Not a psychological eating disorder, like teenage girls who wants to waste away. But a physiological eating disorder.

Their bodies don’t know how to eat.

I know, it’s not in any of the textbooks, and nobody really talks about it. But how else can you explain it?

1. When it comes to eating, many Aspie kids will go down with the ship.

The old saying is If he’s hungry enough, he’ll eat it. That makes sense. Otherwise, how else did the species survive?

So you’re supposed to put a plateful of food that is outside of his six tolerated food items in front of him. And after a few tantrums, he’ll eat it.

Not so.

I’ve seen a two-year-old Aspie choose to lose weight. And the tantrums? They had to do with low blood sugar and starvation.

So Grandma’s advice doesn’t work. The doctor’s advice doesn’t work. The dietician’s advice doesn’t work. We are dealing with a problem that the world hasn’t confronted yet.

2. Many Aspies have intense reactions to flavours and textures in food.

Like, intense. They hate everything. Combining foods makes it worse.

My theory here is that Aspie kids experience each flavour and texture separately. Their taste buds and brain taste centres don’t mix the food into one joyful experience. So too many flavours and textures is jangling.

Over time, very slowly, Aspie kids can be coaxed to eat a wider variety of foods, provided you don’t expect them to eat what we eat. View the slideshow Living on Thin Air for ideas on how to do that.

3. Many Aspies have difficulty with chewing and swallowing.

Many Aspie babies have a hard time learning to nurse. Their moms give up and go onto formula. But I’ve heard of moms who had to massage their baby’s jaw to get him/her to swallow the milk in his/her mouth. Baby just had a mouthful and wasn’t doing anything with it.

As they start eating meat, they overchew. They chew and chew and chew — and don’t know when to swallow. Sure, many kids have a hard time with chewing meat. But chewing pasta? Fish? Bananas? Should it take five minutes for that bite to be chewed?

The overchewing might have to do with the difficulties with swallowing. One Aspie teen told me he thought his throat was too small. He felt as if he had to push the food down. Okay, maybe that has something to do with the tension that comes from anxiety issues. But the result is a hard time eating.

Then there’s the gagging reflex. It can be caused by taste or texture or just the feel of the ball of food at the back of the tongue. Or it can be caused by the sights and sounds of people eating. Oversensitive senses balk at the confusing sensory mess called eating.

4. Many Aspies don’t seem to feel when they’re hungry or full, or at least not in the right amounts.

This may have to do with anxiety. When your brain is preoccupied with tense thoughts, it can’t focus on how the body feels. Or it may have to do with weak body awareness. Whatever. They don’t know when they need to eat more.

The result is low weight and poor growth.

So what can a parent do?

1. Get educated about sensory issues.

Understand that the behaviour isn’t psychological or deliberate. You can view the slide show Living on Thin Air to get some basic ideas.

The Star Center and the SPD Foundation are currently offering a workshop on problem eaters. If you happen to live near Raleigh, NC.

2. Focus on fats.

We’ve been brainwashed over the past 30 years to think that fats are bad, that fats cause heart disease. But that old myth has been busted. Fats are good, and human beings are perfectly evolved to eat high-fat diets (but we aren’t at all evolved to eat high-carb diets).

Fats are great for problem eaters because they’re packed with calories and they don’t spike the insulin. That means less bouncing and fidgeting, which ends up burning calories.

Here are some good fat foods: sunflower seeds, cheese, high-fat yogurt, salad oil, olives, avocadoes, meat, eggs, fish, cream. Put more of these on your kid’s plate, along with fruit and vegetables, rather than starchy, low-nutrient foods like pasta and bread.

3. Try voice, jaw, and throat relaxation exercises.

I have no idea if these will work. But tightness in the throat can cause swallowing problems, just the same as it causes voice problems. So professional voice therapists  might be able to help.

