What is it? Why are we telling everybody about it?
Two reasons. One is to show what we can do; people with Asperger’s Syndrome have normal intelligence levels although because it’s a communication disorder learning can be a bit harder than usual.
The other reason is to raise awareness of Asperger’s Syndrome; sometimes it goes un-diagnosed for a long time – it’s pretty awful growing up with many of your friends and relatives ‘encouraging ‘ you to ‘learn to adapt’ or whatever. Even when it has been diagnosed and those who need to know (teachers etc.) have been told there can sometimes still be no tolerance for the difficulties of a child with Asperger’s Syndrome, although I’m happy to say that this is improving.
So What is Asperger’s Syndrome?
I’ve heard a doctor say that children with Asperger’s Syndrome show no interest in making friends. My first reaction to that was something like “What kind of rubbish is that? I’ve certainly always wanted to have friends”. Now I think about it maybe that doctor was making sense – although we want friends we have to learn and practice how to be friends, which is very hard work.
Being friends is actually very hard work for some?? Yes, I wrote my thoughts above to illustrate the problem: people with Asperger’s Syndrome don’t seem to be capable of understanding things in quite the same way as other people, often not fast enough to carry on a reasonably normal conversation.
You might think it’s a problem which can be worked round, and it is to a certain extent, but when even eye contact and body language needs to be thought about, you can imagine how tiring it can be. Young children and adults with the problem usually have no idea that their behaviour/body language can be inappropriate or how to recognize when it is – hence the need to learn, the need for the support groups to teach; and, of course, the need to recognize the condition in the first place.
Created by Ethan Grammatikidis using Latex and Linux