Comments on: Building on our strengths

By: Passion, obsession, and the autistic child // Brett's Waste Blog

Passion, obsession, and the autistic child // Brett's Waste Blog — Mon, 13 Sep 2010 14:18:02 +0000

[...] very good way to make this distinction. Or, as teenage autistic Luke Jackson asks (in a quote that I’ve used before) with more than a hint of sarcasm: When is an obsession not an [...]

By: Brett

Brett — Sun, 21 Dec 2008 17:47:23 +0000

@Phil

Thanks for the recommendation. From some of the descriptions and reviews on Amazon, it looks like this could be a good resource not just for autistic children, but for all children. I’ll post a follow up once I’ve had a chance to read the book.

By: Brett

Brett — Sun, 21 Dec 2008 17:43:10 +0000

@CS

Though I sometimes watch the weekend sports, I don’t always. When someone asks me about something I didn’t see, a good response seems to be, “No, I didn’t. What happened?”

After they give me the quick rundown of what happened, many times they follow up with, “What were you doing this weekend?” Which gives me a chance to share my passions and obsessions.

By: Phil Schwarz

Phil Schwarz — Sun, 21 Dec 2008 05:57:02 +0000

A great read on what to do with obsessions — how to leverage them — is Paula Kluth’s “Just Give Him the Whale!”
…for which I think the publisher should have obtained a testimonial from Jerry Newport (the “whale” in the real story behind the film “Mozart and the Whale”) .

By: CS

CS — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 20:43:28 +0000

“It seems that our society fully accepts the fact that a lot of men and boys ‘eat, sleep and breathe’ football and people seem to think that if someone doesn’t, then they are not fully male. Stupid!”

Nothing truer could be written. Every Monday at work, the same guys ask me if I saw the game with so and so. Every week I say I don’t watch football and every week they give me the same “deer in the headlights” look. Talk about perserveration! Same goes for golf. Everyone is just flabbergasted that I don’t play it and I don’t care to watch it. I always tell them I left sports behind in high school because I’m tired of answering the same question over and over. My response is meant to be a slight be rude and condescending. I answer like that because I have hopes they will stop asking me the same question again and again but it never works.