Aspies For Freedom

What an interesting, lovely and talented bunch!

My six year old son is smart and articulate.  He loves singing and dancing, putting on shows when he puts on different accents for the different characters he plays, he has a huge interest in everything and how it all connects up.  His memory is amazing and he is loved and cared for by all his schoolmates.  He enjoys his drama class and had his first swimming lesson yesterday.  He has a good ear for music and languages and will succeed at whatever he puts his mind to!  My beautiful, gorgeous wee aspie boy!  Wouldn't change him for anything!

I think so long as he knows that its cool to be himself, then he can survive a lot. Bullying is something that pretty much every Aspie faces in our lifetime; people are cruel at times, but equally, they aren't the kind of people you would want as friends anyway, now are they?

Thats just my 2p on it. What I've learned (the hard way) is that its far more important to be you and live your life. Not what everyone else is doing. School is a horrible place for having to be someone else. What I'd say is encourage him never to lose sight of himself, and how wondereful he is, and how special he is to you, and not to supress what he is... but equally, as a parent, encourage him to recognise that there is a time and a place for some of his stims (i.e. spinning). Thats very hard - one of my stims is that I make up other languages and think/talk about other worlds that I make up in my head when I can't deal with being on campus. Or when I'm upset. I sometimes stare at the sky and want to go home (yes, I'm one of those Aspies with the 'alien' complex ) - but then I think about how fantastic it is that I can be the anthropologist on Mars. I mean I'm 24 now and its taken me a long time to get to this stage, but thats with no family support. I find it really helpful when my friends just laugh if I start spinning or flapping - in fact my girlfriend and I were just in a mall having coffee, talking about Aspergers, and she decided that she was going to start spinning too. In the middle of a busy mall on a Sunday afternoon! And that made me laugh and feel so much more comfortable that I can be around people who don't give a toss, and actually think its kinda cool. She said that she thinks its cool that I can amuse myself for hours with my own little languages and stims - she burst out laughing when I said I was Saturn midspin. Randomness rocks! There will be kids out there who think its cool that your son is a true individual, but for the meantime, be that cool person who doesn't supress him, but guides him.

Also, you can be an Aspie and cool. Genuinely cool people don't give a toss what others think of them. The problem is that a lot of younger Aspies feel that because they don't wear the right clothes, have the right hair and say the right things, that they're not cool. Being in fashion and being cool are closely related but they are not the same thing. You can be in fashion, say and do all the right things etc but be a bumbling mess inside that is full of insecurity over how fat you look, whether or not Brad likes you yadda yadda yadda... but cool people, genuinely cool people, just get on with life. I think that with encouragement, support and respect, a lot more Aspies would be a lot more happy. We rock (sometimes literally ), really, we do.

Our eldest who is 6 has been having a lot of problems with nightmares etc at the moment but we are really proud of him as he won ‘Star Of The Term’ in his school class.   He was presented with a certificate and prize in the school assembly, he looked very proud of himself and I was proud with him to with a tear in my eye.

Our youngest who is 3 has now learnt to trace over his name a nursery so he is very proud with himself as are we.

I am proud of both our boys.  

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