- Apr 5, 2007
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Hi. I have a very wonderful and precious daughter who has always been a blessing in my life and in the lives of so many other people. She is married and has three children. But when she was a child she struggled in school, not just academically but also socially. She talked like a grownup by the age of 18 months and is extremely intelligent. She can and will beat all of us in any game or puzzle. She has a good sense of humor and really does have a tender and generous heart toward others. She has been diagnosed with ADD and is on meds. for that as an adult. There are things about her which seem to fit Asperger's but maybe not enough for a diagnosis. I wish we knew. It has been mentioned a couple times by several doctors but then they seem to turn away from the diagnosis. Here are the things that I think fit: If she begins a new hobby she will become completely obsessed with it and engage in it to the point that the amount of time she spends on it is truly unhealthy, like quilting, or sewing, crocheting. She'll turn out things almost like a one person factory and look for excuses to make something for someone so she can continue to spend long hours on her hobby. When she was a kid she'd literally sit for hours in her bedroom fixated on doing a certain thing; like Tetris, Yahtzee, solitaire, or the 75 foot long gum wrapper chain she made.
She is completely obsessed with sports to the point where the word "fanatic" really seems to fit.
I was always amazed at how she could stay focused on one thing for so long without becoming completely bored with it. As a child when she made a new friend she would talk about that person incessantly to the point where we all got sick of hearing about them. She tends to wear her heart on her sleeve and so often she'll goof up by sharing too much personal information to people she's not really close to. She often seems to lack the ability to feel embarrassed. She also suffers from some Anxiety and OCD tendencies but not so much as I do. I have pretty severe OCD and Panic Disorder. My obsessions cause me severe pain and horrid anxiety, where her obsessions/fixations seem to bring her pleasure. The thing that has concerned me the most is something that's going on with her yet again for which we've never had an answer. She will become obsessed or fixated on a person. She loves her husband and I don't really think this is about wanting to be unfaithful but she cannot seem to stop herself once this ball gets rolling. Over the past few years she's become obsessed with several celebrity figures - the people are always males. She actually is able to get these people writing or emailing her and she would talk about them all the time... even to her husband who really didn't appreciate her fixation on them. Eventually these people would get turned off by her emailing them every day and would tell her to leave them alone which pretty much devastated her emotionally. Which, of course, made her husband feel even more upset. It's as if she just cannot see how overboard she's acting when everyone else is able to see it. Now..., and this is really concerning me, she seems fixated on her son's teacher who is also a male. He is not even an attractive man and doesn't share her world view. She talks about him endlessly and because she's so over involved at the school she sees him all the time and finds "reasons" to email back and forth with him. And... yes.. her husband is not liking this at all. She just says her husband is being paranoid and that she isn't attracted to this individual but once again it's obvious to everyone else that she's obsessed with this person and cannot seem to stop herself from dwelling on him all the time. She is very beautiful and I'm afraid that this person will like the attention she's giving him and maybe want to have an affair with her. (The thought makes me ill.) What is so different from a person who is really seeking to have an extramarital affair is that she doesn't hide her interest in this man from anyone. I've tried in the past to explain to her that this behavior falls well outside the realm of normal and that it doesn't look good to those looking in from the outside but that has never been something that stops the behavior. What stops it is when the person gets sick of her shoving into their life so much. This just breaks my heart for her and I've tried so hard to figure out how to help her so that she won't damage her marriage or her reputation as a Christian. So... does any of this seem like Asperger's to any of you? She's such a precious and gifted person and I don't want her doing things which could in the long run bring so much pain to her life. How can I help her with this? Thank you for any insight or suggestions you might have. Desperate!!