Your kid might be holding his tongue wrong. The tongue should rest cradled in the bottom jaw. It shouldn’t be plastered to the roof of the mouth. Even getting your kid to learn to release the tongue and let it fall would be a good first step. Eventually, he can learn to let the throat fall open too, and all the tension fall out of his jaw.

To test how relaxed her jaw is, ask her to breathe in and out slowly through the nose. If her throat is relaxed and open, she should be able to feel the air blowing against her throat.

And what a wonderful, uber-Aspie he is! Sure , his whole cadre of friends are nerds, geeks, and social misfits — including the customers at the comic store and the speech-impedimented bully at the cafeteria. But Sheldon is the creme-de-la-creme of misfits. The filet-mignon of nerds. The Cadillac of social outcasts.

And because of him, the show’s a hit.

Thank you, TV, for that. For now every household gets to spend time with an Aspie every week.

Maybe it was time.

For years now, our culture has been curious about the high-IQ geeks that have become the new power people. There’s a thirst to know more about them and their “beautiful minds.”

The show’s long streak as a hit shows that the world wants to know more about the world of Sheldon Cooper and his nerdy friends.

Here’s what’s to love about Sheldon Cooper:

1. He says the things everyone thinks but dares not say.

An Aspie doesn’t instinctively know all the social rules. So people like Sheldon just put their thoughts into words. Sometimes the outcome is hilariously inappropriate.

But let’s face it — some things need saying. Our culture has a lot of rigid ideas about what’s sayable. Once these ideas are out in the open, we can start examining them.

The audience is laughing as much at themselves as at Sheldon. Who’s sillier: us or him? That’s always the punchline.

2. He delights in small, simple things.

Little things like toy trains, baby birds, and koalas bring joy to Sheldon’s face. The viewer can’t help marveling at how small these pleasures are. The show counters the jokes and humour with these small, tender moments to show a full person with deep feelings.

3. He tries to help.

Sheldon always means well. He wants to do things for his friends. He’s dedicated to the truth. He is at all levels a good person. Despite the fact that his words are hurtful and stark.

And we all know that it’s the thought that counts.

4. Despite being a brilliant adult, he is lost in childhood.

So many Aspies miss part of their childhood because they’re so busy coping or academically excelling. Same with Sheldon. When he gets hurt, he wants someone to sing Soft Kitty to him. He needs the soothing care of his mother. This shows the double sword of giftedness.

5. He’s open-minded despite being rigid.

Sheldon’s relationship with his fundamentalist mother is one of the highlights of the show. Not only does Mom show remarkable patience and diligence with her Shelly, but Sheldon gives her respect in return. Even though he thinks her religion is illogical, he states his objections simply, not meanly, and never attacks.

He asks Leonard and Penny to explain when things don’t make sense to him. He gives serious consideration to new ideas — that is, about anything except his pet interests.

Good to know for dealing with Aspies.

6. His sense of humour is hilarious because it’s different.

Sheldon doesn’t understand sarcasm, but he sure can use it. It’s even funnier because he feels he has to tell everyone that it was sarcasm.

His deadpan practical jokes are also hilarious because they’re bizarre. With Sheldon, you’re never quite sure if he’s serious. There’s a lot to enjoy in that.

in fact, you could say that Sheldon Cooper makes Asperger Syndrome fun.

As a parent, here’s what I love about Sheldon Cooper:

1. He has friends.

Sheldon isn’t easy to live with, but his friends include him in everything they do. They accommodate his needs, rituals, and sensitivities. They put up with his inappropriateness. They buy him books and give him pointers. If they’re mean to him, they apologize. They even helped him find a girlfriend who could accept his limitations.

Which introduced us to a female Aspie in Amy Farrah Fowler. So if you missed learning everything about Aspies through Sheldon, you get to learn it all again through Amy.

In effect, the show models for the viewers how people should act with Aspies – with acceptance.

