Asperger's and Girls (11 page)

The “simple” solution is to delegate. In other words, if your daughter is eligible for vocational supports through public agencies such as vocational rehabilitation, use your working partnership to help her apply. If she isn’t eligible for public services, investigate options that may be available privately (contact your local Asperger’s or autism support agencies for names). If neither of these options is available, go back to your daughter’s high school and talk with their vocational counselor for ideas.

If you can’t delegate the job-coaching role, use your working partnership with your daughter to set up some ground rules about how involved she needs you to be. Also, talk with her about how much to disclose to employers about her social communication and regulatory challenges. Recognize that she probably doesn’t know how to approach the whole job process, other than the vague goal of “getting a job.” Set up realistic goals. For example, if she is more comfortable online than in person, she probably can’t go store-to-store in the mall asking for job applications. If she doesn’t meet a goal, brainstorm with her about what got in her way.

And, if she gets a job, talk again about how much input she wants. Then abide by her wishes unless there is some real danger involved. A case in point: When Jane got a summer job at a local amusement park, her parents worried that her “ga-ga” approach to young children would get her fired. They were increasingly concerned when Jane came home talking about how she could just “eat up” all the darling toddlers who rode her ride that day. Tempted to give the “safe touch” lecture, Jane’s mother instead asked, “Do you lift the children onto the ride?” “Oh, no!” Jane began. “That’s against park rules. We are never allowed to touch the children.” Jane went on to describe in great detail all of the park policies, rules that reassured her parents that they needn’t worry about adequate supervision.

And, if a problem arises, remember the working partnership. As with the college student, we have to facilitate the young woman’s self-advocacy rather than charging in to save the day. Listen and then ask if she would like your help.

Take-Home Tips

As parents of young adults with or without AS, we are almost constantly walking the fine line between allowing them to make their own decisions (and mistakes) and protecting them from harm. A few lessons I’ve learned from the parents and daughters I know:

• Ted Williams was “out” six out of every ten times he came up to bat. And no one has done better since.
  
• People can have fender benders and still be careful drivers.
  
• If she makes a mistake, it’s not just because of AS.
  
• If we make a mistake, she’ll still love us (though maybe not right at the moment).
  
• One child-care expert once explained that the “best” parent with the “easiest” child still makes six major parenting mistakes a day.
  
• The worst mistake is not trying.
  
• Finally, to paraphrase the Gloria Gaynor classic, “We will survive!”
  

Some Helpful Resources

Bolick, T. (2001).
Asperger Syndrome and Adolescence: Helping preteens and teens get ready for the real world.
Gloucester, MA: Fair Winds Press.

Grandin, T., & Duffy, K. (2004).
Developing Talents: Careers for individuals with Asperger Syndrome and high functioning autism.
Shawnee Mission, KS: Autism Asperger Publishing Co.

Harpur, J., Lawlor, M, & Fitzgerald, M. (2004).
Succeeding in College with Asperger Syndrome: A student guide.
London: Jessica Kingsley.

Meyer, R.N. (2001).
Asperger Syndrome Employment Workbook.
London: Jessica Kingsley Publishers.

Shore, S. (Ed.) (2004).
Ask and Tell: Self-advocacy and disclosure for people on the autism spectrum.
Shawnee Mission, KS: Autism Asperger Publishing Co.

online.onetcenter.org
(Occupational Information Network—listing of jobs and careers, along with job descriptions, educational requirements, etc.)

Aspie Do’s and Don’ts:

Dating, Relationships, and Marriage

Meet Jennifer McIlwee Myers

J
ennifer McIlwee Myers is a mature, extremely intelligent, happily married woman with Asperger’s Syndrome. She is also a terrific writer—funny, eloquent, and to the point. In her own inimitable way, she has gleefully (and successfully) ignored the accepted wisdom about what it takes for someone to be “happy.”

Jennifer was diagnosed with Asperger’s in 2002. She has a BS in Computer Science and can write a technical manual “pretty darn quick.” Her interests include Disneyland, pre-1970 horror movies, Harry Potter, and rearranging her books. She often writes and speaks on autism-related topics, and lives in California with her husband Gary.

Marriage—it is not necessary that all Asperger’s girls get married, no matter how stridently society claims it’s the only path to bliss. “Romantic” love? Reality may be quite different from the fairy tale version. Rejection? She advises not to look at it as a “setback.” Dating? Don’t be fake (you can’t hide your true self forever).

You will enjoy her refreshingly honest views on life, and you don’t have to be an “Aspie” to benefit from them.

