Knoxville Asperger Support Group / KAEC
Meeting Announcement
The upcoming meeting dates for the Knoxville Asperger Support Group are:
- Novemeber 19, 2007
- December 17, 2007
The support group has a Yahoo Group which can be found on http://groups.yahoo.com/ by searching for Knoxville_Aspie_Support. It meets the third Monday of every month unless there is a conflict or holiday at the West Branch of the Knoxville Public Library (map) at 100 Golfclub Rd from 6pm to 7:30pm.
The Knoxville Asperger Support Group is a no charge, open discussion on the subject of Asperger Syndrome. Typically attendees are caregivers of children teens, and adults although folks with Asperger’s often attend to provide input, ask questions, or seek out others with Asperger’s. All are welcome!
Potential Special Topic
Dr. Dan Murphy of the School Board has proposed turning KAEC into a middle school to serve the Sequoyah Hills areas. He is making the rounds to several PTOs (will be at Rocky Hill Elementary on Dec 10 at 6:30pm) to garnish support for his proposal. When asked directly as to what would become of the KAEC students, Dr. Murphy gave an ambiguous answer. In my mind that means they either have no plan or will bus the children to Karns. As a parent of a child with Asperger’s, you stand a chance that your child will spend some time at KAEC. This is a topic that needs to be discussed immediately.
November 16th, 2007 at 12:16 am
send more info
December 31st, 2007 at 9:29 pm
Is it possible to ask some questions about your son’s progression and growth past issues of difficulty? My son is 10 and recently I’ve stopped with the identification of new issues as much and moved on to “will he ever master this or outgrow that?” I wondered what insight you could provide.
January 29th, 2008 at 7:06 am
Hello Sheri! I think you would get the best answers by going to http://groups.yahoo.com/ and looking into some of the Asperger’s groups. We participate in the group “knoxville_aspie_support”
I think 10 is a challenging age for our children. I feel like we spent far too much time with Tommy on trying to teach him behaviors instead of focusing on his strengths and teaching him to live with his Asperger’s. Now there is a fine line between “teaching him to live with” and “teaching him behaviors” but I feel there is a difference between pounding into someone’s head “these are the rules!” versus “you know fluorescent lights agitate you, move to a room with incandescent lamps.”
As for “outgrowing” issues, I try hard to look at other children the same age and ask “is this a normal part of maturity” then realizing that our children sometimes lag behind developmentally I’ve looked at slightly younger children and asked the same question. If it doesn’t seem developmentally in line with other children (such as ticks), we can then focus on teaching him to live with it (in the case of ticks, making them not attract attention to himself by either giving him something to fidget with or if the tick involves the hands putting the hands beneath the table “keep it small”).
January 29th, 2008 at 9:45 am
out on a limb and out of place. is there a group for east tenn. knox is too far. and i would love to meet with any parents like myself.i am an aspie dad and aspie son. stitchimage3@comcast.net. my son is 10 also. thank god for pokeman !
January 29th, 2008 at 11:17 am
Try contacting TN Voices for Children. They would possibly know of a group in East Tennessee. You can also try NAMI. Of course, you always have the option of starting one. We simply put some flyers out and found a place. The local library worked for us. We use an hour half slot of time and it always seems to get filled with discussion. We chose a free format (anyone can say anything) and once in a blue moon we invite a professional to come in. It helps to have a moderator who can make sure that one person isn’t monopolizing the group (it is easy for a support group to accidentally become one person’s group therapy session) and the moderator can help make sure everyone gets a chance to speak. Usually at 15 minutes before we are scheduled to bring things to a close I politely interrupt and prompt “does anyone who has not spoken want a chance to talk” (or something similar).
Asperger’s Support Groups should probably come in two flavors.
1) Caregiver Support. This is like ours where it is primarily (but not limited to) caregivers of children and adults with Asperger’s. We also have children with Asperger’s and adults show up to the meetings and either listen, contribute or hope to meet other Aspies.
2) Aspies for Aspies. A social type of group focused on bring folks with Asperger’s together. In the case of younger people it may be to create social opportunities. Adults may want the social opportunities or simply to discuss the challenges they face in our society and seek information from others who have had similar experiences.
Oh how I relate to Pokeman!