Adolescent and Autistic: Difficult But Not Hopeless

What’s the newest self-help skill that I am adding to the list for Charlie? Not folding laundry; packing his lunch; shopping and carrying groceries and putting everything away;microwaving meals (he does all of these). He has yet to learn how to tie a shoe, it is true; Charlie’s preferred shoes are those slip-op leather shoes that many adults seem to wear.

The newest skill that is on the horizon is: Shaving. There is definitely a thin dark line appearing above Charlie’s upper lip.

Am I ready? Who is, ever?

Very heartening, then, to read a post in Science Daily today, on Adolescence And Autism: A Difficult, But Not Hopeless Combination:

A paper by Dr. Eric Fombonne, Head of the Division of Child Psychiatry at the McGill University Health Centre (MUHC), describes the effectiveness of social skills training groups for autistic adolescents.

“This study shows that the social and interpersonal skills of autistic adolescents can be improved, and we established that our method is efficient and does not require significant resources,” said Dr. Fombonne.

Dr. Fombonne organized the first training group in 2002, with his colleagues Jack Strulovitch, social worker at the MUHC, and Vicki Tagalakis, therapist in psychiatry paediatrics at the MUHC. They wanted to address the needs of autistic adolescents who had no major delay in their language development or who were not cognitively challenged (high-functioning autism and Asperger syndrome). Since then the training groups have been running twice a year for 14 sessions, each group involving seven to eight adolescents aged an average of 14.6 years.

The major component of the sessions is role play, which allows the patients to simulate different social situations and create new friendships with other members of the group. Both the adolescents and their parents were asked to fill out peer-validated questionnaires so that researchers can evaluate progress. “These groups were created based uniquely on clinical approach, meaning without the same selection or limitation criteria inherent in research projects. The groups are therefore very representative of what can be done in a classic therapeutic setting,” explained Dr. Fombonne.

My son does have a a significant language delay so perhaps the social skills training might not be as readily useful to him. But there are ways to integrate prompts so he can communicate and to motivate him to talk more; the notion of role-playing strikes me as somewhat like a social story, but dramatized.

By coincidence, I also just heard more about an after-school program for older autistic kids, to be run by Anything Is Possible from 4.30-6.30, starting next January and including “Arts & Crafts, Reading Programs, Music Workout & Various Academics.”

Growing up with autism, and raising an autistic son: Difficult but not—never—hopeless.