Life with Aspergers

Today, I'm posting over at Specialism. Teaching Basic Life Skills to Special Needs Children http://special-ism.com/teaching-basic-life-skills-to-your-special-needs-children/ My post was prompted by the thought that our dependent special needs children may well grow up into needy and dependent adults - and that we, the parents, won't be around forever. It makes sense to start getting our kids to do things for themselves.

In my last couple of posts, ( 1 , 2 ) I've discussed the way in which our special needs children use the media to accelerate their learning. I've talked about how critical the media is for visual learners and how these kids learn in a completely different manner to their peers. Now however, we need to look at the negative aspects of this media obsession. I've already discussed the possibility of learned violent behaviours, irresponsibility (jackass) and bad language.  In this post, I want to look at some of the less obvious types of negatives. Inattention and Immediacy In the last decade have become an immediate society.  We expect our movies to start with action sequence immediately and without introduction. If the film is a slower one then often the action is the film's credit sequence itself; Panic Room for example.  I've noticed that many kids and adults today simply don't have the patience to watch an older film and it's one of the main reasons ...

In my last post , I looked at television and movies and discussed the amazing academic and social learning opportunities they present for visual learners. I also talked about the negative aspects of these and in particular, my belief that it's not violence that's the problem but language and stupidity - jackass; that last point is for you. In this post I want to look at other types of indoor recreation; computers, games, tablets, phones, music players and books. Computers Computers represent an amazing "not-to-be-missed" opportunity for children with aspergers syndrome to pick up skills, follow their special interests, learn visually and even socialize. It's hardly surprising that the computing field has much more than its fair share of employees with aspergers. On the one hand, this stresses just how important it is to give your child access to them - and to the internet. Even gaming, which you may see as a "wasteful" activity, is really devel...

We all know that too much TV is bad for your kids. The same goes for computers. Quite frankly, the same should apply for iPads, Phones, books and portable music players but somehow our society doesn't seem to have issues with these. Of course, all of these rules apply for "normal" kids. But how different is it for kids with special needs, and in particular, those with asperger's syndrome? Should they be afforded more time on these devices? Less? -- or is their diagnosis irrelevant in this case? In this series, I present my thoughts on the matter. The Needs of Children with Asperger's Syndrome Children with aspergers syndrome and other ASD's often have vastly different needs to their neurotypical counterparts. Chief among these needs is the need for visual and experiential learning. While most kids can easily follow classroom conversation and can easily separate the teacher's jokes and the general buzz of conversation from the teaching...