TOTALLY GEEKED!

Dear Prudie,
I have a brother two years my senior, and we’re in our late 20s. We don’t really have a relationship. I have recently learned a lot about Asperger’s syndrome, and after hours of research, I’m positive my brother is on the spectrum. He doesn’t really listen to what other people say and interrupts conversations; he lives in a world of habits and changing his routine makes him sick; he can’t understand other people’s feelings while having extreme feelings of his own; he has difficulty making friends; he has odd, repetitive behaviors, the list goes on.
He’s never been diagnosed, and my parents never investigated his awkward behavior, and he was bullied when he was young. He is a very smart person, now with a master’s degree in engineering, and I am happy to know that he has a good job, a few close friends, and an active social life. I never understood his behavior was a syndrome, and not just him being rude, mean, or unpleasant. Now thinking about my brother makes me feel terribly sad, and also very guilty. I want to get along better with him. The question is, Do I tell him I think he has Asperger’s? He’s very sensitive and can get terribly upset when conversations turn too personal. What’s the best thing to do to become a better sister to my undiagnosed Aspie brother!


—Bad Sister


Dear Sister,
Your brother is an engineer, so even though he has a hard time dealing with people, maybe if he thinks of himself as an engineering issue, he can understand himself—and even others—better. I suggest you start by giving him a copy of the superb Michael Lewis book (soon to be a motion picture), The Big Short. True, this book is about the economic meltdown, not Asperger’s, but one of the heroes of the book, Michael Burry, who saw the collapse coming, said of himself, “Only someone who has Asperger’s would read a subprime-mortgage-bond prospectus.” He realized he must be on the spectrum when his young son was diagnosed with Asperger’s. I think this could be a way to open this conversation with your brother, and bring him a similar insight about himself. I have heard from other adults who got this diagnosis later in life (sometimes a self-diagnosis), and they say it suddenly made everything that came before make sense. If your brother indeed has Asperger’s, it’s certainly not too late for him to get help, not to obliterate his differences, but to understand better what makes him tick and others tock