"Asperger's Syndrome:
A Guide for Parents and Professionals"
By: Tony Attwood

I practically devoured this book! Now that we know what our son is dealing with, I want to read everything I can about Asperger's Syndrome and at 223 pages it was a pretty quick read for me.

Admittedly I was hungry for information and so the faster I read, the quicker I learned, so I read fast. I plan on going through it again and making notes in the margins for on-going reference.

The author, Tony Attwood, sounds like he genuinely cares about and understands Aspergers sufferers, which makes sense since he's a practicing clinical psychologist specializing in Asperger's Syndrome. Some of the passages brought tears to my eyes as I recognized my son, again and again, in the words I was reading.

The chapters are broken out logically for learning about the various aspects of Aspergers. There's Diagnosis; Social Behavior; Language, Interests and Routine, Motor Clumsiness, Cognition, Sensory Sensitivity, Frequently Asked Questions.

I found the Social Behavior, Interests and Routines, Language and Cognition chapters to be the most interesting for our son's situation.

Social behavior because of his huge difficulties in socializing and his constantly being bullied;

Interests and Routines because of his all-absorbing interest in skateboards, shoelaces and Yu-Gi-Oh cards;

Language because of his difficulties in understanding anything other than a literal use of words;

Cognition because of the information included about taking tests, which has always been a source of anxiety for Cameron.

There are several suggestions for the type of help that you should obtain for your child through the school system, suggestions that are ideal for AS children in the school environment, but unfortunately in today's day and age many of these suggestions won't work, at least here in the United States.

Maybe the school system is different in the United Kingdom (UK), which is where this book is published, and the background of the author appears to be UK as well, but here in the U.S. I believe these interventions would be very difficult if not impossible to obtain in our overwhelmed school system.

Nevertheless, it does give the parent a starting point of ideas and if you can get your school to implement these ideas then excellent and more the better for your child (and future generations of Aspies). :)

The suggestions for various school services are only a small portion of the book and really don't detract from the helpfulness (of the book) to the parent and I would still strongly recommend this book even if the suggested school services cannot be obtained.

There are several charts and diagrams: various diagnostic charts, a "how do you feel today" chart with images of various emotions, a scale that is a gauge to determine the extent of the AS person's anger at a particular time, etc.

You'll probably want to read this book at least a couple times, chances are more than a couple times. It's chock full of information and it can be easy to miss "little" things.

As I read through it there would be a sentence here and there that, when read just at face value might not mean much, but when dissected a bit and applied to our situation it was like "ka-pow" to the forehead, like "ohhhh, that's why he does this or says that"! Quite an eye-opener! :)

We definitely recommend this book - Asperger's Syndrome: A Guide for Parents and Professionals by Tony Attwood - as a very good addition to, or start of, your sure-to-grow personal library of Asperger's Syndrome books. :)

Buy this book at Amazon