During this class we discussed a book entitled “What it is to be Me” by Angela Wine. This kid friendly book is a great introduction to Asperger’s Syndrome. The book is straight forward and positive, portrays children with Asperger’s as superheroes.
Asperger children are not very good at reading social cues, the body language, social rules and expectations. Things such as language, figurative speech, are hard to decode or understand because they not logical. There is also an honesty issue here, children who have AS tend to give detailed description of things, the need to tell the truth even when it’s not necessary. This is an impulse control issue, not being able to hold what they want to say in. Children who have AS do not always have a strong mind/body connection leading to bathroom problems (such as peeing their pants). They may not know how or when to say they need to go to the bathroom. Making sure that there are school policies and planning for school activities that accommodate and aid those who may have AS is important. Also, having students or children know where things come from, educating on the issue can empower them. As I have mentioned before, especially in school situations, labeling is an issue. Therefore knowing what is acceptable to use for language concerning AS or other disabilities/abilities helps those who may be put in the spotlight without the want to be there. Taking a cue from family or the children themselves can be helpful but saying “Asperger kid” may be appropriate to some and not to others. What is the language for all disabilities or abilities such as being deaf, blind, using a wheelchair, being mentally retarded (or other terms that are used for this now), and even extending this into culture based language with terms used for race. It makes me wonder where we are going as a society with the notion of being politically correct is this helping or hurting us in the long run.
During class we played a label game. Everyone was given 10 post-it notes and on each note we had to write a label for ourselves that we have been given at some point in our life or that we had given ourselves. The labels that I used for myself were princess, only child, teacher’s pet, nerd, tool bag, OCD, spoiled, rich, dork, and married. We then had to put these labels all over our bodies and walk around reading each other’s labels. While some of these I have given myself and I can now own because I feel educated about the term, many of them were given and were done so in a hurtful manner. This game was an excellent example of labels for those who may have Asperger’s Syndrome. People who have AS have a label on them all of the time, that everyone can see, and they cannot simply pull off like our post-its. It is sad to think how many labels we could come up with and how we have labeled each other or even ourselves. Why do we label like this? Well, we are all hard wired to label, to put things into categories to deal with things. The first category we discover as babies is “me/not me” followed by “colors”. We have trained our brains to think like this, to make sense of the world around us using labels and categories but they are hurtful to others. Our society has yet to figure out how to maintain itself, without putting someone down or making them feel bad for being different every day.
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