2. He shows NT people not to fear Aspies.

The character of popular, beautiful Penny is a demo for NT people who have to live with Aspies. Sure, she doesn’t know how to deal with Sheldon at first. But over time, she learns to accept him and enjoy him.

In fact, over the course of a few seasons, Penny learns that her nerdy, Aspie-ish friends are deeper and more sincere friends that the superficial people she’s been hanging around with before.

3. The show has tenderness.

The Big Bang Theory doesn’t mock Aspies and geeks. Is celebrates them. It shows their inner world, their dreams and failures, their pain.

Like so many parents who know the inner world of Aspie kids, we yearn for the world to understand how much they feel, despite their wooden mannerisms.

Sheldon does that job for us.

Heart-rate variability (HRV) means how much your heart beat speeds up and slows down. You may feel that it beats faster only when you run or when you’re scared, but actually, a much finer up-down rhythm occurs all the time.

It’s linked to your breathing. When you inhale, your heart-rate increases slightly. When you exhale, your heart-rate decreases slightly.

A calm person has high HRV.

His/her inhale produces an increase, and his/her exhale produces a decrease. This is why taking a deep breath can make you feel calm. After that long exhale, your heart-rate is down. It stays down till your next inhale.

You can even see this rhythmic sync on a computer screen. The heart-rate variability of a calm person makes a nice sine curve that follows the breathing curve. As the curve goes up for the lungs filling up, the heart-rate goes up. As the curve goes down for the lungs exhaling, the heart-rate goes down.

However, a person with anxiety has low HRV.

When an anxious person inhales, the heart-rate doesn’t follow. At the exhale, there’s no calming reaction. In fact, the heart-rate seems to go up and down on its own.

That’s why the person doesn’t feel calm. His/her body isn’t in sync. The normal relaxation that comes from exhaling isn’t there. More than anything, the heart-rate is running its own show and taking over.

To summarize:

• A high level of everyday HRV is linked to feeling calm, as well as to having good coping strategies, emotional flexibility, and adaptability.
• A low level of everyday HRV is linked to feeling stress and anxiety, as well as to having poor coping strategies, emotional fixation, and panic.
• Most people with anxiety disorders breathe too fast. So the first thing they need to learn is to breathe more slowly.
• Anxiety disorders put an enormous strain on the heart.

Two kinds of HRV therapy are available.

One is a handheld device that attaches to a finger or thumb. It measures the heart-rate in a sine curve and shows it on a tiny monitor. You slow your breathing to force the sine curve to sync with your breathing. One such product on the market is the StressEraser, but there are others as well.

The other kind of HRV device includes a belt around the ribcage that monitors breathing, as well as the finger/thumb device to monitor the heart-rate. Both the breathing and HRV curves appear in the display. You slow your breathing until the two curves into sync. This kind of therapy is usually done in a neurofeedback practitioner’s office.

Of course, there’s one budget form of HRV that involves no technology.

It’s called meditation. Buddhists figured out a long time ago that the secret to happiness was slow, controlled breathing. Studies of the Buddhist-trained brain have shown great HRV and a resting activation of the brain centers associated with happiness.

How do you feel after doing HRV?

Calm.

With a little practice every day, you learn to feel this in-sync rhythm. After a while, staying in sync becomes natural. Stress and anxiety melt away.

My husband has probably as much neurofeedback training as most beginner practitioners out there. But he’s an IT guy, not a therapist. They talked the situation over for a few weeks, then decided that the student would just borrow the equipment and self-train.

Big question: Does self-training work?

In favor of its working was the fact that this student was an adult, very determined to succeed. His ADHD was in the way of getting his degree and moving ahead in life. He was willing to devote the time. Since we’d lent him a pile of very expensive and sophisticated equipment, we were also relieved that he was conscientious and careful.

But still, does it work?

