Could It Be Aspergers?

we're going to focus on Asperger syndrome it's a very much a trendy term and we now know that autism spectrum disorders and Asperger's is part of that affects one in 68 children so if you're at a school divide the number of children registered there by 68 will tell you how many aspis and that's the term I going to use it's a very positive term our ASP is actually originally coined by those who have Asperger's syndrome themselves and if you're not a speii you're called neuro typical and neurotypicals have their own problems too and to be honest my main concern is not a Spurs it's the attitude of neurotypical z' to someone who's different that's my concern now if we're going to get changes in slides that's it I'm going to go through what are the characteristics we look for there's a textbook called dsm-5 which goes through it in detail I'm a great fan of Harry Potter I would like a sorting hat so you just put the hat on instead of Slytherin or Gryffindor it says a DD o DD ASD trouble is there's too many D's in life and you get a kid who's got multiple diagnoses usually done in a very negative way from the child's perception but if we look at the criteria that's it right first of all people with ASD have difficulty understanding other people and that's their biggest challenge in life neurotypicals are born pre-wired to make friends read a face socialize it's what they go to school for not to learn they're there for their friends and to play and socialize with them but there are some children teenagers who are not so good at socializing and son with Asperger's can socialize incredibly well but it's exhausting and they do it by intellect and analysis by intuition and for many typical kids socializing is energizing for these kids it's exhausting now the first thing we look for is deficits in social emotional reciprocity the balance and there seems to be two groups there's one group that there's a group of kids playing over there and this kid says I don't get it I don't understand it I prefer Lego or minecraft and become social engagement for this group my definition of ASD is someone who in life has found something more interesting than socializing but have to be with social zealots so they are withdrawn isolated highly conspicuous but then there's a second group who see all the socializing go right okay and instead of being introverted and withdrawn they're motivated and intrusive right okay and they join in you do this you know that no are tell the teacher etc and I described them as Italian drivers because they don't read the signals as I'm looking at you your faces are traffic lights if you smile an odd green light I keep talking if you've got amber light slow down not speed up if you burst into tears red light stop but they don't see the no tailgating signs or men at work signs and keep interrupting you and they're highly motivated and intrusive and abrasive and annoying to others because they don't read the signals and become very upset when it's pointed out the mistakes they've made so for this group they want to socialize but they're incredibly clumsy when they do now the next one is deficits in nonverbal communication that is the ability to read faces body language tone of voice and express those accurately themselves and especially the ability to express feelings because often when you have a person with Asperger's and say what are you feeling now or what were you feeling when you threw a wobbly or whatever it was they say I don't know come on you must know you can tell me every dinosaur in the Jurassic period what are you feeling now I don't know I'll now complete the sentence I don't know how to grasp the many thoughts and feelings in my mind hold one identify it and explain it to you in speech so you'll understand so there's a major difficulty converting thought and emotion to speech but not in the arts in the ability to sing in perfect pitch to create music to take photographs and so they can get their personality and inner world through drawing music and the arts more than speech the next one is devoted in developing and understanding relationships from classic autism of not really bonding with mom as much as you'd expect but then this is the kid who's desperate for friends and they say how do I make friends and how do I keep friends and when I say the teenagers it's how can I get a girlfriend could can I buy one and I say no it's illegal although I must admit I could make a fortune running a dating agency for aspis and and their mothers would pay me a fortune for them to leave home and get married and so that mum can have a life now so it's understanding relationships it's friendships typical kids on a beach on a summer's day never met each other just very quickly they make friends playing together it's done and the kid with Asperger says how do you do that what signals say I can join in what can I say what can I do so all those theatres are confusing nothing to do with intellect it's social understanding that's it now the next one is restrictive Oh hate the terminology this is academics for you saved in words that nobody can understand makes you seem intelligent okay they like routines they don't like change there are certain words that provoke quite severe agitation no weight change and not fair strong sense of social justice and so for this individual they don't like change the unexpected and surprises they like routine and consistency and when there is a change they hit the panic button but it's a life of predictability is the one that they seek now another component is highly restricted fixated interests now yes when they're young Thomas the Tank Engine it's not in the diagnostic criteria but they become incredibly knowledgeable in the volcanoes minecraft I could have made a fortune if I don't actually a lot of Minecraft Pokemon and the other games are actually designed by ass-kiss yes they are because they speak the ESPY language and all the aspas are entranced by it from Steve Jobs to Bill Gates to all that group so there is an interest it may last hours it may last decades they collect information they have a phenomenal knowledge of it they're a walking encyclopedia but at school they're being taught lessons and I'd have to explain like I did this week as one teenager said why am I having learn Pythagoras's theorem which i think is the square on the hypotenuse is equal to the sum of the squares on the other two sides I can remember it I was drilled it but from the moment I finished high school I have never ever used it and many with Asperger's say what you're teaching is a waste of time and it is but they want to know about their special interest the next area is sensitivity to sensory aspects of their environment now that can include auditory and when I talk to the teenagers and I say which teachers do you like or not like they say I hate teachers who shout and so sometimes they don't want to go into the playground not because of the social component but the