<p>I’m pretty sure I was successful in getting the virus off the laptop. I’ll be so proud of myself if that’s true. </p>
<p>Weird snow day today. My largest client has probably fired me. We finally insisted on getting paid the huge amount they owe us, the owner threw a fit, fired me, don’t know if it will stick. I’m like the abused wife who needs to get herself to the shelter…it will be rough if I can’t do their work, but working for months on end for free is really bad for one’s self esteem.</p>
<p>Speaking as someone who almost ALWAYS works for free… yes, yes it is. oh wait… they call it “volunteering.” But is it volunteering if you feel coerced or guilted?</p>
<p>Sorry, I just need to spew. I’ve had an awful week at work. Personnel problems, boss problems, employee problems… oh, yea and problems getting the work done. But my dept did a great job anyway and it would all be ok if just one of my many bosses would have at least acknowledged the hurdles that we (me) overcame. bleh.</p>
<p>I could retire at the end of the year and have a pension of about 20% of current salary. But, I just can’t figure out how to pay the bills or what new career I could launch that would bring in anywhere near enough to fill the gap.</p>
<p>Ok thanks. I feel better getting that off my chest.</p>
<p>Did anyone see the P&G commercial… to mom’s? Watching all the little kids do olympic sports… well, I totally welled up. </p>
<p>Pretty awesome little show tonight (a little long - and I really think they need to keep speeches to a minimum as I kept thinking the oscar music was going to que).</p>
I have an older son with AS. (He graduated from college in 2008 and now has a GREAT job with the federal government as a Computer Scientist.) </p>
<p>Interestingly, I posted the same question on a message board for parents of kids with AS, and there was no response whatsoever. ? I’m thinking that parents of these kids are too caught-up in the day-to-day lives of their families, and aren’t thinking ahead. It’s similar to parents of kids in elementary school not often think about the challenges of middle school or high school for kids with AS. Parents assume that the experience they have now with the AS diagnosis in schools will remain the same. Perhaps they will. But I’m not sure how the future public school students with AS will be served without the diagnosis. </p>
<p>I found this article about the changes in the DSM having effects on special education services:</p>
<p>Regarding the Asperger’s label - From what I’ve heard, the move is so it’s easier for Aspies to get special ed services, esp in California. Rather than taking away the diagnosis, why not just make the CA schools give special ed services to Aspies?</p>
<p>What I like about the label is that people are finally getting that there may be a reason why the local “odd ball” is odd. I like having positive Aspie characters in TV shows and movies. Awareness is great. </p>
<p>Most people think of autistic people as either never talkling, or like Rainman. If an Aspie is given an “autistic” label, won’t teachers just think “oh no he isn’t”?</p>
<p>But with all of that said, I know that the accomodations that my son has needed at school have not been academic. I think the accomodations most kids need are more social and organizational. They need to be allowed to read a book at recess rather than “playing” with the zero friends they have. The teacher needs to make sure that when groups are bieng chosen for a project, the Aspie kid is a part of one. The kids need help recording assignments and remembering to turn them in. A sensitive teacher will handle all of this without a legal mandate to do so.</p>
<p>My understanding of the proposed DSM change in autism/Aspergers is different than missypie’s, though I admit I am not fully informed about the issue.</p>
<p>As I understand it, this is driven by the science rather than the politics. Researchers believe that Aspergers is just one end of the autism spectrum, and there is no clear dividing line between Aspergers and non-Aspergers autism. They think it doesn’t make sense to label just one little section of the autism spectrum.</p>
<p>I live in California. My son never went to school, but I have several friends with Asperger sons. The Aspergers label has been enough for their kids to get special ed services. I get the impression that parents of Aspie kids oppose this labelling change. And it is just a labelling change. Aspie kids will still have the same strengths and weaknesses if they are relabelled as autistic. They will still need the same accommodations. </p>
<p>I don’t feel strongly about the matter, but my gut instinct is to oppose the relabelling. When my son was finally labelled Aspergers last summer, things fell into place and I was able to gain a better understanding of what I had always known about him and why he behaves the way he does. Because Aspergers is a somewhat specific diagnosis, much of the advice and analysis I read was applicable to my son’s situation. Autism is so much broader that if he had merely been labelled autistic I would have had to wade through a lot of discussion about problems he doesn’t have. Of course Aspergers is just one piece of my son’s personality, but still the label is a handy shorthand for communicating with professionals and other Aspie parents.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Certainly a sensitive teacher will handle all these issues without a legal mandate. Unfortunately insensitive teachers will not, and a lot of insensitive teachers are out there teaching. I had all the problems missypie lists when I was in school (the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree) and no teacher, not one, ever handled them.</p>
