Our Kids with Autism
Mar 13th, 2008 | By Jenn | Category: Articles, Autism, Jenn BrockmanThis week I interviewed Rebekah White about her two sons with Aspergers syndrome. Our 2 youngest at the ages of 6 have been diagnosed as being on the Autism Spectrum so we had a lot in common. If you aren’t familiar with Autism, I suggest you look into it, or better yet listen to our show http://www.blogtalkradio.com/Special-Needs-Kids and to Rebekah’s show thttp://www.blogtalkradio.com/healyourselftalkradio which airs today and will focus on autism as well.
There are so many challenges when you have a child with autism but there are so many great things as well. For instance, though my child is very stubborn and gets “stuck” on an idea that has to be told or acted out before she can move on, she has one of the brightest minds I’ve ever seen. She is so intelligent and funny when she can get around the bumps in her road! Rebekah and I both have high functioning autistic children which can cause even more issues. They seem normal and so their symptoms and behaviors can be easily brushed off as being a bad apple, or lazy, or any one of the negative things associated with difficult children.
It is simply not true of these kids though. They process the same information that you and I do, but they do it in a different way and so they may have to do things in a different pattern than we do in order for them to get to the same end result. These patterns may look out of the ordinary to others and may not fit in with a structured situation like school or work.
Social situations can cause problems, because while the autistic child looks to be interacting with their peers, they might not be really connecting. They often times have a story in their head already and they cannot play along well if their peers don’t follow that story line. Do you have an autistic child?
Please share your thoughts with me. We all need support.
Jenn Brockmanwww.paintedlaydies.comwww.mamabags.com
There’s so many ‘high-functioning’ autistic children now of days that I think it’s actually becoming the normal way of thinking. I think the latest figures I heard was that 1 in 5 children are autistic. That’s 20% and I bet that numbers rising. Wish we could figure out why.
Nicholas’s last blog post..Special Needs Trusts for Disabled Children
With how common autism is becoming it should get easier socially for these kids as the level of understanding increases. I believe the statistic is 1 in 150 kids right now.
Behavior Characteristics of Autism’s last blog post..Accommodating Behavior Characteristics of Autism