Expert: Dr. Sharon A. Mitchell - 4/3/2007

Question
Today is my son's 17th birthday.  He is a loving, handsome, considerate, kind, bright, humerous and wonderful boy on the spectrum.  Diagnosed with PDD at 18months, he has accomplished a great deal and has overome obstacles that even some neuoro typical kids could not.  He is a sophmore in high school and is in ld resourse rooms and maintstreamed in all of his electives.  He has a goal of going to college.  He is on the high school swim team and has two varsity letters.  He is active in a youth group and is a camp counselor.  His friends are wonderful, supportive boys who treat him with respect and protect him.  He is simply a pioneer in this community, and an inspiration to kids in our community.  Problem is, I have never had anyone  to ask advice of, no one with a child quite like mine, who is  high functioning asd, but with huge areas of normalcy.
THERE ARE SO MANY ISSUES!  What do I do about driving?  He wants to drive, knows the rules but has test anxiety.  We are working on flashcards, but he still may fail the temps test.  I don't want to rush it, but at some point he does want to get in the car!  He wants to date...but is attracted to the most popular girls!  Since his weakness is conversation, how does he do this?  How do I approach this issue?  

 I always thought that I had the anwsers, but the lines between his issues and normal teenage development are blurring.  Any help or resourses that you could give me wiluld be appreciated  

Answer
Pam, most certainly you're welcome to right again. Glad to have been of assistance.

Sharon A. Mitchell

Pam, hats off to you and your son! And his teachers. You've all done a wonderful job. You're an inspiration to parents of recently-diagnosed young children who are wondering how they'll make it through the next years and how things may turn out.

It sounds like the social disabilities that can plague some kids with autism spectrum disorders are not a major impediment in your son's life. Succeeding at college sounds entirely within the realm of possibility for your young man.

Despite all the success to date, that doesn't mean things would have always been easy for your family. Nor does it mean that there are not challenges. As Temple Grandin says, "Once autistic, always autistic", meaning that even when the person has learned strategies and improves in skills, there are still autistic tendencies that require approaches that may differ from that of other, "neurotypical" people.

While your son has PDD, he's also a teenager. Some of his current difficulties may be based in the autism; others are those suffered by most normal teens.

Driving - many young people with autism spectrum disorders drive. There are a couple difficulties that I see but they can all be overcome. There are also some positives about driving when you have an autism spectrum disorder, but we'll start with some areas of concern.

First, safety is a major concern - both for your boy and for others on the road. Think of autism as a processing disorder where it's hard for the person to take in, interpret and respond appropriately to more than one piece of information at a time. Then think about driving. It's a multi-processing activity.

There are the physical requirements - hands and feet in certain positions. Eyes that need to watch in front, to both sides, in the side and rear view mirrors as well as occasionally over the shoulder.

Sometimes on the road, there is not a lot of time to sit and weight options. The conditions may require rapid decision-making and physical responses (braking, accelerating, turning the wheel, tooting the horn).

It's necessary to be able to both weed out distractions and to pay attention to certain things while letting others recede into the background. These are central coherence skills with which many people with autism (and many other disorders)often have trouble.

Apart from figuring out which things to pay attention to, there's also the requirement to not allow your attention to wander, but remain focussed on driving.

Now for the plusses. Just as there are certain characteristics inherent in autism that can make life more difficult, you can use some of these characteristics to your advantage.

Many people with autism are rule-governed. When you find it difficult to make sense of the world around you, if someone gives you a pattern or rule to follow - a rule that works - then you tend to latch on to it. Treat learning to drive from a rule-centered approach. "The rule is..."

My son with Asperger's has been driving since he turned 16. He's never had a ticket, traffic violation or accident. He learned and followed the rules of the road exactly. (Which is nice, expect in his early driving days we did have a certain amount of difficulty with his reactions when OTHER drivers did not follow the rules of the road.)

When you and I learned to drive, we spent hours practicing. Kids with autism learn well by doing as well. But with your son, you may need to overpractice - spend much more time practicing, demonstrating and introducing him to new situations than you would for another teenager.

