Talk about serendipity! I just got off the phone with Alex Plank, the founder of WrongPlanet.net, a website for the Asperger's Syndrome community, which includes both people with the diagnosis, people who suspect they might have Aspergers' and their family members.
So, what does that have to do with serendipity? It started with Christmas. I got a Nook for Christmas. Like all boys with their toys, I had to try it out, so I bought the New York Times on Monday and stumbled on a terrific article, Navigating Love and Autism. It relates the experiences of Kirsten Lindsmith and Jack Robison as they have become "a couple," a challenge for most young people, but like climbing Everest for young folks on the Autism Spectrum. The author, Amy Harmon, did an outstanding job of detailing not only the challenges that Kirsten and Jack face, but how their struggles with appropriate social interaction, sensory input needs and tolerance, and their difficulty in reading and understanding the emotional affect of others challenge all people with autism spectrum disorders.
We are looking at a huge surge in the population of people with ASD's: up from one in 10,000 thirty years ago to one in one hundred in the last couple of years. As these boys (mostly) and girls come of age, some of them will be filled with longing for the kind of intimacy that they see other boys and girls experiencing, without knowing how to get it. Those of us who work with students on the spectrum only have to watch Sheldon Cooper and Amy Farrah Fowler on the Big Bang Theory for our Asperger's radar to go off, and to see how the single mindedness and inflexibility so typical of Asperger's create challenges for Sheldon and Amy.
I'm in the process of organizing all the "stuff" and ideas I have appropriated for teaching social skills and beginning the process of creating a book proposal for a middle school social skills curriculum. It has to be broad enough for both high and low functioning students on the spectrum, since "social living" is the one course that many middle school children with autism will have together, at least here in Nevada. It will use scripts, video self modeling, social narratives (stories) and other techniques I have used and made available to you.
The New York Times article mentioned Alex Plank, a young man with Asperger's syndrome, and the website he founded, WrongPlanet.net com in order to create a place for adults with Asperger's Syndrome to get together online and share the challenges that they face. Wow! Was I excited. What better than to actually ask young adults about their experience in Middle School, what they would have liked for teachers to know and do to support them as they navigated the challenges of Middle School. We may all chuckle at the challenges of Greg Heffler in the Diary of a Wimpy Kid, those challenges can multiply exponentially for kids on the spectrum, who like Greg's friend Rowley, are oblivious to the unwritten rules of social conduct in middle school.
I thought, "What better than to ask people on the spectrum what they experienced and what they needed to help them succeed in middle school?" So, I joined WrongPlanet.net and contacted Alex, who just got back to me. I'm thrilled: I will be writing an article for WrongPlanet laying out my challenge and soliciting feedback. Hopefully my inbox can handle it!
For you who are on the spectrum, teach high school students on the spectrum or are family members, rush on over to WrongPlanet. Hopefully you will find people who share your challenges and may actually have some recommendations for successfully navigating puberty, middle school, high school and on through college.
Comments
Thank vaccines for causing autism. Its world wide. Only one common denominator.
Guess you didn’t get the memo: It isn’t actually world wide because in China, where they still use themerosol (mercury) they have lower incidence than in the US. One of the reasons that the case suing manufacturers failed in the Vaccine Court was that experts looked at videos of litigants before they got their vaccines and found they all exhibited autistic tendencies, such as lack of joint attention.
Can you explain what joint attention is?
“Joint Attention” is a naturally appearing behavior of neurotypical children. Neurotypical children will follow the gaze of an adult at a very early age–long before they walk. I was once having breakfast in the cafeteria of a grocery store in Pennsylvania, and an infant of about 4 to 6 months (not yet sitting independently) engaged me from a distance of at least 12 feet, reclining the in the baby carrier of a shopping cart. I was amazed: I had been working with children with autism at that point and had never seen such a clear example of joint attention. I didn’t imagine it: I am neurotypical.
Let’s please drop the “vaccines cause autism” cause. Too much research time and money has been wasted going down that road over a falsified claim by a discredited doctor. Let’s work on getting individuals with autism what they and their families need: help, in the form of respite care and education, and new avenues to live, love, and be themselves in the world that we all live in. Most of the teenagers I work with are fed up with being defined by their defects in social skills, behavior, and communication, and constant calls for them to receive therapies to become “normal and typical.” They would rather just be themselves, and get help on coping with neuro-typicals. We have to meet them half-way, folks.
The fact of the matter is that nobody really knows what causes it, which makes it more challenging and scary to think about!