Asperger's Syndrome - That Explains Everything

Strategies for Education, Life and Just About Everything Else

Stephen Bradshaw

• Publisher: Jessica Kingsley Publishers
• Year: 2012
• Print ISBN:
  9781849053518
• eBook ISBN:
  9780857007025
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Autism Spectrum Disorders
• Index: Psychology

Students with Asperger's Syndrome (AS) frequently find the school environment challenging, despite often having a high level of academic ability, because their unique social and sensory difficulties are not fully understood or accommodated. This book clearly explains proven and practical approaches in education and care that will enable young people with AS in primary and secondary education to thrive. The author uses anecdotes from his extensive teaching experience to illustrate potential problem areas and put forward solutions. There are useful strategies for dealing with issues relating to anxiety, communication, social rules, relationships and classroom behaviour. Accounts from parents and young people with AS who have benefited from the approaches described in the book are also included.

This book is a comprehensive and accessible resource for teachers, carers and professionals working with young people with AS, equipping them with the insight to help AS pupils succeed, not only in school, but in the wider world. Parents will also find it useful.

Part 1

Introduction and Background

Chapter 1

Asperger’s Syndrome – Weird or Wonderful?

I noticed when one of our young people went into the local town that they would stand at the edge of the road next to the zebra crossing and wait until a car was coming and then step out in front of it. When I asked, ‘Why do you do that? Why don’t you just cross when there are no cars coming?’ He replied, ‘I’ve been told to cross the road only at the zebra crossing and if there aren’t any cars coming it doesn’t work, it’s only some lines on the road.’

The general public perception of individuals with Asperger’s Syndrome (AS) is often one of individuals who are rude, isolated, strange, whose emotional and social development has not kept pace with their academic and physical development. They will be thought of as taking things very literally and showing no emotion. They are often described as academically bright but socially inept. They will be seen as the computer ‘nerd’ or someone who focuses upon their special interest to the exclusion of all else, no matter how bizarre that special interest is. The press and film industry want to portray them as isolated people with no friends but with a savant skill that makes them exceptional, the crackers of codes or having the ability to retain a large amount of factual knowledge. We will explore the role of the media in creating this stereotype in Chapter 4. The perception may also be of someone who is exceptional with numbers and has a photographic memory.

So are these stereotypes true? As with all stereotypes, they are generalisations but there are aspects that may be true. However, my own experience of individuals with Asperger’s Syndrome is that everyone is in some way different from every other one – they are as individual and different as the rest of us. Two individuals with Asperger’s Syndrome may have completely different profiles but both still have Asperger’s Syndrome.

There are, however, traits that run through all individuals with the Syndrome. These include the inability to read social cues correctly or understand the complex rules that make up society; a high level of anxiety that may become debilitating and manifests itself in different ways; an interest that may become an obsession; and a desire to be part of the social world of ours and have friends, to be ‘normal’, but a distinct difficulty in social communication. Individuals with Asperger’s Syndrome see the world differently to the average person, and will react in different, unexpected and even unusual ways to events and stimuli that most people would take in their stride; they will refer to the rest of us as ‘neuro-typical’. I will explore a whole range of these differences in a later chapter, but it might be useful to discuss just a few here. Physically, those with Asperger’s Syndrome will often have no clear distinctive features. They may, however, seem different to other children because of the way they walk, or because of certain mannerisms or gestures, often repetitive. It is often referred to as a ‘hidden syndrome’, so members of the public or people in authority cannot understand why they don’t just ‘get it’ and think they are rude or abrupt.

They certainly will have rituals, superstitions and routines that they have to follow or it becomes difficult for them to function through the day. They often have a rigidity of thought that will not let them accept things but want to go back over incidents until they are resolved to their own satisfaction. ‘Let it be’ or ‘get over it’ is not an option. Their vocabulary is often extensive and will mask other difficulties or make them appear that they are operating at a much higher level than they actually are.