<p>Interesting, the Aspie/autism conversation caused me to think about my father and as well about me. </p>
<p>I’ve never known exactly what the labels mean, but my father was a brilliant physicist (an MIT physics professor who, like my father, was a National Academy of Sciences member told me that my father was one of the smartest people he’d ever met and I, as a former Harvard professor who has had the opportunity to meet lots of smart people, would say the same). He was a lovely man but missed all social cues. He did not know when people were interested in continuing a conversation and would go on and on in conversation with various fixations (Unix in the old days, numerical methods for complex problems, taxes, …). At his memorial service, people joked about it in an affectionate way (getting trapped in a 2 hour conversation about something they didn’t care about at all) but would his behavior be characterized as Aspie? He really liked people and I think wanted to be social but did not know how to connect or read cues.</p>
<p>I remember having few (typically no) friends in school – I never got the tools although I think I always had an interest in making friends. I remember in my first year of college deciding that I was going to learn social skills and writing a letter to one of my roommates saying that I was going to do so. He wrote back saying that (I remember only vaguely) that I was probably the only person he’d ever met who would decide to do that and if there were ever anyone who could succeed at it, it would be me. I worked at it and one year sought help. Some of what I did is amusing looking back on it, but it was quite effective. No one now would know that I was painfully shy and didn’t know how to interact with folks. I’m not Joe Social and still find some situations awkward, but I can start up conversations, meet people, make friends, etc… I have a few very close friends and an active social life (that comes in part because I married someone with oodles of social skills). I think I have the tendency to go on and on about topics that interest me, but I can read the cues of disinterest and can stop (when they collapse in a heap, it’s time to stop). I wonder if I could earlier on.</p>
<p>woody, back to V-Day. ShawWife is away and you had suggested that she really wanted a present other than the expensive and hopefully beautiful flowers. In my typically male way, I asked if she’d like anything and she said No, she just wanted us to do nice things for/with each other. In the literature about happiness, it turns out that things don’t make us happy but that experiences we share with others do. I think instead of a present, I’ll schedule a weekend away. </p>
<p>One interesting thing that we’ve been seeing is that couples who are friends of ours who have been married 20 to 30 years are splitting up or having major-league problems. One friend, whose two daughters have graduated from college and gotten married, recently told his wife he wanted a divorce. Since she had a medical issue a few years ago (she’s pretty well recovered by now), he’s been fanatic about exercising and I wonder if he wants to have a life as a younger man (with new younger exercise-oriented wife)? I don’t think there’s a woman yet in the horizon, but who knows (he’s very well-known and it would be hard to keep it secret). Another couple, both high-achieving professors who had seemed a great couple, split up now that their youngest is a college sophomore. Not sure why, but we just found out and will I’m sure hear the story. This one was presented as more mutual. We met them when our sons were in pre-school. A third couple was a little different. The woman had major early successes in her artistic career and then plummeted and is pretty much ignored and has been, since I knew her, self-absorbed and selfish. Her husband, who made a lot of money, was doing all sorts of things to make her happy. new house, new studio, doing a lot more of taking care of the kids, lots (and I mean lots) of household help paid for by him since she doesn’t earn much money, … . I never thought she was nice to him – always complaining (e.g., about having to take care of the kids on the one day per week that she did it, or so it seemed). He started going to yoga and meditation classes in addition to heavy cycling and a neighbor apparently targeted him (thought he was the man of her dreams and decided to leave her husband for him). She started signing up for all of the classes and weekend retreats and lo and behold ended up in bed with him. I think he was thrilled to have someone tell him he was handsome and wonderful when his wife was always complaining. My male friends are generally pretty successful in life and those who divorce typically end up with a (typically adoring) younger woman, but in this case, I don’t think she was a younger model. He told her and she went and talked to the neighbor and then went to her husband and told him she’d been a lousy partner and, if he would stay, committed to try to change. He did and she did. She surprised and impressed me. </p>
