aspergers

[lars]

I am having difficulties at school with my child's behaviour not to mention the temper tantrums at home with the 'no' word.
School has requested an assessment and said that he may have aspergers although they are not really sure. His behaviour at school is at an all time low and he appears reluctant to learn but otherwise seeems bright.
What are the signs of aspergers he is 6yrs.

Hi Suzywong
I know just what your friend means by poor parenting skills. I had a bit of a disagreement with the inlaws over this. They just think DS is naughty and refuse blank to see it any other way.
There is a reason for his behaviour and I need to understand the reasons for the bad behaviour.

lars, sorry to hear that
I have suspected this friend's child, let's call him K, has some kind of ASD for a while now, and things came to a head recently when he attacked my DS at nursery (they are Best friends, but K cannot control aggresive impluses and lashes out, sometime articulating he's going to do it and sometimes not but always very surprised at the fallout) I am not for one minute suggesting Aspergers children are characterised by violence to others, but it is the impulsive aspect of these attacks and the failure of all his mother's strategies to make K remember not to do them. He also had remarkabley early language skills, whole sentences at 11 months and is becoming more and more distressed if promised routines are changed.
Anyway, the nursery are aware of his impulses and my DS1 still loves him, I just feel desparately sorry for his mum because she's got to the 'can't take him anywhere' stage and he is sad that people will cease to like her little boy.
Does that make sense?

lars- he may be socailly immature- and not really ready for school without being AS. Or he may verge that way without being AS. Or of course he could be AS. In any event I think it would be worth reading up on AS and using parenting techniques that suit children with AS- they usually work well on NT children as well. (I use the same methods with ds2 as I have to use with non-verbal ds1- and ds2 responds well to them).

Suzywong. It all depends on your relationship. I would be wary about saying too much though to be honest. One friend did tell me she thought there was something wrong, but that was after I'd spent a year telling her I thought ds1 was autistic- and she's spent the year saying he wasn't. (she believed that btw- and she had 10 years of nannying experience, and she saw ds1 at least 3 times a week every week from the week he was born). Signs aren't always that easy to spot (and ds1 is nowhere near AS- he's much further along the spectrum).

Jimjams everything you have said makes great sense and thanks again for your responses. DS does say that he doesn't like school but can never give you a reason what he doesn't like about school.
I can relate to many of the behaviours mentioned.
Thanks again Lars xx

Suziewong, I wonder if you could suggest to your friend that she has her child's development "checked" as he has some "unusual" behaviour without having to come out with the specific idea of AS. If you could offer to go with her that would be great and say something like "come on, you're a good parent, let's see if we can find out anything else".... I don't envy you though! THe other thing that comes to my mind is that, left unattended, these things will only get worse not better, however "mild" they may seem now. It may just be a case of learning some new strategies as suggested by Jimjams or it may be more complicated, its still worth finding out.

Thanks folks, I have felt uncomfortable about 'diagnosing' someone else's child, but the descriptions I have read about on MN have pointed that way. Now I have the same dilemma as SuzyW!

Lars, I hope you continue to find a way through this, he sounds great, and you sound a very perceptive and clever mum!

Good idea from Davros- I've done that before. Works better if the person has money and can afford a private assessment

I have just been on a very interesting American website. Please look at www.son-rise.org and also there is an American quarterly magazine entitled the Autism File. If you go onto google and type in Autism File it will take you to its website. Very interesting stories from parents whose children have improved greatly after following the programme. Please look at it.

As far as I know ALL anecdotal, see other thread on Son Rise.

on a sort of similar note - could poor eye contact/literalness and difficulty understanding jokes/difficulty reading people's faces without other imaginative problems/ritual behaviours in an adult be related to a mild degree of aspergers?

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Reading what I have I would say possibly - yes! They are definitely some of the traits that are part of AS.

I would say that it's possible. The impaired imagination thing is actually a bit of a misnomer. Some Aspies have the most incredible imagination, even to the point of creating entire towns, worlds etc. Again, not all Aspies need rigid routines either, so it's possible that the person you are thinking of is still an Aspie.

Mummy to steven - Yes i think it could! My DS has mild Aspergers and my Husbands response is "well that is just what i was like as a child" And the more i think about it (he also still has certain traits now - not that he would ever admit it!) I wonder - is Aspergers inherited??????????????

AS does have a tendency to run in the family. Ds1 has HFA/AS, dh has AS, his father almost certainly has AS. On my side of the family there are a lot of us with strong Aspie traits.

thanks for the input everyone

There is a very good online aspergers/autism test for adults here:

AQTest

I am going to do the test myself!