What do you know about Aspergers Syndrome?

[Fred Sherman]

Fred your post above sounds so much like my son it's amazing.

@ Kim, Amen!

I scored 29 on this test. I do have many Asperger characteristics, but not enough to be clinically diagnosed with Asperger Syndrome.
My son on the other hand is a textbook classic Aspie, who is also diagnosed with ADHD, Sensory Processing disorder, and extreme Anxiety disorder.

We've talked about this before, but I forget how old he is. He'll also likely be dyslexic, so be ready for that too.

Also be ready for some real frustrations over grades in school. I had a pattern all through junior high and high school of C's, D's and F's except for one or two classes that would be A's. The A would be in whatever was interesting. Don't expect that to always be science or math either. I flunked high school calculus. The teacher would never accept tests or homework with the just the answers.

He'd always say "Show your work".

What work? The answer is obvious?

(Writes a new problem on the blackboard) Okay, what is the answer to this one?

Quick look.. Rate of flow changes 27 ml over 7 seconds.

He takes 5 minutes, gets the same answer, slams downy he chalk and sends me to the principle for the 3 rd time that month.

I'm sure you already know this, but don't ever let anyone tell you his abnormal, slow, retarded, or stupid. I had all those things send about my from 4th grade on...

And the way I got back my calculus teacher and to make it more interesting for me, was I converted everything to hexadecimal, did the math in hex and then converted the final answer back to decimal.

There. Showed my work. Happy?

This was before home computers, so most people were unfamiliar with hex and octal. One teacher tried to chew out my father for teaching me "useless number systems". His laughter was priceless.

 

[Fred Sherman]

OCD is one of the "disorders" on the Autism Spectrum. Almost all people with Autism or Asperger diagnoses have OCD, even tho they may not be formally diagnosed with it, because the OCD characteristics so closely mirror the Asperger characteristics.

Absolutely. Its hard to separate them.

On my bookshelves, I have the books ordered first by size. Largest from left to right, starting at the bottom shelf, to the top shelf. Within the books that are the same size, they are arranged alphabetically by title.

A friend asked me about that once. How I came to that arrangement. Why not the larger books up top? Didn't make sense to me. larger is heavier. Heavier lower means lower center of gravity for the bookshelf, less chance of tipping. Safer.

Why not just alphabetical? Thats not a pattern that you can see from far away, only up close. From far away, it looks wrong. So why then alphabetical within a size? Because my desk sits close to my bookshelf. when I look at a portion of the books, it has to look right, be ordered.

What I don't know is where one ends and the other begins.

Like M&Ms. I can only eat one color at a time. Thats classic OCD, right? But the order matters - it is according to the light spectrum. That means no browns. I just don't eat those. That is beyond OCD. But I don't have to worry about that anymore: http://www.mymms.com/

Order just the colors you want. I get only the green ones now. Green is my favorite color.

 

[Peggy]

Yep we've talked about my son at length before. He's 11, almost 12. Has a documented IQ of 147.
He's always read at least 2 grade levels ahead (in kindergarten he was reading at 2nd grade level, etc), and he's a whiz at both math and science.

Kindergarten is when he was diagnosed, thank GOD for early intervention! 1st grade was great! 2 - 4th grades were a living hell. Horrible mood swings, behavioral problems, violence (mostly directed at himself, only occasionally toward others), hysterical meltdowns, etc. FINALLY summer before last, a new psychiatrist took him off ALL meds, detoxed for about 2 weeks, then introduced a new meds. And I got my son back.
5th grade he did really good, both at school and at home.
He has just entered the 6th grade. Over the summer we received his final 5th grade report card, which was straight A's.

School started 2 weeks ago, and he's had one serious meltdown, but his teachers expected it, as they know that he doesn't transition well.
He's done pretty good this week so far.

 

[Shamil]

To get over 30 you must be obsessed with playing games that involve pretending and numbers.

I'm not obsessed with numbers. Labelled as a socially inept, I just have a difficult time relating to people. I don't understand emotions, and I can typically be aggressive. I am a massive fan of micromanaging, to the smallest detail, as Steve Jobs would be with the cafeteria food - yes, I'd even go far as with the ingredients they use.

There are patterns all around us, and I feel that it is imperative for us to understand them.

I like-- require things to be as perfect as possible. Everything needs to be in order. In my world, there is no such thing as chaos.

Note that I haven't been formally diagnosed with anything.

 

[Peggy]

Absolutely. Its hard to separate them.

On my bookshelves, I have the books ordered first by size. Largest from left to right, starting at the bottom shelf, to the top shelf. Within the books that are the same size, they are arranged alphabetically by title.

