Life with Aspergers

This week is the official international ADHD Awareness week and I thought it might be appropriate to talk about the condition - especially since it's so common in children (and adults) with Asperger Syndrome. In fact, it's very common for people to be diagnosed with ADHD first. ADHD stands for Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder and it goes hand in hand with another disorder which was once called ADD (Attention Deficit Disorder). These two disorders are now considered one, though it's quite common to distingish ADD as ADHD-I (ADHD - Inattentive). Public Perception If you don't have children with ADHD/ADD, you're probably imagining children who are literally bouncing off walls, throwing things and jumping across furniture. Like Aspergers, ADHD suffers greatly from stereotypes. It's quite common for people to witness televised "extreme acts of ADHD" and blame it on the parents, red cordial, too much TV, poor discipline or any number of other things. ...

This is a "best of the best post. Check the link: SOS Best of the Best Edition 11: Family Life from 15th October for more posts on this topic by other authors. Normally I tend to keep my family life quite separate from my general aspergers posts. No, I'm not fussed about privacy, it's all there on a different blog (see: http://gbollard.blogspot.com ). I just do my best to to shield my readers from the boredom of my daily life. This month's BOB topic however is "family life" and I guess this is one of the hardest posts I've had to write. How do I make it sound interesting? You see, apart from unexpected change, our lives are pretty much the same as everyone else's. We've got things down to a routine. It wasn't always like this. We had years of terrible struggle until we developed all of the rules. As parents, we've gotten very good at predicting events and distractions. For example; We can now look at food with the eyes of my eldest son an...

In my last post, I looked at less confrontational strategies to approach autistic children with under normal conditions . In this post, I want to look at how it's done during a meltdown. A Brief Look at Meltdowns I'll begin by defining a meltdown. Meltdowns are generally violent and loud events which look very much like temper tantrums with one very obvious distinction. Meltdowns are " out of control " events.  The person is not using the meltdown as a means of getting what they want - in fact, they want the meltdown to stop more than you do. Not all meltdowns actually are violent but all have the capacity to be violent. A person in a meltdown state is not responsible for their actions . For this reason, it's important for young children on the spectrum to learn their triggers and how to avoid them. To Approach or Not to Approach The first question that you need to ask yourself is; is it dangerous for you, for others or for the child? If the situation isn...

For many people, particularly teachers, the first real experience with autism comes as part of an intervention in a "situation". After all, aside from odd mannerisms and odd comments, many autistic children can appear quiet and non-participative - this can easily be mistaken for shyness. The real problems begin to surface when an extraordinary event, such as a meltdown or shutdown occurs. Even if no such event occurs, a simple friendly intervention from a teacher can sometimes result in a unexpected response. When such events do occur, they can "sour" the relationship between teacher and child - and sometimes between the parents and school too. Recovery is a long process of "walking on eggshells" for which most teachers don't have the time or patience, In this post. I want to look at some of the ways that you can modify your approach to children with aspergers syndrome to reduce those ill effects. I'll be concentrating on an approach under no...

" Blazing My Trail: Living and Thriving with Autism " by Rachel B. Cohen-Rottenberg is a "sequel" to "The Uncharted Path" which I reviewed here and followed up here . When we last left Rachel's story, she had fully accepted her place on the autism spectrum and was making plans to take control of parts of her life. The plans weren't big plans but every long journey begins with small steps. At times, it feels like an entirely different person has written this book. This Rachel is capable, confident, assertive (without being nearly so argumentive) and full of promise. Yes, it is a sequel and indeed in the first chapter or two, it feels like you need to have read the first book - but then it all changes and from then on, whenever it references past events, it provides a handy recap. I feel that the titles of the books were very well chosen, with "The Uncharted Path" being about taking uncertain steps into unknown territory and Blazing My Tr...

This is a "best of the best" article. Check back here after September 15 for more articles by other authors on this topic. There is a saying about Aspergers which I believe applies equally well to most, if not all, other special needs - to paraphrase; "if you've met one person with special needs, you've met ONE person needs". Just as all special needs people are different, the calming techniques required are also quite different. Techniques which calm one person may simply infuriate another. Trial and Error In this post, I plan to cover a few approaches but the application of these is very much a matter of trial and error. If your actions seem to be worsening a situation then stop and try a different approach. Getting Attention No technique is going to work unless you have attention. It doesn't have to be total attention, part attention is fine. Don't forget too that many special needs children have issues with eye contact, so "attention" ...

A friend is doing a talk on Cyberbullying and asked for some suggestions. Unfortunately I'm not the sort of person who can write "just a little" and as it turns out, my response is too long for Facebook. As such, I've decided to "post here and link there". In any case, she may find your own comments/responses to be better than my original statements; So here are the Questions; When does freedom of speech cross over to cyberbullying? What productive strategies have you used when encountering online bullying? Parents/Teachers: Do your school districts have a cyberbullying policy or guidelines which they enforce? Psychologists/Therapists: How serious can this kind of trauma be to individuals enduring online attacks? When does freedom of speech cross over to cyberbullying? For many people, this threshold is reached shortly after the person being attacked starts complaining. For people on the spectrum however, this threshold may be reached quite some t...