that would make Hitler blush, they are able to pursuade anywhere from several hundred to several million people to give them hundreds of thousands to MILLIONS of dollars.

So perhaps, although the communication issue is generally the thing that "catches someone's attention" about autism, that may not it's most important trait at all.

Perhaps, at the end of the day, it is primarily an anxiety disorder that is just so intense that it causes communication issues ...

On The Axinar's (And The Axinar's Old Man's) Verbal Abilities

Well, we do have quite a fascinating little comment discussion going on surrounding the topic of how some people with autism spectrum disorders can SING perfectly fine, but, if I'm catching the lingo correctly, can't facilitate any other meaningful communication through speech.

Now this in and of itself is a topic worthy of some discussion.

For instance, a Torah reading in a traditional synagogue is canted, or sung. In fact, recordings of this canting can be played here.

And, yes, these are memorized verses, but one can arguably say useful information is being related in this way. In fact, whole cultures have been based upon this information.

Now, it's common knowledge that people with various forms of autism and Asperger's have trouble with small talk - eye contact, picking up body language, etc. However, the topic at hand is how someone might come to abandon speech altogether for the purposes of carrying out, as The Old Man's case worker explained the phrase to me, Activities of Daily Living.

So, I tried to figure out what many would consider a "simple" situation where one would use ordinary speech to obtain something related to Activities of Daily Living - for instance, oh, making an order at Mickey D's

Now, a new contributor, AnneC, painted the picture that she might very well start to place the order if she had been able to figure it out before approaching the counter, but if anything went wrong at all (what she wanted being out of stock, etc.), things just might come to a crashing halt.

Oh I certainly recognize this behavior from The Old Man. If something even trivial goes wrong an entire mission can get aborted. I remember once when my grandmother was in the hospital or something of the sort he abandoned a whole cart full of groceries because he brought the wrong check book or something of the sort. I think by that time I was in college and had a credit card with a $500 limit or something like that and was able to save the day. I think he had plastic on him too, but of course the whole concept of adapting to changing circumstances escaped him.

I do suffer from a touch of this myself. In the MickeyD's scenario, if they were out of the thing that I wanted I might very well have to step back out of the line and think for a second how I wanted to proceed next. There have certainly been thousands of times that a phone call hasn't gone the way that I wanted and it may be many minutes, hours, or even days before I have been able to work out a "Plan B" in my head and call the person back.

But probably the most fascinating comment comes from Amanda herself - "speech is that stuff that generally comes out totally unrelated to what I'm thinking when it comes out at all."

Oh that's REALLY beginning to sound like me.

Particularly the last few years people have stopped me in mid-sentence over and over and over again and told me I was not making any sense whatsoever.

Of course, as many of you have noticed, quite often my TYPING doesn't make much more sense.

AnneC also mentions that she thought eventually e-mail would replace the telephone because, to her anyway, typing was much easier and more straightforward than talking. Interestingly enough, there are certain areas of business that were almost exclusively conducted on the telephone that now go on almost exclusively in email. I'm pretty sure it's not because any of the participants are on the autism spectrum. Quite frankly I think it's because of the ring and voice mail time. Pretty much, if you type fast enough, there's no "wait time" while trying to "push" a message via email. Between the ring and the "greeting", you can be looking at an investment of a couple of minutes or more on each phone call.

In any event, yes, what started out as someone questioning an autism diagnosis has gotten me thinking even more strongly I have a touch of it MYSELF ...

"Luke looks normal and has a wicked command of the English language ... BUT ... his brain does not work in the same way as yours and mine ..."

There is an EXCELLENT article running on the UK Daily Mail about a young man named Luke who apparently developed Asperger's as the result of a nasty case of encephalitis as a baby.

It's pretty amazing how many of of this young man's traits are like my Old Man's.

"A scratch or graze will have him screaming in panic, yet something like a broken arm has the opposite effect and he will appear not to feel it."

The Old Man of course will have a fit if he gets a bug bite, but when he had an actual heart attack he handled that quite well.

Luke's mother, Jan Greenman, puts a name to a phenomenon I have noticed with The Old Man - she calls it "blueprinting" - for instance if he tastes something for the first time that create's a "blueprint" in Luke's mind and he demands that anything like that taste in the future has to be exactly the same brand, the same cooking method, etc.

Similarly, once you start doing the WORSH and the PROVISIONING for The Old Man because he just had g*dd*mn quadruple bypass surgery, it doesn't matter that he long ago recovered from the heart attack, you have to keep doing those chores for him for the rest of his days.

Fortunately The Old Man seems to have been spared most of the aggressive tendencies Jan Greenman describes about her son Luke. Although, I do have to tell you, particularly when he was younger, The Old Man had one hell of a temper.

Ah, yes, the many, many joys of daily life in and around The Spectrum ...