kids shouting to each other running fast and they might bump into you or not liking a birthday party because there's are balloons that could go pop so not only are they confused in the social minefield of the day they also have major problems of sensory sensitivity it's tactile as I walked across from the hotel to here there are a lot of kids going off to prestigious high schools and I find it amazing that young men wear shorts because I come from England I think it's really quite weird however they're wearing ties now for those with Asperger's they can't stand things around their neck they don't like labels they have that tactile sensitivity it's visual I hate mrs. Smith why because she wears bright clothing and it just blinds me teenage ass the uniform is black or all grey not emos but why have colors I don't know how they go I don't know what to wear I'll just wear black and I also paint mrs. Smith not because of what she wears she makes me want to vomit what you mean she makes you want to vomit she smells of coffee or her perfume makes me retch it's also position of the body and movement skills they can be notoriously clumsy may not respond to pain as you would expect and may have a problem of a mind-body division that some times may self-injure at a mild level just to get their brain in connection with their body now the next criteria is symptoms must be present in the early developmental period but may not become manifest until social demands exceed capacities in other words for some of the kids in the early days of preschool primary school they can hold it together they can socialize but when they get to high school the wheels fall off because life is now much more complicated they're trying to relate to toxic teenagers the most dangerous creature on this planet for Greg forget great white sharks trying to eat surfers the most dangerous creature is a pack of teenage boys neither use nor ornament now what it means is that it's later on and often in classic autism diagnosed in the preschool years Asperger's boys primary school girls high school and beyond but more on that in a moment but in other words the symptoms may become apparent later and must cause clinically significant impairment in everyday functioning and that's where we've got to make a decision does this aspect affect that person's quality of life in childhood often very much now we do have what we call the Asperger personality type and that is as the Americans would say the apple doesn't fall far from the tree and in half the cases we see there is a parent with similar characteristics interestingly the highest level of having kids with ASD if we go through the professions yes engineers are more likely to have kids with ASD even more likely are those in information technology even higher is Accountancy but the Supreme profession for having ASD kids is medicine Wow interesting but that's another topic there are personality characteristics it's always been here we've now got a label for it but what I'm now finding that early diagnosis and early intervention means that sometimes I'm actually removing the diagnosis interesting I saw a child when he was seven years old classic Asperger's soaring for two years helped him with the development of friendship then didn't see him usually a good sign and then at nineteen his mum said could you see him because got a problem he's always wanted to be a police officer and he has a strong sense of social justice has done all the first aid courses and he really is dead set on being a police officer you make a great one however he's asked be an honest to a fault and on the application form wrote down that he had to the police academy Asperger's they immediately sent back a letter basically saying how on earth could you think that a person with Asperger's could be a police officer which is interesting because you then have to dismiss about fifteen percent of police officers from the dog squad to the scene of crime investigators so she said he has no idea what to do could you see him because he's very depressed in the whole process so in walked a very tall nineteen year old young man and I was chatting with him and I thought where's the Asperger's I can't pick up any Asperger's all right I'm going to redo the diagnostic assessment and on a particular test you need a score of 65 or more to have Asperger's and his score was 42 so I wrote a letter to the police department saying he had Asperger's he now no longer has sufficient to be of clinical significance in his daily life please consider him like any other citizen and he got in he I was so delighted but then I got a few months later an email from him saying thanks for the letter Tony I got in but I didn't like it and he said so I've joined the Navy and I'm really enjoying it because I'm doing radar but then I saw him a few months ago and he said yeah but I didn't like the living onboard ship in close proximity to so many people so I'm now at university studying psychology yes because he started observing and analyzing people since he was three years old it was his only way to cope so longitudinal studies clinical experience suggests about 15% move out of autism spectrum disorder now there are certain language components it's the pragmatics the art of conversation it's monologuing it's not seeking repair of a conversation and the prosody is odd for a lot of the kids when they're young she's an interesting fact that the United States has fewer kids with Asperger's than it should because it exports them to Australia because many of our kids speak with an American accent because they learnt language not from parents or peers but television and dora the explorer' so they speak with an American accent and can be so pedantic and they give you so much detail and spotting errors they are great at spotting errors and if you make an error they are the first person to point out your mistake and you should be grateful to them for your mistake being pointed out high school principals don't like it when their grammar is pointed out to the whole school but there are legion sees to the tooth and Catrice and correction to look at patterns and look at inconsistencies that's one of the reasons they can be so good at maths because the maths is study of patterns and they are good at studying patterns motor clumsiness can include being clumsy unusual gait handwriting skills but in team sports they can be the last to be chosen because they're poor at ball sketching skills and so on which means that often their preferred activities are solitary sedentary activities often looking at a screen and handwriting waste of time nineteenth-century skill you know just teach them to voice record no when I'm doing the diagnostic assessment I'll show pictures hmm and I'll ask what do you see now a kid with Asperger's and looking at this photograph may say she's got a hand in the jar her brother has his hand on her shoulder or look and there's some plants crawling down the wall under some