What AS traits do you or did you have?
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What AS traits do you or did you have?
| Thu, 03-16-2006 - 10:47pm |
Hi all,
I know we all go on about our husbands having their fair share of AS "quirks" but I know I have my own too. I was thinking back on when I was growing up and some of the things I did that I now know are sensory or motor planning related.These are the things I have in common with Jake.
I sucked my thumb while rubbing my nose with my finger everyday until my late teens(Please don't tell anyone LOL)The funny thing is when Jake had a pacifier he would rub his eyelashes while sucking on his nuk.Auditory problems have always been an issue for me. I can't stand anyone chewing near me and I hate waiting in the doctors office because people usually sit and read magazines and I HATE the sound of pages turning.
I also realised when Jake started PT that I have low muscle tone(I'm slouching as I type this).When I was younger I would tire so easily playing sports my mom just thought I was being lasy. I now watch the same thing happen with Jake because of his low tone.Sports in general were not a good thing for me because I was and continue to be so clumsy. I have a million scars from all the times I fell as a child.
School work wasn't a problem for me until around age 10 when Math suddenly became like a foreign language. I can still remmeber what we working on(long mulitiplication) because I never seemed to have a good grasp of it after that. Of course, History and spelling were my best subjects because all you need for that was a good memory!!!!! I don't know what has happened to me now because my spelling is awful and lets not even talk about my memory!
Socially I was very shy and continued to be until I reached my twenties. That's where Jake and I differ, he hasn't got a shy bone in his body and I'm glad.What traits do you share with your child?
Teresa
I know we all go on about our husbands having their fair share of AS "quirks" but I know I have my own too. I was thinking back on when I was growing up and some of the things I did that I now know are sensory or motor planning related.These are the things I have in common with Jake.
I sucked my thumb while rubbing my nose with my finger everyday until my late teens(Please don't tell anyone LOL)The funny thing is when Jake had a pacifier he would rub his eyelashes while sucking on his nuk.Auditory problems have always been an issue for me. I can't stand anyone chewing near me and I hate waiting in the doctors office because people usually sit and read magazines and I HATE the sound of pages turning.
I also realised when Jake started PT that I have low muscle tone(I'm slouching as I type this).When I was younger I would tire so easily playing sports my mom just thought I was being lasy. I now watch the same thing happen with Jake because of his low tone.Sports in general were not a good thing for me because I was and continue to be so clumsy. I have a million scars from all the times I fell as a child.
School work wasn't a problem for me until around age 10 when Math suddenly became like a foreign language. I can still remmeber what we working on(long mulitiplication) because I never seemed to have a good grasp of it after that. Of course, History and spelling were my best subjects because all you need for that was a good memory!!!!! I don't know what has happened to me now because my spelling is awful and lets not even talk about my memory!
Socially I was very shy and continued to be until I reached my twenties. That's where Jake and I differ, he hasn't got a shy bone in his body and I'm glad.What traits do you share with your child?
Teresa

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Edited 2/19/2008 9:26 pm ET by littleroses
This is just such an excellent discussion! I was thinking the other day how watching Ian and Duncan is making me relive some of my childhood and how stressfull that is because it's often very uncomfortable and the memories are not pleasant.
"Empathy--I think I do feel empathy, but I also think my son David, who is dx with AS, does too. I don't buy the whole bit about people with AS not feeling empathy. I think it just sometimes seems that way." Before I forget I soooo, soooo, soooo agree with this. We all in my family definitely have empathy. If someone gets hurt, it's almost like we feel the pain ourselves, and we definitely identify with it. I cry when I watch emotional movies. Certain emotions we may have trouble with empathy in certain situations, but with effort I think we can empathize -- we may just have to manually process it, rather than have it be automatic.
Growing up I have a very vivid memory back to the age of 3 or so. As a preschooler I was very prissy and particular about my clothes. I liked to wear dresses and skirts that had a lot of flair because I liked to twirl and have the skirt go out. I did that constantly.
I ate my grandmother's bagonias as a preschooler. I vividly remember picking out the smallest ones that hadn't completely blossomed and were still closed. I liked them best if they were still closed because they had a sour taste. I can even visualize the purple "veins" in the petals and the yellow inside part.
I climbed things and had several pieces of furniture fall on me. I even have a scar under one eye where I was gashed by a dresser.
