What do parents think of their child's/teen's LSA/TA/Support

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I've joined this community as I work with young people in a UK FE College and mainly with guys in Mainstream courses with Aspergers.

I'm an LSA, and only have been for around 4 months, but I love my job and the guys I work with, they keep me on my toes, and we have a laugh every now and again.

I'm mianly there to help them with focussing on their work, keeping them on track and structuring their work and timetables.

When I started I was told one has "text-book" Aspergers, which I don't really get (every-one is different), and the other has ADHD as well as Aspergers. They are very different in their social skills.

I was wondering what parents thought of their childs LSA's are like, and if they have contact with them, as I've found that some don't seem aware of the amount of support some need.

Any comments would be great, I'm here to help my understanding of the guys I support!

Juli

My son hasn't been assigned a LSA as he generally does fine during the school day, but from trying to keep him through homework I would suggest that you should accept that staying on task isn't and shouldn't be an uninterrupted stream of work. What you need are interruptions that aid and don't detract. For my son, that means discussing some tangents to the material that interest him, and also means allowing a good amount of sensory manipulation while working, including whole body movement periods. Sometimes I have to send him off for a walk before he can get his brain re-engaged. With him, I knows the signs in his body movements for when to press on, and when to give him a release.

I know what your saying

"discussing some tangents to the material that interest him, and also means allowing a good amount of sensory manipulation while working" - Tangents are frequent, and we discuss alot of what they enjoy, or what they think of a topic, what I meant my focus was that sometimes they end up seemingly staring into space and thinking about noting, which one guy realises he does, and apologises for and asks me to explain again and gets back on task.

They are on a compiter course, and they both love their games! It's whats enables them to be so social with the other guys who love games aswell, they tend to sneakly keep games minimised on their computers and when they get a little tested they pop it up for 5 mins and relax.

They always have a time to get up and walk to their other class, they usually have two hours for lunch so they can spend that time doing whatever they want.

I know about when to press on or leave them alone, as one has a lot more stress than the other when it comes to actually doing any form of focussing on work, so I do tend to leave him to one task for a half hour and see how far he gets.

I find that he tends to do work whe he is on his own and not around friends that can seriously distract him. Strange for an aspie to be so social that he cant think of anything other than that, but in some ways I believe that now he has been able to make friends, nothing else really matters. Double edged sword, that one.

J