I thought I'd start posting about how Asperger's Syndrome has affected me over the years. There are two reasons: 1. There has been a drama series on BBC1 about a family with an autistic boy called The a word and the first episode made me think of a post to blog about, and 2) I have started working on my Asperkids series called The Rainbow School, so these posts can be the start of promoting it.
In the first episode of The a Word, the family have a birthday party for their boy, Joe who is now 5. He hated being the centre of attention and laid on the floor. When I was that age, I didn't have any birthday parties. For two reasons, 1. I was too shy because of my Asperger's, and 2 because of my Asperger's I found it difficult to make friends of my own (one of the social impairments of AS). I also didn't go to any parties myself, again because of the reasons above.
It was only later on in life, when I was an adult and went to work, that I really started celebrating my birthday with others. I did have a party for my 18th, but I didn't mingle with my guests. I made myself in charge of the music in a corner and wanted to stay there the rest of the time.
So, there you have what I was like with birthday parties when I was younger.
If you have ASD, did you have birthday parties? If so, what were you like at them?
1 comment:
Hi Julie,
Thanks for posting about this - it's really interesting to hear your perspective. I have a son who is autistic and we find it very hard to consider arranging birthday parties for him for the same reasons you mention in your post. Fortunately his school are very happy to help and let us bring a cake and candles in for him so he seems quite happy with the arrangement but it's still hard to see your child miss out on something that other children experience a lot of.
In general, I've been following your blog for a while and I really admire the direction you've taken with writing about your Asperger's; to have an articulate and intelligent person sharing their experiences in the way that you do is incredibly helpful and more than once I've found your posts to be useful to me. I don't usually have much free time to comment on blogs but I wanted to thankyou for yours; it really is worthwhile.
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