F.A.Q . - General Questions

I think my child has Asperger Syndrome or something like that….what should I do?

Each child and adult with a social cognitive deficit, while sharing some common underlying traits, expresses his symptomology in very unique ways. Thus, there are no clear guidelines for what exactly to begin working on. However, I can make some recommendations about what to do and what not to do in considering what to do next…bear in mind that I am not shy about sharing my opinions based on my many years of clinical practice:

Things to consider:

•  While I cannot prescribe specific services for our population of kids based on a diagnostic label, I can say that from my experience we need to focus on different skills at different times of development:
  
  
  •  Preschool: focus on the development of non-verbal interaction skills including parallel play, symbolic play and imitation of others. Do not worry about language-based play yet!!! They have to learn to observe to be better social thinkers as they age!
  •  Early elementary school years focus heavily on social interaction including non-verbal play, observation, imitation and simple language exchanges. Help them learn to feel safe when making “smart guesses” about the social world around them.
  •  Older elementary school (3rd grade and above), while continuing to explore social relatedness begin to explore the organizational skills of the child. Do not assume he will learn these skills at the same pace as his peers. Use visual organizational systems and clearly defined expectations for homework time as well as how to carry work from home to school and back.
  •  Middle school: Our children can be pretty fragile (like all middle schoolers) socially and academically. Be aware of the critical thinking demands being placed on them from their curriculums. Help them to learn to adjust to multiple teachers and multiple demands of each. Continue to explore the organizational systems the child needs to continue to learn about. Also focus on the social demands while helping them feel good about their own unique skills. Socially students need to continue to learn about the verbal and non-verbal communication strategies when relating to others (teachers and peers). Avoid working only on conversational skills, effective communication is way beyond having conversations. They may benefit from mental health counseling if they are becoming depressed.
  •  High schoolers: Read the section for middle schoolers…but now expect your child to be pushing further away from welcoming your help. Plan to have your educational team (which includes parents) support the child in building functional communication and organizational skills to deal with problem solving and complex assignments across a mix of classes….but by Junior year the child needs to be willing to work on following through with these skills on his own if he is a child who you are hoping will live fully independently as an adult. If a child lacks motivation to help himself learn strategies then you will need to switch your focus to helping the student discover his own motivation. This means that you likely need to break down the task/expectations to a point that he can competently follow through on his own and then feel good about his accomplishment. Many students with low motivation are those that have felt totally overwhelmed by the demands. We need to show them how to get started and see how to establish their own plan for moving forward. If adults always create the plan and then help them to follow through with the plan, the child will likely face tremendous struggles in college. High school is about transitioning the student towards understanding how to implement strategies himself that he has been taught across the years.
  •  College-aged: Most of the problems I see in the college years relate to poor organizational and communication skills for solving their own problems. In college, students are expected to seek their own education. Teachers are there to support your student in gaining knowledge without the teachers feeling that they need to support the skills (organizational and communication) for acquiring that knowledge. All colleges have a program for special needs kids, but kids with social cognitive deficits still fall through some big cracks.
    
    
•  Talk with your school psychologist or speech language pathologist about their understanding of these smart kids who just don’t seem to “get it” socially and have abstract academic problems. If the professionals have a decent understanding of the possibility that they could be of assistance, discuss in more detail the assessment procedures that they can use to better understand the issues. If they are unfamiliar with your student's disability work with them to gain insight prior to the assessment.
  
  
•   Avoid the belief that educators and therapists in the public school system are “less worthy” than private practitioners. I have had experience with a wide range of professionals (school and private practice based, including medical doctors) and I can safely share with you that there are many professionals within the public school districts who care deeply for the students and who have developed many incredibly insightful treatment approaches! I have also met many school professionals who do an excellent job understanding the diagnostic complexity of kids with social cognitive deficits. I CANNOT say that all the private professionals (educational and medical specialists) that I have met are highly competent. Learn about each person you are working with. Do not assume that they are good or bad based on their location of employment!
  
  
•  Always use some informal assessment techniques to consider the depth of the social cognitive deficit. My last chapter in my book, “Thinking About You Thinking About Me” defines some of these strategies in detail.
  
  
•  Appreciate that schools alone are NOT responsible for the entirety of your child’s challenges. Students with social cognitive deficits have a 24 hour disability, meaning that it is responsibility of all persons who live and work with these students.
  
  
•  All goals that are written to help your child with their social understanding should be addressed in someway at home as well. Keep in touch with your therapist!!!!
  
  
•   Consider also seeking therapeutic assistance from a therapist in your community (speech and language, occupational therapist, marriage and family counselor or psychologist to name a few…). Find out who the specialists are in your community by contacting your local Parents Helping Parents or your local chapter of the Autism Society of America.
  
  
•  Maintain time in your child’s schedule for him to have time for his own interests.
  
  
•  Make sure you celebrate his unique abilities more than you focus on his challenges. He is a person who has to feel good about himself before he can show progress in any area!
  
  
•  Do remember to thank all the professionals who help your child in the public school sector. This group of folks is rarely recognized for all their hard work.
  

Things to avoid:

•  Do NOT assume all school professionals lack information and that they don’t want to serve your child so that they can save money.
  
  
•  Usually I do not recommend bringing a lawyer to your first meeting with a school district. It sets a very adversarial tone. Remember that all persons working with your child are also people. Just like your child likes positive supports, so do the teachers.
  
  
•   Do not keep getting your child tested by every available specialist. The most important thing is for your child to improve skills over each of the years of his life. Each time a child gets tested he feels that there must really be something very wrong with him!
  
  
•  Do not fill up your entire child’s free time with therapy visits. Less is more. Give your child quality lessons that you can help him to carryover across the week, month, year.
  
  
•  Try to avoid thinking that your child changed once he got a diagnostic label! He is the same person, we just now have more specific information we can access to better understand his needs.
  
  
•  Avoid believing ALL the diagnostic labels you may be given by the medical community. People do make mistakes. Get a second opinion if you are not sure.
  
  
•  Do not think students grow out of social cognitive deficits. Do not believe anyone who tells you that. There is a big difference between mild immaturity and social cognitive deficits.

How do I get school districts to acknowledge that he may have a problem severe enough to warrant an IEP even though he does well on tests so he doesn’t score low enough to qualify?

In my philosophy statement written in this website, I reviewed the problems we encounter when trying to understand our child’s issues with standardized tests.

The most important thing is for the educators to observe your child across environments in his school day.

Even though school districts are encouraged to use standardized tests to qualify kids, all school districts are allowed to qualify students if the IEP team recognizes the need.

In California, we have to qualify children for speech and language services only if they fall below the 7th percentile on standardized tests or show difficulty on a language sample. In my mind it makes sense to collect a “pragmatic language sample” and then to observe the child with his peers. If he easily stands out as one of the 7 quirkiest kids on the campus for every 100 who are there, he likely falls below the 7th percentile socially. We have to use some common sense standards with our kids because their disability is serious and life long, even though it is difficult to recognize from test results.