Neurofeedback therapy takes a long time. For us, we found that 30 hours of therapy brought the busy brain (high beta anxiety waves) down – not gradually, but all at once. Another 30 hours suddenly improved the sensory motor rhythms (sensory processing issues). We went on to put in another 40 hours, but the improvements after that were more subtle. The delta-theta waves (zoning, lack of focus, sleepy brain) were the most stubborn. And even now, years later, we find that every three months, we need to do a few “tune-up” sessions.

ADHD is usually a problem of high delta-thetas and low betas (concentration waves). But this student’s initial assessment showed remarkably high busy brain waves. This suggested that a lot of his ADHD may be due to a shrill and constant panic signal rather than to a sleepy brain. If so, then this was good. In our experience, busy brain responds faster to neurofeedback than delta-theta.

For the first few weeks, the student was frustrated by the lack of results and called occasionally for support. But he checked in this week, since it was the agreed-upon due date for the equipment, and said he discovered that his ability to read and retain had suddenly improved. He was hoping this meant a break-through was imminent.

My husband let him keep the equipment over the Christmas holidays to keep training, make some appointments with his home neurofeedback therapist, and then check back in January.

There are few neurofeedback therapists out there, and many young people with Asperger’s, Tourette’s, ADHD, and anxiety disorders. Wouldn’t it be great if kids didn’t have to self-train?

For many, many Aspies, food is one of the Big Issues. Too many sensory issues are involved. Not surprisingly, most don’t learn how to prepare their own foods and are dependent on mom, spouse, roommates, take-out, and/or low-nutrient frozen nuke-and-eat dinners.

But it’s important to give Aspie teens the skills they need for a full and independent adulthood. Don’t give up on teaching him to cook even before you’ve started. You might be surprised.

But first, let’s take stock of the sensory challenges your Aspie teen might have:

1. Tactile sensory issues.

Many Aspies are disgusted by the feel of food — not just on their hands, but also in their mouths. Many dislike having dirty or wet hands. And cracking an egg? The feel of the cracking, the goopiness of the egg inside, and the risk of getting their fingers wet makes this really distressing.

2. Smell sensory issues.

Some Aspies can’t be near strong smells. Even the delicate smells of raw vegetables can make them run out of the room. That’s going to be a challenge for facing foods.

3. Motor control issues.

Controlling the hands to deliver the right about of whack to crack an egg without obliterating it? Controlling the fingers to pry the shell apart without plunging the thumbs right through?  Stirring and mixing without flinging the contents across the room? For kids who lack motor control, these skills can take a long time to learn.

4. Motor planning issues.

Many Aspies aren’t instinctively aware that they need to hold the handle of the frying pan with one hand while they spatula the eggs with the other. They don’t hold onto the bowl while they mix. As a result, there are continuous messes to clean up.

5. Auditory issues.

Auditory processing can be as simple as being grossed out by the squishy, bubbly sounds of foods. Or it can be the inability to follow and understand verbal instructions.

6. Taste sensitivity.

Often Aspie kids hate a lot of foods. They don’t like cooking because they don’t like eating.

*   *   *

So those are the challenges. Here are some suggestions for success in the kitchen.

1. Start early, do it often.

A kid as young as eight years old can prepare food. The sooner he gets started, the sooner it starts to feel natural and normal.

Start with weekend breakfasts and lunches. Every kid in the household should have to make his/her own breakfast and lunch. Keep it simple. Provide foods they like.  Give your kids the job of making their own school lunch. This helps your Aspie youth get used to handling food.

At all cost, avoid giving your kid money to buy lunch at a school cafeteria. This just encourages dependence on others. Worse, school food is usually dreadful. Make sure your kid is eating real food made at home.

Once breakfasts and lunches are under control, move onto suppers. The best thing is to assign each kid in the household one day to cook supper. Allow the kid to plan the menu. Supervise and control the process until you’re sure he can do it on his own.

Yes, it’s time-consuming. If both parents are working, then weekdays might be a challenge. But consider that once your kids can cook a meal, that will be really useful when you’re coming home late from work.

