Tag Archives: Musings of an Aspie

Autism / Aspergers, Reblogged

The Importance of Play

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Musings of an Aspie

This morning as I was lying on the floor wrestling with my dog for her tennis ball–complete with fake growling on my part and some real growling on her part–I realized how important play is in my life.

Still. At the age of 45.

Since childhood, I’ve enjoyed playing board games and card games, solving puzzles and competing at (some) sports. Basically if there’s a game and I can potentially win at it, or at least enjoy trying, I’m there. But I’m also a huge fan of spontaneous, unstructured, completely pointless play.

Play in its purest form.

Play that arises in the moment and leads to unexpected, unbridled fun.

Which is probably why the assertion that autistic children don’t play “right” is so offensive to me. Why have autism researchers and therapists and clinicians forgotten the meaning of play? Worse, why are autistic kids so often described as not understanding…

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Autism / Aspergers, Reblogged

Behavior is Communication: Are You Listening?

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My talking and singing to myself works like that. It annoys the hell out of some people and can embarrass my children, but these two stims are a force of nature. My medication lessens my anxiety stims but does nothing at all to my concentration, happy, silly – whatever other non-anxiety moods there are.

Musings of an Aspie

Behavior is communication.

This has become a catchphrase in the autism community. And for good reason. It’s certainly true.

A child runs from a store and experts assure the frustrated parent that behavior is communication.

A parent asks for advice about why their recently diagnosed child bursts into tears at bathtime and experienced parents nod in sympathy. “Behavior is communication,” they say.

A child refuses to eat anything but raw carrots and pancakes and the child’s occupational therapist isn’t the least bit surprised. Behavior is communication.

A child flaps at a wind-up toy that’s stopped moving and the experts . . . somberly intone that the child doesn’t know how to communicate . . . that he isn’t aware of the adults around him and is “trapped in his own world”, unable to share his joy with others.

An adult walks away from an autism researcher who is treating him as…

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Autism / Aspergers, Reblogged

Sensory Sensitivities: Understanding Triggers

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Again, Musings of an Aspie (Cynthia Kim) expresses my thoughts perfectly. I’m sitting her in my new sweater just feeling the tag in back becoming more and more painful. Why I bother to leave them on for so long before I cut them off, I will never figure out. Stubborn and determined not to let a tiny piece of fabric win over me. Silly old woman.

Musings of an Aspie

This is part 3 in a series about sensory sensitivities and atypical sensory processing. Read the other parts: Part 1  |  Part 2  |  Part 4

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While atypical sensory filtering is related to sensory sensitivities, not all unfiltered sensory data will trigger sensitivities. Remember the sounds I described hearing as I’m typing this? I’m not especially sensitive to any of them. I hear them and it’s hard to tune them out, but I don’t have a biological stress reaction to them. They’re just there and over the years I’ve grown used to having a lot of irrelevant aural data constantly pinging around in my brain.

In fact, I didn’t know until a couple of years ago that other people don’t hear all of those distinct ambient sounds when they’re engaged in an activity.

I suppose what’s happening in this case is my sensory gating is failing…

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Autism / Aspergers, Reblogged

Gender and Autism: A Preliminary Survey Post

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In my search for an understanding of what it means to be a woman with Aspergers/ASD/what-not, sites like Musings of an Aspie help me put things into perspective and at the same time meet people whose brains work like my own. This is a really great article on how one’s gender might influence how one lives Asperger.

Musings of an Aspie

I’ve been planning to write about gender and autism for a while now. Months ago, I wrote a personal reflection piece. It got two emphatic thumbs down in beta, so I let it languish in my drafts folder. Then, after some feedback from commenters here, I decided I would write a more informative companion post as context for the personal reflections, but that never happened. Then I cannibalized the personal reflections piece for something I was invited to submit to an anthology, which took me weeks to write because apparently everything takes me weeks to write lately.

Which left me still wanting to write about gender and autism here. As a first attempt, I’ve  surveyed some of the ideas that people have put forth about gender and autism over the years, starting with Asperger himself.

Note: I’ve linked to a bunch of articles in this post, many of which I…

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Autism / Aspergers, Reblogged

Invisible

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I get this feeling a lot when I am at parties with people who might be some sort of family or friends but not really close. Other people probably do not mean to exclude me from their conversation. But their conversation slowly pushes me out until I find myself feeling like an intruder. Perhaps I am perceived as one as well. I imagine I can be a difficult person to converse with as socially accepted “small-talk” bores me. Why is it so difficult to talk about heavier stuff?

Musings of an Aspie

Before we get to today’s post, an announcement: As part of the avalanche of advocacy this week, there will be a flashblog on Monday, Nov 18th. You can find the info at “This is Autism” Flashblog. It’s open to autistic individuals, parents and allies and is accepting writing, video, graphic and comics submissions.

On to the post . . .

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Sometimes [often?] I feel invisible.

I thought this feeling would go away when I grew up. Feeling invisible as a kid is normal, right? Everyone is bigger than you. Smarter, more experienced. And the ones who weren’t bigger or smarter or more experienced, were funnier or prettier or  . . . something.

I never quite understood what that something was, just that I didn’t have it. When teachers forgot my name, I shrugged and mumbled it for them. Then mumbled it again when they mistook my…

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Autism / Aspergers, Reblogged

Hovering on the Fringe

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This was me growing up. Finally, someone put it all into words. What a relief.

Musings of an Aspie

My apartment building is testing the alarm system so I’m at the park today, sitting at a picnic table, writing. It’s a beautiful day and the park had been deserted until a few moments ago when a group of kids on a field trip showed up to eat lunch at the picnic tables and play on the nearby playground.

Watching them find seats and settle down to lunch reminds me of how much I dreaded field trips as a kid. The unfamiliarity of the setting. Having to find someone to sit with on the bus. Worrying that I would end up without anyone to hang out with during the inevitable free time we were given as a reward for enduring the educational portion of the outing.

As the kids are finishing up their lunch and breaking into little groups to play football or soccer, I hear a crash. Two boys…

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Autism / Aspergers, Reblogged

Autistic as a Reclaimed Word

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What are my thoughts on reclaiming the word autistic for myself? In many ways autism is a word, but words have power. Perhaps this means that I have to come out of my autism closet and decide how I am going to define autism rather than letting the word define me.

Musings of an Aspie

Most adults on the spectrum prefer to be called autistic, rather than a person with autism or a person who has autism. The general consensus is that autism is not a separable entity. To be “with” something or to “have” something implies that we might somehow be able to rid ourselves of that thing and still be the same person, much like someone who has been cured of a physical illness.

I have always been autistic and always will be. If I was not autistic, I would be a completely different person. My autistic neurology affects how I experience the world and how the world experiences me. I am autistic. This feels very simple and logical to me.

It is not, however, always as simple for others. I’ve noticed that a lot of people in the autism community (which is different from the Autistic community) find the use…

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