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rufusrufus

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Everything posted by rufusrufus

  1. Oh, I didn't go back and read the whole thread, I just started blabbering on (I do that a lot!). I'm glad that something I said makes sense though - wahoo! My most pervasive stim is spelling out words as if I'm typing / texting with my fingertips or my toes. It tends to be a word I've picked up from a conversation, although it's not necessarily an important word from the sentence - it's just as likely to be "the" or "and" as "anti-disestablishmentarianism" If / when I become aware that I'm doing it, I try to stop myself, but a minute later I'll realise that my toes have just picked up the baton and are doing it instead! And often when I try to stop my toes AND my fingers doing it, my arm / leg muscles will contract / relax as if they're joining in too. It does seem to act as a dispersal of nervous energy, but it's incredibly draining, and I don't feel in control of it at all. I can be lying in bed absolutely exhausted and I'll "select" a word from my internal dialogue and off I go... so it doesn't even matter if there's an actual conversation going on or not! Argh! I think it actually came from an earlier stim, as when I was a child, whilst travelling in a car, I'd press my fingertip down when we travelled alongside a hedge / wall / fence, and "jumped" any gaps, then pressed down again when I "landed" on the next item. I'd also do it with lines in the road, pavements dipping and then rising, traffic (making fingertips "hop" from one car to another). I don't think I do it when I'm driving, myself, though. I'd like to feel a bit more in control of it, but I guess I'm lucky in some respects that it's not as obvious as hand-flapping or rocking as I've been able to hold down jobs etc. Having said that, if it had been more obvious, maybe I would have got a diagnosis sooner!
  2. Cool. My favourite puzzles are the ones where you're given a certain number of letters and you have to find as many words as possible as you can. Hours of entertainment
  3. Haha. I like "If you want breakfast in bed, sleep in the kitchen!"
  4. My cousin got me into The Cure a bit - he always wore their T-shirts and I became intrigued! And my old geography teacher once made me a mix tape with the Talking Heads on it. I really get into movie soundtracks too. As a child it was The Bodyguard (no accounting for taste, I know!) and in my teens there was The Crow and 10 Things I Hate About You. Now it's Dreamgirls
  5. I feel for you. Maybe something happened before he came home that upset him and it all came out when he got home?
  6. I've never heard that saying, but I used to work in a school for children with special needs and there were a fair few on the spectrum who did this, or other movements, like waving a sheet of paper, or a piece of cloth, or a bag in front of their faces. I can't remember where I read these, but 2 theories spring to mind relating to this. The first is that the world is so overwhelming and overstimulating, that the flapping hand, or whatever, acts as a filter, or a distraction. The mind / eye can focus on that, whilst taking in the rest of the world through peripheral vision, without full focus, which reduces how over-stimulating it is. Someone (might have been Phoebe Caldwell) used the example of a child who would hold a toy car up to his eye and view the world through the windows, as though the "frame" of the car gave a bit more control of what he viewed. Does that make sense? The second theory is a sensory integration perspective - the example I read was about walking on tiptoes, so I'll use that - in NT people, the brain gets enough information about where they are in space, orientation etc, from the sensations of the feet, leg muscles, ears (for balance) in relation to the ground. Their muscles tell them that they are standing upright, on a level piece of ground, with straight legs etc, whereas the autistic brain doesn't always process all that info in the same way. So for the brain to get enough information from the feet, a person with autism might need to focus all the sensory pressure on the balls of their feet (i.e. walk on tiptoes), so the relevant muscles are triggered and the message gets to the brain. I keep re-reading this and really have no idea whether it makes sense outside of my own head!! Anyway, I was going to say that maybe the hand-flapping is a similar thing to walking on tiptoe - the nerve endings in the hands / arms aren't stimulated enough by still air surrounding the body to get that information, but the sensation of the movement of air might trigger those sensory messages to the brain? Or maybe it's a comfort thing? A ritualised movement? Hahaha this made me chuckle
  7. Hi, I'm Ruth, 26, diagnosed with Asperger's recently. What kind of puzzles do you like? I love jigsaws, kakuro and word puzzles.
  8. Songs that really stick out in my memory from my adolescence: November Rain - Guns n Roses Californication - Red Hot Chili Peppers Smells Like Teen Spirit - Nirvana One Of Us Cannot Be Wrong - Leonard Cohen Poison - Alice Cooper ...to name but a few...
  9. True, I guess "sausage tree" is a colloquial term, rather than an accurate anatomical one My Dad used to live in the Caribbean and they ate bread fruit. That confused me!!! It's most like a potato in texture and flavour.
  10. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kigelia Ta da!
  11. I also burst into song aaaaall the time because someone will say something that reminds me of a song. If I say / think the word "sometimes" I start singing "Sometimes in our lives, we all have pain, we all have sorrow" from Bill Withers - Lean On Me. Anyway, is this silly enough to be in this thread or have I hijacked it? :s Did you know that there's such a thing as a sausage tree?
  12. I can't really offer any advice, but I offer my support if that's any good :s
  13. Hi there. I can't say exactly what you could expect, but I used to volunteer / work at a home-based therapy programme for a child with severe autism and there were elements of therapeutic play in what we did, so I don't know if this is helpful at all. We would use play to foster interaction between ourselves and the child. A formal therapeutic setting was more than he could cope with, he'd just shut down, but by engaging with him on his own terms, through play, this helped him learn to tolerate (and even occasionally enjoy!) our presence. I would think that in a first appointment they may do some kind of assessment - Emma's needs, areas she struggles in, what insight you can give them maybe? I'm not sure. I don't know how long each session might last though. We used elements of Phoebe Caldwell's Intensive Interaction and Son-Rise too, as well as Stanley Greenspan's Floor Time method and Sensory Integration stuff. I don't know if any of that is relevant at all, but I think it's really interesting stuff to read, in any case! Funnily enough I got accepted onto a Post Grad course to study play therapy, but then the course didn't run. If it had I could probably have given you some better info, sorry! Good luck though
  14. rufusrufus