2. Be patient.

Many Aspies have weak problem-solving skills. When the pot boils over, or the mixing bowl spills, or the cookies end up slightly burnt, they can just drop everything and run out of the room. This is their anxiety over-reacting to the situation.

Create a rating scale for cooking disasters, where 10 is the house burning down and 1 is slightly-less-than-perfect. Post it on the fridge. When you make messes in the kitchen, get the whole family to rate your mess-up (“Boy, that was a six, wasn’t it?”) This helps your Aspie kid realize that messes happen to everyone and that most aren’t a big deal.

When your kid runs away from a problem or mess, help her rate it, then return to fix it.

It’s often helpful to discuss potential mess-ups before the cooking project starts. This will reduce panic if these things occur.

3. Use the familiar to work toward the unfamiliar.

What if she wants to make the same thing six weeks in a row? That’s fine. Repetition is one of the ways Aspies learn. One of your goals is to create a comfort zone with cooking, and repetition will help do that.

After a while, add in some variations and small substitutions so that she can expand her repertoire. Over time, incorporate more variations.

This is better than introducing an entirely new cooking project each week.

4. Keep meals low-cook.

Many Aspies prefer raw or lightly steamed foods with few seasonings. You don’t need to teach your kid to make casseroles. Focus on easy meals.

There’s nothing wrong with a dinner of sliced fruit and vegetables, toast, nuts, and a chunk of ham. Later, you can add variations, such as heating the ham, cooking frozen peas instead of sliced veggies, and making pasta with sprinkled cheese instead of toast.

5. Teach your kid knife safety early in the game.

Aspies often have weak motor control, so they need to learn proper knife technique. Serrated steak knives are less likely to cut a finger, but they’re harder to control than a proper vegetable knife. Watch Youtube videos on good knife technique. Then practice together.

Buy a Slapchop for mincing.

Buy a pair of clear swimming goggles for cooking projects involving onions. This will prevent panic-related knife injuries caused by over-reacting to onion fumes.

6. Get siblings involved.

Often one of your kids has progressed to being a not-half-bad cook. Use that talent. Get the kids to make a meal together, or bake cookies together. The sibling will help cover the Aspie kid’s mistakes so that both end up feeling successful in the end.

7. Help with heat.

Many Aspies feel heat more strongly than NT people. Opening an oven door to put in a tray of cookies can feel very dangerous to them. Hot frying pans and boiling pots can create panic.

Encourage your Aspie kid to wear oven mitts. Help with putting things in the oven. But ask that your kid stands right beside the oven to watch the process and feel some of the heat.

Introduce broiling. It involves less exposure heat than baking. Many foods can be broiled instead of baked or fried.

Develop some steam safety techniques. Help your kid understand how hot (and how not-hot) steam is, how to use the pot lid as a steam shield, and how to stir a simmering pot. Discuss ways to prevent pots from boiling over, as well as simple ways to clean up the mess when they do.

8. Write the steps on paper.

Processing written instructions is easier than processing verbal instructions. Break every task down into steps. Pre-read them through together. This will help your kid focus on the steps and feel more in control.

9. Make a cookbook.

If your kid is heading off to college in a few years, then now is the time to start making a cookbook of easy meals you know he likes. Most college cookbooks lay out complex dinners with spicy sauces and multiple textures. You need to create a cookbook that works for your kid.

Consider including such classics as Scrambled Eggs With Cheese, Tuna Melts, Steamed Vegetables, Salmon Patties, etc.

10. Stick it out.

It’s going to take a while for your kid to feel comfortable in the kitchen. But don’t give up and pass on a legacy of dependence. For an Aspie to feel in control of his life, he’s going to need to control his food. In many ways, this is more important than math and physics.

I’ll go out on a limb here and suggest that it’s a question many bloggers in the Aspergersphere don’t want to ask.