A friend asked me about that once. How I came to that arrangement. Why not the larger books up top? Didn't make sense to me. larger is heavier. Heavier lower means lower center of gravity for the bookshelf, less chance of tipping. Safer.

Why not just alphabetical? Thats not a pattern that you can see from far away, only up close. From far away, it looks wrong. So why then alphabetical within a size? Because my desk sits close to my bookshelf. when I look at a portion of the books, it has to look right, be ordered.

What I don't know is where one ends and the other begins.

Like M&Ms. I can only eat one color at a time. Thats classic OCD, right? But the order matters - it is according to the light spectrum. That means no browns. I just don't eat those. That is beyond OCD. But I don't have to worry about that anymore: http://www.mymms.com/

Order just the colors you want. I get only the green ones now. Green is my favorite color.

LOL! I order my books as well, but not quite to the extent that you do. My son doesn't order them at all. He's in the child-typical disorderly stage. Everything goes on the floor. EVERYTHING. Usually, it isn't until the mid to late teens that the Aspie-typical everything-must-be-in-order trait kicks in. At least that's the way it runs in my family (yes AS runs in my family). My Aspie nephew was a SLOB in his childhood years but now in his mid-teens he's getting to where everything has to be in order, and in a certain order, at that.
My cousins Aspie son as a slob as well as a child, but starting around 15 yrs old all of a sudden the clothes were picked up, the books neatly on the bookshelf - in a certain order, the clothes in his drawers were folded and arranged by color, etc etc.

SO I have a few years to go yet for the neatness to kick in. He is obsessive about keeping his toys separated. He has colored bins in his room. The black one is for his Transformers, red is for his hot wheels, yellow is for the lego bionicles, blue is for the board games. This is his system, not mine.

 

[Shamil]

My ability to understand jokes is sliding - I don't see the joke in the Cali. case thread.

 

[Kevin]

Interesting thread. Growing up I was attributed with having a lot of 'quirks' that have carried with me nearly my entire life. Some are evident that everybody around me knows about while others nobody is even aware of with the possible exception of my wife. When I entered the work place in an IT shop the first thing I realized is that a lot of my fellow coders also had quirks. Over the years it has sort of just become a part of life for me that certain IT folks have quirks and it is perfectly normal. As a result, I suppose, it is why I am more comfortable with other 'geeks' in social situations than strangers.

 

[Kim]

LOL I just had an example of Aspie literal-ness and their reliance on visual information.

I asked my son to go to the shop and buy me a block of plain dark cooking chocolate, specifying to be sure it wasn't a block with nuts or other things in it, just plain dark chocolate.

He came back and told me they had none... :|

I knew this wasn't correct, so went and had a look myself, sure enough, they did have some, but on the block was a photo of some nutty cookie things you *could* make if you wanted too with the plain dark chocolate inside

So he had rejected that as being not what I was after, as the photo wasn't of plain dark chocolate, so the visual information conflicted with the written information.

Maybe Marketers need to think about things a little more with a wider view.

 

[Peggy]

Interesting thread. Growing up I was attributed with having a lot of 'quirks' that have carried with me nearly my entire life. Some are evident that everybody around me knows about while others nobody is even aware of with the possible exception of my wife. When I entered the work place in an IT shop the first thing I realized is that a lot of my fellow coders also had quirks. Over the years it has sort of just become a part of life for me that certain IT folks have quirks and it is perfectly normal. As a result, I suppose, it is why I am more comfortable with other 'geeks' in social situations than strangers.

Funny. My son is completely "at home" with anyone who can talk computer-ese with him. He's a computer geek. Well, make that an electronics geek - computer, laptop, iPod, iPad, Wii, DS, DSi, and he's getting the DSi3D for his birthday in November.
He's 11 yrs old and can take apart and put together a computer with no problem at all. Last year at his school, something happened to the computer system, and the repairman couldn't find the problem. I'm not quite sure how it happened that my son knew there was an issue, but he heard about it, asked to look at it, and just to humor him, his teacher took him to the office. My son fixed the problem within 10 minutes.

Ha, the computer repairman told him to come see him after he graduated, lol.

 

[Jaxel]

Funny. My son is completely "at home" with anyone who can talk computer-ese with him. He's a computer geek. Well, make that an electronics geek - computer, laptop, iPod, iPad, Wii, DS, DSi, and he's getting the DSi3D for his birthday in November.

Adopt me!

But yeah, I'm generally the computer guy around here. Even my friends who work in the computer industry sometimes come to me for help. As a biomedical informatics major, I even find the human body and how it works very simple. To me, the human body is just a giant computer.

 

[Mark.B]

Oh dear, I got 38.

