Tip Sheets

Please remember that few schools can offer everything that you want for your child. However, go with your ‘gut’ feeling; if you like the school and the school is willing to help your child, then this is a good place to start.

5 Key Points in Choosing a School

If you prepare and plan the morning/afternoon it can be a lot of fun for you, your Autism Spectrum child and the children who come.

Birthday Parties

Combining the strengths and knowledge of parents who know their children best and have a history of supporting and advocating for their children, with the expertise of teachers, creates a powerful partnership that directly benefits the student.

Collaboration with Teachers

I love routine and order

• Help me to keep things in the right order
• Show me how to put things carefully back on the shelf
• Show me pictures of what you want me to do

Create a Positive Environment

The relationship between parent and school is ideally a solid partnership, with all participants working effectively for the benefit of the child with ASD.

Create a Positive Partnership with Teachers

We need to find friendship opportunities in places where the ASD person feels comfortable and not force the situation. An ideal situation is while the ASD person is engaging in an activity that they enjoy.

Creating opportunities for friendships

Find clear information. Know what you want to say to others and be positive. Talk about the positives to others. Discuss the difficulties you may be facing.

Diagnosis for Family and Friends

As a parent you need to decide what to say and how to say it. You can begin by talking about strengths and difficulties that the child may experience.

Disclosing the Diagnosis

The diagnosis of an autism spectrum disorder (ASD) should not be a barrier to holding a licence. Driving is a process of constantly assessing the big picture; this can pose a major challenge to students with ASD. Some people may find this skill extremely difficult to grasp whilst others will be highly competent drivers.

Drivers Licence

Family gatherings for most people are a time of joy, celebration, love, laughter and good times. However, if you have a child with Autism Spectrum who also has sensory issues, around, noise, movement and touch, it may not quite be the same.

Family Functions

As we teach friendship skills, we also need to teach that friendships grow and change, and so we need to guide them through the different stages of friendships as some friendships wane and others become much closer. This can be taught if you have established a mentor relationship with the student.

Friendships

Girls on the spectrum are better at masking their condition – they do this by copying the behaviours of others. Behaviour is often less ‘obvious’ for someone not familiar with ASD girls. Some great tips to identify and understanding how girls differ from boys.

Girls on the Spectrum

After a while I told my son that a proper hug needed two people to use their arms to squeeze. He began to understand this and began to hug back.

It was fantastic the day that my son initiated a proper hug and it was breathtaking, but in a great way!

Hugs – Mothers do need them

Students with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) can, and usually have a problem with, perfection and everything being perfect. That is perfection as perceived by them.

Due to their literal thinking styles and unconventional ways of problem solving, their concept of something being perfect is very different from ours. This can lead to many problems at home and especially at school.

Importance of Being Perfect

When a friendship has formed, many ASD people will forget to maintain and reciprocate this friendship. We need to give them “ideas” and “how to instructions”.

We need to remind them with each new situation so they can build up a repertoire of scenarios where they will feel comfortable in using these “instructions”.

Maintaining Friendships

There are ways in which we can prepare the person with ASD for some of these changes, for example when expecting visitors to your house.

Preparing for Visitors

When a partnership is formed between teachers and parents, the students see the value in education and education related activities such as homework and revision.

Teacher and Parent Relationship