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eliabeth kerin

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Hello, I'm new here and thought I would introduce myself. I have 2 sons, 7 and 8, recently diagnosed with aspergers. I strongly suspect that my husband has it as well, although he is currently awaiting testing. What I would like to know is if you could go back in time what would you want your parents to know? What would you want them to do to help with school? Any advice is very appreciated.
 
I didn't know for myself until my adult life. I guess back then if they did know is to understand why I have trouble making friends and why I have kept to myself most of the time. Also for them to know I don't feel comfortable at family events when there a lot of people. An average family event is 40 or more people. Though my mother now knows I don't feel comfortable at family events, if she would have noticed this when I was a child, maybe relationship with my family could have been better.

However, since I was officially diagnosed with a learning disability during my childhood, my parents were able to give me the support I need for that case.

Anyhow, welcome to the site.
 
I don't remember elementary school well, but what i do remember is that i forgot stuff at home a lot and often got distracted in class cause i couldn't (and still can't) tune out the noise of the other kids. With the noise mom just told me to tune them out but i never understood that cause i just can't filter out background noise. Now as a cashier in college, i learned to simply hyperfocus on what i'm doing (checking out my current customer) and that helps. That or if i'm at home doing homework, i listen to music (or instrumentals) which i can tune out and that helps if its not math or reading related. With forgetting stuff, only to do lists and phone reminders seem to help or repeating what i need to remember to myself aloud. Getting my stuff organized ahead of time (the day before) helps minimize forgetting stuff in the morning because then it becomes routine and i'm more alert than in the morning. I'm very routine based especially in the evenings and mornings. Also i always had a lot of anxiety surrounding changes in routine - stuff like a dentist appointment or stuff like that. It would be even worse if they were sudden, and i was only told about them a day or a few days in advanced. I typically need a good week's notice to get used to the idea that something different is happening (and plan in my head exactly what i'll say when, plan the whole event ahead of time really). The rest is more obvious - socially awkward, didn't understand how to make friends, couldn't differentiate friendly teasing from someone being mad at me, etc. But these are the more basic not as obvious things i wish we would have been aware of as i was growing up.
 
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eliabeth kerin said:
What I would like to know is if you could go back in time what would you want your parents to know?
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Welcome to AC.

Wow...what a question. It almost breaks my heart. I didn't speak in sentences until I was four. Spent time playing by myself indifferently to having friends. My parents thought something was up, and referred me to a specialist who deemed me just fine and gave me a "clean bill of health".

Two decades before the medical community adopted Dr. Asperger's research. :mad:

My parents DID know. But my doctors did not.
 
Welcome! I would have liked my parents to teach me how to deal with teasing and bullying, I had no idea how to respond when other children were cruel to me, and it never even occurred to me to tell them or a teacher about what was happening. The general wisdom for dealing with bullies when I was a child was "ignore it and they'll get bored and stop." That doesn't work, at all :confused:
 
Thank you all for the replies. My son's do not understand when people are being mean and therefore get bullied a lot by kids who play tricks on them or take their belongings. The sad thing is that they refer to these people as' friends'. Sometimes they think that kids who are trying to warn them about what is going on are 'bullies' and lying about their 'friends'. I am torn if I should try to get an aid to work with them during lunch and recess or whether that would make them feel more 'different'. I have asked the school if I can volunteer during lunch and recess and they said no.
 
I recommend Tony Attwoods book "The Complete Guide to Aspergers Syndrome" it gives detailed advise for helping AS children with the all the various problems they may encounter, and has an excellent chapter on bullying.
 
