Do YOU socialise with 1000+ of your peers 5 days per week? Then you're just not socialising enough!

Right, you lot!
You, you and you - up the back, hiding behind the lamp post, chewing on your hair - you're all to come up here and give a public speech about how you all socialise with 1000+ of your peers every single day.

*waiting....waiting...waiting...*

Come on now, surely you've been to school?
Surely you've been taught 'the proper way' to socialise with gazillions of total strangers you have nothing in common with and been taught to enjoy your discomfort even when most of them farted the alphabet in science class after egg sangas at lunch?
And, surely to goodness, you're continuing this tradition now that you're all growed up and socialised proper?
(the socialisation, not farting the alphabet around the water cooler to impress that weird work experience chick from accounting)
*rolls eyes*

No?!
What do you mean you "don't associate with that many people even at work" ????
Is this some kind of madness?
You've been to school, that's where you learn to socialise!
Maybe you didn't learn properly?!

*rolls eyes again*

I have been told that to ensure correct socialisation (which is apparently the cause of a teenager hearing voices and hurting himself) the answer is to send an anxiety-ridden, mentally unwell child back to an over-crowded secondary school.
Because, apparently, belonging to 4 different sporting clubs, a drama club, lapidary club, a social group with a social worker and psychologist on hand, not to forget having frequent excursions...none of these count.

 *rolls eyes wildly until they fall out of head*

Plonk

Got to love those who are so rigid in their beliefs that homeschooled kids
A) don't get taught anything
B) have no socialisation
and repeat ad infinitum only what they know - that 'normal' schools are the only way to educate and teach kids to be social.

*rolls pre-plonked eyeballs wildly across bench top in attempt to be sarcastic*

*avoids teabags on bench cos those sting eyeballs like a mofo*

Cos, goodness knows, we all spend about 8-10 hours each day with over 1000 people, behaving in a socially acceptable manner at all times, never wishing to have time to ourselves and, because we are all Borgs/replicas none of us ever feel anxious/nervous/claustrophobic or stressed at sharing so much of our lives with these strangers we have little in common with.
Don't we...?

*No eyeballs were hurt in the making of this dribble*

Peter Pan Aspie

I still have trouble getting my head around the fact Aspie teen will never be 'normal', nor that he will have a fully independent life as you and I know.
Two steps forward, one step back: he's actually been looking at his distance ed website and trotting through all the study groups but another couple of major meltdowns last night and this morning saw us back at square one.
Why the meltdowns?
Who frigging knows.
He says he was suddenly scared by me calling out to hubby in another room (which we do every.single.day) although he'd had a moment earlier in the day and briefly refused to keep his appointment with his (long-known) psychologist.
Pressure?
Anxiety?
Yep, but we get lulled into a false sense of security when he's sitting on the couch watching telly then suddenly explodes for no apparent reason.
It doesn't help the psychologist told us she'd had another Aspie boy in, same age, trying to control his rage attacks.
Hellloooo, deja vu, I think we've been on this merry go round before....although I think we forgot to get off.
He cannot cope with most day to day social things - he actually walked to the nearby shop last weekend for the first time on his own.
He was shaking and rocking afterwards.
He says he doesn't mind supermarkets yet he has to go dig holes in the backyard or hammer pieces of wood to relax after we've tackled one.
He says he gets scared at our voices, that smells make him angry, people looking at him wrong upset him and, of course, he argues with the tv when the presenter states something that is incorrect.
Most times he can pass for a NT and then it all falls to shit.
We relax after 2 days of reasonable behaviour and then ka-boom, the house is smashed, hubby is pummeled and the dam bursts with floods of tears, shaking, rocking, grunting and tight, clinging hugs as he's scared himself with his behaviour, not to mention the gaps in his memory as he can't exactly remember what it was that he did.
He has a monstrously high IQ yet he cannot cope with mundane things.
This is my wonderful, fantastic, beautiful kid, who will forever be a kid.

