Aspergers/ASD support thread

DrFluffy

anewman wrote: »

An interesting book to read is the essential difference by Simon Baron-Cohen (interestingly enough he is Sacha Baron-Cohen's Uncle (Ali G, Borat etc). http://www.amazon.co.uk/Essential-Difference-Extreme-Penguin-Science/dp/0141011017/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1195866664&sr=8-1

[pedant]they're cousins[/pednant]

Snaggles

DrFluffy wrote: »

[pedant]they're cousins[/pednant]

Lol at the pedantic...er....ness (is that a word? ). It's actually extremely appropriate to the topic in hand too - Ryan is very pedantic. He corrected the speech therapist twice when we were there the other day! :eek: :eek:

Don't worry, I'm not getting carried away thinking that Ryan's birth caused his problem.....that way madness lies ......I just want to put my own mind at rest that there isn't something I've forgotten about or wasn't aware of.

Littlemissmoney - thanks for that, I didn't realise that applied to medical notes too, but it's worth being aware of.

Strapped

seven-day-weekend wrote: »

Aspergers was not recognised as a condition when my son was small but I can remember some wonderful things he said :

At fourteen months (VERY forward in speech), he didn't know the word for 'chest' and he was bouncing up and down on his dad's chest and shouted 'Dad! I'm on the front of your back!'

Now if only I'd realised that this is no way normal speech for a fourteen-month-old......the concept of front and back as well as the vocabulary...but I was just pleased he was so 'forward'...however this really needed checking out just as much as if he was a late developer.

At two and a half, with another little boy the same age, both playing with dinosaurs. Adult says to friend 'do you know what this is?' He replied 'a monster'. Ben replied 'actually it's a diplodocus'.

On a visit to London at five, a friend pointed to the Houses of Parliament and asked Ben if he knew what it was . Ben replied 'Sandstone' (Dad was teaching geology at the time).

Same visit to London, Ben saw some beautiful decorative brickwork. Not knowing the word for brickwork , he called it 'brickage'.

Now he's grown up he is an intelligent and likeable young man who would not ever knowingly do anyone a bad turn and qute often does good ones.

However, he has terrible problems with organistion, following directions and still when he's tired has problems tying a tie. He can bore for England about Warhammer models and still buys himself Lego.

I've only just realised a few months ago that he's like me. I was very much like this when I was young. I never understood people who were catty or told lies. I can also bore for England about my particular things and be obsessive about them.

So I don't know....maybe I'm on the spectrum too.

Whoops....sorry for the long post. Boring for England again!

This is my (5 year old) son to a "T" too! And the describing daleks in minute detail (plus how to fly the tardis - he knows the names of all the bits and how to use them :rolleyes: ) But don't most kids do this? He's also had some problems settling into school, as he's a bit of a loner. He has been observed by the Ed Physchologist though, who doesn't think that there's a long-term issue.

And, for the record, he had a difficult birth - very long labour, emergency c-section, he looked like a klingon and the paed thought that his skull plates were fused together. He was x-rayed and referred to Gt Ormond St, but fortunately they turned out not to be fused, just incredibly overlapped where his head took such a pounding and after a few weeks he was back to being a perfect little globe-head

Snaggles

Strapped, the dalek thing is just one of a loooong list of behavioural patterns that are a concern in my son. In isolation it's probably nothing unusual (because yes, they're pretty cool and a lot of kids are very interested in them).

It's more the WAY he speaks about them - a lengthy, rather toneless monologue with little regard for whether or not the listener is interested, or whether the circumstances are appropriate (for example, he is just as likely to do the check out lady in the supermarket as he is to someone he knows).

It's actually the only immediately noticeable symptom that my son has, although if you spent a bit of time with him, you would soon start to notice others.

Sorry your son's birth was difficult, I'm glad that he has had the treatment he needs and his head is okay.

Strapped

Snaggles wrote: »

It's more the WAY he speaks about them - a lengthy, rather toneless monologue with little regard for whether or not the listener is interested, or whether the circumstances are appropriate (for example, he is just as likely to do the check out lady in the supermarket as he is to someone he knows).