magazines I wanted to throw neat rain magazines whereas typical kids would say she's trying to steal a biscuit or a cookie he's standing guard squeezes her arm if anybody looks she'll drop it they won't get into trouble but if she gets one he expects half because he helped her out you see it's not wrong it's looking at the world through different eyes and not really working out what may be going on this one kid with Asperger's what's happening he's giving her the ball the little girl have a look at her face how's she feeling uh happy why is she happy because he's giving her the ball whereas typical kids will say she can't understand why her brother is giving her the ball but she hasn't seen the broken window since she holds the ball she did it not me she's got the ball or a kid with Asperger's looked at that for about 10 seconds silently and then he said no way no way would a ball that size make a hole that small that is physically impossible we do little stories for kids under the age of six you have a little kid wanting a birthday present mum and dad say what would you like for a present she says a puppy comes the morning of her birthday she's so excited that she's going to get a puppy she walks down into the kitchen there on the kitchen table next to mom and dad is her one birthday present you think he's my puppy she opens the box and inside she finds books lots and lots of books no puppy she's so sad her mum and dad say did you like your birthday present and she says thank you it was a lovely present why would she say that and the kids with Asperger's go of course the books are about puppies that's why she said thank you and I thought yes or why would you say thank you for a present you don't want it's understanding those sorts of components and conventions now there are associated features I'm going to explore a bit about those a little bit further on but there's one thing that those with Asperger's are really good at worrying they have a high level of anxiety routines and rituals are imposed to reduce anxiety also an unusual profile of learning there are the hype electic or dyslexic they learn to read early on to read about their special interest in mathematics they are supreme at mathematics or they're hopeless at mathematics in drawing they draw in photographic realism or they have made a difficulties and they sing in perfect pitch hot like Susan Boyle however I had one kid whose teacher said oh he's lovely and he loves music so I sing to him but he keeps hitting me why does he hit me when I'm being nice to him because you sing off-key and he spots errors they make great conductors to spot errors and great engineers in sound recording in studios because they can spot all the errors now one of the things we're starting to become more aware of is the diagnosis in girls and women the invisible end of the spectrum and they tend to fly under the radar of diagnosis because girls are smarter and more creative than the boys in coping with difference remember I said for reciprocity ignore turn away or intrude girls do the third option and that is okay I don't get it but I'm going to watch I'm going to observe who's popular Rebecca what does she wear pink right I'll get pink pink pink pink pink what did they talk about Barbies I'll get a hundred Barbies how does she talk what does she do and they observe analyze and imitate it's a much more intelligent way I don't get socializing so what I'm going to do is see what's going on and copy it so it's the observation analysis and imitation now when they do that imitation for a brief while cured of autism but what she's got is a surface sociability but a lack of true social identity the real self must be hidden I can only be the person that people want me to be and who they want me to be is so successful but I'm ashamed of the real me it's masquerading it's watching and imitating to conceal social confusion and this causes anxiety and stress and a lack of said self identity but one of the other issues can be in the teenage years she's either a goody two-shoes puritanical nun that the teachers want the whole class to be or she says right I watched I analyzed I imitated I walked the walk I talked the walk walk talk talk the talk and walk the walk but it didn't work so I'm going off the rails and she goes through because it didn't work well promiscuity at least I'll be appreciated body piercing yet I'll give it a try so one of the issues he's going to be going off the rails because of non acceptance and inconspicuous when they are the goody two-shoes can lead to suppression of many issues they often read fiction because when you read Harry Potter you can work out what people are thinking and feeling because Hermione in the text is her thoughts and feelings and Hermione is the quintessential ASPI girl at Hogwarts she has no female friends many of the girls with Asperger's when young are tomboys or they watch soap operas home-and-away your neighbors because they've got friends and can't fit in watch TV as your documentary of socialization but prefer to be with boys than girls girls are [ __ ] mean two-faced and horrible boys are fun engaging and I like to be with the boys because I get there jokes and we both like engineering Lego and mathematics they decode social situations by doll play so what she does is not Barbie getting married or Barbie doing retail therapy this Barbies teacher this Barbies her these Barbies are the kids and she replays decodes and unpacks the events of the day by playing with Barbie or rehearsing what to say or do tomorrow she may also because she's isolated as far as she's concerned I haven't got any friends that's okay I'll have imaginary friends and imaginary friends are better than no friends and I had a 12 year old girl that mum said she's developing puberty and schizophrenia and I said I'll see her as fast as I can but what you mean by schizophrenia she's hallucinating in class she talks to someone called Sarah who does not exist but she talks to her allowed in class unaware of the effect is having on other people I think she's developing schizophrenia she's hallucinating so I saw her as soon as I could when I said when you're talking to Sarah what do you talk about and she said well we we talk about the new school principal and the new rules and we talk about what books were going to need for homework and and we talk about our favorite TV shows and I said to Mum that's not schizophrenia that's loneliness she's escaping into a world of imagination and she is so good at it of off with the witches and fairies she becomes a successful author and I know a number of authors with Asperger's syndrome that that's their way of coping is to escape into an imaginary world you have control of that is safe and you can explore many aspects of life also girls tend to apologize boys rarely so if boy makes a social mistake he gets upset agitated he's referred for a diagnostic assessment the go go oh I'm sorry I'm so sorry I hurt your feelings and