We are PROUD!

[Quirkybird]

I hope you don't mind me doing a bit of boasting!

My husband and I have just been listening to our middle daughter, and her eldest boy, 12, talking on the radio about the youth club she is setting up for children with Autism in their county of Warwickshire, which is about 100 miles from here. Our grandson has high grade autism and is extremely bright but has social problems . Our girl now home schools him. They both gave an excellent talk about the new group which is called 'Aspire' which has charitable status. Our grandson is extremely articulate, and coped well with the interviewer's questions. He managed to bring his passion for trains into the interview.

Do others members have relatives with Autism or have the condition themselves?

 

[Marcialou]

I used to do after-school care for a 7 year old boy with autism. He was pretty verbal but not at the level with his peers. He was in a regular classroom with an aide. We had a lot of fun together. We'd go hiking and canoeing and to children's museums. I helped him with his homework and his reading level improved quite a bit from our work together. His passions were airplanes, electric fans, and street drains.

 

[Thomas]

I hope you don't mind me doing a bit of boasting!

Not at all.

Our grandson is extremely articulate, and coped well with the interviewer's questions. He managed to bring his passion for trains into the interview.

Good for her, and good for him! The trick is to get people to see the difference as a difference, and not a problem.

Do others members have relatives with Autism or have the condition themselves?

Our family view is that everyone is somewhere on the spectrum.

My nephew was 'spotted' as having Asperger syndrome at a very young age. Non-communicative (unless he wanted to be), almost totally unaware of the world outside, etc. He did well at school although he was, of course, bullied quite a bit. I remember my sister was in tears when he went on a school study placement, a week on a Dartmoor 'monitoring' station collecting eco and enviro data. How would he cope, away from home? He wasn't at all 'easy' in any social circumstance.

Well, after he re-programmed all their tech to run significantly more efficiently, and streamlined their data collection processes, wrote a couple of scripts to manage data comparison, that kind of stuff, they didn't want him to leave.

He got a First with Honours in Game Design at uni, and is now living quite comfortably in Bristol.

There's a company in Sweden (Scandinavia, somewhere), that employs severely autistic chaps — it does seem to afflict the male of the species more — to do code checking for software companies ... so you write your code, and these guys will go through it and make sure everything's coded properly.

The guy running one of the rooms manages those with extreme symptoms. As you probably know, the higher on the spectrum, the less you like surprises or change, or doing things differently. So he runs the room like clockwork. From the outside it looks like a totalitarian state. Work starts on stops 'on the dot', same with breaks, lunch ... the guys enjoy their work, and can't function in an 'open' and 'free' environment.

A good friend of ours is asperges, and he's a musician of no little accomplishment; he's played with the likes of Pink Floyd and Eric Clapton. I was gobsmacked when he pointed out a neighbour — who happened to be a jazz guitarist — was asperges, because he could see the signs, because he was himself.

"How come you're asperges, and yet you do your 'Floyd on LSD' never-the-same-twice solos?" Of course, as he explained, music is all about order. Music is the language of maths. "I play," he said, "and it's my world..."

If you've never heard of him, check out Daniel Tammet.

And if you've heard of Oliver Sachs, don't be so sure ... Daniel Tammet thinks he's got some things fundamentally wrong.

 

[Quirkybird]

People with Asperger's, like my grandson, often go on to achieve well. I sometimes wonder if it is almost necessary if you are going to do well in business as it makes you so focused? Bill Gates is reputed to be on the Autism spectrum along with many other high achievers.

 

[wil]

Congrats.... I am contemplating if Asbergers and other forms of autism are actually a portion of the new evolution of humans...

consider we are now evolving not on a social dynamic of personal survival, relying on oneself, but have now as an organism realized the community as a whole will cater to care for those that benefit the community, and the needs of the specific nerd/geek will be fulfilled so they can fulfill their mission (one we may or maynot be able to perceive) but that we will provide for them an incubator, a space for their growth and expertise to excel?