Aspergers Syndrome

Not long after my daughter was diagnosed with Aspergers Syndrome I had started researching articles and books. I had found several books that looked good. One of the sites had a conferece in my area for one of the authors, Tony Atwood. After researching him I found out he was a leading researcher of Aspergers Syndrome from Australia. The conference was for teachers, medical professionals, and parents. I paid the money and attended the all day conference. It was well worth it. His discussion about how special these children are made me so much more comfortable dealing with these issues. He explained that they don’t see/do things wrong, just different.

I loved his analagy of the 100 piece puzzle. It has helped me explain Aspergers to so many people. He said to imagine a 100 piece puzzle. People with Aspergers have 80 or more pieces of that puzzle. Relatives will have simular traits to Aspergers and might only have 40, or 60, or 20 pieces of that puzzle and aren’t Aspergers, even though they might have a trait of Aspergers. It is only when they have 80 or more pieces and display a large amount of Aspergers traits are they truely Aspergers. Nice and easy! I left the conference feeling challenged, but eager to work with my daughter even more.

Aspergers children are brilliant and usually have special areas they excell in. My daughter is math and science. The book I read by Tony Atwood was called “Girls and Aspergers” which was a huge help to understand it better. Girls display Aspergers different then boys. Boys can be more outward and agressive while girls are inward and awkward. Social skills is the biggest display for both as they have difficulty reading social and facial cues given by others. I highly suggest reading one of Tony Atwoods books because he has many out there to deal with different situations. Check out his website at www.tonyatwood.com