Sure, some parents blog under false names. So then maybe that’s okay. But a lot of us blog under our real names, or we blog in a way that it’s not hard to figure out who’s being talked about. Then what?

Is it okay?

After all, it’s hard parenting an Asperger child. Right? Do we not have the right to express ourselves and get advice and support from others?

Here are some of my thoughts on the right to blog about our kids:

1. The child “owns” his/her Asperger Syndrome, not the parents.

We adults — teachers, occupational therapists, psychologists, parents –  think we own the Aspergerness of the children we work with. We want to have control over the situation, so we make the situation “ours.” We call the shots, choose and make the accommodations, direct the teachers, read (and write) the books, name the symptoms and behaviors. Some of us even exploit it for personal profit.

Because of this control freakishness, we forget that the Aspergerness belongs to the child.

Our job is to pass on control to the kid, not to keep it for ourselves.

2. Professionalism demands privacy and confidentiality.

The teachers, OTs, and doctors who work with Asperger children can’t blog about them, share information about them (without permission), or identify their issues publicly. Should parents not hold themselves to the same standards?

3. The internet has a loooooooooooong memory.

You’d think maybe it’s okay to blog about a toddler. Heck, he can’t even read, and neither can his friends. But those blogs will still be floating around the internet years from now, for anybody to read. Including them. And their friends. And their friends’ moms.

Even if you take the site down, other bloggers may still be quoting you, keeping your words in circulation.

4. Older kids have strong privacy needs.

Being a teen is tough, and doing it with an Asperger perspective is even tougher. They and their friends spend most of their free time on the internet. How long before some monstrous classmate finds the blog and starts passing it around Facebook to humiliate the kid?

How hard will it be to defend what you’ve written? How much will your child feel exposed and betrayed?

5. Parents don’t own their children.

Children are their own persons. Just because they have Asperger Syndrome doesn’t mean that they lose the right to their dignity, or that they somehow are more “deserving” of being blogged about. That’s treating the child like a thing, instead of a person.

We need to ask whose rights come first.

Parents focus on their own pain and confusion. Naturally. They reach out for help. They try to help others. Naturally.

But is there a way to do this while still placing our child’s dignity before our own hardships?

If there’s any chance that our need to blog hurts our child, now or in the future, then do we have the right to do it?

At least think about it.

Rehearsing is funny. I mean, if you’ve never done it. If you’ve done it, then it’s totally not funny.

Parent: Remember to try to make a good first impression on the teachers.
Kid: Yeah, yeah, right. Impression. (not looking up from computer)
Parent: And ask your friends how their summer went. Like, ask did they go somewhere.
Kid: Yeah, yeah. Somewhere. (not looking up from the computer)
Parent: You aren’t even looking up from the computer! (puts hand in front of screen)
Kid: Hey!
Parent: We’re talking about school tomorrow.
Kid: No, YOU’re talking about school tomorrow. I’m not. I don’t even care.

Are you a parent facing a new school year, more stressed than your kid?

Then listen up.

Here are some tips for getting through the first week. And I said “getting through,” not “sailing through,”, mind you.

1. Pack a lunch together. Asperger kids need to feel some control over their food. They’re won’t be shocked and surprised by what’s in their lunchbag. And they’ll be more likely to eat it. Just keep healthy, high-protein, low-sugar foods on hand. Over time, pass on the entire job to the kid. It’s a life skill. Hey, life’s tough, kiddo!
2. Send an introduction letter for the teacher. Mention Asperger Syndrome, sensory difficulties, and accommodations outlined in the IEP. Many, many teachers aren’t aware of the IEP until well into the school year.Phone the school secretary and let him/her know it’s in your kid’s backpack. Otherwise, it’ll just come home again. If your kid is in high school, the guidance department or special needs supervisors should have informed all the teachers in advance.
3. Write a list the night before. Include all the basics: eat breakfast, brush teeth, comb hair, get dressed, pack lunch, etc. Draw a checkbox beside each item. This will help focus the morning.
4. Prepare for after school. Your kid may or may not want to talk, but there’s still lots to talk about. Getting used to a new routine is a tough go for an Asperger kid. So talk about the new daily schedule. If you have a copy of the schedule, try to colour-code it (like, dislike, hard, easy, etc.) and post it on the fridge. This helps the kid feel more control over their day. Talk about the other kids, and point out potential new friends. Peek in the lunchbag to see if anything got eaten.