People with Asperger’s Syndrome are less likely to be recognised as having a problem like autism, and are more likely to be labelled bad or ill. At one of the schools there was boy who I would describe as classic Asperger’s Syndrome – would not give any eye contact, rarely spoke as he didn’t see the benefit, was highly intelligent, would dance on the disco floor all night on his own – but because he had not been diagnosed felt he certainly didn’t have Asperger’s Syndrome. I will explore the difficulties with diagnosis in Chapter 3.

They are likely to behave in ways which are considered by others to be unaccountable, odd and/or unacceptable and will have complete ‘meltdowns’ caused by what we would regard as minor or insignificant factors, such as not following the same routine, unexpected change, different colours. They are likely to be conspicuous by their social immaturity, which may be accompanied by an innocent and trustful manner. It is when someone with Asperger’s Syndrome is involved in social situations that other people begin to understand just how different they may be. It has been described as if you are at a Bulgarian cocktail party where you don’t understand the language or the social rules and have no signposts to help you know how you should behave and what is expected of you.

For example, those with Asperger’s Syndrome tend to take spoken words at their face value. This is because one trait of Asperger’s Syndrome can be the lack of a highly developed imagination. Those with Asperger’s Syndrome tend to be very logical in their thought processes. This can create humorous or confusing situations as you can imagine:

The sign on the local laundrette stated, ‘When light goes out please remove all clothes.’

The toilet signs on ‘theme’ restaurants or pubs also creates confusion. How can someone with Asperger’s Syndrome work out what the symbol on the toilet door means and whether it is supposed to be male or female? On a recent holiday to Spain I noticed that the toilet signs looked very similar with both individuals dressed in traditional Spanish smocks both appearing to have dresses on, but the men’s sign had a discreet moustache. I was totally bewildered.

They will often have what appear to be highly developed verbal skills, but while they may have large vocabularies and perfect grammar, they frequently find it difficult to actually put the words together as part of a ‘normal’ conversation. They are challenged by such things as metaphors, sarcasm and irony, because of the inherent illogical nature of these. And they find non-verbal communications, which make up a huge part of normal, everyday conversations, very difficult to interpret.

They are usually very good at processes that involve logical thinking, in particular programming and using computers. They also tend to be very single-minded, in the sense that they will frequently develop an extreme interest or an obsession in a particular subject and learn everything they can about it. The real issue, though, is that they are likely to fixate on a very particular aspect of their chosen subject, to the exclusion of everything else about that subject – for example, someone with Asperger’s Syndrome might claim to have an interest in a particular football team which may involve learning the players’ dates of birth and how far they live from the ground, but they have never watched the team play or have no awareness of how they are performing in any particular season.

They will also be inclined to want to talk about their particular chosen topic at length, rather than engage in the ebb and flow of normal conversation and do not pick up any non-verbal cues from other people whilst talking about their ‘special’ subject. People with Asperger’s Syndrome also frequently have problems with emotions. They are often incapable of understanding that people apart from themselves have emotions, which in a social situation can cause significant problems.

Individuals with Asperger’s Syndrome can also suffer from heightened anxiety, particularly in social situations or situations where there are high levels of sensory input, such as public speaking, plays, speeches and fairground rides. I have worked with children with Asperger’s Syndrome who were able to speak to a large audience but were very anxious about an individual interview. What’s more, they seem to deal with this anxiety in different ways to the ‘norm’. Reactions to anxiety can be extreme – including tantrums, aggression and self-harm – and are often difficult for those who have no experience of Asperger’s Syndrome to understand or cope with. One individual described the level of anxiety as akin to standing at the top of a multi-storey office block on the edge looking down and having that feeling all of the time.

The effects of Asperger’s Syndrome can range from the relatively mild through to the extreme, and those who have Asperger’s Syndrome may also have other problems. The Syndrome can be debilitating, when individuals would rather stay at home within their comfort zone than try something they are unsure of. However, I would argue that the lives of all people with Asperger’s Syndrome can be made immeasurably better if they are provided with the appropriate education and support from an early age.