Hi Eliabeth.I would like to recommend you the work by Netherlands doctor Tinus Smits. I had aspergers too but ive got total rid of it. Its not that after aspergers cure one starts to behave like normal human beings but rather one is able to function at a higher vibration and is more aligned to the all pervasive life. A individual with aspergers doesnt deal with other people merely as individual and hence use their mind. Rather one is very much in the heart and little or no ego zone where one only feels but isnt able to feel himself fully as a ego self. This is known as universal layers of humans. It is totally curable. Individuals with aspergers feel awkward about many things because they are different. Some people also call them star children or indigo children because their consciousness comes from a distinctly higher plane or dimension where life operates just like what we have seen in movie Avatar. Theres nothing wrong with brain function. Youe children are from higher dimensions and need time and guidance to enter the earth zone.
 
Hi, Eliabeth. I am a new member too. You're question is something I ask myself a lot. It's hard to say looking back. However, I think one thing that would've made a big difference is if my parents would've understood how difficult junior high was for me because of the changing social expectations. I really needed some guidance and advice. As it was, I ended up ditching a lot, though I kept my grades at least at passing level. If my parents had taken seriously my above average test scores in elementary school (doing 12th grade level English and 10th grade level math in 6th grade), they could have put me into a special school for gifted students. I may not have learned to deal with social situations like I had to in junior high, but at least I wouldn't have thrown my education away to avoid uncomfortable social situations. It's easy to say, "Oh, you just need to learn how to deal with it," but, I don't think I learned any successful ways of dealing with social situations in junior high, and those years set a dangerous pattern for my high school years too. I dropped out of school after the 10th grade. It wasn't until I was 21 that I took my GED and went to college. I think it's important for parents of Aspies to choose wisely the timing of the battles they're going to make their child fight.
 
Thank you for your thoughtful reply. I have read several accounts of AS individuals having the hardest time in grade school. I am really thinking home school or a private therapeutic day school. I wish that the school understood what is going on and didn't minimize what they're going through.
The hard part is that they don't, so I am constantly battling and adversarial, so the school thinks that I over react to everything. I guess I am not good at picking which battles I will fight. I only want them to be safe, understood, and valued.
 
eliabeth kerin said:
I am really thinking home school or a private therapeutic day school. I wish that the school understood what is going on and didn't minimize what they're going through.
The hard part is that they don't, ...
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I don't think public schools in general have a very good model for education, and they are woefully inept teaching children with special needs. Special education classes are little more than glorified babysitting in most (but not all) cases. Understand, though, I'm speaking from the central California perspective where some of the lowest academic scores in the country are received by students. I'm all for home schooling or private school, but I realize many people don't have either the time or the money to go that route.

I once got a piece of useful advice that might be helpful for your sons regarding the bully vs. friend issue. In effect, if several different people tell you the same thing about someone, it's probably the truth.
 
Welcome :)

I suppose if I could go back in time, I would want my father and I to have a better relationship, and for him to know that I understood him, and what he had to go through alone for all those years, as I know suspect that he too was on the spectrum.

I thought I'd post a few links that might be helpful for you:

Resources: Resources | AspiesCentral.com

Dr.Tony Attwood (world reknown expert): Home
 
Cali Cat said:
I don't think public schools in general have a very good model for education, and they are woefully inept teaching children with special needs. Special education classes are little more than glorified babysitting in most (but not all) cases. Understand, though, I'm speaking from the central California perspective where some of the lowest academic scores in the country are received by students. I'm all for home schooling or private school, but I realize many people don't have either the time or the money to go that route.

I once got a piece of useful advice that might be helpful for your sons regarding the bully vs. friend issue. In effect, if several different people tell you the same thing about someone, it's probably the truth.
Click to expand...
I don't know if it is because they are young, but no matter how many people tell them, they can't see bullies.
 
eliabeth kerin said:
I don't know if it is because they are young, but no matter how many people tell them, they can't see bullies.
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It's probably a combination of their youth and the Asperger's, in my non-professional opinion. I know as a child I had to learn what guile was. I was taken advantage of by other kids several times just because they knew I was so kind and had a desire to be helpful. By the time I was their age, I started to understand that I was seen as easy prey and began learning to protect myself. (I was not diagnosed with ASD until adulthood.)
 
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