Please listen, parents. Hate on me for it if you want.

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From yet another perspective: Last autumn I attended a conference and interacted closely with a renowned author (autism research) as she was interested too in my own research. In confidence, I shared that to trust my Aspie-enhanced senses (which sometimes parents/clinicians can wrongly shun!!) has been a big boon to my science. She was so excited, telling me YES. Sometimes parents try to micro-manage their Aspie, which does not really work. Yes, my father was strict but he let me cut & paste to the extreme, etc. let me find my own way without interference, even if I sometimes did not speak.

That is, go WITH it, not against it. Use your difference, which can then become a strength. In order to do this, as OliveOilMom et al. has demonstrated, is to let it be. Best not to interfere with any given Aspies developmental processes - the hands off approach.

LabPet,

Not all parents, but a lot of parents have a pretty good sense of when our kids' "aspie superpowers" for lack of a better way for me to articulate it, are in play. A lot of us also know when the opposite is true. There are things my son can do way better than I can, and when the context would indicate this to be the case, I let him have at it. There are things I would -love- him to be more independent with, and he -could- do, but he won't b/c of fear of failure or b/c a thing is tedious or requires persistence.

Then on the other hand, there is the fact that he doesn't pay any mind to where he is and would get hit by a car, if he was out by himself unsupervised b/c he would be spinning around, darting here and there, talking to himself about Zork or microwaves, and paying no attention to anything but himself. Sometimes safety has to come first, and safety takes many different forms.

Knowing the difference between these kinds of things is the job of a parent. It is hard not to project ones own life experiences and personality into it, but that is the job: Knowing what is safe, what is unsafe and when to take a chance. Sometimes, it is hard for higher functioning aspies (myself included, so no offense meant to anyone) to understand that just b/c I or you could have done a particular thing, at a particular age, does make it so for everyone's kid/s, (Including my own, so again, no offense to anyone, meant.)

The rule of thumb around here is that an aspie has 2/3 the emotional age of his chronological age. Some of our kids, smart as they may be in many other respects, have not tested that high. Some have their own individual blind spots. Again, figuring this kind of thing out, is part of the job.

Without reading all the responses: there is a balance here that everyone has to figure out for themselves. Yes, many will overdo it one way or the other, but without sitting in their exact shoes, we have no way of knowing when that is true. The best we can do is provide solid information from which each person can reach that conclusion themselves.

There are times to cocoon and times to let go. The difference is super hard to know. My ASD son seems to be comfortable and thriving with the way I've called it over the years; my (more-or-less NT) daughter thinks I am way over-protective. I always ingest the information and recalibrate if appropriate. It is a constant process. There is no one way to point the compass and then consider yourself done.

So I share my stories on these boards and others share theirs. The parents reading then have to figure out what information applies best to their unique situation and point in time. Sometimes we will think they are calling it wrong and try, once more, to sell what we think they need to hear. But, in the end, we do have to recognize that we aren't inside that family and don't really know, and accept their decisions as valid.

I've moved back and forth on this dial so many times. Because the life my family lives demands that. It has never been a straight road for us. I feel like I see how all the positions have validity. It just comes down to time and place.

Glancing over the rest of the thread, I think all I will say is this:

We are all unique people with unique life experiences, and none of us are perfect at expressing ourselves every moment of everyday. So forgive and move on. Everyone here is just trying to figure life out, and not a one of us have completely succeeded.