Asperger’s Syndrome is an autism spectrum disorder. Children diagnosed with Asperger’s show significant difficulties in social interaction, along with restricted and repetitive patterns of behavior and interests. Unlike autistic children, Asperger’s children preserve higher levels of linguistic and cognitive development.
Children with Asperger’s are not mentally challenged. In fact, many of them are gifted. They are however socially impaired and need a lot of patience and one-on-one adult interaction, both of which are not typically available in a traditional school setting.
Aspie children are essentially socially impaired and have a very hard time socializing with other kids. With ongoing training and lots of adult feedback and assistance they can learn basic social skills, but they’ll probably always seem “different” to other kids, which often means rejection, bullying and taunting.
Many parents to Aspie children decide at some point that public school is simply not a good environment for their child. For some families, small private schools provide the answer, while for others, homeschooling is the perfect solution.
Aspie kids often flourish when homeschooled because they are removed from a stressful social situation and can focus their energies on academics, and on gentle, guided socializing. Unlike the harsh classroom environment at school, the homeschooled Asperger’s child can experience positive social experiences through family activities and homeschool group activities, where, unlike school, parents are there to help, guide and give gentle feedback.
3D online homeschooling is especially suited to Asperger’s children because many Aspie kids flourish in an online 3D environment, which they perceive as safer and less threatening than face to face interaction. Research shows that face-to face interactions are extremely difficult for people with Asperger’s while interactions via computer virtual environment technology are more manageable because they tend to be slower than face-to-face interactions. Slowing down the rate of interactions may provide users with autism-type disorders with time to think of alternative ways of dealing with a particular situation, thus reducing their anxiety level.
Of course, we are not recommending that kids with Asperger’s be totally removed from in-person social situations. But we do believe that the combination of online, special needs homeschooling and gentle, supervised real-life social exposure is very beneficial to Aspie kids and enables them to reach their full potential, academically and socially.