Anyone who's read any of my famous rants on vBulletin's forum would probably not find that surprising, and even on my own forum I regularly seem to offend people without realising it.

Someone who would know told me years go I probably had Asperger's and was certainly at the very list "mildly on the autistic spectrum" but I have never given it any thought and I'd certainly not want to be "labelled" in that way, nor be given any "special treatment". I've done alright in my own way and I'm absolutely fine. Anyone who doesn't like me is welcome to clear off, which sadly most people did/do but I don't care about that either.
.

 

[Fred Sherman]

LOL I just had an example of Aspie literal-ness and their reliance on visual information.

I asked my son to go to the shop and buy me a block of plain dark cooking chocolate, specifying to be sure it wasn't a block with nuts or other things in it, just plain dark chocolate.

He came back and told me they had none... :|

I knew this wasn't correct, so went and had a look myself, sure enough, they did have some, but on the block was a photo of some nutty cookie things you *could* make if you wanted too with the plain dark chocolate inside

So he had rejected that as being not what I was after, as the photo wasn't of plain dark chocolate, so the visual information conflicted with the written information.

Maybe Marketers need to think about things a little more with a wider view.

Wow! I can relate, almost to the exact example. There is a very literal component to it. My wife has sent me out for that block of baker's chocolate too, but I was focused on the "block" aspect. The box with the 8 1oz squares? Thats not a block. Neither is the one with the grooves kind of like a Hersey bar to help break it apart.

I was gone for hours looking for a block of chocolate. Finally found one. it was a 10lb block of Guittard Chocolate at a gourmet foods store for something like $70.

Thats another thing. We have trouble with the value of money. Not the numbers itself, but the intrinsic value. The day I spent $400 on a new rod and reel - that day was classic. My logic was flawless. I like to fish. I don't get to go as much as I want, so I don't want the gear ruining the days I can go. That means I need the best and this was the best they had.

Thats how I expressed it, which is kind of funny because with a genius IQ, internally I'm thinking about the number of ball bearing, the control of the spool, less backlashes, dynamic gearing, improved magnetic drag. But what comes out is simplistic, almost childlike. I'm sure Peggy is laughing at it nothing new to her.

Sometimes the biggest distance int he universe is the distance between brain and mouth. Sometimes, its a gap that can't be breached.

And when I have trouble crossing that gap? Thats when the stuttering starts.

 

[Kim]

Wow! I can relate, almost to the exact example. There is a very literal component to it. My wife has sent me out for that block of baker's chocolate too, but I was focused on the "block" aspect. The box with the 8 1oz squares? Thats not a block. Neither is the one with the grooves kind of like a Hersey bar to help break it apart.

I was gone for hours looking for a block of chocolate. Finally found one. it was a 10lb block of Guittard Chocolate at a gourmet foods store for something like $70.

Thats another thing. We have trouble with the value of money. Not the numbers itself, but the intrinsic value. The day I spent $400 on a new rod and reel - that day was classic. My logic was flawless. I like to fish. I don't get to go as much as I want, so I don't want the gear ruining the days I can go. That means I need the best and this was the best they had.

Thats how I expressed it, which is kind of funny because with a genius IQ, internally I'm thinking about the number of ball bearing, the control of the spool, less backlashes, dynamic gearing, improved magnetic drag. But what comes out is simplistic, almost childlike. I'm sure Peggy is laughing at it nothing new to her.

Sometimes the biggest distance int he universe is the distance between brain and mouth. Sometimes, its a gap that can't be breached.

And when I have trouble crossing that gap? Thats when the stuttering starts.

LOL that's funny Fred!

Sounds a bit like the males in my household with the money thing >_< LOL

 

[Forsaken]

LOL that's funny Fred!

Sounds a bit like the males in my household with the money thing >_< LOL

I think all guys have an issue with spending lots of money on stuff they likely won't use...

I mean, you've seen how much stuff I've bought lately :|.

 

[Shamil]

I think all guys have an issue with spending lots of money on stuff they likely won't use...

I mean, you've seen how much stuff I've bought lately :|.

I purchased a shiny pen because it was shiny. It only costed around $300.

 

[Kim]

I think all guys have an issue with spending lots of money on stuff they likely won't use...

I mean, you've seen how much stuff I've bought lately :|.

hehe true! Although I am pretty bad myself, so shouldn't complain really

 

[Peggy]

Wow! I can relate, almost to the exact example. There is a very literal component to it. My wife has sent me out for that block of baker's chocolate too, but I was focused on the "block" aspect. The box with the 8 1oz squares? Thats not a block. Neither is the one with the grooves kind of like a Hersey bar to help break it apart.

