Question: “I just took my seventh grader
out of school to homeschool him. He was recently labeled as having Autism, but I don’t
see him that way. He used to have the label
of Asperger’s Syndrome. He seemed to have
fallen through the cracks in school, wasn’t
making progress, and his anxiety was getting
worse. How can I help him?”
Is your child dealing with Asperger’s Syndrome? What are the symptoms? Here’s what I saw at school lunch time. This is generally a care-free, much an-
ticipated time of the school day. Taking my
station as a lunch room monitor in the caf-
eteria in middle-school was an eye-opening
experience for me. As a special education
teacher, I stood in that setting watching
adolescent life play out. I was frequently
moved by the pain of some of my students
as they navigated this cacophony of sounds,
movements, choices, and social interac-
tions with peers. For those students, it was
as if they were participating in a foreign
dance as they wandered around the cafete-
ria, either trying to see where they would fit
in, or more often, looking for an abandoned
spot against the wall where they could ei-
ther sit and read a book, or stand and gulp
down their lunch before exiting as quickly
as they could to the outside. The same scene
played out in the playground, where they
continued wandering the perimeter of the
grounds until the bell rang.
These were my students who had been
diagnosed with Asperger’s Syndrome.
I saw these same wonderful, bright, curious, young students in the classroom, and
enjoyed helping them overcome a learning
glitch, like dysgraphia or spelling. But it
pained me that I could not help them navigate their social world in a more comfortable way. Anxiety ruled their day.
What has happened to the diagnosis of
Asperger’s Syndrome? In the 2013 edition
of the DSM (Diagnostic and Statistical
Manual of Mental Disorders), the criteria
for labeling a child as having either Au-
tism, Asperger’s Syndrome or PDD (NOS),
were changed. Navigating current insur-
ance requirements, schools were having
difficulty obtaining services for these in-
dependent areas; so it was decided to place
all of these behaviors under the ASD (Au-
tism Spectrum Disorder) label. While this
combination may be more efficient for
school services, many parents now choos-
ing homeschooling for their children with
Asperger's-like symptoms report their chil-
dren subsequently “fell through the cracks”
in school for various reasons.
Most of the time our students with Asperger's-like symptoms, have parallel diagnoses,
such as ADHD, Sensory Processing Disorder,
and/or OCD. I refer to them as kids whose
“nervous system is in disequilibrium.” Their
sensory system seems to be in “red alert” mode,
sensing threats in many situations, which
keeps them very distracted and unable to
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Dianne Craft
What Happened to
I refer to them as kids whose “nervous
system is in disequilibrium.”
Asperger’s Syndrome?
