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http://www.aspennj.org/plank.html
My Experience with Asperger Syndrome

by Alexander Plank

I am 15. "Having a dash of autism," is how author Uta Frith describes
individuals with Asperger's Syndrome (AS). Twenty to twenty-five people
per 10,000 have AS. I am using my own experiences with having Asperger's
Syndrome to help people better understand me and other people with this
mild form of Autism.

Hans Asperger, an Austrian pediatrician, published the first definition of
Asperger's Syndrome in 1944. He identified a pattern of behavior and
abilities that he saw mostly in boys. The pattern included "a lack of
empathy, little ability to form friendships, one-sided conversation,
intense absorption in a special interest and clumsy movements." (Attwood
p. 11) Asperger called children with AS "little professors"
because of their ability to talk about a subject with such detail.
Asperger died in 1980 before Asperger's Syndrome became widely
recognized. The first person to use the term "Asperger's Syndrome"
in a paper was Lorna Wing. Her paper was published in 1981. Asperger's
work was not internationally recognized until the 1990's.

Asperger's Syndrome is a form of autism. People with AS usually have
normal or above normal IQ's. AS is a pervasive development disorder. It
is described as an inability to understand how to interact socially. Many
adults with Asperger's go without being diagnosed. In fact, an estimated
30-50% of adults with Asperger's have not been diagnosed. People usually
are not diagnosed with Asperger's until school because of social
interactions.

AS is usually diagnosed by a psychiatrist. The first stage in diagnosing
the syndrome is using a scale. In the scale numbers are used to describe
how frequently certain AS characteristics occur in a person. The second
stage is diagnostic assessment, which usually takes an hour or more. In
this second stage, a clinician examines the behavior of the patient. The
clinician also looks at information from parents, teachers, and therapists.
Other skills examined include language, speech, learning ability, and
movement.

People with AS have certain characteristics. The characteristics which I
will discuss below are defined by the American Psychiatric Association in
the fourth edition of its diagnostic manual, Diagnostic and Statistical
Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV).[1] AS comes under the category of
pervasive developmental disorders.
A. Qualitative impairment in social interaction.

Examples of impairment in social interactions include 1) problems with
non-verbal behaviors such as eye contact, facial expression, body posture,
and gestures; 2) failure to develop age-appropriate relationships; 3) lack
of interest in sharing interests or achievements with other people; and 4)
lack of emotional or social reciprocity.

People with AS usually do not talk with people. They talk at people.
Conversations are usually one-sided. People think that AS people are
being rude on purpose. People with AS are not trying to be rude. They do
not realize that they are doing this. They do not understand how people
interact.

Children and adults with Asperger's Syndrome tend to interrupt
frequently. They have a hard time understanding social cues that tell them
when it is their turn. Sometimes they see two people talking about
something they are interested and automatically think its ok to just join
the conversation because they know about the subject of which the people
are talking.

AS children frequently make comments that are very irrelevant. This is
because they blurt out the first thing that comes to their mind. People
think that this is odd, but is important to remember that they do not
understand that it is important to keep some of their thoughts in their
heads.

B. Restricted repetitive and stereotyped patterns of behavior interests and
activities

Examples of this include at least one of the following impairments. 1)
Preoccupation with one or more patterns of interest, which is abnormal in
either intensity or focus. 2) Apparently inflexible adherence to routines,
which are non-functional. 3) Stereotyped and repetitive motor mannerism
(hand or finger flapping or twisting, or complex whole-body movements) 4)
preoccupation with parts of objects.

Another characteristic of a person with Asperger's Syndrome is that he or
she frequently gets obsessed with things for a certain amount of time and
then move to another subject. My friends call these obsessions
"phases" because I grow out of them. They who have Asperger's
Syndrome spend all their time doing things to satisfy their interest in
their obsessions. As I mentioned before, they talk at people. This
talking at people is most frequently seen in conversations about the
subject that they are obsessed about.

In addition to being obsessed about something, Children with AS tend to
make rapid movements with parts of their bodies. When I was younger, I
always spun my arms, flapped my hands, and twirled my body.

C. The disturbance causes clinically significant impairment in social,
occupational, or other areas of functioning

The biggest problem for me is that I am misunderstood by teachers and other
people. They think I am purposely being rude, or being lazy (as with my
handwriting). They think that I don't care about things. I do care. I
just don't understand. I am not trying to make people's life hard. In
addition, I misinterpret things that people say and get my feelings hurt.
People don't see a wheelchair or any other visual sign of disability so
they assume nothing is wrong with me.

D. There is no clinically significant general delay in language.
E. There Is no clinically significant delay in development of
age-appropriate skills (other than in social interaction).