<p>Sociologically, I think this is sort of interesting. In an earlier era, most men at that age would be looking for retirement in 10-15 years and wouldn’t have an incredibly long life expectancy. Now they can expect to live 25 to 35 years and are healthy and there does seem to be a surprising amount of divorcing. </p>
<p>I don’t think ShawWife worries that I’ll be looking for a younger model but it did cause both of us to think about the importance of making sure we do stuff together and keep the relationship strong.</p>
<p><a href=“getting%20trapped%20in%20a%202%20hour%20conversation%20about%20something%20they%20didn’t%20care%20about%20at%20all”>quote</a> but would his behavior be characterized as Aspie? He really liked people and I think wanted to be social but did not know how to connect or read cues.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>I wouldn’t presume to diagnose your father. But the behavior you describe is very typical of Aspies: not being able to see social cues and talking on and on about a narrow interest that listeners do not share. Aspies are socially isolated (when they are) more typically because they don’t know how to connect socially, not because they don’t want to connect socially.</p>
<p>Having few or no friends because you don’t have the tools is also something very typical of people with Aspergers. Nowadays, a good intervention program will explicitly teach those tools to children. </p>
<p>It’s funny, I can remember years ago arguing online with people who opposed homeschooling because they thought that students need to go to school to learn how to interact with other people. I always replied, not all students learn to interact by interacting, and schools don’t explicitly teach interaction. So students who go to school, but can’t manage the social situations, will just have a worse and worse time as they get older. Why would I want to send my child to school to suffer? Back then I knew intuitively what is now well understood-- some kids just don’t get it. You have to teach them the “hidden curriculum” of social reality explictly, though everyone else just picks it up by osmosis.</p>
<p>While I agree with CF about perhaps not forcing social interactions via school. They still need the skill set, or at least recognize the importance of it. Granted, I don’t have a child with these difficulties, but I did have a kid who just wasnt very coordinated and would have well preferred to keep his nose in a book. It became important to us to expose him to many situation that didn’t come easily to him. To throw a few mountains to climb in his path in order to teach him resiliency, determination, and the reward of effort. If we had left him to his own devices, he might never have learned to be willing to take a risk and in that, risk failure as well as success. So… while homeschooling might have fit your child academically, I do hope you availed him to any and all social groups that so many homeschoolers seem to have access to. Locally, I know they rent gym space and have sports leagues, field trips and special speakers through a consortium of home school partners. Just saying, just because it was less painful for a kid, doesn’t mean it was the good or right way to handle things. I honestly think you need to take on things that don’t come easily. Otherwise… how do you learn perseverance? </p>
<p>H and I went for a walk around the lakes and are taking in an early movie/late lunch/early dinner. So I have to go blow dry my hair. And I agee with Shawbridge, I’d much rather my husband take time to spend it with me than hand me a bracelet and go back to work. Of course, the bracelet’s nice as well. I am NOT a fan of flowers. Lots of money and they die.</p>
<p>woody, I don’t know – don’t know if she has left her husband or not – but apparently my wife’s friend has a kid who is in the same grade as the neighbor and the kids are friends and used to get together for play dates, so I gather it is pretty awkward at this point. </p>
<p>I give my wife’s friend a lot of credit for realizing that, although her husband was wrong to have an affair, she was largely the cause of his being even open to it. [He seemed like a fabulous husband to me and made the rest of us look bad for years. Thank heavens for his indiscretion. … ] It does go to the point that even at our age, males don’t have much of a clue socially and the females who are paying attention seem to.</p>
<p>Modadunn, I feel the same way about flowers, but for some reason, ShawWife loves them. I buy flowers every time I go to Costco. I figure that you don’t buy presents to match your interests (I don’t even notice they’re there until they block dinner conversation) but for the other person’s interests.</p>
<p>CF, well, I will say that I really worked on the hidden curriculum. Some of the stuff I did is, in retrospect, a bit hard to believe. It is also hard to believe that people cooperated. What makes it hard to believe is that once you are over the hump, you realize that other people come by the same things by osmosis. But it really worked for me. </p>
