LancsLad

Darkshire I think everybodies first responsibility is to themselves and to gain an understanding of the person we are. Without doubt AS makes us into quite complex individuals in many ways, but also very interesting ones in my experience. The route to gaining an understanding and ultimatly self respect, assurance and confidence is through experiential learning. As humans we need to experience scenarios and reflect on how we respond to them, this is a real challenge for many of us with AS. From your posts Darkshine I very much get the impression that you are still in the process of working through gaining an understanding of yourself, thats great, I guess it is also the cause of a lot of your frustration. When we push hard at the world as science tells us there is an equal and opposite reaction and this is a source of pressure. I think our mindset is really important as to how we deal with this pressure and that plays a significant role in how we overcome obstacles. A few years ago I was the head of a department which contained some really outstanding individuals most of which were older than me and had come from some pretty impressive backgrounds. I had been in the post for about a year or so and was doing pretty well and felt I had earned the respect of my colleauges through a lot of hard work leading by example. One evening a member of my department came to me and polietly asked could he offer me some advice based on what he had seen of me over the last year or so. I had no choice but to say yes but was highly anxious about what was to come next. He started by saying he had a lot of respect for the effort I put in and that he thought I was highly talented and a natural leader but that my weakness was in how I used my energy. He gave me a brilliant analogy which has been a real gem for me to this day. He said think of an old surf guy in his sixties who still hangs out on the beaches of Hawaii. He doesn't go into the sea as often as he used to but sits on the rocks watching the waves waiting for perfect conditions. He then calmly and relaxed picks up his old and trusty board and walks into the sea. He isn't as strong as he used to be so he uses his experience as to when to make the effort in breaking through the rollers untill he gets out into the big swells off shore. Here he sits on his board for a moment or two to get his breath back and take in the view. When he picks a wave he makes sure it is the right one and with every ounce of energy and with all of his experience he works himself into its hot spot. Once there he lets the energy of the wave do all the work and simply rides on its crest untill he arives back to shore. Here he smiles a quiet smile to himself picks up his board and goes home knowing that today was a day in which he lived his dream. Darkshine what you are going through I am sure is pretty hard. The fact that you are still going is a strong sign of your resiliance and tenacity and a recognition of the success you have to date. I think it is important that you embrace the scenario you are in as a great self learning vehicle and of benefit to you on that level alone. I was happy to go back to university and the costs it involved simply to learn more about myself. The first time I was in this type of environment in my early twenties i was very much like the young surf dude. All attack, falling over a lot, frustration but I kept going back for more untill I became so knackerd all I could do was lie on the beach and get a tan. I was a long way from learning how to get close to let alone ride the big waves. The story from my colleauge had a profound effect on me as I realised firstly he could see clearly what I was like and I knew I was exhausted with the efforts of the previous year. The effect was I became far more strategic in my thinking and where I chose to spend my limited energies. It made me think about what were priorities in my life and to focus on them first. I worked harder at pacing my efforts and monitoring my energy levels on a daily basis. The bigest thing it gave me was a feeling that I should trust my own abilities and to use the natural energy which was around me for my own benefit, how to ride the wave in reality. Once I started to ride the wave something very significant happened in my life, instead of it being a battle to try and achieve things I became more relaxed and realised that life could actually be a lot of fun and that there was real satisfaction to be had in how you do something as opposed to what you actually do. But even then I still had a long way to go. I think the chink of light you should be aiming for is a feeling of self contentment because along with everyone else you deserve to have it. In respect to careers etc... we have the right to want to get onto whatever big wave we might choose, but to do so it is better and important that we get experience along the way. I still very much have my big dreams but I am happy to surf what is around me each day whilst I gain experience and confidence. When I return home from the beach it is important that I feel I have had a good day and that it was fun. Sure I will have had a few mishaps and have the odd cut or bruise to show for it, but hey thats part of being a surfer. My advice would be to stop trying to fight this thing and get some energy back into your system and take a look at what is in front of you. Very often when our head is down and we are thrashing around a lot of the hits that we experience are self inflicted we simply don't realise it due to all the adrenaline. When you rationaly look at what is in front of you it may be the case that your wall has a door in the middle. It may be locked but the person with the key is standing right next to you and is happy to open it. You could of course take another running jump at trying to scale it but in my experience this normally results in bashing your knees and it hurts. For many having AS does get associated with pain and it is something we embrace. Looking back at the time of my story I kind of liked being exhausted all the time it had a qudos of being first into work last out being the norm. My colleauge knew however it couldn't last and this is why he decided to intervene. It took a while for me to turn around but I never really learn't the lesson untill I had a nervous breakdown and was inside a secure mental health unit on suicide watch. This was the final wake up call for me. For a time I was very afraid of facing the world but then I understood I didn't have to try and take it all on at once like I had before rather I could pick the bits I wanted to have a go at. With this new insight I was not really that concerned about achievement in the conventional status sense, but instead I took a selfish perspective as to what opportunities would provide the best learning experiences so I could better understand myself. Life since then has become more balanced, relaxed and fairly productive, importantly I have learn't to feel better about myself in the process. Food for thought as they say, best wishes.

Have you thought about an adult swinging patio seat or a hamock set up if that is too expensive. In a way I think swings are for parks due to really strong associations we have with them, and for me they never seem to work in a garden setting in the same way. Given your daughters age my gut reaction would be to try am more adult style product and then you have the best of both worlds, hate to think of you giving up early morning trips to the park for a swing feel like I need to get out there and do just that right now! As a garden designer/landscape architect I would say most childrens play equipment on the high street is not robust enough for the type forces an adult can exert, and whats the point of having a half hearted swinging session. To purchase a commercial product would be quite expensive for what you get and health and safety legislation means they might only hand it over if they can install it themselves adding to the cost again. The traditional approach is to find a tree as the structure. If you don't have a tree which I guess is the case then I would ask a local joinery firm to help using some timber posts, a few coach bolts and an old scafolding pole as a cross bar. This is possibly a better route as they can construct it to take into account any gradients in your garden. I would tell them your daughters story and wouldn't be surprised if they did it for the cost of the materials. Just a few thoughts.

