My child has Aspergers: now what?

A redefinition of the diagnosis of autism is more urgent than ever. The way autism is currently determined causes confusion. It doesnt make sense to place individuals who can talk and who have certain social skills deficits on the same spectrum with non verbal individuals.

Children and individuals with Aspergers can suffer from anxiety, be inflexible to change and have executive functioning and social skills deficits. They dont always understand shades of grey and need to be taught perspective taking. ABA can address these skills deficits and behaviours that are challenging and disrupt their success at school or in their relationships.

Its very possible to teach an individual with asperges to think differently in order to change certain beliefs they may have concluded that are incorrect and that impact their life in a negative way.

Improving social skills is absolutely possible too. Teaching them how to appropriately initiate a conversation, deal with conflict, understand social rules, make appropriate eye contact and engage in meaningful social relationship forms part of the ABA program.

ABA provides different teaching strategies and helps us determine how to teach an individual with Aspergers emotional coping skills. Ultimately, we want to teach the individual the skills they missing so they can cope in any environment instead of adapting the environment to the individual. In adulthood, we want the individual with aspergers to have independence and be able to establish meaningful social relationships. We also want them to be able to hold down a job successfully.

Exposing individuals with aspergers to change and teaching them how to adapt to sudden change is very important as life changes all the time and we cant always control these changes.

Eliminating food allergies, supplementing deficient vitamins and minerals, removing processed food, healing the gut and treating infections in the gut and investigating and treating for Pans and Pandas are all important considerations parents can discuss with their doctor as these conditions contribute to the reason the child is presenting with Aspergers symptoms.