by Nita Tyson

Created on: November 16, 2011

Parenting a child with autism is one of the most challenging, frustrating, and rewarding experiences a parent can have. Whether the child is considered high functioning, with Asperger’s Syndrome, or is somewhere else on the autism scale, there are undeniable challenges that must be dealt with daily.

Many children with autism suffer with sensory integration disorder, or SID. Its official name is

processing disorder, but it is more common to hear parents referring to the disorder as SID. One famous neuroscientist calls SID a mental “traffic jam”. At our house, we just say the nerves got scrambled, because my daughter understands “scrambled”. For some reason, the nerves got tangled up, and the senses don’t respond the way they should. Clothing tags feel like torture, soap smells like a delicious dessert. Some days the dog feels like silk and smells like a flower. The next day, poor Basker might feel like sandpaper and stink. In the meantime, he’s still the same old’ dog to us parents.

Imagine the challenge if your child sometimes doesn’t feel the cold. He or she would be prone to frostbite from being outside. Other days, we could set the thermostat on 90 and my daughter would still be cold. The nerves are confused; they don’t know how to “feel” correctly. This same process affects the nerves that transmit the orders to walk, to sit, to stand, and to be able to write or draw. Some days, she draws exquisitely. Other days, her work resembles that of a two year old. Every day, she is challenged.

Autism is characterised by social difficulties. Children and adults with ‘traditional’ autism don’t seem to want to have social interaction with the world. Parents of children on this side of the scale spend a great deal of their time trying to interact with their child any way they can. People with Asperger’s, one the other hand, want to be social, but only on their terms. They try, usually desperately, to communicate with peers and to fit in. Unfortunately, they also want to do so on their own terms. This makes a very difficult situation, because much of the world we live in is devoted to the idea of playing well with others, not to the child who says “my way or the highway”.  Young people with Asperger’s are particularly prone to manipulation, because if they are in the mood to hang around with “friends” that day, they will do unacceptable

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