Firstly I have found this type of behaviour to be quite problematic but I have been able to get control over it. It is a behaviour and thought pattern and like all behaviours it can be modified but this takes time. My first point is that my partner often can't find things and remeber where she left them, she can forget to lock doors, leaves lights on, goes shopping and forgets to buy things we need etc... this is fine as we are all human and have weaknesses. In contrast her AS partner, me, hardly ever does any of these, in fact I can't remeber the last time I have and my memory is very good. The point being is that this type of behaviour can be a positive thing in our lives. I think an important step is to monitor your bahaviour for a period of time and note down when you check things or make sure objects for example are in their special place and how many times you do it. I would then split the list up into important, not so important, and inconsequential activities. You might feel everything is important but if you want to change split them up. Here are some examples which I have had issues with. Locking front doors, having door key with me, turning off the oven all of these are important as the effect of not doing so might be dangerous or lead to more difficult problems. Having my design equipment in the right boxes, checking my e-mails, writting in my electronic diary, these things are all important things in my life and at times my behaviour around them can be very obsesive but they are not critical things and so for me go in the second list. In my final list I would put things like having my clothes straight on my body, the order in which I tie my shoe laces, if my work desk is strictly arranged. These last things need to be one way or the other and I might have a preference but to be truthful they are not that important as I can function very well either way around. The next big issue is in trying to reduce the levels of anxiety around each activity and in trying to get a control over them. This takes time and needs constant work to make real progress and i feel it is about dealing with the anxiety. The best place to start is with the last list. I might fee that it is important that my desk is tidy and might feel compeled to tidy it up. What I have done is said to myself that I will tidy it up but in an hour and that I need to carry on working as that is more important. This was not easy as it entails a period of anxiety but it is safe anxiety and I was able to get through it. The same is true of things like checking e-mails or this forum for example, I might be doing this say 12 times a day. The next step is to get this down to possibly 10 then 8 etc... I could either list times but this might easily lead to obsessive behaviour rather giving myself a quota has been more effective. I might want to check my e-mail but then have to think do I want to use up one of my allowances or leave it for a bit. One example might be I get up in the morning and check someone has sent an e-mail, I then send a reply and I am anxious have they recieved it and answered straight back. It is reasonable to give them a chance and checking every 2 minutes is not very constructive so I might give it 20 or 30 minutes and live through the anxiety. If there is no response and I am using up my allowances then I might think sensibly that they are at work and their next best chance will be at dinner in this case I check again at say 1:30 and use up another go. I think this type of rational behaviour at times does need some artificial controls put on it. I will get anxious in these types of scenarios but the more I am proactive in managing anxiety the easier it becomes. The most difficult area and the one you highlight are things in the first list. Here I believe you have to recognise that checking is a good thing but ask yourself to what extent. In some instances I believe it is counterproductive. I know in the past for example I put keys in open pockets which are easily checked, and this behaviour has been close to an unconcious action. In reality I guess I had more chance of loosing my keys by checking them and them not going back into a pocket and falling to the ground than if I didn't at all. Taking another example from my life, I go running every morning and so have to take a key with me, leaving it under a plant pot is a bad idea as someone could use it to get in the house, so logic says a back up is out of the question and I wouldn't trust a neighbour either as they might go out. The key thing could be a very big thing and has been. The first part of my solution is that I have to have a secure place to put it which is just for the key and nothing else can contaminate this space. When I buy any clothes, bags etc... they must have these spaces and enough of them otherwise I simply won't buy the product. This is important I recently bought a running backpack and it even had a pocket inside a pocket complete with a clip to take my key making it a five star purchase, made my day in fact. So in my example I have running shorts and tights all with zipped pockets. I then need to have some emotional security so I put my key on a key ring which is big enough so that I can feel it but not so big it bugs me. This also created a rattle noise which I have deadened down with an elastic band but not lost completely. A similar approach might be feeling in a bag for a mobile or hearing a bunch of keys but not going as far as having to get them out of a pocket. The final part of my jigsaw is how many times should I check for my key and this is about routine building. My routine is lock the back door and zip key in pocket check zip (1), go through back gate touch check for key(2) pull down running top, just before starting run touch check (3, optional still working on it). My target is to get it down to just the first 2 it was at about 7 or 8 a few months back. I still want to check part way around the run but I know I have tried so hard to cut it down and don't want to go back there. At these times I think through the first 2 checks and then remind myself I have never forgoten or lost a key so in all probability it is still there safely zipped in my pocket at that very moment. I can try to feel it if I must but not with my hands only the small of my back or I can try and listen for a faint jingling noise but I musn't check any other way, I am now at the stage that thinking it is there is enough am considering taking it of the key ring as I have made so much progress. As I said checking things or being tidy and organised are really good attributes to have, being overly concerned with these things is a real energy drain. I never want to get sloppy as a person in fact I nag my partner to double check things all the time and I still fail to understand why she does not have special places for things like her car keys and mobile phone but drops them anywhere without a thought, I laugh now at some of the places they have turned up. She secretly hid some keys once before going on holiday forgot where the secret place is and we still havn't found them 8 years on! I never want to be sloppy in my behaviour but personally I feel a double check is a very good target if the system is secure, a tripple check is still good but beyond that I would say it is wasted energy. I am far from being perfect but have been able to work through this problem though it has taken me a couple of years to really get a grip with it. I fully recognise the anxiety involved but feel we have to learn to live with it in small doses and that is why I think making lists and takling one or two areas at a time is a good way forwards. Hope there a few pointers and some encouragement in the reply, best wishes.

