I am glad that some attention is being paid to this disorder, but I fear that only the negative isolated instances get press. Aspberger's children are NOT all violent and uncontrollable.
I know, as my olest son was diagnosed in third grade. My son is nothing like the people that you highlighted in today's show. He is loving and gentle, and has never in his life raised a hand, or his voice to anyone! He does have trouble controlling impulses, but they are benign things such as vision self stimulation, and the need for physical activity when he is in a situation that makes his stress level rise. He occasionally talks way too much in social situations, but is never rude or critical or mean.
I have had to fight tooth and nail to get Joel what he needed his whole school career. From insisting on a double blind study of him taking Ritalin in kindergarten, to finally removing him from public school in third grade and schooling him at home.
The things that educators and social workers and even doctors were recommending for Joel very often were not in his best interest. They initially wanted him to be medicated to make him easier to manage. That never worked out. After he was diagnosed, the educational team for Joel decided he would be better off in a behavioral classroom, where they could punish him by putting him in a "time out" room for being unable to sit still and focus on the task at hand. The social worker told us that Joel realistically, would never get beyond a third grade education his whole life. This was so unacceptable to me that we made arrangements for me to home school Joel and his brother Ryan after that.
The straw that broke the came's back came at the end of that school term. I was summoned once again to school to talk to Joel as he had been sent to the office for failing to complete a worksheet. I hapened to come in to the office when no one was there, and overheard a conversation my son was having with himself in the detention room.
He was saying, "OK- I need to do this work. I don't want to be in trouble. I just need to focus..."
It broke my heart. He was trying so hard, and the ability to succeed was just beyond what he could do at that time. I decided right then, that there had been enough punishment for things he couldn't control. I vowed to move heaven and earth and find a way to make him feel that he was smart and capable and loved, and that he was the gentle, caring, good boy I knew him to be.
I was running a full time day care in my home at the time, so it was a struggle to school at home, but it was ever so much worth the effort to do. We home schooled for most of Joel's elementary years, until I became ill and could no longer run my daycare or teach Joel. At that point, he entered public school at the junior high level.
He tested out at that seventh grade level, even though he had been doing sixth grade material in our home school. (Way beyond what that social worker predicted!) He of course needed some modifications to his education plan to accomodate his learning difficulties, but thanks be to God, we had Darby on our side.
Darby is a dedicated para that has worked with Joel thru junior high, and as luck would have it -moved up to the high school when Joel did, so she has been his advocate all thru his high school years, also.
She could see past all the surface things-inability to look you in the eye, and the self stimulating, and inability to sit still- and truly see the beauty of intelligence and sparkling kind personality that my son possesses. She actually listened when we voiced our wishes for Joel, and stood next to me in fighting for what Joel needed these past six years.
Don't get me wrong, it has been no picnic in the park to raise a learning disadvantaged child. It has profoundly affected us all. We had to adapt a totally different parenting style for Joel, than we did for my younger son, Ryan. It has caused a lot of friction between my younger son and myself, as he could not see why the rules and expectations were not the same for him as for his brother. He did not see Joel's disabilities, as we only focused on Joel's strengths, so he felt he was unfairly put upon a lot of the time.
Joel is a very witty intellegent young man. He has worked his tail off in school and is often on the honor roll list, despite his Aspberger's. He was a member of the speech and debate team, and also performs publicly reciting cowboy poetry. (Imagine that for an autistically challenged kid!!) He spends his summers competing at horse shows, and exhibiting canned goods and leatherwork at the county and state levels. He is the treasurer for his 4-H club, and is active in FFA. He was the junior attendant at prom last year.
Joel has a part time job working at the swimming pool, and is also in business for himself raising and showing suffolk sheep.
He will graduate along with his brother this May, and plans to go on to college.
If you have an autistically challenged child, you have to never give up on their abilities and constantly search for ways to facilitate their learning and growth.
We found that Joel's biggest challenge was that his brain didn't filter anything out. In a classroom full of kindergarteners, he was receiving all the stimuli in that busy room, and couldn't filter any of it out. He heard every word the teacher was saying, but also heard the lunch lady talking to the principle in the hall, and the boy next to him's stomach growling, and the sound the forced air furnace made when it turned on. He was constantly on sensory overload.
When we were schooling at home, we could limit that noise level to some degree, and then introduce sounds into the background gradually until he could tolerate it. We also desensitized him gradually to sound when we traveled in the car, by suddenly adjusting the volume levels to the radio in a sporadic fashion for short periods of time. He was strapped in the seat, and couldn't get away, self tim or run in circles like he could at school, so we gradually worked our way up to tolerating sounds he couldn't control, until he was no longer bothered so much by outside stimuli, and could better focus his energy.
Does your child rage, scream and kick doors? Is his or her behavior the typical brattiness of a spoiled child, or involuntary behavior beyond the child's control? Dr. Phil sheds light on a pair of widely misunderstood extreme neurological disorders. First, he looks at Asperger's syndrome, a high-functioning form of autism which can cause a person to lack control over his or her emotions, including anger. Rich and Karen's 15-year-old son, Alex, was diagnosed with Asperger's at age 6. His sudden fits of rage and erratic behavior have put a strain on his whole family. Should his parents be afraid of Alex, or is there something they can do to bring his behavior under control? Plus, Craig, 37, can't control his physical tics, nor can he keep from constantly uttering obscenities, literally hundreds of times a day. Craig suffers from Tourette syndrome, an affliction that's gotten so bad, he won't go into grocery stores, movie theatres or any public place for fear he'll be kicked out. What will the disorder mean for his plans to start a family? Talk about the show here.
