Autism and EducationHaving to follow an education demands a great deal of independence, the extent of which depends on the sort of study. Working independently involves planning one’s study. The EF, the executive functions, play an important role in these tasks.For men with autism it is difficult to keep an overview and carry out independent responsibility over their study. This is why they often depend heavily on their instructors. They ask a lot of support and try to deal with their uncertainty by discussing all details.  For instructors, this is often a difficult situation. Their hours have been calculated on an average and men with autism exceed that quota easily. Moreover, the help that they ask for deviates from normal help questions. For an instructor, the question appears to be unimportant, discussing a detail, but for the autistic man, it is of heavy interest. He sometimes loses sleep over a question, where someone else doesn’t even see the difficulty. Learning from books means that you must be able to distinguish head and side issues from each other. The translation from theory into practice is usually difficult for men with autism. Furthermore, contacts with other pupils and teachers demand much understanding of social interaction. Men with autism often do not have sufficient understanding of the subtlety with which people interact with each other. During training this can mean that they become isolated and have problems with the rejection that they experience. It demands a heavy involvement from the training staff to break through this isolation. Autism and Education
Summery Education requires planning one’s study time, reading books and determining which are the main issues and which are only side issues, and interacting with instructors and classmates. These are all skills where the autistic student is severely challenged. Thus, the instructors must be heavily involved in helping the autistic student to overcome these challenges, and the parents should pay particularly close attention to the child’s education. As with all matters related to your autistic child, an educational program must cater to your child’s individual needs and be closely monitored, because every autistic child is different, just as every non-autistic child is different.
|