Managing Autism - A Personal View

Children with Aspergers Syndrome often struggle with social situations, unable to process information or their environment appropriately or in a manner that is timely.  However, roleplaying with your Aspergers child can be a great way of helping them to learn and practice responses to situations they will inevitably be faced with, and at the same time help them to understand that different actions have different consequences.

When using the process of roleplaying, the idea is to create a scenario related to your child’s life.  A scenario would involve creating a setting - time, place and people involved.  It would also involve an explanation or discussion of what might be happening in the setting, as well as a discussion of different responses or actions.  And of course, there must be appropriate or ‘natural’ consequences for various actions.

With the help of your child (and perhaps other family members or friends) work through the scenario slowly.  Give your child the opportunity to try out and explore different responses to the scenario and help them through dealing with any consequenses that they will face as a result of their choice of response.  Don’t worry if your child makes an inappropriate choice or struggles to make their way through the role play - the idea of roleplaying is all about practicing, and the more a child practices the easier it will become for them to deal with these scenarios in real life.

Introduce roleplaying in to your Aspergers child’s life gradually - like any other change, there may be some resistance at first.  Work at it slowly to start with, supporting and encouraging your child to build their self confidence.  The benefits of roleplaying with your Aspergers child can be enormous.  Your child has the opportunity to explore real life situations, and as such explore the consequences of their actions and responses in a safe and ‘forgiving’ environment.

One thing to note is, children with Aspergers Syndrome often take things very literally, so if your child is unable to imagine pretending to be another person, it may be an idea to try this with puppets, or use photos of people on ice cream sticks. 

This entry was posted on Friday, October 5th, 2007 at 6:37 am and is filed under Coping with Autism - Strategies, Child Autism, Asperger Syndrome. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.