literal thinker-emotional literacy

[feelinchirpier]

Hello I was just wondering about other peoples opinions on this....

Ds 7 (poss asd) will point out how sad someone must be if he sees their parents telling them off in the street, in the past he has seen a little girl crying by a gate in our street he has shown great concern from the minute he saw her and even asked me if he should go and help to which I pointed out her mum was there so she would be fine, he gets quite upset if people are not nice to a person at school who he really likes to the point that he repeats what has been said to them when he is in the bath (in various voices) or reacts badly to the people who have been nasty.

To us he is very caring towards others even if he sees a sad clip of film on the tv it makes him cry (but the scene is not overly sad so he has picked up on peoples subtle emotions). The school have always said he lacks empathy and a test by the ed psych shows him to be below low average on emotional literacy which backs up the lack of empathy etc.

Now after all of that rambling i will get to the point :)......if a child who takes things literal is told NOT to speak to strangers is asked a question such as "if you saw a stranger lying at the side of the road with an injured leg, what would you do?" what do you think the answer would be?? I have been pondering on this for some time. Could his literal thinking style affect his responses to the emotional literacy test??

[lelly88]

My son sounds like yours, he is significantly dyslexic but very bright (which we only discovered at secondary). He was ?ASD at one stage. The ed psych thought he didn't respond normally to something (he was acutely embarrassed it turns out) and sent him to a paediatrician. He is extremely empathic but also very logical. You must stress this at any meetings you have in the future, misdiagnosis is a big possibility in these kids. My was later diagnosed with ADHD and the doctor was no sooner handing out Ritalin I was so shocked there was very little explanation- we declined and have been proved right.
Good luck with your investigations but be aware. X

[feelinchirpier]

Thanks lelly I asked whether the ed psych had tested ds for dyslexia (due to a list of things I have noted over the past few months) but she hadn't because the school didn't have any concerns about that. Can I just ask does he learn better if he watches something? rather than if they tell him verbally?

[lelly88]

Yes his visual processing score is 3+ years above his age he always says to he has to see things to understand them. His non verbal reasoning is top 3%. Verbal reasoning average, but the dyslexia makes his written work horrible unless he takes the time to edit it.
He thinks on pictures and I think this makes him feel things acutely. He's 14 still plays with odd things - imagining they are space ships while running up and down his room making strange noises. I'm sure the Ed Psych would read something strange into that!

[lelly88]

I would also say he has picked up a little girl who has fallen, comforted upset schoolmates, the only fight he got in was sticking up for a friend who was being bullied.
He can't watch certain things on the telly that are too emotional - will run out of the room.
So sensitive I really don't know where the ?ASD came from. He was very dreamy in school in his own world I suppose perhaps that was what they were wondering about.

[Niceweather]

Similar story with us on the misdiagnosis. They thought my son had ASD but turned out to be bright, dyslexic and a bit eccentric. He has amazing empathy and had dealt with a couple of situations I can think of in a very very mature way and yet he has recently been chosen to go to Emotional Literacy Lessons (Yr7). I can only think that it's for other reasons like immature behaviour. I wonder if Emotional Literacy and Empathy are actually different things then? Do you know what your Emotional Literacy test consisted of? Two EPs, several SENCOs and no class teachers got to the bottom of my son's issues. The answers came from a private Clinical Psycho and a computer dyslexia screening test.

[cloudymeatballs]

lelly that's really interesting because my ds said very similar about having to see things! as for tv we can't watch the usual afternoon soap omnobus because it really stresses him out to the point of shaking and trying to hide. Its so frustrating when you try to tell some what he is like at home and you can just see the amusement in their eyes that just says what a crock.

niceweather I'm not sure what the test consisted of or even if it was a test tbh (could of been from info collected from school) but I have googled and came up with how someone would respond to certain situations (if you saw a stranger injured etc etc) but the EP said that due to his emotional literacy being below low average they will concentrate on empathy, others points of view, why something may happen and how to appropriately react.

After watching my ds (yep ds was my ds with all his many characteristics until asd was mentioned then we had to step back and take a closer look :) ) for a while now in various social situations I know how he will react and obviously when he is at school I don't see this and I believe he is maybe..possibly misunderstood most of the time which is what is causing the problems - disruptive behaviour, being argumentative, opinionated the list goes on......I now find myself in a position where I am considering contacting camhs and asking them to postpone his further assessments and see what happens with the EP I think she sees my ds as a challenge to unpick and I have a lot of confidence in her seeing what we see the more time she spends with him.