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From Scouting Magazine’s ‘What Would You Do?’
One of our Boy Scouts has Asperger’s syndrome. He does well learning Scouting concepts by reading, but he has struggled with camp-outs and activities that are not highly structured. What can we do as a troop to help him succeed? Also, it is taking him a long time to complete advancement requirements. How do we encourage him to keep putting in the effort to complete his requirements, even though they are more challenging for him than for other Scouts?
L.R.
Yokosuka, Japan
People with Asperger’s have difficulty recognizing non-verbal communication and the cues of social interaction like facial expressions. Imagine that everyone around you is wearing a mask and you can’t ‘read’ their facial expressions and you have some idea of what it is like.
Encourage your Scouts and leaders to ask and answer questions of this Scout non-judgmentally to help him ‘read’ the social cues he may not otherwise recognize.
As for requirements I’d just ask him if he is having any particular difficulties and offer to help. Scouts get to advance at their own speed and level of interest. Encourage him as you would any other Scout.
I’ve had the opportunity to work with Scouts with Apsberger’s. It challenged me to look at the world a bit differently and I think I learned more from those Scouts than I ever taught them!
I am the parent of a Scout with Aspergers’s a nd an assistant Scoutmaster for his Troop. As part of my Woodbadge ticket, I made a website to help parents and Scouters of scouts with ASD. https://sites.google.com/site/autismandboyscouts/
The site was designed to help parents of autistic children who are wondering if Scouts could be beneficial (YES!) and has a lot of information that can help Scouters deal with new Scouts in their unit who are on the Autistic Spectrum.
The best piece of advice I can give is to explain things thoroughly and in the simplest language you can. Autistic people do not like sudden changes, and tend to be literalistic.
Also, have a plan in place if you have an autistic Scout who is prone to wandering/elopement. Wandering related injuries/accidents are a leading cause of serious injury or death for individuals on the autistic spectrum and are avoidable with proper planning and precautions.
We have a Scout with Asperger’s joining the Troop this Spring. Thanks for the great post and the advice.
My son has Asperger’s and we have to do things a little more structured with him when it comes to teaching him things. Some things, he is a whiz at, others, more coaching and teaching is in order.
Each autism spectrum case is different, and has to be dealt with in a manner that can be hard to deal with, it not downright impossible.
There aren’t medications that can “make them fly right”…just understanding what they have to struggle through to figure things out is medication itself.
My son, Sam, and I have a strange relationship…but it’s a strange relationship in a good sense. We do things that only him and I do, and we do it on a level that I can teach him. That will be one of the advantages of helping him as a scout when he joins a troop (I hope that he joins mine, otherwise that will make very awkward situations at the dinner table).
Regardless, with Autistic scouts, they are really no different that any other scout. Each situation, whether it’s a “normal” scout or an Asperger’s scout, will present itself in a different manner…it’s upon the Scoutmaster and Assistant Scoutmasters to be able to work with that scout, and to make the decisions that any good leader has to make.
I have 3 Scouts in my Troop that have Autism. 2 have been diagnosed with Asperger’s.
They love stucture and do not do well with sudden changes. But the are great kids and good Scouts. I think the best thing that any Scout leader can do is… NOT to treat them any different than any other Scout. They need to be in a patrol, they need to go on camp outs, they need to work on advancement…etc…
What I have found is that once Mom and Dad understand that we treat their son like every other Scout they tend to let him participate more fully.
Aspergers kids are smart, caring, and can prove to be an asset to the unit as a whole.
In the last 5 years that I have been working with multiple Scouts with Autism I have learned a great deal.. and so should any leader that has been blessed with these young men.
Clarke: I wrote a blog post about this:
http://scouteradam.wordpress.com/2010/11/02/my-son/
My son has Asperger’s. Our pack currently has another scout on the “spectrum” as we call it. Every person who has this is a different case. So, we work with it. People with Asperger’s can be very high functioning.
For me, working with my son and others who have it, I just have to relate to them differently. Which, isn’t too hard. In fact, my wife things that my son gets it from me. We are both hyper focused, sometime slow on the up-take, but we get it. When we do, we know it. And when we teach it to others, its taught in a different perspective that others might not have thought of.
Overall, work with the boys/adults who have it. You can learn something.
Yours in Scouting…
The first thing I would do (now that I found it) would be to read the BSA publication “Scouting for Youth with Disabilities Manual”, specifically the sections on autism spectrum disorder.
http://www.scouting.org/filestore/pdf/34059.pdf
This is much, much improved from the material available ten years ago, when my son was going through Cubs with disabilities.