Autism effects your child in so many ways! Your child is having trouble with tags in his clothes. The noises are like razors to her ears. Their food is a "weird" texture and impossible to eat! This is just some of the sensory stuff! Then there are the social challenges. It is also a problem when we ask them to stop those repetitive behaviors that make them feel safe, secure. So many things are SO difficult for your Autistic child.
I want to focus on people with high functioning Autism (f.k.a. Asperger's). With all the challenges that many Autistic students face, one area that has been mastered for many is READING. YAY...something they are really good at, that doesn't involve other PEOPLE, and can be like a "movie in your head." The problem is that by the time your high-functioning Autistic child reaches 3rd grade you may see that they can read the 6th grade stories, but they struggle with COMPREHENSION of what they have read. They can't make connections to the text. They can't tell you about what they read. They can't apply what they have read outside of the context of the book.
WHY is comprehension so hard? There are three ways that your child's Autism is having a direct impact on the ability to comprehend what they have read. Here's a quick overview of each...
1. Theory of Mind-the ability to understand other's point of view or perspective. Comprehension of reading relies on understand the feelings, perspectives, and emotions of the characters in the story.
2. Central Coherence-ability to bring details together into a whole concept or idea. Your reader may not be able to piece together the details that were read and infer the theme or main idea of the story.
3. Executive Functioning-the process of organizing, planning, and monitoring progress when presented with a situation. There are many processes that are used when retelling what they know from their reading. They have to organize their thoughts, possibly in sequence. They have to access any prior knowledge they have in order to really understand, and so much more. All of this goes on at the same time! A typical person does this intuitively. Your Autistic reader cannot. WOW.
So, what can a parent do? This sounds so immense, right? Look for Part 2 of this post for ways to help your reader and have fun doing it, too! If you just can't wait to read more, check out this article that spells it all out ! :)
You are your child's first teacher. And you'll probably always be their favorite. Never forget that!
Happy Reading!
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