Asperger is actually not a disease, it is a disease that many children have. The word disease itself may give the wrong impression of Asperger and the many wonderful children who experienced it. This article briefly describes some of the features of Aspergers and introduces some tips for managing the challenging behavior that is often associated with this condition.
Asperger is a developmental disorder, affecting the ability of children to interact effectively with others to communicate. Children with Asperger are usually socially troublesome and absorb everything about a particular topic. Asperger's signs and symptoms include absence of blindness and lack of facial expression, abnormal nonverbal communication such as unnatural posture and gestures of the body. People with Asperger will often show intense obsession with one or two specific narrow themes such as baseball statistics, train schedule, weather and snakes. They will not understand, sympathize, or be sensitive to others. It will be difficult to "read" other people and understand humor. When they speak, it is often monotonic, hard or abnormally fast voice. They often seem to move discordantly and show poor coordination and strange attitude or stiff gait
Children with Asperger often demonstrate a challenging behavior as a reaction to a world that can not be dealt with effectively. In an attempt to stop an action, you first need to consider the reason why that action is taking place. The best way to establish why individuals with Aspergers are displaying challenging behavior is to complete the ABC analysis. This includes analysis of "predecessor", "behavior", and "result". The predecessor is what happens before the action. Their behavior is their response to the previous example. The result, and this is a difficult one, what immediately follows the action. Children with Asperger are often limited in their ability to verbalize their needs. Once you have identified the cause of the action, you can help with this. Do not forget what happens before and after action occurs. Once you establish reasons for action, children with Asperger need a consistent behavioral program or intervention method. Children with Asperger want coherence and everyday and need to know what is coming. Otherwise, it will only create more difficult behavior.
For children suffering from Asperger, behavioral interventions need to consider changes in the environment that may be needed. This involves giving excessive irritation or deleting items that may provide what you think is necessary. For children suffering from Asperger, behavioral intervention should also plan to provide alternative behavior to individuals. Keep in mind that removing actions without fulfilling the needs finds their own replacement behavior. Autism and Asperger are difficult to diagnose especially in young children whose languages and cognitive abilities are still developed. All children are different and many infants show Asperger's signs and symptoms at some point.
It is natural that small children are ego-centered, but many small children show strong interest in specific topics such as dinosaurs and fancy characters of their choice. These are not reasons to be warned alone! However, if your child feels frequent problems at school or you can not make friends, please consult a pediatrician. There are many possible causes for these difficulties, but developmental disorders like Asperger should not be excluded. Hopefully this article hopes that there are some ideas on what to do next, where to ask for help, and how to better manage your child's behavior.
