TITLE: Starting Points: The Basics of Understanding and Supporting Children and Youth with Asperger Syndrome
AUTHOR: Hudson, Jill and Smith Myles, Brenda
SUBJECT AREA: Asperger Syndrome
PUBLISHER: Autism Asperger Publishing Co.
PUBLICATION DATE: 2007
NUMBER OF PAGES: 59

Over the years, Brenda Smith Myles has written both alone and with other authors, books about Asperger Syndrome that provide helpful suggestions for parents on how best to help and support their loved ones with AS, from childhood through the rough shoals of adolescence. Now, in her new book, Starting Points: The Basics of Understanding and Supporting Children and Youth with Asperger Syndrome, coauthored by Jill Hudson, she’s done it again.

In Starting Points, the authors present specific strategies which parents and teachers can use to ensure the child’s success both socially and academically. The book is divided into different sections that each focus on one specific area of difficulty and include practical strategies to help the child in that area. These include focusing on one specific detail of a given situation rather than the “big picture”; self-regulation of emotions and behavior; the need for predictability and structure; and difficulty with daily living tasks. For example, in the chapter on Structure and Predictability, the authors present such strategies as “Verbal Priming” which involves providing detailed information about an activity before it happens to defuse possible anxiety.

One of the most important chapters of the book discusses how to help children with AS master social skills. Entitled “Getting Along with Others,” this chapter includes such strategies as Scripting, Turn Taking, and Direct Teaching...explaining how each strategy works and how to employ them to teach important social skills to AS students.

This gem of a book covers all the bases and then some. It’s a “must-read” for teachers and parents who want to know how to help children with Asperger Syndrome master what the authors call the “Hidden Curriculum,” or unspoken rules of social behavior, and how to help a child with AS channel his or her own unique special interests. This has everything a teacher or a parent of a child with Asperger Syndrome could ever hope for.