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Nurturing Your Asperger's Child

By: Phyllis Wheeler

You have discovered that your child has Asperger's Syndrome, like many other children. Asperger's is on the "autism spectrum," which means that a child can be a little bit autistic, or odd-normal, or a lot autistic and quite impaired. Asperger's is somewhere there between the extremes. Now that you know this, you want your child to move toward the more normal end of the spectrum. If you work with him and bolster his self-confidence, you may help him become more normal. If you don't help him, the world will drain his self-confidence.
How do you increase his self-confidence? You can encourage his musical gifts. He may have exceptional musical talent--people on the autism spectrum often do. He may even have perfect pitch. If your child can enjoy music, or even excel at it, it will give him joy for the rest of his life. Now, how do you find the right teacher? The typical piano teacher may be intimidated by your child. But a music therapist wouldn't be intimidated. Or perhaps you have a family member or family friend who knows the child and has the patience to teach him. You can build a requirement for daily practicing into your system of rewards for your child. You need to create such a system to encourage your child to do chores and homework.
Aspies often are loners. Your child may love to talk on and on about one subject. Developing social skills doesn't come naturally. You will need to teach these skills. When your child is in grade school, he may not be very aware of his need to learn social skills. But in middle school, he may notice that others have friends while he does not. When he reaches this teachable point, it's time for you to step in and show him how to make friends.
Steps you can take are:
* Therapy groups that teach social skills, led by a social worker, speech therapist, or other professional.
* Guide him in a conversation game every day after school. You, the parent, can become the teacher.
* Sending him to a special-needs school that will help with this. I believe that mainstreaming the child without any support is not helpful. These children need careful coaching on how to interact with others, and protection from bullying.
A child who is bullied can feel the damage to his self-worth for the rest of his life.
An Asperger's child in regular school may be the target of teasing and bullying. It is your job to try to make sure that isn't happening. You may want to volunteer at your child's school, to find out what is happening. If your child has an aide assigned to him, you can talk to the aide. You can ask the aide to help protect your child from teasing, as well. Negative teasing often goes unpunished in our culture. But you need to find a way to defend your child from these ill effects.
* Homeschooling may allow you to protect your child from teasing. You can find out all about it on the Internet.
* You may be able to find a school that controls most peer interactions. This might be a private special-needs school.
In short, there are steps you can take to protect your child's self-esteem. Be sure to take them!

Article Source: http://www.wcom51.com

To learn plenty of tools for raising your Aspergers child, be sure to check out Phyllis Wheeler's ebook, Nurturing Your Aspergers Child. In it Ms. Wheeler defines workable tools, such as a point system.

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