Autism-World

Q: Im 18 years old and am currently working with autistic children. i have become really interested in becoming a child psychologist. anyone out there have any experience with autism or child psychology? what kind of classes should i take in college?

Answer:

In college, depending on where you go, I think the psychology courses don’t cover as much as I think you’d want to cover. In college, you’d probably want to major in psychology and take all the brain and behavior, psychopharmacology, developmental psychology, adolescent psychology courses you can.

You might also want to think about how you want to work with autistic children. I am a school psychologist and I work in special education, mainly with children with severe disabilities which also includes autistic children within the severe context, and this is within the school setting. There are of course a range of classes for the range of abilities that autistic students have so there are plenty of opportunities to work with them and their families in the school setting. But I know that this is only one of the few ways that psychologists can work with autistic children and their families.

So while taking your classes in college, you might think about how and where you see yourself working in the future, and then find the right Masters/Doctorate program that is for you and your goals. You should also try to figure out the emphasis of your postgraduate program. There are a lot of research-oriented programs out there, and if that’s what you want to do, great. If you want to be more hands-on and practical, you will need to go more toward the applied side of things. And keep working with those children. Direct experience with them and their families will teach you a lot of things that your education never will!

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This entry was posted on Friday, September 14th, 2007 at 8:24 pm and is filed under Ask and answer.