P
lease allow me to introduce myself. I am a forty-year-old woman with Asperger’s Syndrome, and I have been happily married for twelve years. Despite (or because of) all of the issues of growing up with undiagnosed AS, I’ve learned a lot about relationships, both from locating good research and from experience.

Mind you, I made many wrong turns and massive blunders in dating and relationships over the years. What I wish to provide for you here is the fruit of those hard-won lessons.

What the AS Girl Doesn’t Need

Relationships and dating are very strange and difficult when you have AS. Dating today is an odd mish-mosh of unstructured social behaviors that involve amorphous goals and much indirect communication. Not only does this mean that dating is not an easy thing for people with AS, but also much of the long-term relationship advice available today is totally wrong for people with AS.

There are “rules” about what women need in the way of relationships that are pretty clearly communicated in our culture—so clearly communicated that most of us who have AS are bound to learn them. The problem is, these rules shouldn’t be applied willy-nilly to girls with AS (and some of them shouldn’t be applied to human beings in general).

Happiness Is...?

The first of these rules about what every woman supposedly needs are:

• The best way to be happy in life is to have a long-term monogamous relationship (marriage).
  
• You
  should
  date and eventually marry
  
• Any relationship is better than no relationship.
  

You may protest that you don’t communicate all of these things to your daughter. Guess what? Even if
you
don’t, the rest of the world does.

These rules deal with a massive underlying assumption that is all around us: dating is somehow
really
important, dating definitely should lead to marriage, and marriage is the best goal for everybody, especially everybody between the ages of twenty and forty. There’s only one problem: it ain’t necessarily so.

It is very usual for teenage girls and young women to be given tons of dating advice from a variety of sources, all of which assumes that they want to date and, if they are seventeen or older, really definitely should be dating. Not only is there lots of encouragement towards dating, but also lots of worry about girls who show no interest in it. Heaven forbid a human being be happy being single.

In the midst of all these assumptions and advice, seldom does anyone talk about what dating and relationships actually entail in terms that are realistic for girls with AS.

My sister (who has very high social skills) once asked my dad if marriage was as stressful as dating. My dad replied,
“Death
isn’t as stressful as dating.”

Dating
is
stressful, and really hard even for the socially skilled; how else would it be possible for countless books and magazines on how to date to be so profitable?

It is much easier for girls with AS to learn social skills and get to know people in more interesting and less stressful situations, like book groups and hobby-related clubs. I’ll go into the details of this later, but essentially this means letting girls socialize in their own way and in their own time, without a lot of pressure to be having a specific kind of interaction with the opposite sex that involves uncomfortable small talk and itchy nylons.

Of course, it isn’t just going on dates that it is the problem. It’s the idea that one must seek out a member of the opposite sex for a permanent bond in order to be happy and fulfilled, and that one must do it
now
or risk lifelong misery.

This is implied so heavily and constantly that it is inescapable. If you look up “singles activities” in the weekend section of the newspaper, you’ll find tons of activities that are designed for people to meet potential dates. No one goes to singles activities for the actual activity. It is as if life is a massive game of musical chairs, with everyone rushing to find a partner before the music stops.

This particular societal obsession can really hurt girls with AS. We Aspies are seldom told about some of the important questions we need to ask ourselves. These are questions like, “Do I want to date now, later, or never? Do I want someone else in my life? Would it be better to just have platonic interactions with guys until I find someone I’d really like to date? Do I want to get married in the foreseeable future? Can I deal with sharing a house with someone who might possibly touch my model airplane collection?”

Girls with AS should be encouraged from an early age to look at dating and marriage realistically, factually, and logically. The fact is if someone else is living in the same house with you, they may want to cook foods you don’t like, move furniture, or otherwise do normal people things.

Simply put, it is important to start asking real questions and giving real information about relationships to girls and women with AS. Ideally, this discussion should begin before they get swept away in a surge of cultural beliefs and hormones. This may mean that parents or others need to set aside the desire to make the girl with AS more “normal” in order help her think about what is in her own best interests.

The more emotional and mercurial the girl with AS is, the more important it is to deal with these questions. The very logical, phlegmatic Aspie may well have an easier time with all of this, as the less emotional person is less likely to get caught up in the romance of romance.

Love Conquers What?

This leads me to the next set of typical “rules” about relationships that are embedded in the beliefs of our culture.

• “Falling in love” is the most important thing; the feelings associated with romantic love are more real than most things.
  
• You’ll just
  know
  it when you meet The One For You.
  
• When you find the right person and fall in love, your life will vastly improve and your problems will disappear.
  

Whether we like it or not, our culture constantly communicates the idea that being in love is vital and that the feeling of being in love is really, really meaningful and important.