Goin' up the country where the water tastes like wine

The boy and I are running away for a night in magical Dunolly on Sunday.
We're booked into a history tour with the local historical society and we get to meet up with some fabulous people again.
Their immediate reaction to hearing that Aspie teen was Aspie was "Ok, cool, our minister has a son on the Spectrum, too. Want another home made cream cake?"
And a former school teacher was so excited to hear we were homeschooling, asking loads of questions, telling me how she thinks it's wonderful and a great way to teach kids.
Oooooooookay, completely arse-about reaction we get with a lot of people in the urbane city!
The magic of the country town is the lack of smog, lack of noise, no street lights (!), no constant rumble of traffic, streets so quiet we've spied kids playing street cricket and footy - something you so do not see in the 'burbs these days.
We approached the one and only pedestrian crossing and were a good 10 metres away from even stepping onto the crossing...but drivers slowed down and stopped in readiness.
OMG - old fashioned values!
Freakin' awesome!
Shop keepers made eye contact with a smile and remembered our names after one months gap in our visits.
No judgments,  no pigeon-holing, just acceptance and friendliness.
Do we really have to come home on Monday....?

Junior Masterchef and the Aspie

Of course all of Oz was glued to Junior Masterchef last night.
Weren't you?
Anyway, the Aspie teen, who used to cook bits and bobs after we'd explained cooking was a science experiment with the interaction of chemicals that tasted yum but lost interest after his head injury (hindsight is so 20-20, hmph) was glued to the show.
He commented more on the appearance of the kids, their parents and their names rather than what they cooked, at first.
Typical Aspie it was other things that grabbed his attention instead of the glaringly obvious ones, lol.
After awhile he got into the whole food thing, commenting that he had the same kitchen knife as one of the kids, that the oven settings intimidated him (after one boy set the griller instead of the stove) and he eventually picked up on some of the judges' facial expressions on what was a winner and what they really liked.
One thing Aspie teen was very impressed with was the good sportsmanship shown by the kids towards each other - how they helped each other reaching for ingredients, wished good luck/well done, shook hands, etc.
General overall respect shown to each other.
Was it edited that way?
Probably but heck, who cares!
It was a huge thing to Aspie teen; it modelled ideal behaviour we'd all like to see in all of our kids, it showed kids not afraid to play with home-grown science and maths experiments.
And another, important thing for Aspies - it encouraged him to try new foods!
He had some Baklava from a local, well-regarded cake shop Niko.
Cooking with Maths is a great book that helps combine food with numbers for younger students and gets smaller heads around the whole concept of equations with practical examples.
Another list of fun books to get kids cooking with maths and science is HERE.

Goin' to the country...to go to church

My darling Aspie is not of the church going variety.
Neither am I of the strict religious type, either, but by the time we got him beyond the scream-the-roof-down-on-any-strange-building stage, he'd discovered Darwin and there was no way we were getting him inside a church.
Darwin, he informed me, perfectly explained the whole catastrophe of us galumphing all over this rock in space.
He waxes lyrical on the Big Bang theory (yes, the theory and the tv series) and thinks Stephan Hawking is the bees knees.
I thought Sunday school might broaden his social experiences, give him more information on what a large majority of our, and other, culture was based.
Nope.
Wasn't having any of it.
Did.Not.Believe.
Did.Not.Want.
Get it away now, thank you.
So, I was staggered to hear him ask to attend Christmas Eve service last year, almost fell off my seat if I remember rightly (it was a blur, the shock, you know?) but after that experience he didn't want to repeat it.
Could almost hear him saying "Been there, done that, have observed the bizarre freakazoids in their habitat and what ritual customs they do at this time of year".
Up at Dunolly, pottering about, visiting the massive humongous Sunday Market and all that we wandered up near the churches for some more photos when I realised there was a service on.
Did I dare?
"C'mon, let's go in" I suggested, waiting to hear the usual emphatic  "No!"
Instead what I heard was "Ok."
Grabbed that moment and we almost leapt up the stairs into the middle of the service (oops) and joined in.
The morning tea with the (small but friendly) congregation afterwards helped cement a fabulous experience for him.
To the point he's asking 'when can we go back to Dunolly and can we go to church?' !!!