I was gone for hours looking for a block of chocolate. Finally found one. it was a 10lb block of Guittard Chocolate at a gourmet foods store for something like $70.

Thats another thing. We have trouble with the value of money. Not the numbers itself, but the intrinsic value. The day I spent $400 on a new rod and reel - that day was classic. My logic was flawless. I like to fish. I don't get to go as much as I want, so I don't want the gear ruining the days I can go. That means I need the best and this was the best they had.

Thats how I expressed it, which is kind of funny because with a genius IQ, internally I'm thinking about the number of ball bearing, the control of the spool, less backlashes, dynamic gearing, improved magnetic drag. But what comes out is simplistic, almost childlike. I'm sure Peggy is laughing at it nothing new to her.

Sometimes the biggest distance int he universe is the distance between brain and mouth. Sometimes, its a gap that can't be breached.

And when I have trouble crossing that gap? Thats when the stuttering starts.

hahahah that sounds SO like my son!

 

[Kevin]

I think all guys have an issue with spending lots of money on stuff they likely won't use...

I mean, you've seen how much stuff I've bought lately :|.

It is the 'Shiny Syndrome'; all male geeks have it. Our shiny toys tend to be technology related.

... my wife's, on the other hand, is shoes/jewelry/clothing related. I'll walk into an electronics store and gaze with wide eyes at all of the shiny new toys, perhaps even daring to touch some , while my wife reminds me that some bill or another needs to be paid so I must resist the shiny things. After which we'll then walk through another store where, upon seeing a "sale" on dresses or shoes, she will stop and slowly turn in a circle taking in all that is around her like a kid seeing the skyscrapers in a big city for the first time. When her visual senses have been satisfied she will then quickly dart away from me, roaming about the various racks of clothes & accoutrements, reminding me of the scene from Field of Dreams where the players just fade away into tall stalks of corn. It is usually at that point that I know that I will be alone, abandoned if you will, for a good hour or so with my solace being my wife will never know that I quietly escaped to the food court to grab an ice cream cone to sit silently amongst the ranks of men. Silently we keep ourselves busy, not saying a word to each other, but all knowing that the shiny toys are so close but so far from our reach. Shiny...

 

[jadmperry]

Interesting...I took the test a few days ago and scored an 8. Just to check consistency, I took it again a few minutes ago to see if my answers or score would change. And, I got an 8 (I was actually surprised as tonight, I took more time, changed a few answers after reflecting, but the score was the same....here were the full scores:
Agree: 2,12,39: 1 point
Disagree: 1,8,29,30,50: 1 point
Score: 8).

This does not surprise me though, as I have never done well with math, patterns are something I work with and see well, but their not applying or being in the "right" order does not bother me, and I am comfortable with "messes" and change. My only take away is that there are all kinds of people, with different strengths and talents. BTW, my son would seem to fit more in the paradigm described. He has some very intense interests, does not like when things are not "just right" and sometimes gets lost in trying to express what is interesting to him and others do not necessarily get what he is talking about.

 

[Fred Sherman]

I think all guys have an issue with spending lots of money on stuff they likely won't use...

I mean, you've seen how much stuff I've bought lately :|.

There is the difference. I rarely spend money on myself. I don't need too many things. The things I get are the things I need. But the definition of need is different in my world...

I have 27 different rod/reel combinations. The rods vary in length from 5 1/2 ft to 8 ft. The reels have different line types, strengths and gear rations. I have a rod that is only for carolina rigs. I have one that is for 1/2 oz jigs, with the drag set perfectly so that I can throw the lure for a month and never get a backlash. I have crank bait rigs, worm rigs, spinnerbait rigs - all set up for exactly the reel with the proper gear ratio, line type and strength.

I fish with a professional tournament fisherman. He has his own show called "big Bass Battle"on NBC sports (used to be Versus) and guides during the off-season. He doesn't have that many rods/reels. Its the OCD component again.

But I haven't bought a pair of shoes or sneakers in 6 years. I wear my clothes until the wear out, which usually happens to my favorite shirts first. When that happens, I don't want different ones, I want to replace the worn out one with one just like it.

Here's another example of how we think. I needed a new privacy fence. The old one was blown down by a funnel cloud that thankfully never touched down. I got the estimates front he fencing companies. Then I drew up my own plans for a fence, figured out the equipment cost, including the tools I would need. It would cost me less. Fences are just geometry, after all. Not hard.

So I bought an auger, a compressor and a screw gun. Home Depot delivered the material and I built the fence. It was better than the would have done and it cost slightly less.

I never used the compressor, screw gun or auger again. Its been several years, but I still have them.

I'm probably sharing way too much. By now, I'm sure you think I'm a basket case. I'll probably be quiet about this for awhile now.