The first thing I will say is that as a designer in the architectural field I have yet to find anyone who is any good at teaching programming and I have been through university courses at masters level. I think this is one area where you simply have to do your homework and find out what software is being used in the specific areas you want to go in an then do the hard yards at home. I am not sure how far you have got with this but you have to get pretty serious, and I mean 100's of hours. One issue with learning current software is the limitations of the average home PC. I have a pretty good system at home but it has its limitations compared to what the average studio system can acieve with networked capacity and specific rendering farms when it comes to top quality outputs. My experience is that you can still impress individuals with home outputs as professionally they can always polish them up if compatible on a studio system. I suspect there are a lot of similarities between my area when it comes to 3D design and the games industry though the software platforms will be different. I am 46 and one thing I have had to accept is that there are a lot of individuals in their early twenties who are pretty clued up on the software and seem to pick it up reasonably easily. As we get a bit older I have found it takes a bit of effort to keep up. What is a fact is that at the lower end of the design process the market will be flooded with undergrads who are happy to work as interns in the industry for little in the way of a salary to simply get a foot on the ladder. This believe me is a real obstacle if you have a mortgage to pay, kids to clothe and feed etc..... What I feel is in short supply in all creative fields is inovative and original concepts/ideas. There are technicians aplenty but all creative industries are driven by ideas not people. Have you got any good concepts for games which you could develop in a presentation format? If you have then I would produce a series of storyboards and mock ups of the concept at a level which a layperson would get a grasp of the feel for the game. I am not trying to douse your fire rather the opposite and give you some constructive advice around your ambitions. I have spent my life moving around various design fields, engineering, product design, teaching, garden design and landscape architecture. In this time I have come across hundreds of individuals who want to be designers of one form or another. Many of these have a strong interest in the design area they wish to pursue be it automotives, fashion, electronic products or computer games for examples. In my experience having a very strong interest in an area is not the same as being able to design, I feel it is something you can either do or you can't. If you can through a lot of dedication you can get better and faster at it, if you can't then there is no way you would be able to deal with the pressures of the industry in any form as a designer. The reason i am saying this is if you want to go into this industry and it is a worthwhile aim, then you should be capable of sitting down at a kitchen table over a weekend and generate pages and pages of design sheets for a game concept which will be good enough to present to someone in the industry. If you can't do this then i think you are looking at entering as a technician which as i have said is highly competitive, not that well paid and the work is to be honest quite mundane and very repetitive, this suits some people but it is not the glamour job many kids would concieve it to be. If you are serious then I would invest time at home in exploring your own potential in this area by setting yourself challenges and projects to work on. Use your imagination and think outside the box, no point in developing fantasy storybords or WWII shoot em ups. Far better I would suggest to develop concepts for the teenage girls market or the elderly on a platform such as the DS to give you more structure. Showing flexible thinking is better than saying you can follow a trend if you get my drift. By finding out what you can do and in what time frames will give you a strong feeling of what might be involved but importantly provide the basis of a portfollio. I would then be tempted to digitise what you have produced and burn it on disk and then research some contacts in the industry and send it out there with a covering letter explaining a bit about yourself. All of these things you can do without having to jepordise your current stability. It is good to have ideas as to where we want to go in the future, it is even better to constructivly work towards realising those ideas in reality. Thomas hope there are a few ideas here which offer encouragement.

Thomas what do you see yourself wanting to do in the computer games industry?

Darkshine a key point in this for me is understanding that I am made up of different parts and not simply defined by one. There are my autistic traits which are very strong, my skills some of which come naturaly but most have been developed through a desire to improve them on a regular basis, there are negative components like my depression, but most importantly there is my personality. What I think is really important is that it is my personality which is in the driving seat of my life journey and that I get the choice as to where I am going. At times getting depressed can take control over my life vehicle, it is important that I know this is about to happen and I make sure it is parked up in a safe place and I hide the keys so it can't take me to places I don't want to go. The realities of AS can also be a very big distraction in some cases I have to significantly slow down the vehicle as concentrating on the road is difficult. At other times it is like having a couple of kids having tantrums on the back seat, I know a good strategy here is to pull over at a motorway service station and feed them or go to a park for a bit to let off steam. Eventually however we will be in a position to start the vehicle up again and be on our way with my personality back in charge. I think there are lots of good ideas which you can take with you into your vehicle which I would relate to as having a set of maps but you have to learn to be a map reader and this takes a bit of practice and inevitably will include going down a few dead ends and getting a little bit lost from time to time. The place to practice map reading is close to your home environment which feels more secure and if you have to stop and ask for directions you are more likely to recognise places in the description. Personally I have never been one to hand over responsibility for my life to doctors, therapists or councelors. I have listend to them and taken on things they have said before setting out on new journeys but I have been wary of treating them like a satelite navigation system telling me where to go as I understand that this is simply a black box it is not in charge of the steering wheel or more importantly the accelerator and brakes. You raise the point that do you take on things which are too big. In my experience if you can drive the vehicle and have a good understanding of map reading you can go anywhere. And this is where I go back to my first point of making it starting points really emotional and locking these emotions in. I know every time I undertake a project it is like a life journey and it will be fraught with issues and be highly stressfull. I often think what is the point of even starting, the answer is there is no point unless there is a really good destination I can get to. I think of this destination like a holiday venue for my personality. I am really selfish as an individual and to be honest am not interested in driving someone elses vehicle for them, I am also not interested in going to places because other people tell me they are interesting I have done this before an in most cases they are really boring. All this approach lets me do is join in shallow conversations which might be ok at the time but are not very satisfying deep down. The key to getting to these great places in my experience is to get to know your personality really well and then strengthen it. Things like my daily diaries play a key role in this respect. You also need to give your personality room to breathe and dream. At the start of this post I said I believe our personalities are in many ways seperable from our autistic sides if we see it that way. For example part of my personality likes to stand in front of people and give talks, my autistic side hates this with a vengence for good reason and can come up with any number of valid reasons not to do so. If you really want to get to the destination then my experience is go for it. If someone asks me to be a speaker at an event next week i will say no, I might not get there in that time. If it is in a few months I will often agree. I will make sure I have something on standby like a slide show as my AS side might decide to have a tantrum on the back seat and throw in a panick attack, but we can pull over then get going again. The important thing is public speaking is something my personality wants to do and he deserves the chance to have his moments as well. Without strong emotional reasons it is so easy to give in to my AS driven anxieties. My experience has been that the more i have taken on the more resigned my autistic side is to the inevitable consequence to get into the car we are off again. With experience I am more and more able to keep my personality firmly in the driving seat, and two years ago my diagnossis for AS was a real revelation as it firmly told my personality side that my AS side hade some really valuable skills and traits that I should recognise and the best thing to do was to give him lots of jobs to do and be a back seat expert. My latest project which will take me a few years to achieve is to qualify for the Triathlon Ironman World Championships in Kona Hawaii. This was a dream from many years ago held by my personality side. It is quite simple really all I want to do is cross the finishing line and have a native flower garland around my neck, smile a quiet inward smile and embrace my partner and son. The hard part is getting there. The starting point for the project is all about emotions and these emotions are written down as screen savers on my computer, posters etc..... The reality is a daily training regime in which my autistic side plays a massive part in producing charts and plans, logging data, analysis of diet etc..... For a lot of the time these days I can even leave my AS side in the driving seat but he does have a tendancy to crash the car from time to time, my bodywork has the scars to prove it. When this happens my personality polietly asks him to budge over into the passenger seat and retakes control. He often has to do so by restarting the ignition by going back to all the emotional stuff about where we are going in the first place then we carry on down the road a little bit further bit by bit. When I was younger I had a really strong 'belief' in my skills, tenacity and resiliance, as I have matured that belief has started to transform into something more powerful and that is a 'faith' in myself. The difference was that in the past I fought against my AS side though it didn't carry a label, today I have have learn't to embrace it as part of the equation though not as the leader that is the role for my personality. Darkshine hope this adds to the post, I have found it to be worthwhile in its writting, simply food for thought, best wishes.

