Asperger? Hyperactive?
-
pingsped:
Hi pingsped,
Hi Snowyqueen,
The notion of normalisation is the child with ASD is now able to socialise with peers and strangers (to a large extent). He is also able to deal with demands of daily interaction, ie take small disagreements, unexpected change etc in his stride, like a neurotypical person. He may still exhibits \"quirky\" behv when he is stressed or anxious.
Most children with Asperger have strengths in logical subjects such as science and math. They tend to have normal language development, esp good decoding and grammatical skills, except for comprehension and lg use.
Generally children who are on the spectrum have poor comprehension skills; ie Aspies have poorer or weaker comprehension skills (esp fictional texts), relative to IQ-matched peers. This is due mainly to difficulties in social perception eg reading between the lines, inability to automatically process and relate social situations as well as process typical human response.
A child who is \"normalised\", has comprehension skills that are within age-norms. He may struggle with literature-type texts but is generally able to answer most inference-type questions.
A child who is no longer having meltdowns but generally keeps to himself, still has a social skills problem. There are other criteria for normalisation eg having a few friends, asking strangers/classmates for help, etc.
Helping your girl with comprehension
- try to use visual methods eg concept map and/or timeline (arrange events in chrono order), to help your girl process the text
- managing stress/anxiety
a stressed child cannnot think clearly
- answering questions
Once a child is able to process the text, he is able to answer most qn, except the synonym-type and inferential questions.
Cloze passage - v difficult to advise as it depends on overall lg skills & vocab
(A child with high-functioning autism has a different lg profile)
hope this helps.
many thanks for providing all these tips for helping kids with ASD.
I would like to check if you have any tips to help ASD kids for composition writing. From your experience, do kids with ASD have difiiculties writing compositions? From the readings in this topic here do suggest that ASD kids would prefer factual reads than fictional reads as they can comprehend the former more. So will this hinder ASD kids writing creatively? MTIA
baong -
[quote]Thinking of letting him to join team sport. Will this helps his social skills?[/quote]
What type of social skill is your child missing? From what I have read, there are more boys being diagnosed as asperger than girls. But then, the symptoms found in girls versus boys are totally different.
Mine now picking up football. While others play for fun, he is detailing every movement instead of focusing on the game as a whole. He is not able to read opponent or friends expression hence does have difficulty in passing the ball at the right moment.
My suggestion is for you to observe on what is lacking with your child social skill.
My child told me he is happy to be alone or will socialise when he feels the company is right. I respected his decision and understand that he needs a lot of personal space and time alone. I'm fortunate to be able to find two other families with children age ranging from 3-15 years old. My child is most comfortable to talk to the 15 years old, to the parents or play with the 3 years old. -
[quote]Most children with Asperger have strengths in logical subjects such as science and math[/quote]
Besides math and science, some are good in drawings and music. Not sure if there are others to add on. -
My son lack of the skill to control his emotions. He likes to whine & scream if someone snatch his toy or he cannot do things right. He reacts by biting & pushing. Lack of empathy towards others. He is rigid so I’m learning how to introduce flexibility to him.
In terms of motor skills & speech, he is ok. That’s why the psychologist recommends social skills training & read social story book.
Besides social skills training, what else can we do to help him? -
baong:
hi baong
Hi pingsped,
many thanks for providing all these tips for helping kids with ASD.
I would like to check if you have any tips to help ASD kids for composition writing. From your experience, do kids with ASD have difiiculties writing compositions? From the readings in this topic here do suggest that ASD kids would prefer factual reads than fictional reads as they can comprehend the former more. So will this hinder ASD kids writing creatively? MTIA
baong
in this thread, I am usu referring to children with Asperger syndrome as I find that there is \"more homogeneity\" in this subgrp.
Children with AS can write reasonably well (compared to children with ASD) but may write out of point. They can remember details in simple stories fairly well & even copy the right answers in lower pri texts but can't truly understand some nuances. Getting them to write a \"beginning-middle-end\" type of story is not difficult.
Children with ASD are harder to characterise as a group as there is a lot of variability.
I hardly teach creative writing skills because the focus of therapy is usu on lg use, comprehension & social skills. When we do writing, we work on retelling and sequencing events pertaining to their lives. or we work on social stories. Most parents opt for regular tuition when their children have functional use of lg.
I'll say you can't go too wrong with cookie-cutter type of stories.
eg beginning - write 2-3 sentences about place & people
middle - write 5 sentences abt a strange, bad or good event/happening
end - write 3-5 sentences about what people did
This is what I'll teach to children with learning disabilities (LD). -
Hi pingsped,
thanks for your reply. What I meant is children with AS, not ASD :oops: for my earlier question. Paiseh, paiseh. -
Hi Sheryl
I'm not sure too. I hope some parents with similar situation is able to advise you better on this.
Hi pingsped
Would you be able to share the difference between AS and ASD? I thought both are short form for Asperger :oops:
I found this website which helps me to understand my child better. I hope parents facing the same predicament will find this useful.
http://www.yourlittleprofessor.com/diagnosing.html -
EN:
Hi En
Hi pingsped
Would you be able to share the difference between AS and ASD? I thought both are short form for Asperger :oops:
I found this website which helps me to understand my child better. I hope parents facing the same predicament will find this useful.
http://www.yourlittleprofessor.com/diagnosing.html
Unfortunately, I'm also no expert in autism. I graduated from NUS in late 1990s & was trained at a pte ctr. I took up a MA in Communication Studies from Macquarie University, Aus, in 2002 (?) but did not complete the course as I had to accompany my husband who was based overseas then.
