My ASD Child

 Do you need some assistance in parenting your Aspergers or HFA child? Click here to use Mark Hutten, M.A. as your personal parent coach. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Mark, I emailed you a while back and you mentioned that I could email when I needed to. Thank you. I last wrote you in December that my son became involved in a dispute involving the local police. We have had 3 court dates. It keeps delaying due to not being able to come to an agreement. But the attorney, even though he was just vaguely familiar with Aspergers, has been very good with Craig. He has the compassion and excellence that is needed here. What started out very bad is turning into a good thing. It will probably take another 90 days or more. But Craig is working hard. Too hard sometimes. He goes to therapy 3 times a week. Doing excellent. He's more focused and can calm down easier. He's got a lot on his plate but has support from his family. From his attorney. From therapy. And from his work.  He h

“I have a 10-year old son Michael who has high functioning autism. His father passed away a couple months ago. Michael coped with this remarkably well initially. He didn’t seem terribly upset, and didn’t even cry at the memorial service. But about 3 weeks ago, we went together as a family to put some additional flowers on his father’s grave.  Later that day, I found him sobbing intensely in the closet in his bedroom. Currently, he is having a lot of behavior problems at school and is risking suspension. The school is considering transferring him to a special education class for students with various disabilities. Today, he refused to go to school. He hardly leaves the house. He prefers to stay in his room playing video games, and will not even eat meals with us. I told him that I would like for us to see a counselor for therapy, but he says he will not go! So my question is how do I get Michael to cope with the loss of his father?” Children with High-Functioning Autism and As

Kids with High Functioning Autism (HFA) and Asperger’s (AS) exhibit difficulty in appropriately processing in-coming information. Their brain's ability to take in, store, and use information is significantly different than other developing kids. HFA and AS students can present a challenge for the most experienced teacher. But on a positive note, they can contribute significantly to the classroom, because they are often extremely creative and provide a different perspective to the subject matter in question. Although HFA and AS differ from classic autism with respect to language acquisition and early cognitive development, they do have similarities (e.g., in the areas of social impairment, impairment in reading social non-verbal language, inflexibility, persistent preoccupation, etc.). Problematic behavior in HFA and AS students is essentially the result of (a) failure to learn necessary adaptive behaviors (e.g., how to establish satisfying personal relationships), and (