Kidding Around Information

For high-functioning students with Asperger’s, life after high school can be especially challenging.  Success in college, vocational training and on the job requires “soft skills,” also called interpersonal or people skills.  Teens and young adults with Asperger’s have mastered high school academics but they continue to need support in areas such as verbal and nonverbal communication, conflict resolution and negotiations, creative problem solving, team-building, strategic thinking and organization.

Read more: What Happens After High School?

These fantastic firsts aren’t what you’re expecting.  Sure, walking, talking, potty training, and the other usual milestones are impressive.  But developmental experts really get excited about these lesser-known gems that display even more complex leaps in development:
1. First “Conversation” (three to six months): Those lovely back-and-forth exchanges of “oohs,” “aahs,” and sweet glances prove that your baby – even at this tender, young age – is working hard to learn to communicate with you.  Your little one is already a gifted conversationalist!

Read more: Learning Together

Every individual has basic needs: physiological, safety, love and belonging, esteem.  However, for children and adolescents with developmental delays, meeting these needs is more challenging.  Of particular difficulty is developing feelings of self-worth and having a sense of belonging.  Many times, children with developmental delays have been ill-treated by peers and people in the community with a lack of understanding.  These children may have internalized messages that they are not “as good as” others.  Additionally, if social interactions are problematic, overcoming that self-perception is difficult and it is difficult to establish a sense of belonging. 

Read more: Skill Building for Children with Special Needs

Writing skills have never been more important – 90 percent of all business communication today happens electronically.  The written word dwarfs telephone and face-to-face communications, and in our increasingly connected world, that trend will continue.  The written word is the vehicle of choice to communicate facts, to ask questions, to persuade.  And while the importance of writing has been growing, writing skills have been on a steep decline.
Falling educational standards, the huge decrease in the amount students read, the disregard for grammar and punctuation, shrinking vocabularies- all are contributing to very weak writing skills in our students.  A recent survey of business owners graded fewer than 30 percent of high school graduates as having even basically writing proficiency.

Read more: Is Your Child Heading For This Educational Train-Wreck?