ASPERGER SYNDROME: A GUIDE FOR PROFESSIONALS AND FAMILIES integrates the latest evidenced-based research from leading scholars and examples from those working with this population in non-university settings with personal practical advice from a mother whose adolescent has Asperger Syndrome and from a young man who has Asperger Syndrome.
Asperger Syndrome is a life-long condition that requires long-term planning, treatment, and medical intervention. Early diagnosis and treatment may lead to minimizing the impact of the Asperger Syndrome at each development stage. Asperger Syndrome: A Guide for Professionals and Families provides effective perspective on each type of intervention and assists those making key decisions at critical developmental and education times in the life of the Asperger Syndrome person. The authors rely on the most current research evidence and clinical experience to provide a realistic appraisal of the most significant aspects of Asperger Syndrome.
Notable features include:
• An analysis of the most current research literature,
• A model for a new approach to diagnosis, treatment, education, and long-term planning,
• An ecological, task analytical view of educating the person with an Asperger Syndrome diagnosis,
• Social skills and social issues such as victimization,
• The diagnosis and treatment of Asperger Syndrome persons with dual-diagnosis,
• An analysis of the later life issues for intervention,
• A personal view from a person with an Asperger Syndrome diagnosis.
Asperger Syndrome: A Guide for Professionals and Families provides information and guidance to parents, educators, diagnosticians, and therapists on best practice approaches to Asperger Syndrome.
For your reference, noted below is the Preface excerpt from Asperger Syndrome: A Guide for Professionals and Families:
Preface
Every book has not one but many stories to tell as readers bring their life experience and unique personal interpretation to the works found on those written pages. For Tom Gullotta, this book began unknowingly some nineteen or so years ago with the adoption of his three-week-old son. Bernie's inexhaustible energy, excitability, and precocious self-centered nature had created by kindergarten a record already inches thick. To this history still more feet of documentation, conflicting opinions, and frankly, anguish would be added before the words Asperger Syndrome (AS) were first mentioned at age fourteen. Tom suspects that many readers with children or other loved ones with AS have had similar experiences.
For Raymond DuCharme, this book is part of a long search for ways to help children and their families. He states:
Children teach us a great deal about ourselves, and fragile children teach us to be thoughtful about our effects on them. A child's reaction mirrors our sensitivity, or our lack of sensitivity.
Children with AS are among the most fragile children. They are most reactive to what they are not prepared to do. They have taught me that I must use their signals to adjust my expectations, and to tap their potential. They have taught me to use the evidence that they provide to help them do what they most wish - to be as accepted and as successful as their peers.
From these different journeys, this volume was conceived as a Hartman Scholar's program. Nearly a decade since its inception, Hartman Scholar programs identify an issue affecting children and their families for intensive study. Once an issue has been selected for study, a search is undertaken to identify leading scholars and practitioners working in that area. To be a Hartman Scholar is demanding, entailing two weekend study groups over a period of one year, with individual study occurring between meetings. The product of that year-long collaboration is the volume before you.
The eight chapters that follow cluster into three untitled sections. The first, consisting of four chapters, provides readers with a comprehensive overview of the syndrome. In Chapter 1, Raymond DuCharme and Kathleen McGrady examine the etiology of AS and address the confusion that surrounds diagnostic issues pertaining to it. In Chapter 2, Brenda Myles examines the evidence-based literature and identifies programs that show promise. In Chapter 3, Raymond DuCharme provides a comprehensive overview of instructional studies. This review is enriched with a wealth of additional data from the author's work at The Learning Clinic, which points to an educational approach that is successful with youth with AS. In Chapter 4, the first section concludes with an examination by Ann Wagner and Kathleen McGrady of counseling and other therapeutic strategies that are helpful to youth with AS and their families.
The second grouping of chapters focuses on two critical issues affecting youth with AS. Chapter 5 by Lisa Little examines the risk these young people face for victimization and strategies toward reducing that risk. In Chapter 6, Peter F. Gerhardt explores the subject of transition support for learners with AS from childhood into adulthood. He identifies several areas in which substantial work remains to be undertaken if the lives of these deserving individuals are to be maximized.
The final grouping of chapters are of special importance. Chapter 7 by Sherry Moyer and Sheryl Breetz offers not only practical advice from the mother of a young person with AS but also provides a case study in how transitional housing and support services can be developed for young people as they "age out" of the education system. Chapter 8 by Stephen Shore is a positive, hopeful, often times humorous accounting of Stephen's life with AS. In a conversational tone that connects with the experiences of individuals with AS and their families, this remarkable young man helps all of us to understand AS much better.
We offer this book to policymakers, educators, practitioners, and graduate students, but most of all to individuals with AS and the families of individuals with AS. We hope that policymakers will use the lessons found in this volume to craft laws and funding opportunities that serve this underserved and often unrecognized population. We hope that educators and practitioners apply the scant knowledge that is available and join us in calling for intensified efforts to develop evidence-based services for individuals with AS. We hope that this work serves as a motivational starting point for students to undertake badly needed research to improve the dearth of knowledge in this area. But most of all, we offer this book to the Bernies who live with AS every day of their lives and to their parents who love them so dearly. May this book not only offer some hope but inspire you to speak out on behalf of all with AS.
Raymond W. DuCharme
Thomas P. Gullotta
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Book reference no: PC480 / NTF285
