Understanding Aspergers

I am going to talk about one of my children, and I ask that even if you know who I'm talking about or suspect what child this is about, to please not use names for their own privacy.

I had a huge shake up about four months ago.  In a round about way, that was really unprofessional and caused me a lot of stress, it came to my attention that some of my child's teachers suspected my child of being mentally ill.  There was reference to hearing voices.  All kinds of inappropriate behavior, mostly in the classroom.  It was a very emotional time for me, as I tried to figure out how to tackle both the possibility of a mental illness and the interactions that were occurring with teachers.

When I finally had a chance to sit down with one of those teachers it became clear to me that some of the problem was not understanding how this child expresses them self.  There was also the problem that we've had continually with not understanding social norms and what society deems as acceptable behavior.  So this problem definitely had multiple faucets and needed to be address on multiple fronts.

I was very lucky to be involved with a group of online ladies that gave me a ton of support during this time, as I tried to sort it all out and understand what was actually happening.

A huge blessing for us at this time was already having access with a professional that was helping this child deal with some other issues.  So testing, in trying to figure this child out was relatively easy.  We ended up with me filling out a questionnaire, having a teacher fill out the same questionnaire, and sitting down and going point by point over what it takes to diagnose aspergers to figure out that the behavior we were seeing was specifically because of aspergers.

So what does that mean?  How does aspergers affect someone long term.  Well, for me as a parent, I felt  relief in knowing that my parenting decisions, which were often under scrutiny from other family members were correct.  I often got flack for correcting behavior, at the time it happened, being told repeatedly that I was going to damage this child's self esteem.

Truth is, with aspergers, the individual doesn't understand or follow social cues often not even recognizing them.  They struggle with having regular conversations often inserting information that's not appropriate with the topic, but is central to a few key obsessions this individual might have.  Conversation skills, body language, expanding interest, all things that must be taught to the aspergers child.  If not taught, they will do these socially awkward behaviors as adults.  Forever being labeled "weird".

Suddenly all the work socially that, as parents, we've poured into this child makes sense.  There's also a sense of purpose in continuing to help this child grow and mature socially, since it will not happen if this child were left alone.

The diagnosis really has opened the window of understanding to our child.  Now that we know, we know better how to help them.

It's been an emotionally full four months since we started this journey and it's not over but it's so much better.  For everyone, especially this wonderful child of ours.