our boy is about to be diagnosed with asd my wife is pregnant

Children do not have a choice, and it often is unmanageable, particularly for secondary school children. Indeed, the masking can camouflage the struggles, but the struggles are still there, and doing untold damage to the child's psyche.

Heather had a choice. She surely would have known that sharing a house with 12 people would be hard, but she decided to do it anyway. Not many people with Asperger's would make this choice, so she is an oddity within the AS population (if indeed she really has the condition - America loves to medicalise these days). I just don't think that these Celebrities are representative of what most people with Asperger's would realistically achieve. Certainly we can achieve things, and this is all positive, but setting our sights too high will only result in a feeling of disappointment. Many typical young people are disappointed when they cannot achieve the much vaunted Celebrity, but with Asperger's it is even more unlikely.

Children do not have a choice, and it often is unmanageable, particularly for secondary school children. Indeed, the masking can camouflage the struggles, but the struggles are still there, and doing untold damage to the child's psyche.

Heather had a choice. She surely would have known that sharing a house with 12 people would be hard, but she decided to do it anyway. Not many people with Asperger's would make this choice, so she is an oddity within the AS population (if indeed she really has the condition - America loves to medicalise these days). I just don't think that these Celebrities are representative of what most people with Asperger's would realistically achieve. Certainly we can achieve things, and this is all positive, but setting our sights too high will only result in a feeling of disappointment. Many typical young people are disappointed when they cannot achieve the much vaunted Celebrity, but with Asperger's it is even more unlikely.