I can relate to what you are saying in a number of ways. The easiest way for me to explain this in my own life is by using the context of me being a designer though this approach transcends other aspects of my life. I am a qualifed Landscape Architect as well as a Garden Designer and I have found that I often approach very large scale project concepts firstly from an emotional viewpoint in trying to get a very strong feeling for what the big picture will eventually feel like. I like to give my projects names and write up my feelings in very emotive ways as starting points and for future reference. If I can't get this emotional hook into a project I know it will go nowhere. As someone with AS a massive bonus for me as a designer was when computer aided design (CAD) came onto the scene. CAD was the first tool which allowed me to have one idea on a digital sheet of paper and be able to move around it and zoom in and out at will being able to focus on the details. Up to that point designing had meant a number of different pieces of paper and this was difficult for me though not impossible. Only being able to focus on one piece of paper at a time was a problem in my life as a whole. What I find as someone with AS and this is both a strength and a weakness is that I can easily get really focused on trying to sort out the most minute details and I need to be able to zoom back out frequently to see how my ideas are fitting into the big picture before zooming back in again. By having the discipline to work in this way I have found myself to be pretty unique amongst my peers. I have found that people generally are good at seeing a bigger picture but fail to grasp the importance of details. Another profile is with individuals wanting to only ever work in limited areas and not wanting to understand how this impacts on the greater scheme of things. Whilst I do not find moving through scales difficult people are highly suspicious of my professional abilities which I firmly put down to AS. I think important point is that I suspect like me you are naturally drawn into details and addressing imediate concerns whatever they may be, this is a good trait as I find I am far more conciencious than most. I think the trick is that when you decide on a long term project/goal is to record that down in a very strong way and by this I mean throw in lots of emotion as you will need that to fall back on as a reference point. I use a number of methods ranging from a daily diary, note books both physical and digital. Coloured cards which lie around my desk through to magnetic and marker boards in my office space. In the past I have even made collages using magazine photographs to express the type of person I would want to be in a years time or so and what I would like to be doing. I know that my own emotions run hot and cold and when i get good ideas about a bigger picture thing then I know it is the time not to try and find an answer but to lock that initial energy into something of a solid starting point, its like cathcing all that energy and encapsulating it into a glass block which I can come back to time an time again to have a look at and to refresh me. One tool which i do find usefull as a second stage is to mind map out potential areas which I might want to explore. Personally I use 'Inspiration 8' mind mapping software. Once I have got to this stage with an idea either for design or as a personal life project I can relax as I then know there is no danger of loosing the bigger picture when the inevitable happens and I will get drawn into the details of executing the thing. I also know that if life events come along to know me off track then it will not be a disaster. One good example in my life is depresive cycles. Over a period of time i can be working well through a project and then enter a period of deep depression for a few weeks. In that time I have no interest in the project concerned and often no recolection of where I am up to, to be honest I struggle to feed myself and get dressed some days. I purposfully don't toch it as It tends to be a waste of effort as I am no where near my best and as a perfectionist I will only reject any attemps later on. When I start to come out of the depression I then turn to the emotional stuff first and revisit it to relight the fire so to speak. Once this happen things come back together pretty clearly. I think that recognising the issues is a great step to take, don't see one side as a weakness rather the other is a strength as I said there are very few people I come across who have a balanced approach. The next stage I believe is being proactive in recording what it is you want to achieve in a very meaninful way and dont be embarased about doing this. As a creative individual this is part on my make up but I have found many NT's who i have professionaly managed to be very poor at expressing themselves in a constructive and emotional way, very good at getting emotionally unconstructive but not the other way around. This takes practice and time in finding methods that work for you but it is a skill that can be learn't and developed like any other. Once you learn how to record the big picture it is a very liberating in my experience as it allows us Aspies the freedom to do what we are really good at in my experience and that is focusing on the details with a clear mind and buld things be they projects or aspects of our lives. Hope these thoughts help a little as I said at the start can see where you are coming from as I also had a weakness in these 'executive' skills as i have seen them refered to in books. I have always been driven to change my weaknesses into my strengths, I might not ever get that far but by bringing them up to a reasonable level I have found it has empowered my real strengths in many aspects of my life. Best wishes.

