Do You Struggle to Talk to Someone With Asperger's The Problem is Fussy Language

When I was a boy, girls jumping rope sang things like, "Skinny and fatty ran a race. Skinny fell down and broke his face." And, "Step on a crack. Break your mother's back." Now most of you know I have Asperger's. So can you guess how I interpreted these words?

surely, me being me, I took these words literally. Can you imagine? Laughing little eight year old girls singing, "break your mother's back!" Whoa! Was I confused. And try as I might, I could not, for the life of me, understand what would make them say such things. No less laugh while they said them.


Fast forward to August 2004. I embark on working with a little eight year old boy. A boy who, like me, has Asperger's. And as I watched his struggles, especially with his dad, I realized why I had struggled so to understood those childhood sayings. You see, he, too, understood only the literal meanings of peoples' words. And none of the social content.

Fortunately for this boy, his dad was the most patient father I have ever seen. Which explained why week after week, he patiently battled what I eventually came to call, his son's "fussy word disease."

What the heck is "fussy word disease?" embark on with that it is not exactly a disease. I call it this merely to bring to peoples' attention that having this condition is painful. Both for the parents and for the child.

What is it though? it is when a child takes every thing you say as if you chose your words perfectly. Straight from a dictionary. With no non verbal meaning. Which then means, if you prefer to say something to among these kids, you had better say it exactly as you mean it. Otherwise, you're going to hear about it.

This in fact is how this boy responded to most of his father's words. Thus if his dad said something like that they were leaving in ten minutes, at precisely ten minutes, they had better be leaving. No if's and's or but's. If not, the boy would blurt things out like, "you never do what you say!" "You promised!" Or "You lied!"

Worst case he might even call him, "stupid!" Can you imagine?

Being his dad was such a patient man, whenever this happened, he would calmly try to explain how he hadn't meant exactly ten minutes, that what he said was simply a figure of speech.

surely, the boy would totally blow off these efforts, then rudely argue, "You're wrong! That's not what you meant!" Which would usually result in his father reluctantly getting firm with him.

At times, watching this happen made me well up with tears. This dad so evidently loved his son. And the boy so evidently loved his father. in spite of this love though, week after week, they could not find a manner to understand each other. Nor to stop their ever present arguing.

in conclusion, one day it hit me that the problem had nothing to do with this boy's social skills. Not directly, anyway. Nor was it rooted in his poor impulse control and outbursts of disrespect. What was happening was simply that when the boy said to his father, "you're wrong," he was simply trying to make him speak in a manner in which he, the boy, could understand. In the boy's own language. And when this didn't happen, his frustration overwhelmed him and he blurted out insults.

Shortly after that, I began to call the boy's language, "fussy." And his father's language, "fuzzy." At which point, I explained this theme, the theme of "two languages," to the family. Then whenever this father spoke "fuzzy," I would gently remind him that "fuzzy" language confused his son. And whenever the boy felt compelled to make his speak "fussy," I reminded the boy that "fuzzy" was his and my language, not his father's.

These reminders also helped me as well. They reminded me that in no manner did the boy intend to hurt his father. In fact, whenever I managed to get him to see he had hurt his father, he'd burst into tears. Partly from this realization. And partly from the sheer frustration of having to work so difficult to be understood.

Here then was the opening I had been searching. The boy's problem was that he had no sense of the personal meaning of his father's words. A meaning I was calling, the "fuzzy" meaning as in, the "warm fuzzy" meaning. And the father, while he could logically grasp the words his son was saying, had no theme his son could not interpret words in other than dictionary meanings.

Today, when I think about how most of today's therapists refer to Asperger's as a social impairment, I feel sad. they are missing the point. Moreover, treating these kids as if the main problem is a social problem only makes them worse.

The social difficulties in Asperger's are not the main problem. I say this knowing full well how disruptive kids with Asperger's can be. however, beneath this behavior is a far more basic problem. The thing which in reality provokes their antisocial behavior. Their inability to navigate the range of specificity inside regular people' language. The degree to which we do, and don't, include the meaning in our words.

What I'm saying is, Asperger's is first and foremost a language problem, not a socialization problem. And whether these kids' brains are wired differently or not simply doesn't matter. Whatever the case, they, and I, simply speak a different language. Fussy. And because the majority of the world speaks fuzzy, we get told we have a disability.

[to read more on how Emergence Personality Theory sees Asperger's, visit http://theemergencesite.com/Tech/TechIssues-Autism-OCD-Aspergers-ADD.htm]