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Aspergers Kids and Public School Problems

Question Recently I have been in a battle with the Public School System. The main issue was my 8year old was being bullied beyond belief! They now think my son has Aspergers… I carried him to a Therapist and he said my son had been emotionally and physically abused by the school and has a couple of Aspergers Symptoms... Where to go from here? Answer Before the landmark Supreme Court case of Brown v. Board of Education in 1954, school districts frequently did not allow handicapped kids to enroll. Today legislation such as the Education for All Handicapped Kids Act of 1975, amended in 1990 in 2004 to become the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, protects the right of handicapped kids to a free and appropriate education in the public schools. The "spirit" of laws that apply to handicapped kids is that each youngster should be educated as an individual. This is a good thing for kids with Aspergers (high-functioning autism) in particular. They need ind

Challenges Faced by Teens and Adults with Aspergers

Despite the rapid growth of interest in Asperger disorder in kids, there continues to be a lack of awareness of the diagnosis and its implications for teens and grown-ups. The reasons for this lack of awareness lie in the history of the disorder and in the historical development of mental health services. Because, as Santayana wrote, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it,” this article reprises some of the history given elsewhere in this volume, but in a highly partial way, to bring out what the author believes to be the historically grounded prejudices that are the first challenge to anyone wanting to help teens and adults with Aspergers. The diagnosis of Aspergers (AS) is more than 50 years old, nearly as old as autistic disorder. The year of 1943 saw the publication of Kanner's description of autistic disturbances in kids [1], and 1944, Aspergers paper on autistic personality disorder [2]. Asperger, like Kanner, worked with kids, and his paper, lik