Milli - have you seen this???

[gynwhyver]

Millie:

I ran across this site and immediately thought of you:

Ask an Aspie.com:

http://oddsandfriends.typepad.com/askanaspie/

You would be a perfect person to contribute to this site!

Take care,

Gwyn

[milivica]

Oh too funny!

I'd like to look up some answers sometime, bet I won't agree with much the resident aspie says - I seem to be at my highest level of olympic arguing with other aspies for some reason.

That is a riot, well, there goes my career as 'the' Ask an Aspie go to girl aye?

[milivica]

Ok, bearing in mind I have only read a little of the site, I get the feeling this aspie is loaded with skills that 'appear' nt externally, and devoid of much function. The answers on ABA especially, reflect that. You cannot 'preach' teaching function. This is yet another case of an aspie that has a compass, but still no sense of north - and is not truly aware of it.

From a personality standpoint, I think this aspie is awesome, not on the 'hate all nt's cause they're evil' bandwagon that I sooooo do not like. Love the light humor, openness and realization that nt parents of asd kids are trying darn hard and with all their love, I enjoy the respectful answers given. No bashing of nt's asking questions cause they love their kids....again I only read a little of the site.

In terms of listening to the aspie advice on that site, based on the little I read, you should turn out what appears to be a fairly 'nt' kid, that will be a stranger to himself but know what others expect. Again, based on the very very little of what I read. My only problem what so ever with the aspie on that site, again, is there is no focus on developing function - skills come naturally when you have function, never worry about 'skills'.

Last week, Vince was in the book store with his therapist. I came there with Carmen, after picking her up from camp, to see Vincent perfectly behaved, reading quietly, content...I mean everything I dreamed of for so many years. I looked at Vince, at the therapist, I said, "I can remember when this would have been enough for me". See, this is not enough for VINCE, so it is not enough for me. Vince was parallel the whole time, never sharing emotion, but willing to (some poster on this site put it so well once) willing to shove factual weather stats down our throats weather we were interested or not...this is not enough by a long shot, for Vincent. Not for me as his mother, I don't want only this for him. I recall a moment in the Helen Keller movie when the Dad said 'Cleanliness is next to Godliness' and the wonderful Ann Sullivan said, "Cleanliness is next to NOTHING..." and she went on. Well, that's how I feel about good behavior, compliance, all that is memorized and not intrinsically felt.

While it is fantastic to be able to finally go places with Vince, and I'm loving that for sure....now that I have it I want more - I want to go places WITH Vince, like I do Carmen or a friend, I want he and I to be able to borrow the other's perspective, share emotion, intrinsically share with me. I'm not sure if I'm wording it all right, but I hope you all know what I mean. It's not enough he has a memorized road map of how to behave, I want his human direction to be intrinsic, EMOTIONALLY based cause he understands the perspectives of others and can make decisions based on his own sense of compassion and empathy and the ability to imagine himself in another's position so can imagine how they feel, not cause he gets a sticker when he keeps his clothes on when looking at the giant anatomy book.

Ok, well, the aspie on that site sounds wonderful as a person, salt of the earth, very respectful and compassionate and knowledgeable - but, seems to be missing the 'core' in the answers I read. I love the idea of advocating support for asd's, don't love the idea of enabling people to make uninformed myopic decisions for themselves, weather aspie or nt. Hope that all made sense, the dogs are getting silly here, my legs are the obstacle course and hide out.