Helping Students With ASD/Asperger's Succeed - For Teachers

Helping Student With ASD/Asperger's Succeed - For Teachers

By Sherri Caldwell, Asperger’s Parent, Researcher, Author and Learning Coach
For more information, contact Sherri@rebelhousewife.com.

Asperger Syndrome is a neurological difference and is classified as an Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). Every child is unique and Autism is a spectrum with wide variation. In my experience, Asperger’s kids are brilliant: sometimes scary-smart, logical and honest, with intense concentration, ability to focus and specialized interests, often in highly-technical areas: computers, science, math and defined aspects of history (i.e. WWII).

With so much brain specialization, it should not be a surprise that ASD/Asperger’s kids (also known as “Aspies”) can exhibit deficiencies in other areas:

• Emotional immaturity: Although often academically advanced, emotional maturity -- their understanding of self and others -- is typically about 3/4 their age: A 12-year-old Aspie behaves and responds to the world at a 9-year-old level.
  
• Social interaction/trust: A marked characteristic of Autism is extreme inner focus; kids seem to be preoccupied in their own little world much of the time. They have great difficulty seeing anyone else’s perspective or showing empathy. These kids must learn social awareness and interactions that we often take for granted.
  
• Sensory issues: Aspies see and experience the world very differently. Their five senses seem to be constantly under attack and overwhelm from noise, chaos, visual stimulation, touch, texture, hot/cold, etc.
  
• ANXIETY: Aspies have a high need for routine, structure and consistency.

Key areas ASD kids need to work on and need help with are flexibility, managing frustration/anxiety, social skills & interaction. They are easily overwhelmed, which can lead to dramatic meltdowns, from not knowing what to expect or how to respond and react in an often (to them) hostile and confusing environment.

Another marked characteristic of ASD/Asperger’s is the inability to look other people in the eye, which can be very frustrating to teachers, but should not be, if you understand why. As an extraordinary 13-year-old Aspie* author explains: “Sometimes it is too hard to concentrate on listening and looking at the same time.” The sensory overwhelm of trying to process and understand both visual and auditory cues at the same time is extremely challenging. So they listen. Eye contact improves as the Aspie child learns to trust the person who is speaking.
* Luke Jackson - Freaks, Geeks & Asperger Syndrome: A User Guide to Adolescence.

Supportive adults empower kids -- not only to recognize and manage challenges, but to value individual strengths and very special abilities, too. The key to success for any child is self-improvement through self-knowledge and learned strategies for self-management and interaction. ASD kids get upset very easily and recovery can be difficult. Very often, they simply need a break from the constant bombardment of sensory stimuli and confusion -- a quiet place to regroup. Most of all, they need supportive adults to accept them, love them and help them figure themselves out at school and in the world.

See Part 2: 10 Easy Ways to Help ASD/Asperger Students Succeed

Sherri Caldwell is an amateur Asperger's expert, with extensive personal experience as a parent, researcher, writer and teacher with an Asperger's son, diagnosed at age 9.
For more information, contact Sherri@rebelhousewife.com.

Comments

[Lindy Sproul]

As the mother of a recently diagnosed Aspie child entering 6th grade, I find this two-part article invaluble! Thank you so much for taking the time to write this in a short readable article. I'll definately be bookmarking this.
Excellent!