Any parent of an Aspie understands how important it is to say what you mean and mean what you say. Aspies are literal thinkers. They see the world in black and white. They tell the truth, don't understand why someone would tell a "white lie" to protect someone's feelings or, for that matter, why someone would not want to hear the truth.

Long before I knew anything about Asperger's syndrome, I knew my son thought a different way than his siblings. For years, my husband, a conceptual thinker,...