My niece, 8 years old has been diagnosed a couple of years ago with Asperger syndrome and ever since I tried to help my sister in law in any possible way. I spend a lot of time reading on my issue, ADHD, so there is little time to research anything else. Any of you guys deal with this disease? In some ways it seems better than autism but there are a lot of problems that come with it. How do you deal with it?
Encourage her interests - people with Asperger's are typically very focused on one field of expertise, so if she can become a true expert on something let her do that!
Yeah, she is really passionate about bugs and when we go outside she likes to study each and very little bug, take it in her hands, observe its every move. Her mom is a little scared something bad will happen. She also likes technology (just like me) and when she comes over I let her unscrew some old pc units I have laying around and keyboards and I other stuff I don't use and each time she puts the parts back exactly the same.
Involve her in social situations with other people who have similar interests. At the same time encourage her to make friends and socialize with people who have dissimilar interests. I know she is only 8, but thinking long term, one of the things that makes people with aspergers 'unemployable' for lack of a better word, as adults is their inability to properly socialize. They are smart and hard workers but they don't alwaqys understand social norms: be it they dont' realize they need to shower daily, or they have a meltdown if someone is late, or they correct peopel who mis-speak or a variety of other things. It's important to set up social situations that teach her how to handle those scenarios later in life.
I think its also important to teach her how to handle social problems. Maybe you can find some sort of group or something she can join based off of an interest that she has. Somewhere she can be around other children if just once a week might help her with social problems later.
Unfortunately in our small town she is the only one that has been diagnosed with Asperger, I really think it would have been good for her to be able to interact with other kids like her. Social situation are the hardest part at this syndrome, she doesn't understand the simplest rules about social behavior and she gets angry when people try to explain to her these stuff. For now she goes twice a week to a chess club, where she can work with her talent but she gets very angry when she looses and the teacher started getting reluctant into receiving her there anymore.
If she's not enjoying people explaining things to her here are few options to try. Do some modeling for her; set up a social situation and basically use another person to role-play how you should behave in said situation. The other option is to write some social stories, about the situations- for instance losing at chess. Something simple like "On tuesdays and thursdays I go to chess club" "I have lots of friends at chess club and I love toplay chess." "I really enjoy winning when I play chess but sometimes I don't win." "IF I don't win it's ok to be upset and sad but it's important to stay calm and congratulate my opponent on a good game played."