Jan as someone with AS and who suffers with clinical depression and have done so throughout my life including at your sons age, I think the simple answer is you can't convince him, he has to see this for himself. I would also say that my experience of medication in treating my depression have not been good. I have found that they simply flatten out my moods which might be good at stopping me getting really low and at times suicidal, but anti depressents stop me from being at my best and as such being able to work things through in my own mind and come to conclusions as to what I should be doing to improve my situation. If he wants to talk then listen to him, if he wants to continue as he is then though it is not a very constructive position to be in and I am sure it is a reflection of running away from rather than facing up to issues which he will eventually have to face I suspect importantly he sees it as a safe place to be at present. I would try to get him to be self reflective and to explore how he is feeling at present. I know that self reflection is my strongest tool in working with my depresion. I know what I feel like when I am in good form and it is important that I recognise and monitor this all the way through to my lowest states, by doing so i can be proactive in controling my state of mind to a large extent and this is a better form of protection against the worst aspects of depression than retreating into a morose state. I think your real concern rightly is that of him becoming isolated. There is a big difference about being in a comfortable environment and self protecting and retracting into complete isolation. When i get to this state my partner takes a firm hand and tells me to be more interactive with her and my son, I don't always apreciate this at the time but I do when I am feeling better. Take an interest in what he is doing no matter how insignificant it may be. I find that depression is very cyclical and winter months are a bad time. It may well be the case that he needs to emerge from this period and I have always found getting out and doing a bit of exercise can often help with this process. If your son feels he needs to be in control then far better i think he tries approaches such as exercise before you go to external sources such as drugs, just a few thoughts, I suspect it is not easy being around him when he is in this state. This might also be his first depressive cycle and as such quite a frightening position to be in, with experience I can see them for what they are, but if he is depressed for the first time be patient its not something you can kick out of. Trying to do so and please others feels very false and fraudulent, rather it is something you need to work your way out off, I have never found anything which was a magic bullet in this respect other than time. Best wishes.

Elaine, I have just registered on this forum and as a 46 year old Aspie who was a secondary school teacher for a number of years I find the post very interesting. I hope I can add something valuable to the discussion as I can see things from both sides. Firstly I had an awful experience of school as a pupil but managed to salvage something from it in the end. Then being in the same environment as an adult though not realising I had AS at the time I can look back and see why I experienced problems and recognise what I had to do to overcome issues and make progress. Some of my experiences might be true for your child some may not but here are my thoughts on the area of school at this age. My first point is that Primary school is a very different culture than Secondary school. My partner is a very experienced SENCO in a large primary and she bears very little resemblence to her counterparts I met in my teaching career. My starting position would be that most secondary SENCO's are simply fire fighting, it is not all their fault most of it is down to the attitudes of classroom teachers and an exam target based system. In my experience and I would not call the schools I worked in bad but even if you get somewhere with the support system getting this through to a teacher who sees your child on one or two occasions a week is almost impossible. I know you think this should not be the case but so many young people pass through their hands being aware and clued up on a child in year 7 when they are under real pressure with their exam groups simply means they glance at info and nothing goes in, let alone they act on it. I can really understand your frustration, in the past I was a foster carer for some quite challenging individuals and I found supporting them at school to be very difficult. It would seem that we were making real progress with people like the SENCO in integrating them back into education for one stupid teacher to unwittingly blow weeks of work out of the water through one thoughtless action on a very sensetive child, but thats the way it is and I suspect it is the way it will continue to be for many. My experience at your sons age was one of facing multiple teaching styles for the first time often having to change four or five times in a day. This was coupled with moving around environments which were ever changing, massive distractions such as background noise along with flickering lights and smells. If this wasn't too much I had social issues to deal with three times a day on the playground where I was constantly getting in fights and drawing attention to myself. The result was that at his age though in a very poor school in a pretty deprived area of the country I was in the bottom sets for everything was in trouble facing suspensions and nearly all of this down to AS, so would I go back and change anything the answer is surprisingly no. The truth is that is what my school was really like, the world of work has been pretty tough as well, and I have recently been through the university system again and that is still pretty much the same. The reason I wouldn't change anything is because I had to learn coping strategies in a real world context if they were ever to be usefull to me. Secondary school and mixed teaching strategies were a nightmare but they showed me areas in which I did better than others and as a result started to draw out my strengths. The problem with all of our schools is they are designed to try and produce good all rounders. At a very personal level I made the decison that I wasn't that bothered about being reasonable at everything, but it was far better for my self esteem to be really excellent at a few things, this is totally contary to secondary school thinking. Looking back I can remeber the amount of time school wasted even in areas I was good at it was rare for me to be able to be productive in lesson times rather I had to set tasks up and put the work in at home. Even at university doing a masters degree this was still the case and will always be my prefared strategy. Using my own strategies had mixed results for example my best score ever for a language test was 16% and that was really trying. I had massive run ins in year 7 with my art teacher who critisised my work but refused to show me anything she ever produced for comparison so stoped working for her. I failed to attend a single Chemistry lesson in my last two years because I couldn't cope with a Chineese origin teacher, not his fault simply couldn't understand a word he said so self taught myself the subject and still got a grade C. For a lot of year 11 I went fishing instead of going to school and worked through revision guides eventually going on to get 12 O levels at C and above, the main issue being not getting expelled so I has somewhere to sit the papers many of which I had to pay for out of my pocket money because the teachers refused to enter me. In the end I was the first person ever from my school to go to university much to the displeasure of I would say the majority of the staff. The reason I make these points is that school often does not work for individuals with AS though I do realise things have got a lot better. As a result I suspect your son like me is in for a very rocky ride. This is a really dificult age for him as like me he will not have developed the maturity to work through strategies on his own. He will need help to develop these skills and things like using a dictaphone are worth a try, it is something I used extensivley at university in the past few years. I also use mind mapping software a lot in everything I do to bring information together as another example. I would be warry of labeling such ideas as coping skills, as to be honest my skillset is far superior in these areas than most people I come across, but they did start off from that basis. Looking back the secret was pulling out what worked for me and developing that and ditching what obviously didn't. Whilst going through this process maintaining self esteem was really difficult at times especially as I didn't have much in the way of support from my parents who are still in denial about my AS they simply saw me I think as a problem child and a bit of an embarasement. In trying to maintain self esteem I had to at times walk away from school and focus on things I wanted to do which allowed me to develop skills at my own level. One example designing and writing detailed Dungeon and Dragon content which was published in White Dwarf magazine supported by my own and friends artwork in its formative years when I was 13 or 14, at the same time my work at school was being critisised in areas such as English, Art and Science which is quite funny now looking back, doubt many of my teachers ever had much of their personal work paid for and published. I know I have been fortunate because I have a fair bit of talent, but a lot of that is I believe down to AS. I also believe that this is the case for a lot of individuals out there it is simply a case that we are not very conventional in how we work best and that causes real problems for schools many of which they find difficult to get past. It is tough having AS but that makes us tough as individuals if we are exposed to the realities of life. School is a very big