My ASD Child

In this post, we will look at the ingredients that are critical to making “social skills interventions” successful for kids with Aspergers. Here you will find basic principles for teaching social skills that capitalize on the strengths of such kids, while specifically addressing their deficits: Make the abstract concrete— Relative to some academic skills, teaching social competence involves abstract skills and concepts. Because kids with Aspergers tend to be concrete and literal, the abstract nature of these interpersonal skills such as kindness, reciprocity, friendships, thoughts, and feelings makes them especially difficult to master. A first critical step is to define the abstract social skill or problem in clear and concrete terms. The behavior must be explicitly operationalized and the youngster taught to identify it and differentiate it from other behaviors (Is this a friend or not a friend? Is this a quiet or a loud voice? Were you being teased or not? Are you followin

One of the most significant problems for children with Asperger’s (AS) and High Functioning Autism (HFA) is difficulty in social interaction. AS and HFA also create problems with "mind reading" (i.e., knowing what another person might be thinking or feeling). Most young people can observe others and guess (through a combination of tone and body language) what's "really" going on. But without help and training, AS and HFA children can't. What comes naturally to “typical” kids does not come naturally to kids on the autism spectrum. The lack of interpersonal relationship skills makes it difficult for these boys and girls to make and keep friends – and often leads to social isolation. Now for the good news: Parents can learn to teach interpersonal relationship skills to their “special needs” youngsters. Indicators That Your Child Needs Social Skills Training  Here are some concrete ways to give AS and HFA children the tools they need to intera

Question Can you advise me on social skills training for my 12-year-old child with Aspergers? Answer For children and teens with Aspergers (high-functioning autism), social skills are necessary, but usually lacking. Finding resources for social skills training in the educational setting may be difficult in many areas. If your child’s school offers social skills classes, social skills therapy, or peer mentoring, he should be participating. If not, there may be public or community based programs, or even private therapy choices available. These programs range in cost and availability and could be unattainable. If this is the case, there are ways to teach these skills at home with very little cost. Because this is so important, the Aspergers social skills connection must be addressed as early as possible and continually supplemented as the child’s ability to understand improves with age. Similar to basic manners, here are a few of the basic social skills that shoul

Social and communicative dysfunctions are arguably the most handicapping conditions associated with Aspergers. Although the rubric social communication is used frequently to encompass these deficits, social communication is actually a redundant term. All communication, by its definition as an exchange of information between speaker and listener, is social in nature. The purpose of using the term social communication here, however, is to focus attention on the close relationship between the linguistic forms of communication used by high functioning people with autistic spectrum disorders (ASDs), and the function of these skills in the achievement of social interaction. In fact, in typical people over the age of 3 years, linguistic communication is the primary modality of social interchange. Although linguistic communication skills are used for a variety of purposes—regulating others' behavior, referring to objects and events, narrating and predicting experiences, and learning acad