Asbergers Syndrome

Aspergers children fall in the group of the Autism Spectrum disorder.  Aspergers is often known as ‘high functioning’ Autism as the symptoms are not as severe as Autism symptoms and so an Aspergers child can function a lot more than a full Autistic child.

Aspergers children will often have many behavior problems such as anger, aggression and depression.  These behaviors can surface because of the frustration that comes along with not being able to deal with social situations and these behaviors can be incredibly difficult to deal with for a parent.

The Features Of Aspergers

Aspergers is more common in males than in females and is usually not diagnosed until after the age of three.  The symptoms of Aspergers will vary from person to person and can sometimes can be difficult to diagnose.

Generally, Aspergers children tend to be highly intelligent and can often hold a good conversation with an adult, however, their social and emotional skills are lacking and they can find it very difficult to interact with children their own age.

The main features of Aspergers are:

• Intelligent and often perform well in subjects like Maths and Science
• Absorb and learn things easily and quickly
• Quite anxious and do not cope well with criticism, in fact they take criticism very personally
• Are often shy and will wait to be invited into a group rather than take the initiative to join a group
• Are often the victims of bullying, possibly due to their shy and withdrawn nature
• Are sometimes clumsy
• Can often be seen as odd or eccentric
• Can be very emotional and very sensitive
• Find it difficult to understand jokes or sarcasm and can often take a joke as a personal attack
• Like to have specific routines or rituals.

Why is Anger Common In Aspergers Children

Aspergers children find it extremely difficult to interact with other children and are often very uncomfortable in social situations.  It’s not that they don’t want to be social, it’s just that they lack social skills and find it difficult to be social.  Because they do want to be social but find it difficult, then they can become very frustrated.  They don’t understand why they don’t have the social skills and may think that people just don’t like them.  They can become more and more withdrawn and become quite angry inside.

The earlier that your child is diagnosed with Aspergers the earlier you can begin helping them to learn social and communication skills.  They can develop these skills but they just need some extra help.  It is also important to help them to develop a healthy self esteem so that they don’t grow to think that they are inferior in any way due to their lack of social skills.  By helping them learn social skills and promoting self confidence will help to reduce anger development.

Another reason that anger develops in Aspergers children is if they are a child that likes to have set routines or rituals and these routines are broken or changed.  Sometimes it can be difficult to stick to a routine 100% but it is important to try to give them their routines as much as possible to avoid an anger outburst.

Aspergers children can get quite angry and even voilent over a changed routine even though this is something that most people wouldn’t really worry too much about.  Cognitive behavior therapy can be useful with routine issues to teach your child to stay in control even when their routines are broken.