If you’re a teacher reading this, here are some tips for you:

1. Give up on conformity. Won’t happen. Next!
2. Go visual. Asperger kids tend to be visual learners. Think charts, graphs, tables, schedules, diagrams.
3. Give them a heads-up before you change anything related to the routine. Tell them what will be different and give a suggestion about what they should do.
4. Keep instructions short. One thing at a time.
5. Avoid too many open-ended tasks. Asperger kids are good at tasks that require micro-focus, whereas most kids at this age can’t focus more than a gnat. Sure, give open-ended and creative work that the average kids can do, but also give the deep-concentration work that Asperger kids can do. Be fair.
6. Be aware of the possibility of sensory overload. Too much of anything (excitement, noise, frustration, movement) creates a sensory build-up in the kid’s body. This is a time bomb. Get tips from the parents on how to avoid sensory overload and how to defuse the bomb before it blows.
7. Let the kid leave class whenever he/she wants. Designate a go-to place. Don’t draw attention to these exits. This is the kid taking charge of the problem and doing what needs to be done.
8. Reserve extra consequences for kids who bully, tease, or treat Asperger classmates unfairly. Yes, that’s not fair. But kids have to learn not to pick on those who can’t defend themselves. When the costs are high, kids won’t do it.
9. Talk about good books on Asperger’s, meltdowns, sensory issues, etc. with the parents. Read the same books and try some of the ideas together, at home and at school.
10. Asperger kids argue with the teacher. Get over it. They’re not trying to be disruptive – they are disruptive. They see all people as equals, and they don’t get the power structures and hierarchies in the real world. Here’s a suggestion: If the kid is arguing and becoming disruptive, give the kid a piece of paper and tell him/her to write it all down, and you will discuss it later.
11. Don’t expect the Asperger kid in this year’s class to be anything like the Asperger kid in last year’s class. There is a lot of variability in who gets identified as Asperger. All the designation means is that this kid is not going to be like the norm, so special strategies are necessary.

Links
A very thorough article on the OASIS website

A list of articles related to education

The politicians look for ideological causes. Because they’re funny that way. The lefties claim the cause is social problems, poverty, cutbacks, undereducation, and unemployment. The righties claim the cause is criminals and anarchists. And Blackberries.

Who’s right?

Neither.

Many of the rioters are employed, educated, and financially stable. Few if any are criminals or anarchists. It was as if a bunch of your neighbours and friends got arrested. And yes, it’s hard to tell if that’s reassuring or alarming.

So, hm, what exactly was going on?

There’s one thing we can say for sure. These riots are going to happen again.

No amount of police, water cannons, security cameras, and expanded prison sentences is going to change that. Because the cause was not the absence of police, water cannons, and security cameras, or short prison sentences. And until we eliminate the cause, we get to keep the problem.

I’m not a Brit, so why should I care? Because there were some weird echoes of the Vancouver riots earlier this year that were sparked by a hockey game. A lot of young people got their lives messed up real bad. Nice young people.

Sure, there have been riots in the past.

But other riots had a definable cause. This one is intriguing because it doesn’t seem to have one. The rioters had no real reason to riot. So we have to start asking different questions.

So then who are these people? The only common factor in the UK riots is that the participants are all young. The police weren’t arresting 45-year-olds. They were also mostly male.

When interrogated, they’ve said they had no reason for rioting. They had no particular grievance. They weren’t part of a movement. They were just rioting for the sake of rioting.