This is something (the only "out of the norm") that the Ed Psych noticed with my son. He self-talks all the time, describing what he's doing, but doesn't check that the person he thinks that he's talking to is listening/interested. He will also talk to anyone (despite repeated "don't talk to strangers" from mum & dad). The school are doing some small-group work to improve his grasp of this (in a way which doesn't single him out). Actually, the school are pretty good

Snaggles

There IS a theory that EVERYONE is on the autism spectrum somewhere, because pretty much everyone has at least a couple of strange little quirks (I believe it's called 'personality' lol). But perhaps it's only when you reach a certain level of severity that it becomes an issue that prevents you from leading a 'normal' life without additional support. I don't know how true it is, but it sort of makes sense.

It's fantastic that the school are helping. Ryan's school are being pretty good so far, so I hope it will continue.

Strapped

Thanks. I hope you get some good support from Ryan's school. As I said, my son isn't "diagnosed" or heading for a formal assessment, but they obviously thought that he had one or two traits which benefitted from some expert input to help him cope with school. (In fact, he's just like me )

seven-day-weekend

Snaggles wrote: »

Strapped, the dalek thing is just one of a loooong list of behavioural patterns that are a concern in my son. In isolation it's probably nothing unusual (because yes, they're pretty cool and a lot of kids are very interested in them).

It's more the WAY he speaks about them - a lengthy, rather toneless monologue with little regard for whether or not the listener is interested, or whether the circumstances are appropriate (for example, he is just as likely to do the check out lady in the supermarket as he is to someone he knows).

It's actually the only immediately noticeable symptom that my son has, although if you spent a bit of time with him, you would soon start to notice others.

Sorry your son's birth was difficult, I'm glad that he has had the treatment he needs and his head is okay.

My son was just like this as a child and in fact is still like it now! Although as he has got older he has a bit more sense of appropriateness and has realised that most people do not want to listen to a half-hour monologue about something only he is interested in.

I remember only a couple of years ago I was talking to a neighbour and my son came in and without ackowldging the neighbour pushed a Warhammer model he was painting into my face and started talking to me about the intricate datails of the painting process. I just said quietly 'inappropriate!' and he shut up, said hello to the neighbour and went again.

This does not always work though! My husband and I often have frozen faces on the phone while he is bending our ears with an ‘Aspie half-hour’.

We have him and his girlfriend coming to stay with us for a week in February. His girlfriend is diagnose Aspergers and whips out her sketch book in all sorts of unusual places.

I think we are going to need some a load of this,:D some of this and cratesful of this:beer: !

Savvy_Sue

alm721 wrote: »

Sorry to hijack this thread but my brother has suspected aspergers along with other special needs and <snip> The thing is hes now 21 and has never been formally diagnosed with Aspergers. Hes currently at a special college (camphill) where they are convinced that he has Aspergers (they do deal with it a lot) and feel that we should get him formally assessed as this may help us get appropriate help for him from social services. So can anyone please tell me how to go about getting an assessment. We've been told that we need to see a clinical pyschologist but dont know how to go about it.

I think you would start by asking the college what to do about getting a diagnosis? I believe the GP would need to do a referral, unless the college has psychologists coming in to do referrals and can refer him themselves. However it happens, they must have SOME idea what to do! And it would certainly seem more sensible to get things under way where he is most of the time rather than from home.

We've had leg-pits too! And elbow-pits too, I think ...

We could do with a pedant mode, couldn't we!

quietheart

My 6 year old is being assessed for dyspraxia/ASD, results this friday (:eek:)
and he had a horrible birth, I was left on the ward on my own dispite being fully dilated, he was in distress and had an emergency section. he had problems from early on, not being able to feed etc and at every stage (and i think we've seen every health professional possible), i've been asked about his birth. I'm sure there's a link.
I agree that if you look hard enough we're all on the autistic spectrum! I don't think my son is, i think dyspraxia covers his issues but feel the unit we're more interested in ASD, bit frustrating this labelling business....