Merged Identity is the name of the band my husband and I are forming in our “spare” time.
I say spare time, as our family is hectic.

My husband’s parents are not doing too great, she has bi-polar disorder, he has Alzheimer’s. We are their carers, and have Power Of Attorney for them. Maybe we are the wrong people to do this, as we are not organised people, and maintaining things is hard enough for just our family.

I am an adult with Asperger’s syndrome. This means that although I am able to ‘fit in’ with you, I do not really understand you. You may be able to say “I understand what you must be going through”, but you don’t. You could be thinking that maybe I am upset about having AS, or that it means that in some way I am broken. Maybe you even feel sorry for me.
I have been an aspie all my life, I just didn’t know it until recently. This means I have very well established coping strategies, and you could have met me in the supermarket, and not realised that there was anything “wrong” with me. At other times, particularly in my teen years, you would have noticed I am not like other people in my peer group, and labelled me slightly odd, slightly dangerous, slightly strange. I play electric bass and sing.

My husband has ADHD, again not ‘recognised’ until comparatively recently. He, like me, is a musician, a more than competent guitarist that is currently playing bass (how dare he take my instruments!) for a great band called the c-sides while the bluehorses take a break. I will refer to him as Jay.

Our eldest daughter is NT, and is a really great actress and dancer, currently doing her A-levels. She will be referenced as DD1.

Our younger daughter is ?AS (or more likely APD). She is an artist and writer, she spent one summer holiday writing a novel for release in a few years. Let’s call her Buffy.

Our eldest son has ADHD (borderline AS) and has just started high school. He is having a hard time settling in, and we are finishing his official statement of needs at the moment. He is called Daryl.

Our middle son was diagnosed as AS when he started nursery school. They were most concerned and helpful. A few days after they decided to refer him, i turned up to collect him, and saw him about to get into someones car. I took him back to the nursery, and they said that he had left in a group of parents and kids, and everyone assumed he was going home with someone else in the group. I moved him to a different school, with an on site speech therapist, and he is thriving. He is Danny.

Baby Connor is 13 months. He is smily, babbling, very intelligent, and had his MMR yesterday. Time will tell where he is on the spectrum. I believe that everyone is on the autistic spectrum, it is a sliding scale, no-one is fully normal or fully autistic.