because she apologizes so profusely we forgive and forget but there's a pattern developing she didn't know or she appeases mum says you going to a birthday party with your cousins you really don't know them will you be okay yes now you haven't seen them for five years you sure you'll be okay yes and and I got to take your brother to football I'll be gone for two hours you sure you'll be okay yes but look at the terror in her eyes she's much braver than the boys in trying to cope with that situation and she's a chameleon trying to adapt to different situations now there are going to be problems that develop early on in life and sometimes what will happen is that that may be camouflaged or not understood and the diagnosis occurs later in life in the adult years sometimes with a relative diagnosed sometimes it's mom or dad and as far as the wife is concerned this explains my husband this is white like hugging a block of wood this is why he's always criticizing me and never compliments me etc so it can explain a lot of marital issues but it may be a cousin it may be a niece or nephew diagnosed with Asperger's that leads to a diagnostic pathway sometimes it's underachieving in employment because they can't get through the job interview because of difficulty with social skills or difficulty getting relationships and when the teenagers say how do I get a girlfriend you don't do that I say quite clearly look as far as girls your age teenage girls are concerned you're not cool you're not trendy you're not risky you're not the type they go for because you're honest trustworthy and reliable wait till they become maternal in their mid-twenties and then they'll fall in love with you because you're a virgin now another issue can be depression there's a high level of depression depression occurs for a variety of reasons one is you may early on seven or eight years old realize I'm different and then think I'm defective and the seeds of depression can be there because of rejection from your peers and you're different and so are bad but when I analyze the inner thoughts and feelings by those with Asperger's who are clinically depressed what is your opinion of yourself and so on I go wow you didn't get that belief about yourself from your parents you didn't get that from your teachers you got that from other kids the tragedy is it was said so often you started to believe it and you didn't have friends to contradict it so the fret not do the acquaintances the rejection the bullying and teasing is a major cause of depression another cause of depression in this group the third one is energy depletion because they use up so much energy managing anxiety processing facial expressions that they are exhausted and that long-term energy depletion leads to depression fortunately we have programs to help on this how long have I got two minutes oh ah a little bit longer all good right so depression can be an issue for this group and to be honest when we've looked at I hope there aren't any psychologists in here because actually what we found was far better than psychology was physical exercise is better than Prozac and it's better than CBT but these guys don't get much physical activity really is very important so depression we also get referrals for relationship problems but there are other issues too and that is the high levels of anxiety if not dealt with effectively may lead the person and this is what happened with our son who Asperger syndrome our son with his social difficulties at high score there's two groups good guys bad guys good guys closed door won't allow you in unless you're socially skilled bad guys will always accept you as long as you're stupid silly risk-taking easy to see that's the group he went to onset of puberty had a huge tsunami of anxiety coming in but that group when we look at Williams anxiety from 0 to 10 he was always 8 9 10 8 9 10 that group were the first group to use alcohol and marijuana for the first time in his life 2 0 and 1 and so self medication with alcohol marijuana then it went on to speed ice and morphine and a whole range of things and he's been a drug addict now for 15 years if I could have turned back time I'd have tried to get to him before he tried alcohol and marijuana that has been his downfall despite his intelligence he's unemployable he's been in and out of prison getting money by armed robbery and so on for his drugs so what we're looking at is how do you get down to there by yoga and meditation and I'm encouraging schools today to teach kids in general yoga and meditation to experience that and for the aspects who value intelligence highly it's not that you'll feel good it makes you smarter because if you are calm and relaxed you make good decisions if you get upset your IQ drops 30 points yes it drops into the normal range so we also have issues of gender identity some of the boys will say girls are nice girls are kind girls have lots of friends girls have adopted me if I became a girl would I be cured so they think about changing gender or we had one girl who desperately wanted to be a boy and then we worked it out she was bullied and teased honestly by a group of girls who didn't bully the boys so she thought if I become a boy I won't be bullied and teased we also get Asperger's in anorexia nervosa and there it's a special interest in weight numbers control kilojoules and so on or I prefer to remain gender neutral and a tomboy I don't want to develop femininity anorexia nervosa will inhibit that we also get how do you react being different and the kids know that they're different when they're seven or eight years old and when they're seven and eight years old they've got one of four alternatives to internalizing to externalizing one internalizing I'm different defective depression and the self-esteem of aspis is based on the criticisms of peers with an absence of compliments so the whole self-esteem is based on criticisms from their peers and that leads to depression another group will escape into imagination and that imagination is so vivid so real so enjoyable and they are unaware of the context that they engage in conversations and interactions with what appear to be hallucinations that they diagnosis schizoid personality disorder there's another group who do the opposite of depression and their way of self comforting and cope coping with life is to recognize their intelligence and see themselves as superior to others this is what I call the Sherlock syndrome Sherlock is classically ASPI not a sociopath it's is very good at logic because he's asked me he doesn't get emotions so he denigrates them as of no great importance and this group comfort themselves with their intelligence and are diagnosed with narcissistic personality disorder because that's a way of coping but another group will copy and imitate and they win an Oscar for their ability to take on accents and to be successful in acting okay so is it Asperger's hopefully you now know whether it is okay thank you you

