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Autism: Are Social Skills Groups and Social Communication Therapy Worthwhile?
vortex2.71 (802986) writes I imagine that enough of us on Slashdot are on the Autism Spectrum or were once diagnosed as having Aspergers that this might be the right venue for this question. My son is on the spectrum, but is in a mainstream classroom at a private school. We have spent thousands of dollars on a bunch of different social skills groups, speech communication therapy, occupational therapy, and physical therapy. We've found that the specific skills and intuition that the therapists possess is much more important than their credentials and are frequently disappointed by the overwhelming mediocrity of special education teachers, speech therapists, and OT/PT therapists. We are at the point where we wonder if our time is better spent with playdates with peers that are facilitated by us than continuing with the groups. I'm curious if there are adult Slashdoters who are on the spectrum who participated in these therapies as children who can weigh in on this? What was your experience with social skills groups and social communication therapy? Did they help?
As someone who remembers childhood. (And I am not Diagnosed being on the autism spectrum) kids (even little ones) can be very cliquey. If your child has social problems, the other kids may try to push him out of their games, as games in general about playing by social rules of play, kids with autism may not get the differences in the rules that the version the kids play and make it no fun for them. For a child with special needs play time needs to be monitored, otherwise the other kids will just end up doing their thing and he will be playing by himself, with kids around him.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
You're an idiot. No matter what your mother told you Asperger's is not the next step in human evolution. A dash of it is probably useful, but people don't usually have a dash of it, I'm not sure it would even be diagnosable at that stage. I've worked with folks that had this and it's debilitating.
Psycho-social education is probably the only thing that's likely to help. The question though is which program and which professionals. There's an array of possibilities, some might work and some won't. And to an extent it depends upon the individual, this isn't a one-size fits all treatment situation.
My experience with my moderately Asperger son is a bit different. He can definitely handle the deep end of schoolwork, intellectually. He's a sharp kid.
But there are some areas where treating him like a normal kid would be disastrous. In particular, many kids with Aspeberger Syndrome can become overwhelmed by sensory input and/or frustration. And when they do, they get emotionally "stuck" in a way other kids generally don't. Normal persuasive / coercive methods of dealing with those states are far less ineffective that on other kids, and so using them can be pointlessly cruel.
Long-story short, maybe throw them in the deep end academically, but perhaps not socially.
Maybe you need to actually get a clue about what aspergers actually is. It's not being a jerk. It IS specific social and communication difficulties combined with specific unusual behaviours or interests. It does not no longer exist, it just has a different term in the DSM-5 which is actually more broad (due to the inclusion of sensory differences). Aspergers is still used as a descriptive term in north america and a diagnostic classification in countries that use the ICD-10.