Asperger's and soccer

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This is a message to all parents like me who have a child diagnosed with aspergers and who are wondering if their child could be good at sport as all specialised doctors and websites for aspergers mention the problem of coordination, lack of social skills etc.

Well, this is the story of Aaron, my son, who was diagnosed with aspergers when he was six years old. At the start, his repetitive behaviour, his lack of high contact, his anxiety with changes led us to consult our local GP. We have four kids but Aaron was different, he could not understand indirect messages such as expressions, he could not read people's facial expressions etc. After a 10 minutes visit our local GP said that Aaron was fine and that we were over anxious parents and that there was nothing wrong with him. But with time and in comparison to his siblings it became more and more obvious that Aaron was not a typical functioning six year old child. After a long battle through the medical world, we finally managed to get him assessed by a group of child psycholgists in the UK specialised in children with autism. And the diagnosis came without much doubt.

Although the fact that Aaron was diagnosed with aspergers did not bother me at all, it helped us a lot to explain to family and friends that Aaron 's behaviour was not just due to the fact that he was badly behaved or spoilt or that we were bad parents but that he just did not understood the world in the same way as most of us. At that time we moved to France, a country lagging behind in terms of accepting and understanding kids with autism. So we decided not to label Aaron as an asperger kid but to treat him in the same way as any of our other children. He is a high achieving child and I did not want to limit his experiences just on the basis that he has aspergers. I thought that when problems arose we would deal with them. We registered him at a local soccer club where at the start he stood out with his mannerisms and way of walking. He could not get too close to the other kids, he felt uncomfortable. We did not say anything to the coach or to other parents and something truly amazing happened. Quite rapidly Aaron developed tactics to adjust to his environment. He learnt French and English expressions by heart with their definition and each time something did not make sense he guessed that this was likely to be an expression and even started to use them. He did the same with facial expressions and I worked daily with him to look at people in the eyes when he spoke as not looking in the eyes in a social environment was too much of a weird thing to do.

With soccer, in a same way he developed an above average ability through obsessive behaviour. Initially he stood out as he had an extremelly advanced theoretical understanding of the game. At an age when most kids can only look at their feet, he could position himself in parts of the pitch where there was no one and so he could cover the balls when the others could not. He said to me that he saw the game from a birds eye view and during matches he could see the whole distribution of his team mates across the field like on the playstation! Then everyday he worked out new skills and practiced things that he saw on the internet. Then in some competitions there were skills tests like juggling or precision shots and he won several of them to the great astonishment of the other parents who thought at the time that he must have been lucky. Slowly but surely he became more confident and dominant in the team by the way he plays but he was still very quiet and good at listening to instructions which is a trait appreciated by coaches. He decided that he wanted to become a professional soccer player and in the last couple of years, he has worked very hard at it. His progress are amazing and he has now become really popular with his team mates. [ you can see Aaron's soccer if you google 'Sport Guyanais U10 Aaron Gozlan Football (8 years)' ]

Aaron still has difficult moments in particular at home but he works really hard to adjust and fit in. He still has a unique vision of the world, which is refreshing for us and his siblings. We keep not labelling him as asperger as where we are now living autistic kids are not accepted in mainstream society even if they do not need any help to adjust. That is the way it is. We have not even told Aaron as until now he has found his own way of coping and he is pretty successful at it. He now speaks two languages, does high level sports competition and...has quite a few friends.

So from my own experience, the capacity of some asperger kids to find their own solutions to problems they are facing daily is limitless. It has been an extraordinary journey to see our child, removing one by one all the barriers and fears we as parents had put on him and on his future.

I'm glad soccer worked out for your son. It didn't work for my son, as he couldn't differentiate between accidental and intentional contact. Whenever anyone bumped into him, he got mad and shoved them.

Very interesting feedback. I would not have thought that contacts could be split into intentional and accidental but I guess that makes sense if you want to understand the game.

Outside soccer Aaron is drawing a world on paper that comprise so far 78 countries, each country map is pretty complete with town, rivers and mountains. For each city he has created a soccer team with a club logo, and three outfits (home, away and alternate), each team has a special name and from his hundred of teams he created a squad of player with each player's name and rating. Then he fills up pages and pages of stats on imaginary championships between all these made up teams. Then finally he draws trophies and medals that he cut out, platify and collect.

I have to say soccer has taken the whole family life by surprise and it is difficult to know where it is going to take us next but I can only say that the more he plays the more he draws, the more he feels happy. So far he doesn't mind accidental contacts but he is very aware of rough kids.