Wednesday, April 03, 2013

Asperger: Teaching them to be compassionate and sensitive towards other people's feeling and needs

Backdates post.


2 days ago, I cooked spagetti for thier lunch. I asked JD " Do you want more spagetti?" And the first thing he asked was "If I take more, will titi have enough to eat ?". I said "Yeah, of course". And he said "Are you sure?". And he happily eat his lunch. 

This morning he asked me "Mami, do you know where is titi's piggy bank?". I asked "why?" He said "cos I found 2 coins and I want to give him". Just wanna test what he is up to , I asked "why didn't you keep the coin for yourself?". He replied "cos my piggy bank is full, so i give him lah".

Suddenly I remember that I need to pen something down. Which is the topic for today (chewah... like i am some writer or what). I think I have achieved another milestone and I think my constant reminder and nagging actually is working. 
The usual thing we hear people calling Aspies when they do not tknow about then would be the words Weird, Stubborn and SELFISH.Aspies would talk to themselves, talk about the same thing over and over again, would suddenly burst out laughing and many more. They would walk over and change the TV channel without asking and they would interfere when other people is having a conversation. It's always all about them, thier needs and thier feelings. Trust me, they do care about other people, but it's just that they don't know how to express and doesn't know what is the appropriate thing to say or do. To make it easier to understand, imagine that there's a wire of feeling and understanding but it's just dangling there not were not connected. They just need someone to go over and plug it into the system and make it function. 

So yes, it's an extra "subject" that AS kids need to learn. Either they learn in via therapy or they could learn it best from the best example, the parents. It's a very hard "subject" to teach" and it takes a very very long time. Although I know that JD is an Aspie only a year ago, but I have been teaching him since I knew he was different when he was about 2 yrs old. I usually show and then tell and i know it's not a glam thing to do a good thing and then tell someone you did a good thing, but for them, we need to do it cos we need to "connect the wire", if you know what I mean. I am still doing it now and probably will do it for many more years to come, cos for AS kids they need so many reinforcement and constant reminder so that it register into the system.

Thanks to my son, repetition and Nagging is my skill now.

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