Aspies For Freedom

hi.new to this..i am a parent of a nine year old boy..10 on the 20th..who has autism and adhd among other things..would be nice to meet other parents for chat and winge..thanks

Hi,

I am also new here and I have a HFA son who is 5yo.  I have found that this site is so helpful!   Welcome!!

Hi I'm new here too

I have two kids on the spectrum (about to be 4 and 2 years old)

This seems lieka  really nice site.

Alice

Hi,

Welcome, I have a 6 yo son with AS. I've also found this site very helpful

Paula

Hi Kezza, are you still on the forum?  

I have a 13 year old son with Aspergers.  Several other family members on the spectrum.  I feel so lucky to have found this site.  I'm learning a lot, and it's fun to share, too.

When I was 10 I was diagnosed with minimal brain dysfunction.  
Much later I was diagnosed with depression (19) and Asperger (26, 27, and 28)

I was in behavior-modification special education in Charles County MD (the elem, middle, and high school for the program are in the La Plata school district at the county seat, I was bussed from Waldorf in the north between 2nd and 8th grade and was enrolled to middle and then high school in my own school district).

The only academic deficit I ever had was being one year behind in math in 5th grade.  Mom had words about "and now you're telling me?" and proceeded to reverse that over Easter recess 1981.  She had trained to teach high school English but never practiced.  She was more than adequate with arithmetic and handled household financial arrangements.  

I was reading at full grade level in middle school, I knew it, and I knew my classmates were not.  

Shortly after being enrolled in my local middle school, eighth grade, I took the California Achievement Tests.  I scored one minimum grade nine functional equivalent, another grade eleven functional equivalent, and the remainder were grade twelve functional equivalents.   I was not motivated to achieve until tenth grade when I started to think about college (there was never a question I would attend).  Thereafter, I scored at semester GPAs of 3.5 or above through high school grades 10 to 12, college, graduate school, and a vocational rehabilitation program for community college credit, with the notable exception of being emotionally and academically crippled in my junior year of college.  

It had been a happy shock at first when one female member of our Christian fellowship, alone then among female on campus students, intervened to teach me Christianity and remind me about friendship which I had forgotten in high school (retreating from social abuse into study).  It was an unhappy shock when I started to get attached to her and, as she eventually told me, raised the ire of her first (and fortunately not last) boyfriend (she married her second, a superior gentleman to be sure, whom I was acquainted with briefly in high school and later did the local college with us- they regard me as a friend now)

Flatly stated, we don't know what is going on in a woman's mind when she breaks ranks with everyone else and does the unexpected, such as identify herself through the mail when you didn't know who the hell she was for the whole first year.   We know that unexpected prosocial behavior from a woman could mean a. friendship (what she intended) b. romantic interest (my misunderstanding) and c. love bombing as a religious recruiting tactic (it can happen and after misunderstanding the romantic I misunderstood the love bombing)

I think as Aspies proceed through college age, they give different weights to the various reasons for wanting a girl friend
1.  Feeling inferior.  Strong at first, decreases with time.
2.  Feeling invisible.  May get easier with time.  May in fact mean instead that when women communicate interest nonverbally, we would never know unless we were (VERY!) consciously looking for it (like search and rescue)
3.  Feeling lonely
     a. hormonally, does decrease with age
     b. emotionally, may be absent at first, but with an increasing number of women friends, especially the best students (possibly residence staff), one will often learn that a woman's spirit is distinct from her body and is what really matters after all.  I was well aware of this by midterms in spring semester, junior year.

Early intervention in the conscious! recognition of nonverbal signals will be most helpful at an age before most women get married for the first time (vast majority between the ages of 23 and 25 after graduation).  It could help prevent feeling invisible as well.  Books I have consulted on the subject are usually aimed at a male audience seeking causal sex, but those specific men and women have hearts in the WRONG place.   Getting into a woman's heart for an honorable reason still requires ease of reading and replying with nonverbal communication.  Kind of like the Impress-Me-Much effect alluded to by Shania Twain.  

Got the [brains|looks] but haven't got the touch
Don't get me wrong, I think you're all right
But that won't keep me warm in the middle of the night

I am willing to agree with the authors of the books that having excellent character, personality, and intelligence seems to qualify you only for friendship, which is respectable, but does not meet one's deepest emotional need.  The authors suggest that some kind of touch, a non-verbal one, is required by the woman's heart first.

Hey Kezza. You're gonna love it here.  A big WELCOME!

Another parent here.  Been around for about a month or so. Our middle child, a boy, turns 9 this week. Welcome.

er.the timestamps suggest im a little late,but welcome