Cosmoline:
Forgetting important dates and birthdays? Yup. Avoiding formal social situations? Oh yeah. Missing subtle signals of displeasure, esp. from females? I'm there. Fixation on complex and intricite distinctions? Yup. Guns, architecture, history, you name it. So what does that make me? A man, I suppose.
pdmoderator:
P.S. Horse puckey is right. Shrinks are like lawyers; they just make more work for shrinks.
Alright, reading that just plain hurts. Fine, make fun of it. There's a metric crapload of kids out there that suffer from a legit disorder FAR worse than I might. I'm not even saying that I have AS -- and if I do I'm probably on the far end of the low spectrum.
Equating AS as some fantasy condition because normal folks exhibit some of the SYMPTOMS of the disorder is akin to writing off schitzophrenia because, hey, who hasn't seen a face in the carpet or a cloud? Must be all horse puckey, right?
How many hours have YOU spent in a closet, bundled up into a ball, in the corner, BANGING YOUR HEAD ON THE WALL BECAUSE ITS A SOOTHING EXPERIENCE?! What? You mean you've never spent an hour of your adult life backed into a corner laying on the floor in a ball smacking your head on the floor to calm yourself down? Ha ha! It's funny! Fake problem, yuk yuk!
Hey, why's that guy collapsed in a puddle after running 6 miles? That's funny! Hey, he's all curled up in a ball crying to himself moaning and rocking back and forth in that field! Ha ha! Stupid fake condition.
There isn't a living soul on the face of the earth that has ever heard some of the stuff I've said here, so please keep making jokes about how AS is something fake and nobody has it.
JoeRapture,
Sorry about pouncing on the personality vs disorder terminology. I can't officially say I have AS (nor would I want to) but ... well ... I can identify in many respects to people that have it.
It's a disorder, but it can be managed, I think, into manifesting itself into "quirks." If your child has a "quirky" request it'd probably help to ask why. Don't try and talk them out of it, though. If they have a reason, they have a reason. You will NOT change that. Somewhere before my teenage years I decided I didn't like wearing jeans. I don't remember why -- it might have just been one uncomfortable pair for all I remember. I didn't own a pair of jeans until I was 21 again. I wore khakis or sweats for years and the meer THOUGHT of me having to wear jeans was a cause of trauma. I still have an aversion to them -- I only own 2 pairs and I bought the last pair just 2 weeks ago. Had the other pair for 2 years. Obviously, I barely wear them. Hangover from whatever hangup I had.
It is easy to assume that your "weird" kid is just being too picky and needs to learn to deal with stuff. Normally, yes. Tell a kid with AS that he's getting Mac & Cheese and drop a plate of blue stuff in front of him and he'll probably flip. Never happened to me, ... oh heck, nearly did. Mac & Cheese was always yellow in my house, but an aunt made some once and it was white colored -- confused the crap out of me. Guess there was a reason I thought of that example. Not sure if it was a big deal to me or not... but I guess since that memory from 20 years ago popped up, it might have been.
You probably already know this but uniformity and patterns are key. This is why I would encourage you to ask "why" -- simply because some patterns have no logic behind them. They're actually just regular things for no reason at all. Those can be "broken" without trauma. Watching a TV show might not be important, but the color of their shoes might be. Not EVERYTHING has to be consistent, just some stuff -- and you might not place importance on the same things, so ASK them. You'll probably find some very odd things that MUST be consistent in your child's life.
I really think "cope" is the best idea until the teen years then you can "deal" with the problems. The only way to deal with them, though, is to identify them and make a conscious effort to overcome, or basically mask, the odd behavior. I didn't get around to this stage until I was 19 though, so I can't say for sure what age to start with the "dealing" process should start. A "shrink" (you know, the people that made up the disease that left me banging my head into a wall for hours in a dark closet) might have some advice or at least anecdotal evidence.