Aspergers and Adulthood: A Guide to Working, Loving, and Living With Aspergers Syndrome 2021-02-03

[VictorR]

VictorR submitted a new resource:

Aspergers and Adulthood: A Guide to Working, Loving, and Living With Aspergers Syndrome - Practical self-help guide to living with ASD

Thinking about moving out on your own? Ready to land your first job? Unsure how to navigate social scenes when you have Asperger’s? Designed for the newly launched Aspie adult, Asperger’s and Adulthood provides supportive solutions-based strategies for navigating the ins and outs of balancing Asperger’s syndrome with career goals, dating, social settings, and more.

Adulthood is complicated for anyone, though it can be especially overwhelming for someone living with Asperger’s....

Read more about this resource...

 

[WolfSpirit]

VictorR submitted a new resource:

Aspergers and Adulthood: A Guide to Working, Loving, and Living With Aspergers Syndrome - Practical self-help guide to living with ASD



Read more about this resource...

I just got rid of the copy of this I had, because having finally had a chance to finish looking through it, I found several problems with it.

The obsession the author has with "all autistics are obsessed with video games, and won't do anything else given the option" was offensive, and completely off the mark for me. It was a real turn off for someone not interested in such things, and even when I was, I didn't let it interfere with functioning elsewhere in my life.

The fixation the author had with "fitting in", and "not acting autistic", especially in public, I found very ableist, and counter to everything I learned years ago as a self-advocate!

My other objection to the book was that it focused solely on adolescents and emerging adulthood, and therefore, people looking to get their first jobs, anfpd live independently for the first time. Not particularly useful for those of us who've been adults for quite a while, and are still struggling with the NT world,

I'm not saying the book didn't have it's uses, because there was some useful information in it, but overall, the drawbacks were just too big to be worth keeping it, or recommending it to anyone.

 

[VictorR]

This is my second consecutive review of a book from Althea Press (the other being Funny, You Don't Look Autistic). Neat to see that we may have a second publisher join Jessica Kingsley Publishers in the field of books for/by Aspies.

As noted in my review itself, the target audience for this book is young adults growing up in the 2000s. It reminds me of a guide I got in my first year of college that spoke of things like "freshman 15" - basically, stuff to watch out for. In that context, it's a solid book in that it gives you some general heads-up about things you might want to watch out for. My star rating, as usual for my reviews, is reflective of the what I think of the book in terms of its intended audience.

For those of us who are past young adulthood and especially for those who've had to navigate life either without knowing we were on the spectrum, I will concede that the amount of useful information is much more limited, especially as the intent of the book is to provide a higher level overview rather than getting into any particular topic in depth.

 

[WolfSpirit]

This is my second consecutive review of a book from Althea Press (the other being Funny, You Don't Look Autistic). Neat to see that we may have a second publisher join Jessica Kingsley Publishers in the field of books for/by Aspies.

As noted in my review itself, the target audience for this book is young adults growing up in the 2000s. It reminds me of a guide I got in my first year of college that spoke of things like "freshman 15" - basically, stuff to watch out for. In that context, it's a solid book in that it gives you some general heads-up about things you might want to watch out for. My star rating, as usual for my reviews, is reflective of the what I think of the book in terms of its intended audience.

For those of us who are past young adulthood and especially for those who've had to navigate life either without knowing we were on the spectrum, I will concede that the amount of useful information is much more limited, especially as the intent of the book is to provide a higher level overview rather than getting into any particular topic in depth.

I guess I'm just tired of books claiming to be about about autism in adulthood, only to discover that what they really mean is teens to mid twenties, (or only the more severely affected part of the spectrum.) When I see books that actually acknowledge that autism isn't just in children, I start to get my hopes up that someone is finally going to actually address the issues we adults face, hopefully without the ableism that is so common, especially in the autism field, only to have them cruelly dashed all over again..

 

[Wolfsage]

I guess I'm just tired of books claiming to be about about autism in adulthood, only to discover that what they really mean is teens to mid twenties, (or only the more severely affected part of the spectrum.) When I see books that actually acknowledge that autism isn't just in children, I start to get my hopes up that someone is finally going to actually address the issues we adults face, hopefully without the ableism that is so common, especially in the autism field, only to have them cruelly dashed all over again..

Not to be "that" guy. But, aside from this site. Society in general has pretty much said your on your own. At least in my experience.

 

[VictorR]

I guess I'm just tired of books claiming to be about about autism in adulthood, only to discover that what they really mean is teens to mid twenties, (or only the more severely affected part of the spectrum.) When I see books that actually acknowledge that autism isn't just in children, I start to get my hopes up that someone is finally going to actually address the issues we adults face, hopefully without the ableism that is so common, especially in the autism field, only to have them cruelly dashed all over again..

Given that a lot of the awareness and programs only started in the 2000s, it'll likely only be as that increasing numbers of autistic children reach adulthood will we see more work in the area. In other worse, we're probably about 10-20 years out.

One barrier is that a lot of funding is directed at children and early intervention, and so an area of advocacy that we can look into is for more funding (and research in particular) for other age groups. Autism and gerontology for example is virtually untouched as a subject.