How to teach others about your Aspergers child

The general public, including your relatives, friends, and
neighbors, do not know what Aspergers Syndrome is, or
how to understand their behavior or deal with it. General
awareness about autism is growing but in my own
experience when you talk to a lot of people about Aspergers
- you get a lot of completely blank looks! It’s up to you to
teach them about Aspergers. Give them as much
information as you can, relative to how much information
they are willing to receive. Bombarding them with
information they aren’t ready to receive will only frustrate
them and make them less willing to listen. An excellent
starting point can be a basic fact sheet about Aspergers,
which you can find for free on the internet. A couple of
examples of these can be found at:

http://ucf-card.org/factsheet/FS5English.pdf

http://www.nas.org.uk/nas/jsp/polopoly.jsp?d=212

http://www.disability.vic.gov.au/dsonline/dsarticles.nsf/pages/Asperger's_syndrome?OpenDocument

If you are going to explain this to someone who is
not hugely significant to the family then a fact
sheet may do it. But if it is someone closer then you
may want to think about printing off the fact sheet
and annotating a few points on it. So for instance
where the fact sheet may say “Aspergers children
struggle with social interaction” you can add for instance:
“when Jonny first went to school he took to running
off when people spoke to him but when the teacher
began to communicate in short sentences alone with
Jonny in a smaller room this began to improve”.
Personalizing the fact sheet with a story of some
kind can really help another person to understand
and relate better to Aspergers. The most committed
person could get bored reading too much of a “dry” fact sheet.
But with a little story and human touch in there it
will more likely bring the explanation alive.
Because if you think about it we all love to listen and
read stories – and this is one of the ways we all
learn every day.

Meanwhile, continue to provide for your child in the
manner that is best for them, increasing every opportunity
to treat them as a “normal” child. The more you can
demonstrate normative behavior for the rest of your
family, the more likely they are to treat your Aspergers
child as a “normal” child. This is again a very basic
way that all humans learn; by observing and modelling
“expert” behaviour. And in this instance you should
view yourself as the Aspergers expert (and in my opinion
as a parent living every day with your Aspergers child you
definitely are the expert). If your friends, neighbors,
or relatives, are witness to one of your child’s bad days,
explain why it was a bad day for them and what can
be done to lessen those days. Don’t be ashamed of
your child or their syndrome. It isn’t your fault that
they have this syndrome and it isn’t their fault. It just is.
As I am sure you know, your child has a huge number
of great qualities about them just like any child.
And sometimes people need help to see beyond
certain behaviors and a diagnosis of Aspergers –
to see the real person beyond.

So what I have tried to explain in this brief article is
the important role you have in helping those around
you to understand Aspergers. Honest discussion,
basic fact sheets (preferably personalized about
your child) and allowing others to observe your
parenting skills are the keys to this situation.

Copyright © 2007 Dave Angel