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"Navigating the Social World will . . . help to bridge the gap between theory and practice."
Navigating the Social World
The focus of Navigating the Social World is to provide a practical, "how to" social and emotional skills curriculum for school age students and adults with AS, HFA and related disorders. It also contains sections on behavioral issues and abstract thinking skills. The book describes multiple concrete, step-by-step (but flexible) programs that can be used to help AS/HFA students or adults become more successful in the social world. It is a hands-on manual that can be used by parents, teachers, therapists, student aides, etc. to run the comprehensive program that they envision.
Since the recognition of Asperger's Syndrome in the DSM IV in 1994 and the ICD 10 in 1993, the number of individuals diagnosed with Asperger's Syndrome and high functioning autism (AS/HFA) has increased rapidly throughout the world. Not surprisingly, the availability of specific programs to address the complex and multi-faceted needs of these individuals has not yet caught up with the increasing rate of diagnosis. Indeed, there has not yet been nearly enough time to adequately develop, investigate, and compare different treatment approaches. As a result, while parents and professionals can obtain a good deal of information about the diagnoses and general treatment approaches, it is much more difficult to find specific information on how to actually deliver programs tailored to the needs of these individuals. When my daughter, Rachel, was diagnosed with high functioning autism at age ten, her doctors, teachers, and I faced the same dilemma: we knew what her diagnosis was and we knew that she needed help with social skills, pragmatics, abstract thinking, and sensory issues, but none of us knew exactly what kind of treatment this would entail or even how to go about finding such treatment.
Thus began my search for the best treatment techniques that I could find or devise for my daughter. In the course of this search, I left my general pediatrics practice in order to have more time to focus on this project. Over the ensuing years, I researched the issue from every angle I could find. With the help of several specialists who work with children with AS/HFA (including a stint with Tony Attwood in Australia), on-going review of the current literature in the field, and most of all, the myriad lessons I have learned from my number one teacher, Rachel, I pulled together the best program ideas I could find or invent. Equipped with this information, I first began writing programs that my daughter's aide and I could use in teaching her social, emotional, behavioral, and abstract thinking skills. Partway through this project I decided to broaden the programs to apply to other individuals with AS/HFA and related disorders. My main goals were to 1) write a curriculum that an aide or teacher with little experience in this field could use and 2) to break the individual skills down into small, incremental steps that could be slowed down to match the individual student's pace of learning. As challenging as it has been, the five years I have spent writing this book have been an exciting and energizing time that has filled me with hope for my daughter's future and for the future of others like her.
After an initial section that gives a brief overview of Asperger's syndrome and high functioning autism, the book covers four major topics (view an overview of Sections 1-4). Each section is broken down into different individual programs. In turn, each program is divided into multiple discreet steps in order to break down a whole task into "chunks" that the student can master one at a time. The programs are organized so that the most basic or concrete steps come first, with subsequent steps gradually becoming more complex and "real to life". In most programs, the final step involves reinforcing the student for using the targeted skill in real life situations/contexts. The curriculum utilizes several different teaching tools including schematics, audio and videotaping, games, handouts, work sheets, role-playing, sensory integration techniques, one-on-one training, and group teaching. Appendices at the end of the book provide student handouts, templates (of the various graphs, diagrams, etc. in the text), and program tracking forms, all of which may be photocopied for the reader's use. An additional appendix lists further sources and materials that may be useful to the reader.