Other Things Associated with AS

Another symptom of AS is motor clumsiness. AS people tend to bump into
things more often than other people do. In addition, handwriting can be
terrible. Their handwriting usually consists of mixed cursive/print
letters and mixed upper/lowercase letters. I have such bad handwriting,
that I have to carry around a keyboard and a palm pilot to type most of my
assignments. This "different" handwriting is caused by Dysgraphia.

Some people with Asperger's Syndrome demonstrate extremely odd posture.
For example, I usually sit with my feet on the chair. I sit like that so
much that I don't notice it. In fact, I am sitting on my chair in Indian
style as I write this.

Also, AS causes a person with it to be irritated by certain by certain
sounds, textures, tastes, and even smells. I sometimes get so irritated by
the high-pitched whistle of my computer monitor, that I want to (or even
do) scream. I hate the texture of jeans, which is why I don't own a
single pair of them. Some foods I cant eat at all. Its not always that
they taste bad but sometimes it is the smell of foods that makes me so
irritated. I can't eat Orville Redenbacher microwave popcorn because of
its terrible smell.

Another feature that has to do with hearing is the inability to focus on
something when there is background noise. I sometimes get so distracted
when I read where other people are, that I just read the words and I
don't even know what is happening in the book. I then have to go back to
where I was before I was sidetracked.

There are actually some benefits to this disorder. If you have it, you
usually are very bright. In addition, having it makes you very resistant
to peer pressure. You do not care what others want you to do if you do not
want to do it.

I am fine with having Asperger's Syndrome. If I had a choice of not having it, I wouldn't change. I like who I am and I do not want to change it. I think AS makes me a stronger person.

Ambrose,

Thank you so much for posting this excerpt from ASPEN's website. They are a very informative site and helped me a great deal when my son (now 16) was diagnosed. I am in full agreement with those who feel that every few years the medical/psychiatric society comes up with the diagnosis du jour, and they among others use it to explain virtually everything. However, I must say, upon my son's dx, that's exactly how I felt. He was previously labelled ADHD (surprise, surprise) and although he definitely had quite a few of the tell-tale characteristics of that disorder, there were definitely other things that just weren't explained by ADHD alone. I am all for trying everything else before using medication, but left with no other alternatives, we put my son on Ritalin from 2nd through 6th grade. I am 100% certain that he would not have learned even 1/10th of what he did during those years had he not been on it. When he exhibited the ability to concentrate and focus adequetly without it, we pulled him off.

Although the excerpt you posted is an excellent read on Asperger's, too many people do take most of the material out there on the subject and come away with the idea that it IS simply a matter of shyness or awkwardness in social situations. While this is a major part of the disorder, and one of it's defining characteristics, most AS people have several other autisticly related issues. (DUH, it's on the autistic spectrum for a reason) If you've seen the movie Rainman or observed the way autistics react to being touched, you know they don't react like normal people. This is called tactile defensiveness, and can affect more senses than just touch. Sight, smells, sounds and tatses as well as touch can be perceived by the afflicted person as pain. This is true in AS individuals, although to a somewhat lesser degree. Discomfort or aversion is more akin to what someone with Asperger's might describe it as. My son has several issues with touch- won't wear long sleeves, is forever hot, yet takes scalding showers and has a very high tolerance for pain. He also cannot stand food smells and will leave the table in a restaurant upon us receiving our meals.

But the social aspect of his disorder (or what ever term you prefer) is the most outward sign that he is not normal. He could talk for hours on end about nothing but movies. Typical for a teenage boy, you say? Not to this degree. He can tell you everyone in a given movie, what they've played in previously, what they're doing next, who produced, wrote and directed the thing, and on, and on.... I'd love to just have a normal conversation about life occasionally, but he's just not having it! If you were so unlucky as to unknowingly show an interest in hearing about his movie trivia and were pulled in by his tractor beam and sat there rolling your eyes in complete boredom, he wouldn't pick up on that most obvious sign in a hundred years. (Poor you) Sarcasm is a waste of good breath, and when giving instructions, spell out exactly what you expect of him or you'll be walking him through it later.

For all of his faults, (can you really call them faults when they're not his fault?) I wouldn't trade him for a "normal" teenager for all the world. This young man will get you cold drinks, wet washcloths, thermometers, and fever medications when you're feeling under the weather; will tirelessly watch younger kids for you, making certain nothing ill befalls them; come up and give you a hug just when you thought you were at the end of your rope; and makes my life as complete a joy as could ever be!

There is so much more information out there on this problem than there was when my son was first diagnosed and it is more widely recognized by the general public. Yet for every mainstream media article or show on it, I feel as though it's being simplified, and the more disturbing and autistic aspects are being gleaned over to leave most people to come away with the impression that Rush seems to have adopted: It's a shyness problem. The only problem I had when I heard Rush report on this was that if he truly has never heard of this (and wasn't just being absurd) then he might have done better to do a little research before introducing this article. From my perspective, he sounded like an ill-informed person, and this was disappointing to me.