Parenting Aspergers Children: How to Cope

Question

It can be exhausting coping with my 9 year old. I often feel like a failure because I struggle to cope sometimes. Is that normal?

Answer

The diagnosis of a serious condition such as Aspergers brings many changes and demands to the family. It is not uncommon for family members to feel depressed and the NAS Autism Helpline receives thousands of calls a year from families who are under many pressures. So you are not alone!

Having a child with Aspergers has the potential to place a great deal of strain on families. Couples struggle with issues of blame, whose fault is it, and guilt. Daily routines are a constant challenge. A special needs child often comes with additional financial costs to the family.

Dealing with the school can seem like a full-time job. The time that it takes to care for a special needs child can leave other family relationships with no attention.

So in order to avoid burnout, parents must make time for themselves. Parents often respond to this suggestion by saying that they don't have any time to do that! However, what you need to keep in mind is that even a few minutes a day can make a difference. Some parents just do such simple things as apply hand lotion or cook their favorite dinners to make themselves feel better.

Parents, just like individuals with Aspergers need rewards in order to be motivated. Parents who have children with autism have even more of a need to reward themselves, because parenting their child is often frustrating and stressful.

In addition to rewarding themselves, family members need to reward one another. Spouses need to acknowledge the hard work that each is achieving. Also remember to thank siblings for watching or helping out their brothers and sisters.

It is also important that spouses try to spend some time alone. Again, the quantity of time is not as important as the quality. This may include watching television together when the children are asleep, going out to dinner, or meeting for lunch when the children are in school.

Families may also want to occasionally engage in activities without the individual with Aspergers. This may include mom, dad and the siblings attending an amusement park together. Often families feel guilty not including the individual with Aspergers, but everyone deserves to enjoy time together that is not threatened by the challenges of Aspergers.

Search your area for support groups or networks. It gives us comfort to know that we are not the only ones experiencing a particularly stressful situation. In addition, one can get the most useful advise from others struggling with the same challenges.

Support groups for parents, siblings and grandparents are available through educational programs, parent resource centers, autism societies and Developmental Disabilities Offices. In addition, there are now online supports available for family members.

Aspergers and Sexual Behavior

Sexual behavior and Aspergers can be a real matter of concern for teachers and moms and dads throughout the world as introducing the very topic of sexual behavior and its importance to kids is a very delicate thing and can be very difficult as well and when it comes to a child or a young one with Aspergers, situations get far more complicated. A youngster with Aspergers is considered to be mildly autistic, and therefore his or her disorder is enlisted under PDD of Pervasive Developmental Disorder. In this case the youngster learns the language with ease and without any delays unlike an autistic youngster, but he or she continues to have problems relating to social interactions as well as in understanding the point of view of another person.

It is very difficult for a person with Aspergers to express his or her own feelings and it also gets very hard for them to understand the various social norms and cues. This particular disability leads to certain inappropriate sexual behaviors like:

• They start up a conversation about sexual behavior with those not comfortable with it and stress on the continuation of the conversation

• They resort to inappropriate touching of others

• They often stare at the sexual organs of the opposite sex which is extremely inappropriate

• They often resort to displaying their sexual organs in public

• These young ones do not understand that they are not supposed to touch themselves in public and they tend to doing it

Individuals with Aspergers find it very difficult to find a partner for long term relationships as they are not able to communicate well at all. They fail badly when it comes to expressing any sorts of feelings which does not mean that they do not feel. But when it comes to understanding the feelings and emotions of the partner they have a really hard time as individuals with Aspergers feel lack of empathy for other individuals and they fail to get the undertone of the speaker as well. They also have a difficulty in controlling their feelings and often succumb to outburst which is not always easy for the partner.

What moms and dads can do to help their kids having Aspergers when it comes to sexuality and sexual behavior is to make sure that they bring up the topic in front of the youngster in a very normal, frank as well as open way. Discussing a specific event right after it has taken place in not a good idea but then again kids with Aspergers respond well to specific details. The spouse or the partner can also help him or her out in more ways than one and specially by understanding the disorder and also by taking help from a professional therapist. When the various social cues are made understood to the person with Aspergers it becomes relatively easier for him or her to get a hold of appropriate or inappropriate sexual behavior.