So what I’m saying here is (drum roll)….

That’s the frontal lobe.

Or rather, it’s the absence of the frontal lobe.

Quickie review time: Remember that the frontal lobe is the brain’s executive manager:

• It tames impulses.
• It guides the brain in focusing on right and wrong.
• It helps the brain understand how the self relates to others (do unto others).
• It regulates the emotions when they get too wound up.
• It keeps the brain aware of the big picture.

Lose your frontal lobe, then you’re all impulse and no control. You can’t behave ethically and morally. You feel nothing toward others. Your emotions ramp up too fast. And you forget everything except what’s going on in the moment.

Yikes.

Asperger and ADHD kids have frontal lobe challenges. Most neuro-work on spectrum kids focuses on stimulating the frontal lobe. So if all the rioters had been young people on the spectrum, that would kind of make sense. However, they weren’t.

But.

Video games put the frontal lobe to sleep.

Yes, I’m dissing video games, blaming society’s ills, bla bla bla. I don’t care if you’ve heard this before. This is important, so listen up.

We know that electronic media has changed the human brain. Young people are now wired differently from older people. And if electronic games are lorazepam for the frontal lobe, then their rewiring is pointing them toward the zombie zone.

An ethics-less, impulse-driven, out-of-control zombie zone.

Imagine that you lived in a videogame world and connect with others through electronic media, rather than through life. What would a riot look like to you?

A lark? A game? A chance to be the game hero you’d always wanted to be? A break from boredom?

Might parked cars and shop windows look like targets? Police like obstacles and challenges to the game?

What would society turn into if an entire generation couldn’t keep their brains under control?

Maybe we’re finding out.

No, I’m not suggesting there’s just one cause for the entire UK riot event. I’m no politician. But at least consider the possibility that the generation that lives in video games and social media has lost the ability to connect with wider society.

Then the cause wouldn’t be real. It’d be virtual.

Now, wouldn’t that be a riot.

What does stimming do?

• It pokes the senses a little. That helps keep them awake. (Think of crossing and uncrossing your legs when you’re sitting in a boring lecture.)
• It feels good. It seems to tickle them inside. Even verbal stimming (playing with words and sounds).
• It soothes.

So what causes stimming?

Stimming is caused by a weakness in an inhibition function in the brain. The brain basically does two things: stimulation (turning things on) and inhibition (turning things off). When your actions are controlled, your inhibition function has got a good handle on the stimulation function.

But let’s say there’s extra activity  in one corner of the brain (think of a loud party). The noise can overwhelm another region close by. It becomes an irritant. You’ll want some release from that irritation. So you let something go.

Basically, your brain overrides the inhibition function.

If you stim by flapping your hands, that doesn’t mean that there’s a weakness in the inhibition function related to your hands, or even your muscle control. It’s more likely too much activity in the stress/anxiety centers, which are very close to your sensory and motor control centers. You stim to release some of the noise.

People don’t do things unless there’s a reward.

There’s some kind of pleasure in letting go of inhibition in little bursts.

You can think of it in the same way as a dignified professional who once a month goes to a wild party, drinks copious amounts of adult beverages, and abandons all the rules for one long evening. Then the next day, he puts on his tie again, feeling refreshed, and goes back to being his usual controlled self.

Pleasure. Release. Relief.

It’s interesting that stimming for people with profound Tourette’s Syndrome often involves swearing.

But why swearing? Why not other random words?

The answer may have to do with the amount of release. Why do we curse when we hit our finger with a hammer? Because we feel more of a release when we say “%$#@!” than when we say “Gosh darn!” no matter how loud we say it.

Tourette people deal with a lot of anxiety and stress noise inside their brains. So a strong stim like swearing helps them release that noise.

This video is Bill Cosby addressing graduation at Carnegie Mellon. But he could have been talking to Asperger young people.

“Don’t talk yourself into not being you.”