reality for an 11 year old but it should not be the only one, nor even the most important factor in their life. For many individuals years 7 to 9 is a period where they are exposed to a system which seems focused on showing them what they are not good at, to be honest this is a lesson we should all be exposed to and take to heart. Unfortunatly it is not a good period for showing us what we are really good at, rather when we find these areas as Aspies it seems more concerned with holding us back for the benefit of NT's. For this reason as a parent i would be very focused on providing opportunities which are favoured towards your son away from school in which he can flourish and in doing so counteract the inevitable negative influences on his self esteem. As he goes through school he will become more aware of strategies that work for him whilst at the same time be able to move into subject areas which are better suited to his individual learning styles. I know some parents will be against this next point but I believe in it strongly, I do not think the long term answer is to make the early stages of secondary school more like a primary school environment. In my opinion this is a very difficult rights of passage which all children have to go through and for which many NT's have dificulties. I fully understand it is very destabalizing for AS individuals and as such is fraught with issues. As someone with AS I know putting myself in environments which are stressfull is the quickest way to learn new strategies. I know this leads to exhaustion and I need my space to recharge but the more I do so the more I get match fit in a way. In my experience the most important factor for children is developing a sense of self worth as an individual as they move towards being a young adult. If this can be developed we are more than capable of passing through the most destructive and chaotic of scenarios and come out of the other side relatively unscathed. For someone with AS school challenges this concept of self worth like no other environment on earth, it is a concept based on comparison rather than one of individuality. Our life outside school can be so much different and as such it is a far better learning and testing environment. For this reason I would be warry as a parent of investing too much of your energies in trying to re-model your son's school environment, as soon as you make a break through the reality is he will move on to another teacher and you have to start all over again. Rather I would direct my energies into environments I could control. On Wednesday I will be going to my 7 year olds annual parents evening. I will get to look through all his school work and will quietly smile to myself. Some of his work will be good and some not so good, but his best school school work will be no where near the standard of the things he does at home simply for fun in a self endulgent way. Because of my own experiences what is important is that when I ask him to tell me what he is good at he confidently can and know that I am proud of him whatever he does. If on Wednesday I ask his teacher to tell me what he is really good at I am convinced she will make a case that he is good at a lot of things when in reality he is pretty average at most. She is starting to get a clue as he won a county art competition out of 600 entries last week and came home with a pretty impressive painting by numbers set complete with an easel. I asked him when he did the entry and he said at after school club, I then asked him what it was of and he can't remember as he didn't think it was that great but they entered it anyway. I see my role as a parent to firstly support him in what he is good at and to develop his self esteem around such areas, my role is not to deliver the perfect package to school for their own benefit. If your sons school is incapable of giving him things to do which develop his skills then provide better scenarios for him yourself. In taking such an approach i feel you have a better chance to develop strategies which work well for him as I bet you undertand your son better than any of the 'experts' you might have come across and at the end of the day it is far more important to his confidence what you feel about his abilities than some disconected professional he comes across from time to time. I can think of nothing worse for a child than to believe that school is against them only to believe that their parent/parents are on the schools side in almost everything. I think schools are often good at making parents feel disempowered and whilst parents might not be on the schools side it appears to be the case for young people who don't have the maturity to see the situation as it really is. I was in may ways lucky as my parents were basically disinterested, so in effect it was simply me vs the school. Because of this don't follow school strategies if they simply show no sign of working as this is taking the wrong side in my opinion just a final thought. Appologies that this was a bit long but I getting my feelings across has been important for me so thank you for sharing your son's scenario as a vehicle for thought, I hope some of it might be of some help Elaine or at least food for thought to others. Best Wishes.

Hope I can provide a bit of perspective. Firstly at whatever time our diagnosis comse, 10, 30, 70 or as in my case 44 what has gone before has passed and we can't change it the good and bad experiences. What we can do is try to affect our future and control how we see the present. In my life I have done a few things prior to my diagnosis which might not be well matched to me at a personal level. For a number of years I was a highly successful teacher but was retired early due to ill health after a very nasty 12 months or so of intense pressure ending in an assault by a group of older pupils. I along with my brother ran our own retail business which had to be liquidated costing me 10's of thousand of pounds. I have been a sports coach at regional level as well a a foster career with some very challenging individulas the pressure of which led to a nervous breakdown. I make these points for one reason whilst I do not do those things now the experiences they provided me with helped me to develop my skills, build confidence and importantly meant I developed an excellent set of coping and management strategies to use in my everyday life. If I had the choice I would go through the same experience again because it is what has made me into the person I am and resenting the past whilst it was pretty horrible at times does nothing in respect to moving forwards in my life. My gut reaction to your post was that your work might not be a good fit for you, but more importantly I doubt that you are developing your skillset much at present. It is only you who can decide if the pressures of work are too much for you to take in which case you have your all round health to consider which is more important than work in anybodys book. I would try to take a balanced view of the positives and negatives of your current job and what they might mean in your life. You rightly say you have an income and this makes you able to contribute to supporting your family a very big positive. I would also not be surprised if whilst some emotional customers loose control of the conversation and get personal that your responses I suspect might be calm, constructive, logical, impartial etc... you may be very good at your job but simply do not see it that way. Is your employer aware of your diagnosis and as a result what your strengths are. Within the same organisation there may be better opportunities for you, maybe not at this very minute but in the future, this might be worth exploring and lead to promotion you never know if you don't ask. If you decide you want to change direction then go ahead and do so. You are right to say it is a very difficult climate at present, I am highly qualified and have been out of work now for nearly two years as an indication. Try not to see things as black and white issues, I know I have a tendancy to do so at times, but think about transfaring to another area of work. What could you be doing to develop a skills set for that area now in your own time? Possibly start a project to show a future employer that you have a strong desire to learn new skills in their respective field. The project does not have to be perfect or to their industry standard but simply show a commitment to wanting to learn. My last bit of advice is get things in perspective. AS does push our emotional energies, to the limits at times, but our background thinking really does add to this one way or the other. I know when I get negative about something I can be very negative, but when I am positive it can seem like I have a lot of energy to spare. A challenge might be to simply for the time being see your job as neutral and tread water with it. If you can do this then you might have the energy spare to put into more productive areas of your life without initially taking away something which we all need a lot of and that is stability. Talk things through with people around you and explain your feelings and get their support in any decisions that you make. There are some opportunities out there in respect to support but believe me they are very limited and financial support is virtually impossible to come by I know I have tried hard with a very good business plan which is recieves very positive reviews only to be told sorry but we can't help at this moment in time. When I was forced to retire from teaching I felt a large part of me had been taken away, I have since understood that what we choose to do in respect to work does not define us, rather it is how we choose to see ourselves. I have the same value as a person sat here out of work as I would as a top CEO of a multi national or if I was back teaching. When we can find that real value in ourselves that is when we can put up with a lot of things in our lives which are far from being perfect, this is as much true for the vast majority of the population regardless of anything such as AS.

