Well, I recently got really fed up with the excuses, so I made a list of Rules and Regulations for our household. They apply to everyone, including me! It's all about bedtimes, computer time, chores, how many times I call them before they get a "black mark" to their names etc. They helpfully reminded me that I had forgotten to mention TV watching times!

So I think predictability is important. Especially for an Aspie kid, but it works well for everyone.

But the difficult thing is not drawing up the list, but applying it in practice and being very consistent about it. So far, so good!

Hmm, if I had kids...I am not sure I could handle monitoring many children at once, all the time.

That's why I don't bother with wanting or having kids, another reason is cause I'm still one myself. Sometimes I wonder if I'm ever going to grow up :/

At 51 I still don't feel older than about 15.  
While I can handle adult situations efficiently, there's still a lot of the child (or teenager) in my outlook on life.  I don't think we actually do grow up, not exactly, we mature, but I hope we always retain that childlike wonder that seems to be an inherent part of our mindset.
Alison

It's the "child-like wonder" which can inspire inventiveness in the face of "mother necessity".  Think "Thomas Edison".  Think "Thomas Jefferson" and his perpetual passion for Monticello.  The list could go on.

^I concur- I feel like a 10 year old still (and look like one too). I don't like people treating me like I am stupid though (for example, though I am childish, my thought pattern is generally very complex and I can process a lot of information quickly). Yet, because I look, sound, and react like a child (when excited or something), people tend to treat me as if I were simple-minded. I actually did not know I was smart until I was about 19...and even then, I didn't believe it at first when my mentors would tell me.

This post was last modified: 06-26-2012 03:58 AM by sg1008.

Yeah I know how that feels.

I pretty much still have this childish laugh that I hate so much, and it sounds so much like one too. Every time one of Dad's friends refers to me as "the child" it makes me want to scream my head off. Allison may want to retain the childlike wonder that's a natural part of the aspie mindset, but I hate it sometimes.

Yes I have been called cute when I act like a child, but when people actually start referring to me as one, it tends to piss me off.

sg1008, when I was 15, I was always told I was cute but stupid. And this was mainly cause my voice literally sounded like the teenage Anakin Skywalker from Star Wars Episode II. I had that kind of idiotic sounded voice back then.  

But at least I still got my intelligence right ?

It depends on how they measure intelligence.... sometimes the intelligence is there and they seem to not notice it....

You're so right.  I sometimes think we spook them, I really do.  So long as they can deride us as stupid, then we're not so scary.  But if they acknowledged that many of us are actually at least as smart as they are, then they worry about our potential.  And perhaps they might begin to feel a bit scared about having treated us so badly in the past?  So long as they can keep us in some sort of subservient retarded position, then they're not so scared, since we can then be disregarded as being just some sort of disabled form of them, rather than a new and functional species of human.  And our numbers are rising.  That's another thing they are becoming so uneasy about.  
Alison

My husband is the most intelligent person  know. As he is so quiet not many people realize it, but he has an amazing brain. He also has a lot of responsibility at work. Yet he can be childish too, in a cute and funny way.

I don't see why it would be necessary to be "grown up" all the time; I think one would miss a lot of fun. And it has nothing at all to do with intelligence!

I get people disbelieving that I was Dx'd autistic at age 3 because I seem so "normal" now.  Well, that was probably the result of a  combination of being so-called higher functioning and having had 40 hours/week intervention via Lovaas back in 1974/75.  Thing is, you can make a person behave however you want if given the right circumstances (ex: Milgram obedience studies); but I don't believe that learning how to behave normally really addresses the underlying reasons for the behavior.  It's sort of like treating a severe headache with pain pills that mask the symptoms, but don't really get at the root cause of the headache--a band-aid solution at best.  Besides, I'll never know how I might have turned out had I just been left alone.  It's an unanswerable question.  The worst part isn't the ABA, but not being told the truth about it for years.  That is the part that hurt the most for me.  

Regardless, I hate it when people (professionals) don't believe me.  I have documentation. Apparently, I don't fit their schema of what a person Dx'd with autism looks like as an adult (intervention or no intervention).  
Lydia

Is that necessarily a bad thing? Or is it just a miscalculation?

Same goes for zealots that you thought we're your friend....