    Hello

    Hi! I type more than I talk Welcome
  15. Hahahaha Ummm, I can't think now I'm on the spot. But I used to have a boss who was Chinese, so her pronunciation of some things were a little odd, but she's one of the people I tend to mimic because she's strong and generally awesome, so I come out with these phrases in a Chinese accent and people look at me like I'm totally bonkers! So instead of saying "what are you doing?" I say "wah choo do-aahn?" (that's the best I can write it out, sorry!), with her inflection. She also called me "Lootie" instead of "Ruthy".
  16. Absolutely! A lot of my speech comes from song lyrics / TV / film scripts actually
  17. rufusrufus

    Objects

    I can't get over the buzz I feel just to have someone understand something I say! It's so cool! And I love to share my musical tastes with people too. Connecting to another person through a piece of music gives me a massive buzz too.
  18. Crrrazy as a coconut!! Haha, just thinking about it makes me smile! Aww, happy days
  19. rufusrufus

    Objects

    All my books are like different shades of my personality. Rather than actually having that "getting to know you" conversation with someone, I'd rather just be able to give them a list of all the books I own and say "There - judge me on that". Hmm, maybe I should try that! Somehow I doubt it would work out too well though!
  20. rufusrufus

    Objects

    I love books! Many books! I can get lost in them. New ones are friends we haven't met yet. Just being around a lot of books relaxes me. I also like over-sized and minature things. I'm not really sure why, but they amuse me.
  21. I love it, my support worker and I quote it at each other all the time
  22. Haha, that video reminded me of this...love it!
  23. Hi there. As others have said, you do sound lovely I can really relate to what your husband said about the bucket in his head. It's as though little things that other people just brush off make scars in my head that won't go away, and they all pile up. Welcome to the forum, I've just joined, myself
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