<p>I’m sure that you are right that homeschooling could give one the opportunity to teach the hidden curriculum. Public schools could, I suppose, teach the same thing as Moda suggests, though they certainly did not do that for me. I was not happy socially until college. I remember arriving at my Ivy League college and saying, “Wow. There are people like me here.” </p>
<p>This conversation is stirring up really old memories and causing me to reflect. I haven’t thought about this in years. Even though I found people like me as a freshman, I didn’t have tons of friends freshman year and had never dated, and that summer was when I decided to learn social skills. I was probably less isolated my freshman year because my school had just admitted girls and at way less than 50/50 so many males with normal social skills were without dates. Anyway, my sophomore year, I remember another sophomore girl asked me for help in some course (I was known as one of the smart kids you could go to if you were having trouble figuring stuff out in the hard courses). She was nice, pretty and popular and would have had no trouble getting dates/male attention. I don’t remember how it arose, but I think I was helping her a couple of times a week. I have no idea what possessed me, but I told her at one point that I didn’t know what you did when you dated and I asked her essentially to teach me about courtship rituals and sex. Not sure how I phrased it, but I remember her smiling and saying, “Well this is a first.” I don’t think it hurt that I’m tall and was a varsity athlete and in very good physical condition and she basically said yes. Probably just what the textbook would say, but she started slow and made the hidden curriculum explicit. No emotional attachment on either side, but she told me later that that it was an amazing experience for her because she had a willing student who was trying to do everything just as she liked it. I’m sure that I approached our sessions – first her course, then mine – with the same earnestness and the same intense desire to succeed that I applied to everything that I chose to do. She broke it off when she started to get involved with another guy but told me that the next girl was going to be lucky (how I found my first girlfriend is another deficient social skills story and whether she was lucky is an open question, but we went out for a year). In hindsight, I can’t believe a) that I asked; or b) that she said yes (and now understand why she was so amused at the start). </p>
<p>I had forgotten all of this stuff. I had to teach myself all of kinds of things. I hope that they have better ways of doing it now. I suppose the good news for mothers of boys who don’t get the social rules is that I turned out pretty normal (though I have had a lot of help from women over the years – lots of funny and perhaps instructive stories). Perhaps surprisingly, I chose an area of work that does at times involve reading cues about social behavior (though more analytically than interpersonally) and I’m actually pretty good at it.</p>
<p>I see people break up after being married a long time too. Sometimes i did wonder what it will be like when my D2 goes to college. but H and Ihave spent alot of time together through all of this and we still like each other. for a while there I felt like the dog just pat my head and walk by. but I think long relationships go in cycles. I dont think I always a ppreciated him as much as I should but I can say the same of him towards me. I agree I would prefer the time as opposed to a present. One thing i do know if you love someone you should tell them, life is too short and you never know corny I know…P.S. we just get cards</p>
<p>Hi DTE! I hope your vision has improved. I remember a quote from John Bayley (sp?), husband of Iris Murdoch re: “working” at a marriage. He said it made it sound like such a boring job! I kindof agree - never did like that work at the marriage thing. OTOH, his wife was spectacularly unfaithful, so who knows? So I agree with you DTE - relationships go in cycles, hopefully the 2 of us are on the same page most of the time. I can take the pat on the head thing as long as I also get the…well, you know…</p>
<p>Back to V-day: I give a card, H makes reservations for dinner. He said not to eat too much tomorrow during the day - I wonder what kind of restaurant it could be…
D is now officially part of a couple. I wonder if they will celebrate V-day. On the other hand, maybe I don’t want to know.
S has (had?) a GF. He said he might break it off with her this past week. I was thinking of suggesting that this week might not be the best time but I decided to keep my mouth shut.</p>
<p>DH and I will skip the presents, but we’ve been doing things together all day. Nice. Tomorrow he is planning to cook a special dinner of trout marguery (sp?) which we first had on our honeymoon … 31 years ago. </p>
<p>We thought that eggson and GF broke up recently, but when when asked about a visit this weekend, he sent this text: “It’s Valentine’s Day. I’ll be busy.” This is not sufficient info for a nosy mom, but I’m trying to resist interrogation.</p>
<p>Hmmm…we also got a long phone call today (Saturday) rather than the normal Sunday afternoon phone call. I didn’t think to wonder (or ask) why, but I never put that together with Valentine’s Day being tomorrow…hmmmm. (Inquiring minds want to know, but are unlikely to find out anytime soon. )</p>
I am NOT a fan of flowers. Lots of money and they die.</p>