Tag Archives: Asperger’s Syndrome

People who live in glass washers

Posted on by November 14, 2011

Yesterday, our friends Linda and Robert, and their son, Kristopher, came over for dinner. We fed the kids first, while we grownups visited in the living room, and then the adults took over the table to eat. Our kitchen table is too small to seat seven, and it works better for us to eat in shifts anyway. If we feed the kids first, then their demands are easier to meet, and they aren’t interrupting the adults.

After everybody went home, Scott and I put the kids to bed, and Scott started a load of wash. As he was getting ready to roll it over to the dryer, I heard him say, “Jessie, dearest?”… Read the rest

Caroline rides the wind

Posted on by February 25, 2020

The first time Caroline rode her bike, she crashed, and thereafter felt as much terror about it as she did kite flying. Possibly more, because this involved her personal body. Part of the problem is that she’s just too big for conventional training wheels. Even her modest weight (I don’t think the child weighs 70 pounds) bends them up and out of shape when they’re attached to her 22” bike. (At eight, she’s skinny and tall.) Plus, a 22″ bike doesn’t balance well against those tiny training wheels. It’s too tall. They make training wheels for special needs kids, but they’re quite expensive, and the real solution is that she just has to learn how to ride the thing outright.… Read the rest

Let’s Go Fly A Kite

Posted on by February 25, 2020

Caroline: Oh I’m fish, fish, fishing for a fish.

Sam: Oh I’m fish fish fishing for a Star Wars.

Guess who had which kite?

They were birthday presents from last week, when Caroline turned 8. I do get my kids gifts on the each other’s birthdays. They’re too young to combine intellectually understanding “It’s not my birthday” with “I didn’t get any presents at all today”. In any case, I got the kites back in May, intending to give them out for Sam’s birthday. But they sat forgotten for so long that it wound up being more sensible to hand them over in September.… Read the rest

The broken arm entry

Posted on by February 25, 2020

As many of you know, Caroline started a new school last fall. In fact, most of you know this story in its entirety, but it deserves to be written down, and Brenna’s post over at Suburban Snapshots got me thinking about it. I’m going to give the back story pretty briefly, largely because it’s worth of its own entry, but also because it will turn any post it dominates into a rant. The short version is that the school Caroline had been attending went from awesome to sincerely dangerous in the space of a summer. The new teacher in what would have been Caroline’s classroom declared that my daughter couldn’t attend without an aide (she doesn’t need one), and generally proved to be a fucking lunatic.… Read the rest

Ballet Camp

Posted on by June 15, 2011

Caroline spent roughly an hour of one recent afternoon confined to her room sobbing, “I want pretzels. I wah-hant pretzels”.

It would be funny if it weren’t so common.

This is the downside of Asperger’s for us. The fit has nothing whatsoever to do with pretzels, although Caroline would certainly argue otherwise. This is about sensory overload, and it happens pretty much every time we introduce her to something new. This time, it’s a combination of the Orlando vacation and ballet camp. She’s been in ballet for three years now, but this is her first summer experience. It’s a three-hour long program three days a week, and in addition to dancing, the “campers” do crafts and watch movies.… Read the rest

American Idol

Posted on by July 12, 2023

Before the blog post today, let me guide you to a website created by my publisher:

http://throwaway-lines.com/

More about that another time, but you can currently find my bio by hovering over the word “Fiction” and clicking my name.

 

I tried out for American Idol (and is it any wonder that this particular bit of reality-showdom has an acronym that could also mean artificial intelligence?) while we were at Disney. It was a total lark, and I didn’t get past round one, and there are no photos for evidence, but I actually learned some fun stuff in the process. For one thing, I had no idea that Disney owned American Idol, though Walt’s company owns the rest of the planet not bought up by the Sam Walton family, so I shouldn’t be surprised.… Read the rest

Treasure Island

Posted on by May 21, 2011

   Well I made it. While I did not reach page fifty, I got through the end of chapter eight and thereby completed the material I had assigned myself for the week. Naturally, I got behind in my grading, and I came across potential blog topics just begging to be written daily. But I got my characters out of their conversation without bogging the plot down too much more, and ended with a chapter from the killer’s perspective. Whee! I can resume my blogging now, as The Bitch has been appeased. (Should I be at all concerned that her urgency turned out to stem almost entirely from desire to get to that “killer’s perspective” chapter?… Read the rest

The Programmable Child

Posted on by February 25, 2020

We call Caroline our programmable child. It’s one of the more amusing aspects of her Asperger’s Syndrome, for her as well as everyone else.  Given the right mindset or circumstances, she can be made to repeat a message almost verbatim. It’s fun to set this in motion and watch the reactions. Mostly, I program her with information for her teachers and appropriate responses to social situations. But sometimes, I’ll stick a phrase in her head and wait to see when I hear it back again. And, on rare occasions, and always by accident, others will program her with messages for us, not knowing the power they have unleashed.… Read the rest

Picky Eater

Posted on by August 27, 2015

 

Caroline is a world class picky eater.  Food is more about texture and temperature for her, and if an item upsets her sense of either, she’ll vomit.  Too hot? Instant gag. Too meaty? Immediate puking.  So we only introduce new foods with extreme caution and feel elated when she sticks to something easy for awhile.

It’s not like she’s the only picky kid on the planet. Or like Scott or I either one was exactly open minded about foods in our own childhoods. But, as with everything, Caroline has her own sense of how to do things right, and the list of things she won’t eat far outstrips the list of things she’ll even consider edible.  … Read the rest

I Love You Just The Way You Are

Posted on by February 25, 2020

 

 Caroline has Asperger’s Syndrome, a form of high functioning autism (HFA) that is probably going to be lumped together with other forms of HFA in the next edition of the big-honking-medical-text-where-they-catalog-the-nomenclature-of-such-things (DSM V).  Whatever. Autism is a spectrum anyway, and describing it is difficult.  It would be easy to let this post devolve into a discussion of what does and doesn’t work in treatments, and which classic Asperger’s symptoms Caroline does and does not have, but that would quickly turn into a conversation about autism.  This post isn’t about autism. It’s about Caroline. Who has Asperger’s syndrome.

So to start out with, I will just say three things.… Read the rest