Prepare to enter the wild and wooly world of an adult with Aspergers Syndrome, a form of autism characterized by intellignce, quirks, social difficulties and downright strange and oddish behaviours.

People with Aspergers generally are high functioning in everyday life but have great difficulty connecting with others due to the inability to read faces, body language and subtle verbal clues. They also tend to take words literally and have a hard time multi-tasking.

Oversensitivity to touch (clothing has to be soft and often the tags removed), light (do not leave home without the sunglasses), sound (loud noises and noisey places are avoided), taste (many Aspies have quite a limited diet and are frequently very picky eaters) and smells makes the everyday existence more of a challenge.

Fasten your seatbelts and come on in...
To find out more about what Aspergers is..please check out my earliest blog entries

Thursday, December 17, 2015

Thoughts on "Into the Wild", Teenagers and Aspergers, When a Grown Child Suddenly Leaves

So many thoughts and much to say.
I finished the book, Into the Wild, and am thoroughly convinced, in my humble opinion, that Chris McCandless had Aspergers. My latest "red flags" are; He possessed grand-grandiose spiritual ambitions; He had a need to test himself in ways "that mattered"; an idealism that defies logical explanation; great concern for social issues such as racism and world hunger; inherent mistrust of government and laws; moral altruism- a challenge in which a successful outcome is assured, isn't a challenge at all; He measured himself and those around him by an impossible rigorous moral code.
I know of one other that has these qualities and I have some as well, though mine have been tempered by poverty and age.
  There are grown children who up and leave their loving parents, with little or no warning because they have to follow their own inner, innate desires. For awhile, after my son left a day after he announced his departure, I felt that I must have erred, made some mistakes and was a bad parent. It took months before I realized that his leaving had Zero to do with me and everything to do with his spiritual calling.
Let's face it, when the baby bird leaves the nest, caring parents get worried sick. We need to trust that we have done all we can, loved them enough, provided guidance by demonstration and example, and provided them with a firm, steady base upon which they can spread their wings...and yes, fly off and far away.
There is no fault, no blame, no guilt...some children turned adults need to get away and find out what they are made of without any support, money or phone calls from mom. Moms need to realize it's okay to grieve, feel lost and be concerned with their offspring, their fledgling and just trust that this is the way it is. An adult has the right to live their own life, as they see fit without any advice or assistance, if that is what the adult child wants.
My son returned after seven months abroad and about a dozen, one sentence text messages. I'm fairly confident he will leave again, abruptly, at the time of his choosing and off to places he will not share. I'm learning to be okay with that.
His life is just that, his life to live.