How many Adult Aspergers are on this forum

[Bullet]

I'm an adult diagnosed with Aspergers syndrome. I never cared about fitting in with others. Yes, I like other people and I'm happy to talk with them, I have a few friends (though 99% of our friendship is via email or on forums) and I am polite, hopefully diplomatic and willing to listen when talking to others. But that does not mean I want to be the same as everybody else. I am happy to be different.

Canopus raised an interesting point e education and life skills and I think, in my case at least, it should not have been a case of not having any academic work done, but rather that others shouldn't have concentrated all of my abilities and how I was coping on academics. Because at school I was a good writer, extensive use of vocabulary, good long term and rote memory skills and often a good perspective on things that was enough to get me some good GCSE's and ALevels in some subjects and because I was quiet at school and rarely drew attention to myself the teachers, at a school which stressed academia above all else, were happy to ignore the obvious difficulties I had. And I, off I trotted to University, first time of living on my own and I ended up surviving on one slice of toast and one dessert a day for weeks. I was sleeping under a pile of towels. I didn't brush my hair so my mum had to brush it and cut it out at the age of 19. My weight dropped (I was underweight to start with). I couldn't keep up with the course work. In short, I had a lot of difficulties with life skills.

[Bard]

Sometimes being academically fine and having AS is a different sort of challenge to AS + learning difficulties.

B's developing life skills; we cook together, talk about why we have routines to do things every day like teeth brushing and bathing. He is a very organised camper!

The main area of concern for me is that he has no understanding of stranger danger, or that other people might not be trustworthy or honest. He believes what others tell him is true, and he will talk to anyone who talks to him. So I could be confident about his ability to catch a train into Brighton, cross roads and go shopping, play on the beach. Apart from the people that he might meet.

I am rather apprehensive about what might happen if he is still as naive as this when he is an independent adult. Just have to wait and see!

Edited July 8, 2007 by Bard

[Canopus]

Something I have noticed is that most parents only take interest in childhood issues, and don't spend much time and effort thinking what will happen once their children become adults. Services for adults with AS and ASD are scant and very little is being done to improve them. I am involved in trying to improve services for adults, but with virtually no success. Lack of interest and apathy are serious problems that I face. I suspect that a successful movement for providing services for adults will have to be led by a flamboyant and outgoing NT person.

[bid]

Something I have noticed is that most parents only take interest in childhood issues, and don't spend much time and effort thinking what will happen once their children become adults. Services for adults with AS and ASD are scant and very little is being done to improve them. I am involved in trying to improve services for adults, but with virtually no success. Lack of interest and apathy are serious problems that I face. I suspect that a successful movement for providing services for adults will have to be led by a flamboyant and outgoing NT person.

 

Hi Canopus,

 

You are completely right that services for adults with AS/ASC are almost non-existant.

 

But I don't think that parents don't bother about the future, it's something we worry about all the time. I think it's more that you can only do so much at any one time, and when children are young the focus tends to be on school because that is the most immediate problem that needs tackling, and parents only have a finite amount of emotional and physical energy. I think you would find that parents of older teenagers do focus on life after school.

 

Well done for campaigning to improve adult services...what have you been doing?

 

Bid

[mossgrove]

Can we all take a step back please?

 

This thread is starting to get well away from it's orginal purpose.

 

I would just like to say that EVERYONES input is welcomed and respected and I would hate anyone to leave the forum over this.

 

That said I feel that this thread has run its course and I am now closing it.

UPDATE: I have now removed everything posted after tempers started to get frayed, but left the first part of the post so everyone can read it.

 

Simon

Edited July 10, 2007 by mossgrove