Will try to offer some advice from the position of someone with Asperger's and having spent a lot of time in school environments as a teacher. I have also been a foster carer with challenging individuals who have been school non attenders between the ages of 11 to 18 as a bit of background. I do not have a child with AS so please bear that in mind Jan. Your son is currently getting things very much his own way. If the stresses of going to school create that much anxiety that he simply feels he can't cope then I can see why he would take this stance as a simplistic fight or flight response. Unfortunatly the more he carries on like this the more the behavioural pattern develops and the harder it is for him to break the cycle. There are a lot of NT young people who develop this type of response for a number of reasons. I think the answer lies in the mid term in him understanding that not going to school for the next two years and the problems that entails is not a good long term option for anyone of his age. You said he was seemingly doing well, but I suspect either something has gone very wrong in one or two areas or the accumilation of stress over a period of time has become too much have you discussed which it is? In my school life the same things happened to me to the point I was in and out of school but all behind my parents backs and there was no support available. The truth is my school couldn't care less and it only came to light at the end of the year when they were honest with a school report and comments came out such as 'I don't know who he is', quite funny looking back. I eventually made the decision to take myself back into some lessons sneaking back into school as I enjoyed them and knew they were things that I was good at and that I had realised that things such as sneaking off to go fishing all day were not going to help me as an adult. Though at the time I did not know I had AS, nor would I for many years, I did know I was very good at some things and very bad at others, what I did not need because life was hard enough for me already coping with lots of other issues attatched to AS was school focusing on my weaknesses and labeling me as a problem. By not going I was not in a position to be labeled. My initial reaction is focus on getting your son to do things related to his education that he is good at even if this is at home, this is a reasonable compromise and as such I believe you are entitled to take a firm hand you are his parent and if this means confiscating computers etc so be it! I would let him have some say in what he does in respect to work but it must be the best he can do and put value on it creating a positive experience. The problems with schools is they are preoccupied in trying to get pupils to do what they want to do and far less interested in kids simply expressing their talents. Whilst most young people in school are complient I found this to be a very difficult proposition. I would ask the question are all the support services which are lined up ready there to help your son or are they there to help the school and yourself? The answer in reality is that he has to learn how to help himself as that is the route to independant adult life. That means he has to start to take some responsibility for his actions. My advice would be to ask your son to outline how he is going to solve the current scenario giving him the opportunity to take some responsibility. If he can't come close to outlining a plan then this is the time for tough parental love and point out that he had the first chance and now it will be up to you to sort out an integration programme back into school. If he manages to outline a half reasonable plan then I would suggest you strongly take his side and support this position and try and push this through with the school. I would say it is unwise to ask a young person for a mature response and then undermine them when it does not suit a school, it is the schools responsibility to act in his interests. In the wider context I think it would be very hard for anyone to accept they have AS if their environments are on the whole working against them and as a result they are disadvantaged and judged against others in a negative light. When I recieved my own diagnosis aged 44 I found it relativly easy to accept as I could look back and see that a lot of things AS gave me meant that I was well above average in respect to my skills profile and as a result had achieved a lot in my adult life. My childhood was on the whole a very misserable experience and school could have been a total disaster. I was fortunate that I understood my own potential just in time took responsibility for my actions and mainly self taught I acumilated a reasonable set of examination results which allowed me to selectivly continue in education in very much my own way being the first person from my school ever to go to university very much to the amazement of the teachers who had very mixed views about me as a non conformist. For interest this success even included getting a grade C in the subject I has not attended a lesson in over two years in which the teacher correctly reported he hadn't even seen me in that time. At this time I would not make the focus AS or any services lined up in this way rather that though 14 is a difficult time for anyone it is the time where we start to mature into being a young adult, take responsibility, and grow as an individual. Expalin to your son that the last two compulsory years at school (taking a guess he is in year 9) should allow for more flexibility in the types of subjects and that by proactively engaging with school he should be better able to tailor his choices more towards his prefared learning styles and environments where he may be more comfortable. In the short term it is not wise or mature to blow these opportunities over the next month or so. If this is the case I know of a lot of kids at this point in their school career who want to give up on things they no longer see a relevent. Maybe some of these things do need to take a back seat for the common good. Hope some of this might help, I have had along with my partner had real battles with individuals in my care in the past in trying to get them do do some positive things simply so I could start to build them up and develop their self esteem. Often the battles have been with the schools who at times want to focus so much on what they have done wrong. This is not easy Jan and you have my support and thoughts but respect between you and your son is important and him being allowed to lie on a bed with a laptop or trying to get him into a car does not sound right to me. Your son has a choice as to whether or not to accept a diagnsis for AS or not. What he has to accept is that he is 14 and that is not negotiable and as such I would make his age the focus and not AS though I am well aware it greatly affects how he sees the world. Best of Luck, no one said being a parent is easy but it is the most rewarding thing we ever do.