Hans Asperger, when he first described the group of children who were later called ‘Asperger’s Syndrome’, thought that it was a syndrome that only affected boys but later realised that it also affects girls. Even now the ratio of males to females that have been diagnosed is quoted at 4:1.

It is my experience that the real ratio may be much lower, but gender stereotypes seem to come into play. That is, if a boy is becoming anxious and his behaviour deteriorates and his work is affected then it is usually followed up with some assessment. As the boy grows and becomes physically challenging and his behaviour deteriorates to such an extent that he can no longer function in a school setting, the diagnosis will be one of the routes that is explored. On the other hand if the girl becomes withdrawn, anxious and ultimately depressed it is often regarded as ‘teenage angst’ and ignored. Or it is misdiagnosed as an eating disorder or an anxiety disorder.

This is a book about my own experiences in education and the wider field, how I had a passion to make a difference to people’s lives, a passion and interest that grew out of working with individuals with Asperger’s Syndrome. It is about how I developed that passion into a model, a way of working with individuals with Asperger’s Syndrome, how I convinced other people to get passionate about this group and to encourage financial institutions to invest in developing schools and colleges to meet their needs. I started my first school in 1996 and am still opening schools with different groups today, as the world has changed and its understanding of this fascinating syndrome has grown.

I certainly made lots of mistakes: there was no ‘model’ or ‘template’. Previously, schools had focused on teaching children with ‘classic autism’ and included students with Asperger’s Syndrome amongst these rather than making separate provision for them. I did not have access to any funding and had to generate any capital myself before investing it into the schools. The result was far from perfect, but what follows is an account of those trials and tribulations.

Hopefully the book will inspire others to work with this group. It is certainly a book that I would have welcomed when I started, an account of what worked with some pupils and what didn’t. Most importantly it includes accounts from the students who were those guinea pigs and not only survived but went on to be able to take part in society and contribute to it. It is their struggle and achievements, however large or small, that I want to celebrate. Let me explain how this all began: working with individuals with Asperger’s Syndrome.

Chapter 2

How I ‘Caught’ Asperger’s Syndrome

Of course, you can’t catch Asperger’s Syndrome, but when I started working with this fascinating group of individuals I became totally obsessive about wanting to find out more and more about how they viewed the world and what difficulties they had. I read every book with Asperger’s Syndrome in the title (there weren’t that many in 1994) and went to every course or lecture on the subject and, of course, bored my family and anyone else that would listen about what I had discovered. I had found my passion and where I wanted to ‘make a difference’.

On completing an assembly on ‘tolerance’ and the need to live together and be tolerant of others’ beliefs in the wake of September 11, I was approached by one of our students. ‘I really enjoyed that assembly, sir’, he stated, ‘and do agree with you that we should be more tolerant… I think that all intolerant people should be shot.’

2.1 The concept, dream and passion. Stage one: the dream

So where did my interest and passion about working with individuals with Asperger’s Syndrome come from, you may ask. I suppose you have to go back to when I started teaching in the 1970s, or even to my school days.

I took the 11-plus and went to a local grammar school. My parents had great expectations of what I wanted to do or be. I had only one focus and that was to be able to play football. I did enjoy school, but discovered that I could get away with doing the minimum and was able to focus on sport for most of my time. At the end of the first year all pupils were graded into streams for the rest of their time at school, so I made sure my end-of-year examination results placed me in the ‘B’ set, so I would not be an ‘A’ stream student with a high work ethic and high expectations, but not be in the lower streams and be dragged into the disruptive groups.

Life was getting easier towards the end of the sixties; the world was changing and becoming more tolerant of differences. Youth for the first time, through music, sport and influencing politics, seemed to gain a voice and the worl...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Contents
• Foreword
• Acknowledgements
• Preface
• Part 1 Introduction and Background
• Part 2 Social Care
• Part 3 Education
• Part 4 Students’ and Parents’ Views – Perception of Reality