Asperger's Children and Teachers

A recent school meeting with the teachers at my son's present school and the teachers from his future school (he goes to middle school next year) just proved to me that some teachers do not have the ability to understand the condition of Asperger's Syndrome.

The stumbling block for the teacher seems to be that the child appears to look normal and be very bright in many areas. The vocabulary of many asperger's children can be amazing and the teacher will often develop the attitude of "if this child is so smart, why can't he understand my point?" Then the teacher embarks on a crusade to "change" the child, make him be like the other children which only causes stress for the child.

We had a situation recently where the teacher had the class out in the school playground, throwing a frisbee at a bottle. This is a very hard thing for my son to do and he is not fond of any activity remotely resembling sports, so when she asked the class "What would make this game better?", he responded, "Well, not playing it at all would make it better." Of course, the class laughed, she got mad and called him "rude", he was surprised that he got in trouble because he was only giving her an answer and then he blew up at her, running off the playground in tears.

Upon discussing it with the teacher, she maintains that he has to learn what is an appropriate social response in this situation, which would be to say what she wants to hear, or say nothing at all. She has completely missed the fact that children with asperger's syndrome cannot be coerced into "saying the right thing" according to her social behaviour code of conduct. This is the very problem that asperger's children have, they are rather blunt, often sound rude without meaning to, and if you ask them a question, they say what they think.

When dealing with a teacher who has this kind of stumbling block the best thing you can do is provide her with some information about asperger's syndrome and caution her about trying to "change" your child. (Teachers seem to feel that they are correcting some flaw in the child that the parent should have corrected as the child was growing up.)

Another suggestion would be to bring up the story of "The Emperor Has No Clothes". The little boy in the story who speaks the truth about the emperor not wearing any clothing is much like an asperger's child, unafraid to say what he thinks.

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