Saw your post a few days ago and have been waiting for verification as a new member to post a reply. Can really empathise with how you are feeling. 7 years back I returned to college for a second degree and had to take a year out to complete the course as i was having a bad year. I then took the massive decision to move away from my family and went to university for 2 years to do a masters course which at times I found difficult. Looking back getting through both courses was a good achievement, not in terms of my academic abilities which I know are very high, but in how my AS impacted on how I viewed what was happening around me. I am a perfectionist and so was very critical of my own performance and that of lecturing staff and fellow students. As a control freak in respect to managing anxiety levels I had to plan everything to the last detail which was cotrary to how most students or the university behaved. As I got towards the end of the course I had to ask questions as to how this all fits in with other things like paying the mortgage, applying for jobs etc... To be perfectly honest the current situation out there is not that good for a lot of people and anyone whith any resemblence of inteligence would be anxious as a student unless they have family or friends to fall back on, but that is reality and we can't change it. At the end of my last course I made the decision to complete all the modules so that I had a postgraduate qualification to enable me to enter a profession should I choose to do so in the future. I was faced with having to write a dissertation to please my tutor which would give me a masters qualification. Though a lot of people around me wanted me to do this piece of work and get a pice of paper which in their eyes reflected my true worth I decided not to do it yet. Not saying I will or won't but have not done it yet. What going back to university as a 44 year old taught me was that I need to understand what my own true worth is. I know what I am good at and what I am not good at, I didn't really need someone else to make that value judgement for me. What is important is that I try to spend my life being comfortable with myself. University showed me that I am not a perfect fit for the world around me or is it the world is not a perfect fit for me, whatever? I know that if I spend all my time worrying about why we do not fit perfectly the one who suffers is me and that does not serve either of us very well. If I was you take things one step at a time and make sure you tie up any loose ends. My last go at university cost me £20,000 I didn't have and gave me a piece of paper which I may never use but as an experience it was priceless. In that time I recieved my diagnosis for AS and though a lot of things I experienced were not pleasant I know I grew so much as an individual through the experience. Looking back I would award myself a distinction for battling through day after day being away from the security of a stable home life and facing daily challenges little of which was really down to doing the work required. Your college will not give you recognition for achieving this, but you must give yourself the recognition you deserve for getting this far. By doing so I hope you find the strength to take the next steps in your life. These might involve education or might lie elsewhere. Far too many people go to university and think it will define their lives. I have done so three times now and believe me when I say it doesn't. What defines your life is the challenges you decide to take on and how you respond to adversity and grow as an individual. Be positive about what you have achieved and have a belief to make the decisions in your life which feel right, my experience is that our natural instincts are often a very good indication on which way to go. You come across as being thoughtful and honest and so it does not surprise me that when faced with the reality of professional working life you see some of it as being a bit distasteful, good spot I say. If you can't see yourself in that environment then make a decision to change it for the better or look elsewhere to an environment which is more reflective of your personality. My last comment is about seeing something as a place to go to fix ourselves. If having AS soemhow means I am broken then I don't want to ever be fixed even if I could. AS gives me all that is best about myself it is what makes me exceptional in certain environments. Sure I have to put up with a lot of ###### in the mix on a daily basis, but over time I have learn't to respect my skills and associate value with them. I still have a long way to go in lerning how to better relate to myself at an emotional level but a big step for me was giving up on the idea of someone or myself ever being able to fix me into something better. I can manage some of the more negative aspects of AS but that is a very different approach than trying to fix them. Take care and look to your strengths which you will have aplenty and there you will find your answers, we all have self doubt but we manage to negotiate a passage through this difficult journey called life when we decide to take one step at a time.

Read your post a couple of days ago but have been waiting for verification to join the forum as a new member. I feel my initial reaction holds true as advice to you. I recieved my diagnosis 2 years ago aged 44 with very mixed feelings at first. A lot of this was related to what my parents had said in their inputs and confusion as to how a diagnosis could be made in an hour and a half or so. I also kind of accepted that things would be difficult if I was on the spectrum to make a diagnosis because a lot of the times deperate to fit into normal social scenarios I have developed a lot of coping strategies which would mask problems to an extent. I felt going into the assesment session that I was capable of getting a negative answer if I wanted to by pre planning the perfect coping strategy and putting on an act. I didn't fake the assesment and felt I was pretty honest but deep down felt I was capable of being fraudulent if I wanted to, being fraudultent was something I did a lot for example putting on a false smile in social situations I didn't want to be in but had to. The point being that being fradulent is a feeling I have learn't to live with though I suspect it is not a natural part of my personality but a coping mechanism. I was also very analytical as I knew i was under sever scrutiny the second I went through the door, and this felt very invasive and personal. I think a natural reaction is to push back against such an invasion of our lives. I accepted my diagnosis but reserved personal judgement as to 'how Aspie' I felt I was, a case of picking things from the diagnosis criteria which indicated a positive diagnosis and then initially finding real life example to show I was not that extreme in real life, hedged my bets both ways. The thing which helped me a lot was being in the very fortunate position for the last few weeks at university to be part of a group of AS individuals. In the first session I was again thinking I was different but this was I guess down to being over twice the age of anyone else in the group. As the meetings progressed I simply saw more and more of myself in the other members of the group and started to feel very comfortable in their company and for the first time in my life felt part of something in a social scenario alongside my peer group. I could see they very definatly fittes AS criteria but felt like them rather than initialy seeing it in myself. Over the past two years accepting my diagnosis has been a liberating factor for me. What I have now recognised is that I can decide as to how Aspie I want to behave in a lot of situations. This is not the same a being an Aspie one minute and not the next. I have a very developed set of coping strategies and I realise I am more fortunate than most in this respect. I can use these strategies but it takes a big effort when I do. In contrast when I am tired or simply decide to really let go and relax I exhibit very strong autistic traits, and to be honest this is the most comfotable and sustainable state for me to be in and this is why I know iI am an Aspie as you put it. It is up to you to decide for yourself as to how you feel about the diagnosis. What I would polietly suggest is what do you feel in respect to your comfortable state. Everyone in life has to put an act on a lot of the time but it is how we relate to ourselves when we are away from this pressure. I would also say the diagnosis list is not something you have to tick all the boxes for to confirm a diagnosis, rather it is an indication of traits. I exhibit a lot of AS traits but others I would never demonstrate and many others are down to personality rather than AS. Take time to think things through my experience is that the time around my diagnosis was a massive period in my life with emotions flying all over the place. Reflect on the information and see how it pans out in reality over the next few months and then draw conclusions after all it is your diagnosis and at the end of the day it is your choice as to whether you agree to it or not. My guess is that as time passes things will fall into place one way or the other.