One of the biggest problems for asperger adolescents is their difficulties with social interactions.
This problem is heightened by their difficulties with speech and language. As with autism, the asperger child / adolescent also seems to lack the ability to mind read, or have the ability of being able to tell or guess at what another person might be thinking.
Normally developing children and adolescents will observe others and guess, through a combination of tone and body language, what the other person may be thinking or feeling.
However, with aspergers this naturally developed skill is missing and so the ability to predict what another is feeling or thinking is not there…
This lack of being able to mind read can lead to social mistakes.
….And of cause social mistakes may lead to the asperger adolescent causing hurt feelings, asking inappropriate questions, acting oddly or generally opening themselves up to hostility, teasing, bullying and social isolation.
Quite often parents and educators of children and adolescents with asperger and autism feel unable to communicate properly with their asperger / autistic teen… and will struggle to understand their needs and act appropriately.
Sometimes the asperger teen may appear not to hear what has been said to them, they will often fail to respond to their name and can sometimes be indifferent to any attempts of communication with them.
Developing communication with your asperger adolescent is paramount, and may be a slow process. As with any adolescent the asperger youth will undoubtedly be experiencing changes in their body and their mood swings may become more apparent.
The normal teenage hormonal changes will still happen to your asperger adolescent, being on the spectrum and experiencing these changes can be an explosive cocktail!
As boys grow into men and girls grow in to young ladies, this can be a very daunting time for a parent or educator.
…As well as dealing with the changes in their bodies, mood swing and growing sexuality, there is also the onset of more grown up behavior…like swearing, dating, kissing and starting to get the desire us adults get when we meet someone we fancy!
A good stating point for any asperger / autistic adolescent, parent, or educator is something called social skills stories….These are an excellent tool for Social skills training for asperger adolescents
You can introduce social skills stories at any time…A good well written social skills story will have high pictorial content as well as text.
These short pieces of text, normally one page long will have pictorial cues as to what is happening.
They can be like throwing your asperger adolescent a life line.
Appropriately written by experts, these social skills stories will explain in easy to understand language and pictures, what, why, where and when.
For example…A social kiss, what this is, why someone may want to kiss you, when it is appropriate to kiss someone, and the differences between kissing and a social kiss…undoubtedly, helping to stop unwanted over enthusiasm with kissing, or awkward situations!
Avoid uncomfortable situations, embarrassing situations and those situations you are dreading or make you cringe….Help explain the need for deodorant and being clean. What puberty means and how it will affect them.
…These social skills stories are normally printable so they can be used time and time again, in-fact they can be used for every situation you need help with.
These social skills stories are a fantastic communication device for a parent-giving you the tools you need to help you conquer Social skills training for asperger adolescents.
