"We just discovered that our son has Asperger Syndrome. I wish we had a summary of the difficulties associated with this disorder so we could know what to expect (and what to work on)."
Sure! There are basically six "areas of difficulty" associated with Aspergers and High-Functioning Autism that you will need to consider. Here's the summary:
1. Difficulty with Reciprocal Social Interactions
Those with Aspergers display varying difficulties when interacting with others. Some children and adolescents have no desire to interact, while others simply do not know how. More specifically, they do not comprehend the give-and-take nature of social interactions. They may want to lecture you about the Titanic or they may leave the room in the midst of playing with another child. They do not comprehend the verbal and nonverbal cues used to further our understanding in typical social interactions. These include eye contact, facial expressions, body language, conversational turn-taking, perspective taking, and matching conversational and nonverbal responses to the interaction.
2. Impairments in Language Skills
Those with Aspergers have very specific problems with language, especially with pragmatic use of language, which is the social aspect. That is, they see language as a way to share facts and information (especially about special interests), not as a way to share thoughts, feelings, and emotions. The child will display difficulty in many areas of a conversation processing verbal information, initiation, maintenance, ending, topic appropriateness, sustaining attention, and turn taking. The child's prosody (pitch, stress, rhythm, or melody of speech) can also be impaired. Conversations may often appear scripted or ritualistic. That is, it may be dialogue from a TV show or a movie. They may also have difficulty problem solving, analyzing or synthesizing information, and understanding language beyond the literal level.
3. Narrow Range of Interests and Insistence on Set Routines
Due to the Aspergers child's anxiety, his interactions will be ruled by rigidity, obsessions, and perseverations (repetitious behaviors or language) transitions and changes can cause. Generally, he will have few interests, but those interests will often dominate. The need for structure and routine will be most important. He may develop his own rules to live by that barely coincide with the rest of society.
4. Motor Clumsiness
Many individuals with Aspergers have difficulty with both gross and fine motor skills. The difficulty is often not just the task itself, but the motor planning involved in completing the task. Typical difficulties include handwriting, riding a bike, and ball skills.
5. Cognitive Issues
Mind-blindness, or the inability to make inferences about what another person is thinking, is a core disability for those with Aspergers. Because of this, they have difficulty empathizing with others, and will often say what they think without considering the other person's feelings. The child will often assume that everyone is thinking the same thing he is. For him, the world exists not in shades of gray, but only in black and white. This rigidity in thought (lack of cognitive flexibility) interferes with problem solving, mental planning, impulse control, flexibility in thoughts and actions, and the ability to stay focused on a task until completion. The rigidity also makes it difficult for an Asperger child to engage in imaginative play. His interest in play materials, themes, and choices will be narrow, and he will attempt to control the play situation.
6. Sensory Sensitivities
Many Asperger children have sensory issues. These can occur in one or all of the senses (sight, sound, smell, touch, or taste). The degree of difficulty varies from one individual to another. Most frequently, the child will perceive ordinary sensations as quite intense or may even be under-reactive to a sensation. Often, the challenge in this area will be to determine if the child's response to a sensation is actually a sensory reaction or if it is a learned behavior, driven mainly by rigidity and anxiety.
The Aspergers Comprehensive Handbook
7 comments:
Social skills, find a group as soon as possible. Their confidence in themselves is going to dictate their growth.
The biggest problems are with other people, I bet this family has been getting on just fine and will continue to do so as long as they keep their own family life private - as everyone has the right to enjoy
as the wife of an aspergers man and mother and grandmother to more aspergers loved ones,i find TONY ATTWOOD books so helpfull,also have joined 2 local groups,it all helps,i also run a group for other parents and mums on line
So hard to summarize & explain to people. Even this condensed description is a lot to take in.
look for a summary of the blessings, those are better to focus on, and plentiful!
Read All Cats Have Aspergers! It's straightforward and simple! Great!
check out you tube video of Clay Marzo, soooo uplifting, it made the week I got the final dx so much easier to deal with, hhe has a more sever case of Aspergers but is one of the BEST surfers in the world, a love of surfing is not the point of enjoying the clip, but please look at it. I hope it takes a little bit off your stress, its so amazing
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