Take Romeo and Juliet. They meet and are devoutly in love before either of them knows anything about the other; they essentially have no actual relationship, but rather a series of “stolen time” encounters; and they quite stupidly hide what is going on in strange ways and wind up killing themselves like the dumb, hormone-riddled, immature twits they are. And they are our culture’s ideal of love. Geesh.

The vast majority of people in our culture seek out romantic love quite desperately, which is no surprise when the vast majority of pop songs, TV shows, and movies are focused on the joys and supposedly sublime sorrows of the damn stuff.

The fact is, romantic love has many attractive points, not the least of which is that it is the emotional equivalent of crack. It has a bio-chemical kick that is quite powerful.

Most parents don’t talk to their children about the fickle and unreliable aspect of romantic love until said children actually fall in love. Many times, the talks that follow are about how the child is too young to really be in love, and how unsuitable the other young person is. For some reason, even now parents still haven’t noticed that this kind of talk leads nowhere good. Whether the child has AS or not, you might as well dip yourself in steak sauce and walk onto the turf of a hungry pride of lions.

Girls with AS, particularly the mercurial ones like myself, are extra vulnerable. Overwhelming cultural messages, which are communicated verbal-l y, visually, and in music—thus, in every possible way a person with AS might learn best—can leave us more naïvely sure of the importance of love than even our typical peers (who are nuts on the subject).

One should appeal to a girl’s intellect and capacity for reasoning before actual romance is on the horizon. The simple fact that it is completely possible to fall deeply, madly in love with someone who should be avoided at all costs should be mentioned. The fact that it is completely possible but really hard to make head-based decisions when one is overwhelmed by the biochemistry of love should be explained.

Perhaps even more importantly, girls with AS should know that romantic love is not necessary to human happiness and it is okay not to feel it. This is another case in which it is vital for girls to understand that they don’t have to fit the mold, and that falling in love is not the all-purpose cure-all that it is widely cracked up to be.

As an Aspie who has both conditions, I can assure you that being in love and having special interests (aka “autistic obsessions”) are much the same feeling. However, being in love involves another human being, who has free will, while an obsession with, say, trains, usually does not.

Trains and other objects of special interests are reliable. Once you decide that you are devoted to building and improving your train set, the train set does not look at you like you’re nuts or wonder where you ever got that idea. Model airplanes do not decide that they want to be built by someone else who is more attractive or less needy.

It is important that girls with AS understand this: no matter how you feel about someone, their feelings may not be the same, and that fact
is no reflection on you.
The one you have become attached to may be much less intelligent and discerning than you think, or may just not be interested. The simple fact is that getting rejected is part of life. The level on which this sucks defies the laws of physics, but there it is.

For some reason, this is more difficult for those of us with AS than it is for the typical folks around us. Maybe it has to do with the whole “theory of mind” thing. Maybe it is because we hyper-focus on one goal to an extent that others don’t.

From my own experience, I would say that the best way for a mercurial/emotional female with AS to deal with rejection is two-fold.

One, always be aware that rejection is not a real setback. If I approached a guy I was interested in and got rejected, then in fact I was no worse off than I was before I approached. If I thought I had a good relationship with a guy and then he dumped me, then that really good relationship existed only in my mind, not in the real world. If the relationship existed only in my head, there was in fact no relationship; once rejection occurs, it merely means that I have been informed of that fact. The situation has not actually deteriorated. This is really, really important. Understanding that the loss of a one-sided fantasy is not the loss of a reality or potential reality is vital.

Two, I use a somewhat cognitive-behavioral approach to deal with the depression and general crankiness that can follow rejection. That is, I drag myself through the standard tasks of life. I’m going to be miserable if I try to go through my daily routine, but I’m going to be just as miserable if I don’t, so I might as well keep going. This is important, as it is not unusual for a depressed Aspie going through a bad rejection to fail to do basic, necessary things and wind up in a genuinely bad situation, such as being in trouble at work or flunking a class due to too many cuts.

Once again, the best tools that a girl with AS has are logic and facts.

The Suitable Partner

The next rule is one most folks don’t realize they devoutly believe in.

• There are certain types of people you should date and who you are best off marrying. Those people should match your own demographic quite closely.
  

This “rule,” or myth, is not nearly so dangerous to the Aspie directly as it can be hurtful to her through those around her.

While often we’d like to think that we, as a civilization, do not judge people on race, creed, color, age, or social class, when it comes to dating, we do. The range of ages, colors, and other variables that are acceptable in a long-term mate are generally pretty narrow.