I'm Usarian Skiff. I have Asperger;s syndrome (undiagnosed). I have 5 boys, 4 of which are diagnosed on the autistic spectrum - One gifted/Asperger's, one straight asperger's, one very autistic, and one prevalent developmental delay (PDD). My wife and my second son are both neurotypical. My wife blogs her perspective here: http://www.glimpsesofskiff.com/
Currently I work as a computer programmer, as do most people with Asperger's Syndrome. I deal mostly with databases.
I started this blog because I was just thinking about what it's like to be someone with Asperger's. What it's like to live in my head. My perspective on the world and life.
On the outside we're usually kind of annoying. Sometimes more than kind of.
We need a lot of patience, and we don't have much patience for everyone else.
We usually think of ourselves as correct and the people around us as exasperatingly incorrect, imprecise, and inaccurate. Finding out we are incorrect about something is extremely embarrassing and many times we are simply unable to accept hearing it at all. Even if proof is presented, we will challenge the veracity of said proof.. we will find a "better" dictionary, or wave off the accuracy of Wikipedia. We don't care if we have right opinions so long as we have correct facts. If you present us with an inaccuracy, it feels as if we have been lied to and will react with strong emotion. Completely accurate information is the absolute most important thing to many aspies, and anything less than perfect accuracy and precision is offensive and the equivalent to what you feel emotionally as immoral.
Our own emotions are extremely difficult for us to gage. Our reactions are nearly impossible for us to predict or steer, so many of us will train ourselves to hold them back. Later we will analyze them ad nauseum until we can figure out what we're feeling, if it's legitimate, how we should best express it, and how to execute that expression. Not holding back and analyzing can me dangerous. We are autistic and we can have autistic meltdowns. These can be like epileptic seizures, but instead of the body going crazy it's the emotions.
Frequently those closest to us will do or say things that cause us to experience some kind of emotion. If we hold back expression what we feel, it's because we're afraid of messing up or we don't know what's appropriate. If we let our guard down and express what we feel, it will probably be an exaggerated expression or an overly dramatic display. When we feel, we feel very very strongly. We don't naturally have an internal sense of what's appropriate and what's not. We have to learn it either by being taught or by watching people in any kind of imaginable situation and copy them. Many of us will copy the way people behave on television, taking it to be an easily accessible model, and only by trial and error do we learn that the way people act on tv, even when it seems reasonable, is not at all representative of the unspoken code of conduct in the real world.
We cannot discern the difference, without help, between accuracy and honesty. Between specificality and lying. If we ask what time it is and you say 5 o clock and it's actually 4:55, we will most certainly feel strongly that we were lied to, and struggle to figure out why in the world anyone would lie about something so trivial.
We will end relationships over 7 minutes or 12 dollars or any other inaccurate statement. If we ask how you feel, we expects a specific and completely open and clinical analysis of what emotions are going on, just as we would provide you with if you ask. If you do not provide what we are expecting, you are untrustworthy. Some of us can change with time, some of us are not capable of changing. some can not change at one stage in life, and eventually learn to with great difficulty.
We are literal. No one can explain what this means. We're literal but we're certainly not stupid. We do understand prose and metaphor. I prefer to say that we are specific rather than to say that we are literal. We don't think in generalities unless we learn to, and even then it's not our nature.. our default assumption. we do not pick up on conversational context when people are speaking in a general sense, unless it's a very broad and explicitly general thing to say and couldn't possibly be anything else. If you say you'll be out in five minutes, we start counting minutes. Someone who has learned better wont tell you they were counting minutes, but if you ask they will tell you how many minutes passed. Most of us will give you an immense amount of grief over the fact that you were 90 seconds late or make a comment about how you were 60 seconds early.
We make observations. When we say things that are factually accurate that either sound offensive, humorous, or just odd - there is no intend to be offensive, humorous or anything else. We are just making a pure factual observation and stating out loud the fact of it. We may half expect to be recognized by somebody.. anybody.. for noticing said fact.. because facts are important. even if they're not.
We care about people. We feel close to people who do not feel close to us. We do not necessarily feel close to people who feel close to us. We long to connect with someone, but it's very difficult. We want to feel loved, respected, desired - like anyone, but the definition of asperger's is that when people do things to communicate nonverbal emotions that we SHOULD be able to absorb from our loved ones, we are not able to receive those feelings. This is the disability part of asperger's. We can know we're loved and all the rest, but we can never truly receive consistent feelings of affection. It's very hit and miss. usually miss. And we communicate it out poorly as well. We can be trained on what to do, but the depth of true relationship is more than can be expressed with intentional learned systems of behavior.
So that's my little post..