My area of study was in language and communication profiles of children with different disabilities. The AS diagnosis was only formalised in 1994, I think.
So most professionals or therapists who graduated before 2005 may be taught or trained differently as guidelines have yet to be established.
There is no compulsory edn (CE) in Spore.
high-functioning autism vs asperger syndrome
- I will usu advise parents not to dwell on it as it is more productive to work on social skills deficit.
- as a therapist, I shld know more as it does help in planing IEP & in honing one's clinical skills.
- however, some kids are hard to categorise so a definitive diagnosis may not be possible. eg diagnosing a child from a chinese-speaking home or low-income family. he will not have classic AS symptoms as his home environment may not encourage/stimulate cognitive & literacy development
I read Saturday's report on adults with ASD. I find that AS label is used loosely. In the movie, Rain Man, Dustin Hoffman, portrayed a person with ASD and savant abilities. The person on whom his character is loosely based, probably has AS. However, AS behv is not evident in the movie.
(some people use PDD or ASD as an umbrella term)
AS or not, self-regulation is the key to normalisation.
Treatment protocol for children is somewhat similar - work on improving function so that one becomes \"high-functioning\" and able to self-regulate. Vigilance is required as ASD is a life-long condition. Regression to the extent of mental breakdown in adulthood is possible. It's preferable to be KS all the way as an adult with AS may find it difficult to cope with spouse and children. -
Hi pingsped
I re-read again what you have written in the past and takes me awhile to digest. Thanks for sharing.
To other parents with questions on asperger, I find the wiki having the most comprehensive explanation & 90% of what has been written can be observed in ds with the exception of motor skill. Here's the link.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asperger_syndrome
I have extracted the therapies from wiki that are open for a child diagnose with aspergers. Parents and family members can play an active role at home helping the child to integrate with society.
\"Therapies
The ideal treatment for AS coordinates therapies that address core symptoms of the disorder, including poor communication skills and obsessive or repetitive routines. While most professionals agree that the earlier the intervention, the better, there is no single best treatment package.[7] AS treatment resembles that of other high-functioning ASDs, except that it takes into account the linguistic capabilities, verbal strengths, and nonverbal vulnerabilities of individuals with AS.[1] A typical program generally includes:[7]
the training of social skills for more effective interpersonal interactions,[71]
cognitive behavioral therapy to improve stress management relating to anxiety or explosive emotions,[72] and to cut back on obsessive interests and repetitive routines,
medication, for coexisting conditions such as major depressive disorder and anxiety disorder,[73]
occupational or physical therapy to assist with poor sensory integration and motor coordination,
social communication intervention, which is specialized speech therapy to help with the pragmatics of the give and take of normal conversation,[74]
the training and support of parents, particularly in behavioral techniques to use in the home.
Of the many studies on behavior-based early intervention programs, most are case studies of up to five participants, and typically examine a few problem behaviors such as self-injury, aggression, noncompliance, stereotypies, or spontaneous language; unintended side effects are largely ignored.[75] Despite the popularity of social skills training, its effectiveness is not firmly established.[76] A randomized controlled study of a model for training parents in problem behaviors in their children with AS showed that parents attending a one-day workshop or six individual lessons reported fewer behavioral problems, while parents receiving the individual lessons reported less intense behavioral problems in their AS children.[77] Vocational training is important to teach job interview etiquette and workplace behavior to older children and adults with AS, and organization software and personal data assistants to improve the work and life management of people with AS are useful.[1]\" -
Hi En
No worries.
Let me see if I can recall some protocols offhand cos currently, my ctr only takes in children with ASD aged below 4.5 yo and AS aged below 7 yo. It's been a long while.
In my practice, children with ASD and AS undergo different social skills training as the latter grp is able to process lg better. Eg Only some children with HFA can access the following curriculum.
http://www.linguisystems.com/toc_samples/1174.pdf
There are some pre-requisites before a child with AS can access at least part of \"higher order\" social skills.
I don't usu use social stories as I find them simplistic/impractical for explaining social contexts of children aged above 7 yo.
I tend not to use ABA for kids with AS and mid-functioning ASD. It may be used to regulate behv, esp anxiety. Structured teaching generally creates rigidity and limitations which create problems (IMHO) in dealing with ambiguous social contexts in later childhood yrs.
I'm not fully aware of potential issues in adolescence and adulthood as I only see children up to 12 years old & I do not specialise in ASD. I think it will be good if you can speak to adult aspies to prepare your child fully.
Of course, one has to exercise common sense when teaching social skills.
Politically-correct advice can be impractical at times.
Hello! It looks like you're interested in this conversation, but you don't have an account yet.
Getting fed up of having to scroll through the same posts each visit? When you register for an account, you'll always come back to exactly where you were before, and choose to be notified of new replies (either via email, or push notification). You'll also be able to save bookmarks and upvote posts to show your appreciation to other community members.
With your input, this post could be even better 💗
Register Login