When I was in elementary school, my father, who adopted me when my mother and he married when I was nearly seven, decided that my picky eating habits needed to stop. Frequently I would end up throwing up in the bathroom because he would insist I eat something that I hated (like canned ocra -- honestly, who eats that stuff???) or runny scrambled eggs. Finally one night after the eggs we were sitting on the sofa and he kept saying, "Mind over matter, mind over matter..." I threw up on the carpet because he wouldn't let me go to the bathroom. He cleaned it up and that was FINALLY the last of his insistence on my eating yucky things. I think he had the right idea of desensitizing me, but the execution was rather draconian.
I have major sensory issues. I hate crowds and noise and become very irratible when I have to be in a crowd with my kids because watching them and making sure they are safe and with me while my senses are so overloaded is very taxing. I also don't do well with lots of interruptions and I get distracted very easily. When I'm getting ready for company and need to complete household tasks on a timetable, I get very irratible with my husband and kids because they interrupt me, and most of the mess is theirs. I resent having to clean up after other people, even my kids. Their stuff invades my space, LOL!
When I was a child I drew pictures of young women's faces all the time. I had sketchbooks and sketchbooks of faces. I was a very good sketching artist and loved shading and creating form and the intricacies of visual texture and lighting.
I dissociate sex and love, which I think most women do not do. To me, sex is sex and love is love, and they don't necessarily go together. HOWEVER, I am very monogomous. I have never cheated on my husband and it is completely against my code of ethics. I can't even cheat in my dreams. When I wake up from such a dream I am plagued with thoughts of, "OMG, HOW am I going to face my children! How can I face my husband???" Then I remember it was a dream and I'm drenched in relief that I haven't committed a heinous act of adultry. Weird, huh?
Socially, I have spent an enormous amount of energy trying to figure people out. I analyze and re-analyze what someone said in a given situation and what their motives were, the context of the conversation, their intonation and body language. I think I have become accutely aware of reading people and I'm better at it that a lot of NTs because I've spent so much time analyzing. And then there are those situations where I get it completely wrong and on occasion it has created a very uncomfortable scene. On those occasions I find myself completely bewildered by someone's reaction. That happened a lot when I was a teenager, and teenagers still baffle me. They are completely illogical and their motives are very hard to figure out. They are totally inconsistent. Consequently, I am very cautious in social situations. But if I need to be in one, I deal okay. The last really uncomfortable situation was when I tried to join a group of moms standing outside my son's school. I was standing among them and I literally had to crane my neck up to see them. A few were literally 10" or more taller than I am (and I'm not particularly short, rather average). I thought, "I must be standing in a little low spot or something." So I looked down to see where I might move and realized that I was standing on level ground with these five women. I started to feel feint and had to look down because if I looked up at them I started to get very anxious and to feel feint again. I don't know if anyone else has ever had that kind of physical response to a social situation, but it really shook me.
I don't think I offend others so much anymore, but again, after having done it so many times and going back to analyze what happened, I've sort of learned how not to offend. I am much more likely to BE offended and think to myself, "Now, how could they not know that was a really snide thing to say or do..." I have to remind myself that other people probably don't spend so much time analyzing their actions and words.
I am also very introverted. I need to be alone to assimilate my day and I prefer one on one relationships to large groups. I need that in order to connect with someone -- I'm not a gal who has 15 friends. I usually have one or two close friends, and I'm close to my mother.
I think it is very interesting to share these experiences and I really wonder if autism is *really* on the rise or if we are just beginning to realize how many people are actually on the spectrum. I see it everywhere and recognize AS traits in so many people in my "social circle" -- of course, I'm sure I gravitate to other AS people because people tend to get together with people they have things in common with. Anyway, thanks for bringing up this question. I've really enjoyed reading other people's posts on this.
Kelly
Good topic... could be a long post for me ;)
Ever since ds got the AS dx, I've known I had alot of Aspie traits. This sometimes gives me hope, and sometimes despair. Hope, because they're mild now, and despite them I managed to go to college, get a good job, get married and have a family. Despair, because I hate to think that ds will suffer some of the pain and self esteem issues that I did growing up, and still do even as an adult.
As a kid, I was know to "have a bad temper". I definitely had alot of tantrums at 5, maybe 6. Kind of stopped when I got to school, although I've always been emotional. My parents are both dead now, but they used to joke about my bad behavior at church, and it forced them to change their "usual" pew from the front to the back. But they were always able to laugh it off, they rarely got upset with me. Now I realize how hard that is to do. I feel bad that I never got to thank them for that. I also wish I could ask them more about what I was like at 5,6,7.. to compare with Ryan.
