The aging Asperger teen...

On Friday morning, I received a rather upsetting phone call. My cousin's husband passed away very suddenly on Thursday evening. He was only 52 years old, and had not been ill through any stretch of the imagination.
Needless to say that sort of started the holiday weekend off in a not-so-good way.
I've talked to my cousin a couple of times since then (she is Cuz's S-I-L) and Hubby will be trying to get the day off for the funeral on Thursday. Either way, I will be there. Probably will attend with my parents.

On Saturday, Hubby and I started the not so nice task of getting the chickens ready for the freezer. My brother and his family stopped in before we finished, so although it was nice to spend time with them, it would have been good to have that dirty job finished with all on the same day. We did finish it all up yesterday.
I am sort of sad to say good bye to 'the girls.' Those funny little chickens made me laugh almost every single time I went out to that coop. It will probably seem a little odd when I prepare a meal with my sealed packages - I don't think I will allow myself to think about it too much.

Over the weekend, I found out that S and Lil'A are 'going out' again. And, again, I'm still not sure what this all entails. She has been giving S little notes all last week - telling him that he should smile, that sort of thing. One of the notes said that she wouldn't be able to go out with S again until she had the chance to 'teach him some stuff' but S didn't really know what she meant by that. I suggested that since they were going to be having lunch together today that he find out what she meant by that.

See - this puts me in strange, uncharted territory. How do you guide an an Asperger child entering the dating scene?
I know he's going to have to get his heart broken - that is part of growing up - but there is part of me that SO wants to protect him from experiencing that particular heartbreak because of his social awkwardness. I can only 'coach' him on acceptable behaviours so much, and I really don't know what sorts of quirks he has that are Asperger-based vs. teenager-craziness!  Add in to that his low short-term working memory, and whatever she does tell him will be GONE before he ever gets a chance to tell me so that I can help him out a bit.  (sigh)

I did a quick Internet search on "Aspergers and dating" but most of the sites that I took a quick look at are more for adults rather than teens. I guess I will have to have a deeper search in to these websites.


I asked the A-man if he had anything special that he wanted to do this week. His smart-aleck response was, "Oh... yeah... cuz, I have such a packed social schedule!" I take this to mean that he doesn't want to head to the city one night this week like he did last. What a guy!