Symptoms of Stress in Children with AS

While everyone experiences stress to some degree, it seems that children and youth with Asperger Syndrome exhibit symptoms of being under stress in different, unexpected ways. For example, my son has recently been hiding under the desk at school (this has been a behaviour that has occurred from time to time) and his teachers are very concerned about this. It never occurred to me that this was a reaction to the stress my child was feeling in the classroom until a parent in the #autism chat room asked the question "What are the teachers NOT helping your child with that is causing him to behave this way?" I was busily trying to come up with a way help the teachers cope with my son's behaviour when this question made me realize that this is one of the ways in which he is trying to show us that he is stressed right out.

Now, getting my son to tell me what he is stressed over is a whole other problem. He has great difficulty with expressing his feelings and a total hatred of answering any questions that may give rise to uncomfortable, angry, sad, or frustrated feelings. In other words, it's like pulling teeth to get him to tell me what's wrong. After several attempts on my part, I finally got an answer to the problem - this year, more than any other year, he is having difficulties with the social aspect of school life. Unfortunately the classroom where he was placed has very few children that he knows from previous years - only two - and he hasn't been able to connect with them during recess and lunch times. Since he cannot figure out how to deal with this problem, he has been withdrawing himself from the class (pulling himself out) quite a bit. My son is very loyal to his friends and will not make new ones just because he cannot connect with the old ones, so he has found this whole situation very stressful.

After explaining his predicament to his teachers, they have come up with a plan to help him connect with other friends and feel less isolated. Hopefully, the next time he has a problem like this, he will tell someone before he starts desk diving again. And of course, if he does desk dive, we now know it's stress related behaviour.

Some of the symptoms of stress in children and youth with Asperger Syndrome are:

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