Channel: Generation Next

Views: 762,862

Rating: 4.8850365 out of 5

Keywords: Generation Next, mental health, youth, wellbeing, Asperger's Syndrome, Aspergers, Autism, Autism Spectrum Disorders, ASD, youth wellbeing, youth mental health, practical strategies, early intervention, learning supports, diagnosis

Id: LuZFThlOiJI

Length: 34min 1sec (2041 seconds)

Published: Sun Jan 24 2016

Reddit Comments

[u/morethanweird]

Tony Attwood is amazing. He's one of the most recognisable experts on Aspergers/Autism. There's also a video where he talks specifically about how it presents in girls, there can be some differences.

[u/MrJKeating]

I’d like to know more about the topic of medical professionals being the most likely groups to have kids that are on the spectrum. It’s an interesting point but I could very well imagine that it’s just more likely for their kids to be diagnosed than in any other group.

[u/dunnobeentold]

Ok. Now I understand why I have such a hard time with our adopted son. He is also an aspie!

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[u/[deleted]]

Ugh...for the last time: MANY OF YOU WHO ARE ON HERE WITH AUTISM SPECTRUM DISORDER ARE NOT CLASSIC AUTISM! Do you use PECS to get your point across? Are you nonverbal? Are you not able to live independently? Are you not able to hold a job? If the answer to those all is NO, then congratulations! You're not severely autistic! And it also means you don't have the right to talk about psychological solutions to help those who are beyond mild on the spectrum.

[u/_Expeon]

Do some more research, take it at your own pace

[u/_Expeon]

I’m praying for you guys too