Compare and Contrast

     There are many different forms of disabilites. The one that is most common, and I work with the most at Chileda is Autism. What some do not know is that there are different forms of Autism. The most common are called Aspergers, and just plain Autism. Aspergers is usually higher functioning kids that have social issues due to the illness. This form is hard to detect unless one is educated, and back when most of our parents were growing these people were just considered strange.
     
     People with Apergers are mostly concrete thinkers, meaning they see things in black and white. If you use humor or scarcasim, this population usually wont understand. Also you have to tell these people how you are feeling, because they are not good at reading body language, or faces. So they may take your hand gestures as being agressive, and become scared or agressive. Alot of these people also have a hard time being around others or crowds so they may choose to sit amongst themselves, or stay in a confined space alone. Many people that have Aspergers also have other mental illnesses. It is very common to work with a child that have Aspergers as well as attachment disorders, intermitten explosive rage disorder, O.C.D., A.D.H.D, and the list goes on and on.

       The thing is each person with this disease is an individual case, and need to be approached differently. Most kids with Aspergers can read and write on different levels. Also many of them are very intellgent. Some people can be the book defintion of a genius, but cannot hold a normal conversation with others about humor or understanding the emotion behind a dramatic movie. A lot of these people are good with technology, numbers, and patterns.

     Autism is more of an obvious Disease, as most of these people can not communicate using words, or can only use few words. Some of these people can read and write, but cannot tell you what they are thinking. It is very important for these people to have some form of communication weather it be PECs, an I-Pad, a Go- Talk, which is a small machine that tells you a perosns basics needs by pushing buttons, or icons that they hand you from a book. This is the form that the very definition is a failure to communicate. This also usually comes with other diseases. I have seen may kids with O.C.D. One child I work with has it so bad it takes him ten minutes just to walk down a hallway with five doors, because he has a pattern that he has to check every door spin around and check again about seven times.

     There are so many different kids with different needs, it is hard to compare and contrast individual cases. So the best way to do it is to categorize these two different forms, because with Aspergers, there are a lot of simularties in these kids. Also with Autism there are a lot of simularties with those kids. Although they have many differences in their own disease, that is the easiest way to seperate one from the other. I hope when reading about these different illnesses it gives you perspective on the "wierd" kid in class that didnt talk to anyone, or the kid in special education that cleaned the tables after lunch that people made fun of. These kids like anyone else need friends, and affection from other people. Just because you don't understand something doesn't mean you have to be afraid.