Some kids work well with their parents; others don't. Even those who were willing to study with their moms as children may prefer not to spent that time with a parent once they're into the teen years. That's normal.

Would your son do better rehearsing for his temps test with someone other than you, such as his friends, a teacher, or a paid driving instructor? The same thing goes when he actually practices driving. Just as spouses may not be the optimal teacher for each other, so it can
be with parents and children. Paying for lessons may be well worth the money.

Having your son drive with other people plus sometimes with you would help him learn to generalize the skills he's acquiring. This can be an area of weakness in autism -learning something well in one situation but being unable to independently apply those same skills in another situation.

Along these same lines, you may need to practice and point things out that you had not originally planned because of this generalization problem. Your son may become proficient driving with the sun at his back, then suddenly, the sun glares in his eyes and the same street he's been driving on for weeks may look utterly foreign and he may lose his sense of direction or his skill at integrating the required driving steps.

Practice driving with him at different times of day, in all weather conditions, in heavy traffic and during the middle of the day. Practice alternate routes. What if there's an accident or a road closure? Would he still know how to get home? What should he do if he locks his keys in the car? Has a fender-bender? Witnesses an accident?

The world's a noisy place. People with autism often have trouble blocking out auditory distractions. You can keep some of these to a minimum by not having the radio on while he's driving, not allowing friends (or more than one friend) in the car while he's driving. Even though you've taught your son what to do in the advent of a police siren, don't assume that he'll generalize that procedure to when he hears a fire or ambulance siren as well. Teach each skill.

If your son is the type who enjoys video games, he may gain some practice through car driving games, although you may need to preview the game first as some may be objectionable.

Here are some examples:

http://www.learn4good.com/games/simulation/driverseducation.htm

http://www.gamerdad.com/detail.cfm?itemID=69

http://www.funnygames.biz/driversed.html

http://www.learn2drive3d.net/

You know, if he tried the temps test and failed it, would that be the end of the world? I know we want to protect our kids and have them be as successful as possible, but learning how to handle a failure, pick yourself up and try again is an important life skill.

Girls. It'd be a rare sophomore boy who has that subject aced. Few fellows at that age are totally comfortable (or successful) at talking to girls.

Was your son slower to make and keep good friends when he was younger? He may well also be a little later at doing this with girls. The positive thing is that he does have friends now and does socialize. Learning to deal with same sex friendships then hanging around in groups are skills to be learned before the dating game. It sounds like your son is well on his way in social skills already and has made it through the middle years. So, the rest will come.

One thing you might want to go over with your son is the whole concept of personal space, especially now that he's a young man and interested in girls. A good rule of thumb is to have your son hold one arm straight out. If he stays about an arm's length away when talking to girls, he will likely not get himself in inadvertent trouble.

Jerry and Mary Newport are married and both have Asperger's. A few months ago Hollywood released a movie about their lives together called, "Mozart and the Whale: An Asperger's Love Story". It's available from Amazon
(http://www.amazon.com/Mozart-Whale-Aspergers-Love-Story/dp/074327282X/ref=pd_bbs...).

Jerry gives lectures on living with an autism spectrum disorder and has written several good books. One that's likely pertinent to you now is called, "Autism - Asperger's and Sexuality: Puberty and Beyond" (http://www.amazon.com/Autism-Aspergers-Sexuality-Puberty-Beyond/dp/1885477880/re...).

It's a good book for parents but is more specifically written by Jerry and Mary for teens with autism. You may want to preview it before handing it to your son - parts are explicitly detailed about what to do and what not to do.

You say, 'THERE ARE SO MANY ISSUES!" You're right. There are. But you probably thought the same thing when you first heard the diagnosis when your lad was only a year and a half old.

Think of all he's accomplished and all you've been through. Likely when you looked at your little toddler, you were fearful of what lay ahead, if he'd have friends,  would he learn to read, how he'd manage at school, would he be happy.... Just as those issues arose and were handled, so will those that crop up as he approaches adulthood.

Sharon A. Mitchell
www.autismsite.ca