I definitely have "sticky thinking". I often get stuck on a stupid topic or issue. When we went to the dev ped with Ryan, and she talked about getting stuck on things, dh just laughed, because I do this all the time.
I have alot of problems with social skills. This is ds's biggest problem, too. I worry about how I can help him learn a skill that I have never really mastered. For example, the thought of calling another parent to set up a play date, it scares me to death. I'm really kind of a loner. DH is the social one. Evelyn, I think I been taking the same invisibility potion you are.. I have the same experience with strangers. When I got out with my sisters, they have all these conversations with people, and like Evelyn says, that never happens to me.
I'm kind of uncoordinated, and was never good at competitive sports. I tried and tried to play basketball and volleyball in grade school, and I practiced SO hard, but the games made me very anxious, and I just couldn't think straight. I would just kind of freeze.
I have a great memory. This skill was extremely useful in grade school and high school, where I could memorize the most useless info, (history dates, science terms) the night before a test and ace it. No one ever picked me first for their basketball team, but I was a ringer in Science Jeopardy or Geography baseball, lol!
Like alot of others, I have sensory issues.. some smells really bother me, like strong air fresheners, or even strong perfume. Also, bright lights and some noises (like ds, I hate the sound of the vacuum cleaner. Luckily, dh likes to vacuum.) Just like ds, I love spinning and swinging, we love amusement park rides! We did the Wilburger brushing with ds. He loved it, and I would have liked someone to do it to me!. I used to ask him, "how about brushing mommy's arm now?"
'm a geek, but unfortunately before it was cool to be one. Although not necessarily an Aspie trait, I do know alot of geeks who have Aspie traits. I have a BS in mech engineering and computer science. (I date myself here, because they don't call it comp sci any more!). I now work for a software company. I often wonder what some of the people I work with, or went to college with, were like at 7..were they quirky like Ryan?
This WAS fun to think about!
Kate
Evelyn:
You sound a lot like me with the small talk thing. I hate it myself. I really, really like to get to know people and do the in-depth talking but that doesn't happen very often and only if you get to know someone and get past the small talk which I have trouble with. I don't desire it too much, but sometimes I think something is wrong with me.
My ex-landlady had get togethers and Bible Studies and I saw the women parking across the street and when the got out of their vehicles and saw her, they would chat quickly and start talking. I came over shortly and just did a shy hi and that was about it. Maybe my looks turn people off. I am not saying that with you. But I don't appear, I don't think, overly confident or approachable.
I'm with you though, I don't stand in groups doing the small talk thing. My DH said that most times in small groups, people chat but don't go in-depth and they might say things just for the group and sometimes stuff just to make other laugh or whatever, but I can't seemt to do it or enjoy it so they leave me alone and consider me to be quirky. I feel better with a group of men usually.
So, you aren't alone on that first one. It does seem normal for others, but not for me either. I wouldn't know what to say and some of that talk I am not interested in. I usually like to talk about stuff others don't talk about and vica versa. I feel out of touch. I am glad you posted that; it makes me feel better. I hated myself for this fact for a long time.
Debbie
I think we ALL have quirks :)
That's great though when we can laugh at ourselves. I am still working on that. I am more hard on myself and on others too.
I would love to read your article; it sounds like a great subject.
My DH is sensitive and caring, but doesn't have a clue on social issues. But he the thinking type and I am the feeling type so we have different social ideas. I get upset when people don't say hi, good-bye, good-night etc., but he doesn't think anything about it. He doesn't see why you should say goodnight or other protocal type things, but to me, they are a necessity and nicities and I had to train him LOL.
That's interesting that you think it is weird and my DH thinks that is just him and nothing weird about it, but he does try. And my DH doesn't ask questions either. He says he can see how I am feeling etc. and says I will just tell him when I want too, but I liked to be asked :) I guess he doesn't think much about it or how others are feeling and doesn't want to use his low energy asking.
I have a lot of issues, but socially I follow the rules, but I am very shy and quiet and rarely offer much.
This is all very interesting. Thanks for opening up. You remind of my DH and talk about it though, my DH doesn't like to use his energy for that.
Debbie
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