World leading experts on autism spectrum disorders Tony Attwood and Michelle Garnett have recently published their new books on helping children and young people with ASD understand and express affection.
So what is the affection programme and how can it help me?
The parent programme: 
Children with ASD often find expressing affection difficult, for them it’s not a hug, it’s a squeeze and this can be profoundly distressing for parents. The affection programme is designed to help children understand why we express affection and help them become more confident in expressing their own feelings of like or love. The workbook is packed full of practical activities to work through as a family including investigating an alien species, scrapbooking and making personalised compliment diaries. By the end of the programme children will not only understand affection but be able to open up and enjoy expressing their own feelings of affection to friends and family.
The parent programme is now available as a workbook: From Like to Love for Young People with Asperger’s Syndrome (Autism Spectrum Disorder).
The professional programme: 
The professional programme is designed to help those working with children with ASD. Centred around encouraging children to understand affection, the programme aims to help young people become confident in receiving affection and able to express their own feelings of like or love. The programme also outlines and establishes the boundaries of appropriate levels of affection which can help to prevent issues in adolescence and beyond. In this video Michelle Garnett explains the programme to an audience at the Mind and It’s Potential Conference, Sydney.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NApAzmYFNiA[/youtube]
The professional programme, CBT to Help Young People with Asperger’s Syndrome (Autism Spectrum Disorder) to Understand and Express Affection is now available.
From Like to Love for Young People with Asperger’s Syndrome (Autism Spectrum Disorder) and CBT to Help Young People with Asperger’s Syndrome (Autism Spectrum Disorder) to Understand and Express Affection by Tony Attwood and Michelle Garnett are published by Jessica Kingsley Publishers 2013.