Alisdair

Alisdair's been given the official diagnosis of Asperger's Syndrome. I happened last Thursday, and I've been working on processing it all since then. We have some one-on-one behavioral therapy sessions scheduled to start next week, a sleep EEG test at Children's Hospital here in Seattle that'll be scheduled soon for some time not too far in the future, and possibly given low-dose anti-anxiety medication on a short-term basis to take the edge off while he's trying to learn some new coping skills. The clinic will be having video/social skills nights coming up this month, I think, where parents and kids who go there can meet up and practice being social and making friends and all that stuff.

We'll get the full official list of recommendations for therapy and stuff this week. We haven't told Alisdair yet because it really doesn't make a difference in the end to him, at least not now. Also, I wanted to be able to do so without getting all verklempt first. His dad is untroubled by this and doesn't really get why it bothers me, but then, that's par for the course for him.

He's a good kid. Hopefully this will let us make things better.

(no subject)

1) Rainier cherries and in-season wild salmon are proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy.

2) Alisdair's stuff has been making me think more about things... odd ways my own brain works.

For example, I find that when I approach a task I haven't really done in a while, I often draw a complete blank on how to do it, especially if it's at all complex. I literally can't parse how to make whatever it is work. If I haven't written for a while, my initial writers block is almost always figuring out how to translate what's in my head to the paper -- or in finding something in my head at all. I don't come up with a lot of spontaneous inspirations; I never have. I rely heavily on getting assignments for what to write, or in holding on to the few ideas I have come up with out of whole cloth.

If I haven't cooked for a while, I literally can't think of anything to cook, or remember how to cook the things I have in the fridge. I rely very heavily on recipes, building up a bank of them to use. The biggest blow my cooking ever took was losing the book of recipes I'd built up during one of my moves. 10 years of cooking experience down the tubes. The more I get into it, the easier it comes back, but it has to be a concerted effort at first. It's all done by rote, with rare bouts of initiative or insight that I can't predict.

Laundry. I can do laundry all day long. When I go to put it away, though, it overwhelms me and I can't think where anything goes. Same thing with many aspects of housework that involve putting away clutter -- buying groceries, putting away clean dishes, going through old mail.... this explains tons about my scattershot approach to housework. Even gaming... I can't hold a system in my head if I'm not using it. It'll come back if I study, but if you were to ask me about how the SR4 magic works or d20 rules for combat work right now, for example, I honestly couldn't tell you more than the most basic mechanic even though I've spent tons of time on both.

I get around a lot of this through sheer training. I know that despite my initial panic, if I start with one small thing at a time, I can get through it. One word on a page, one towel put away, one dish in the dishwasher, and so forth. I hate this about myself, as it really makes me feel stupid. It also means that trying to write anything I don't have guidelines for, like, say, my novel, is literally like pulling teeth trying to get it out of my head and onto the page. I'm trying to get this approach through to Alisdair as I know it'll be helpful to him in the long run, but it's not easy to grasp. His memory seems better than mine for the most part, though. Perhaps it'll be okay.

I don't know. Does everyone deal with this, or is it just me? Inquiring minds want to know how other people's brains work. :)