Research and Current Practice
Helping a teenager develop awareness of the need to learn social interaction skills
Hi
I have contact with a boy who has aspergers, but has absolutely no awareness of his lack of social skills, nor of the need to develop any. He is 17, in his last two years of school, and has limited experience with typical social situations such as visiting friends, purchasing things in a shop, asking directions or help from people, catching buses or using a taxi. He hasn't learned to fix himself a simple meal, wash his own clothes or operate a bank account.
He was initially diagnosed as having dyspraxia, but meets criteria for Aspergers, although has not been formally diagnosed with it. He doesn't seem to notice that he's 'different', or that it could possibly be aspergers. He attends a normal secondary school, but has had trouble passing exams such as English and mathematics.
So... given that he's going to have to look at getting a job, learning to live independently, and start to develop a life apart from his mother - how can we encourage him to develop skills that will help him socially?
I have contact with a boy who has aspergers, but has absolutely no awareness of his lack of social skills, nor of the need to develop any. He is 17, in his last two years of school, and has limited experience with typical social situations such as visiting friends, purchasing things in a shop, asking directions or help from people, catching buses or using a taxi. He hasn't learned to fix himself a simple meal, wash his own clothes or operate a bank account.
He was initially diagnosed as having dyspraxia, but meets criteria for Aspergers, although has not been formally diagnosed with it. He doesn't seem to notice that he's 'different', or that it could possibly be aspergers. He attends a normal secondary school, but has had trouble passing exams such as English and mathematics.
So... given that he's going to have to look at getting a job, learning to live independently, and start to develop a life apart from his mother - how can we encourage him to develop skills that will help him socially?
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Mike on -
Hi Adiemus, This sounds like my son with aspergers. He has sensory issues and we also have trouble getting him to eat different foods. Many times its the texture of the foods. I recently listened to a webinar by Dr. Lori about the food issues. This is called Food Jags. I also feel like the desire to eat the same foods all the timee has something to do with routine also. We have a two week long menu and if we skip having an item like spaghetti for instance he will claim he doesn't like it anymore. He also is sensitive to different clothing and tags. He doesn't want to wear any color of pants besides blue pant. The comment by Simon was of particular interest to me about the color sensitivity. I am going to research this as this was a great point that I haven't thought of yet on the reason for wearing the blue pants only.
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Permalink Reply by Trish Mahalko on -
I work with elementary school children with high functioning autism/Asperger profile, and a great resource is Michelle Garcia Winner, a speech pathologist and expert in the topic of Social Thinking. You can check her out at www.socialthinking.com
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Permalink Reply by wincopup on
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I read with interest the symptoms of dyspraxia. I had never heard of this disorder before. I hope disorder is the correct term. Many of these symptoms more accurately describe my son than the Asperger's he has been diagnosed with. Do these two things often go hand? Where do professionals differentiate between the two? Granted some of the things used to describe this young man above do not apply to my son, but the symptoms that I read about on the dyspraxifoundation.org website do apply in many instances.
I find this Asperger's website to be very informative :o)
Real life instead of reading symptoms.
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