Autism and hobbies and interests

Here is a rough guide how parents and teachers and other guardians can help children with autism use their special interests.

Subjects: Art, science, music, craft, maths

Skills: Drawing, creating, writing, making, numbers

Knowledge: Birds, pictures, tunes, plants, patterns

Encourage the child to work on related activities to do with their interest. Eg if it is music, they can draw instruments, write their own tunes, write a guide, photograph things. Go to places of interest and learn about music. Join groups of same interest. Play the music instruments.

All these can help the child to socialise and not be alone all the time. They can also learn more and get educated. It could later on become a career.

So, what about me? Well, I liked writing stories at school. English, as it was known then, was my favourite lesson despite being bullied. And look what I do know – I am an author writing for adults and children.

This is a brief guide to a full book I have planned to write about hobbies and interests for children with autism, as part of the Rainbow School guide series and 'Learn about autism'.

Asperger's Syndrome/autism and schooling

This post is in conjunction with a report in the Daily Mirror the other day about a boy who was excluded from school because he has Asperger's.

Back in the 1980s and 90s I was at primary and secondary school. In both schools I was bullied by other girls, yet I had an education. Some lessons I liked, some I didn't. I still had an education. But it appears that children with Asperger's are not getting this education I had. Why? Well, the report I read in the paper said that this boy had been getting on fine at primary school, albeit he did have habits such as banging pencils on a desk. Then he was diagnosed with AS, and the school excluded him, not being able to cope with him - this was a mainstream school. The same happened with his secondary school, and now he is being home-educated by his mother. I feel that this is really bad, esp as it says that this excluding of children without warning is illegal.

But there can be a good side to this. If the mother is home-schooling her son, then she can teach him the basic subjects and the ones that are most important for when you are an adult, such as maths, literacy, not topics like science or geography.

I have read there are mainstream schools that do have special needs units in them for children with AS or autism, so maybe this mother can find one of these for her son.

So, I wish the mother all the luck in the world with educating her son. From me, who did have an education whilst not knowing she had Asperger's at the time, and was bullied.