annqldau

Hello

Girl I work with has just been told by Doctors her husband has Aspergers but he's quite old, has anyone else lived with an adult with Aspergers? Have met plenty of patients with it but was just wanting peoples real life experiences of living with someone with the condition???

iPom

I know someone with it, but I don't live with them. It depends on the severity of the condition to be honest. My friend eventually got a divorce from her hub, because he was too difficult to live with. Understanding the condition can help you live with it, but I think you need the patience of a saint to do that. My friend in the UK was in lots of support groups but at the end of the day, her husband was cold, disinterested, lacked empathy and was completely obsessed with trains and electronic things... It drove them apart. Once they were divorced, it didn't seem to affect him very much, but she was devastated... and guilty too.
Difficult situation.

annqldau

Sounds like her husband... I think I would struggle patience is not my virtue.
I like spontaneity in most things.

LisaD_uk

This sounds really sad.
I only ever worked with a young boy with this, he was 7 and a big handfull. Sorry this doesn't help you at all.

Sleeping Beauty

not an adult, sorry. as above, i was a teachers aide to a 9/10 year old boy in the uk. not much help, i am sorry. it is late in the day to be diagnosed though, but at least they now have something to work towards.

Sam

This so sounds like my brother

apart from the trains thing!

i've often wondered if he was a sufferer, but like SB i've only ever worked with children with this condition,

I know it is often over looked in adults

annqldau

Yes unlike Autism they can function in normal jobs and get married etc. but it is the rituals and lack of social graces that often make it apparent. Have come across people who collect empty coke cans on mass and also take cars to bits but never put them back together as it is the ritual of collecting or stripping the cars down that is their obsession.

Sam

Is it best to just leave them be?????

Jaycee1

I work with lads in year 11 (last year of school) who are fantastic people. One is very self centred, the other very argumentative and fully aware of his condition - he also has ADHD.
He also tells me that he won't work as he 'has no social skills as you know and if you don't you should read my bl**dy file'.
Somedays it does feel like I live with them - 6 hours a day - as I feel like a nag and he often asks why my husband puts up with me!!
I wouldn't change things for all the world but having said this, I know how difficult things are for families as I can walk out of the door at 3.30pm.
J x

Australia_bound?

I work with at a school full of them Is never a dull moment

Work long hours so virtually live with them during term time! What exactly are you wanting to know?
Each one is very individual and severity of condition can vary from one extreme to the other. I take it if he's been diagnosed later in life he'll be mildly obsessive about things such as lining up tins in the kitchen cupboard so they all face forward . Kids I work with can be very impulsive at times and don't handle confrontation well, some can appear very normal until their trigger is found, others are very wacky all of the time and have strange obsessions that they frequently talk about!

annqldau

Yep they all know their rights now and that they don't have to work as will get disability money for ever more, we have friends daughter with ADHD and she says similar stuff. It will be never a dull day place to work though so not boring.

annqldau

Impulsive is not a problem with him it's the opposite very set in his ways and patterns doesn't like any deviation from what he considers the norm and quite obsessive about a few things.

Australia_bound?

Sounds a fairly mild form of behaviours then! There are lots of books on the condition to swot up on if necessary, maybe he could do with reading about the condition so as to explain it to himself a bit more. So he can understand why he is the way he is and how best he can deal with things!
Have they got any kids? Have to say seems to run in the family although the experts seem to think it doesn't, quite a few of the kids I work with have fathers in particular who display very AS type behaviours

Vash the Stampede

• My father
  
  
• The eldest daughter of some close friends in Adelaide
  
  
• My wife (high school teacher) used to teach a boy with Asperger's

It can be relatively simple to cope with if it's not too severe; in the case of my friends' daughter, you'd only know if you were told.

glittababe

Its not that bad, my son gets on with life in his own little world. He has a girlfriend, close mates, none of whom have ever said anything nasty about him or his little ways. The only time I got upset (Cameron wasn't) was when I overheard one of my friends children calling Cameron "weird". He's not weird, he just has a set routine and needs plenty of reassurance. He still has a comfort blanket and can't handle large groups of people or anywhere unknown to him. He has a thing for the colour red (red is safety so I've always had a red coloured car) and he always needs to know the safety features of everything (from fire escapes to number of air bags in a car). He gets A's for maths and sciences and can follow instructions perfectly. If he finds himself in a situation where he has no control, he throws a wobbler which will include headbutting things! Up until recently he was keeping his room in a very organised way (from certain drawers for certain t-shirts to alphabetically organising his books), but teenage hormones are kicking in and he's starting to relax a bit about cleanliness. Oh and he has a thing about time, we have to leave the house by 07.45hrs or we go nowhere!

It took 7 years to diagnose Cameron. The first symtoms were spotted by our Health Visitor and GP in the UK. We went through various child development tests, attended lots of different centres before he was finally referred to a specialised unit at Gt Ormond St. One of the things they do is to put parent's through similar tests to see if it could be learnt behaviour from a parent, or genetic. I was fine, but poor hubby Mark was told "your in the autistic spectrum". Mark refused to take it any further as he functions perfectly well and says over the years he has learnt to adapt his behaviour around others. In fact he doesn't view himself as having any social probs!

All in all its not a major thing, when we went for our medicals for the visa, they didn't even want his hospital notes! The Dr said he was a happy and healthy lad with no major learning difficulties. In the UK he was on a record of support followed by statementing, here he doesn't need any help. The teachers are aware and never put him in any situations he'd feel uncomfortable with (like public speaking or huge group work).