question about aspergers

[cheeryface]

an 11 year old child that can look at you and know you feel sad , understands sarcasm and idioms can teach a bunch of newbies karate..thats not a child with aspergers is it ?

Gah wrote a really loooong post and lost it.

basically I said.. It could be aspergers.. The best way to know is to get assessed.

Lots of sympathy to you for the horrible experience that your son has had.
My DS has Aspergers and the tricky thing is that there is no neat label, or universal 'proof'. At first we were unconvinced by the diagnosis, but over time we have found it a very helpful way to understand how he ticks. I recommend a book written by a 13 year old with Aspergers called Freaks, Geeks and Aspergers Syndrome, by Luke Jackson. You may not want to give it to your son until you have a definite diagnosis, but it could be a useful insight for you into life through your DS's eyes. But frankly, even a typical kid would be upset by what your DS has been through. He is lucky to have a mum like you on his side and investigating all possibilities.

thankyou to everyone.
Just had the call we were waiting for , from the new school. He starts on Wednesday.

I am so worried things will be as bad. it will be awful for him if things go wrong again.
I have got him into a school where he knows people from his old primary. The deputy head was really nice and listened to us but then when we met the head last week she was another story telling me he wasnt there for friends but for an education

tbh i think it might be a relief if someone could say yes , defo aspergers. Then at least i would know what to do more.

It can be hard to tell. My ds has exactly the same main symptons as Indigo's ds but we cannot get a dx. Am told he has behavioural difficulties and does not have difficulties in the triad of impairments!

Don't assume it is not AS just because he/she does not fit descriptions. He might just be higher on the spectrum. We did not recognise AS in our DS for 4 year, could not make sense of the explanations until we went to NAS Help! programme. Some of the things they explained really clicked with us, it all started make sense. My DS was diagnosed at 8. Before this for 4 years we struggled with schools because of stuff that eventually was diagnosed as ADHD. We got medication and his presentation changed. Suddenly with ADHD switched off, so to speak, his AS became apparent! It even got worse over time because the gap in social skills widens and demands at school become more complex. My DS has a very good eye contact with us, talks a lot and very articulately. He does not speak like a robot and his interest is reading joke books... So you guessed it, he learned sarcasm and figures of speech before it became apparent that he does not get that intuitively. He copes better. That is the thing. However he copes only in say 90% of situations and in the remaining 10% he does show all the impairments of AS. With age the relative importance of the 10% that let him down increased so it became more and more apparent to his peers. The dx gave us some tools to deal with the 10% sitiation.

Try reading the books by high functioning Aspies with successful professional careers. "Pretending to Be Normal: Living With Asperger's Syndrome" for example. Or even better get him to read it and see what he thinks. Personally I avoid apologetic books - the famous "Freaks, Geeks & Asperger Syndrome" did not hit it well with DS.

Really high functioning aspies don?t look anything like the description on NAS website ... for 95% of the times until they hit the 5% situation. I am sure you heard speculations about Bill Gates etc. Consider our previous prime minister (politics aside).

our situation is very similar to lokovatoress.
ds has very high functioning AS and we were very reluctant to accept dx.
he was fascinated by idioms when he was about 8. at the time i thought it was cute but realise now he was teaching himself the things he did not get intuitively
his eye contact has always been good around family/friends but is poor with others
i can completely understand your ds ability to teach karate as it is something he excels at and there are very set rules to follow. that doesnt mean he has AS but it doesnt rule it out imo.
there are many situations where no-one would know my ds has AS as he has become very good at
masking it. now he is a teenager he wants to fit in and our old saying 'being different is cool' doesnt help anymore he tells us

Cherryface.....like some others have posted, it really is a vast spectrum. Autism is diagnosed using the triad of impairments and my son fitted all of that back then, aged four. He is definitely more Aspie (high functioning) but all the same, it is all ON THE AUTISTIC SPECTRUM.

I recently attended an NAS "Help!" course and was so sad to sit with parents of teenage kids who'd gone through such difficulties without a diagnosis until age 13, 14 even . They had spent a huge part of their school life just trying to survive and "get through it". A diagnosis, as you say, is key....for him, for you and for what's left of his schooling. Can you ask to be referred to a paediatrician who can make a diagnosis?

As far as school goes has he been seen by the Educational Psychologist? CAMHS? CASADT? He "isolates himself"?? Don't school want to investigate why? They should. You may need to toughen up there, Cherryface!!

My son would often isolate himself because.....it was just SO HARD trying to do the little things that come naturally to neuro-typical kids. He knew he was different and often took himself off because it was just easier. He always looked excrutiatingly uncomfortable when anyone was trying to engage him in a conversation or play. He'd often "blank" the situation (just glance away - like he could shut it out). He manages to "engage" better now, but then he's ten and bright. As for memory...as part of his Statement assessment, the Educational Psychologist said that he had an exceptionally poor working memory. So now we do one instruction at a time..... He can't do 3 or 4 requests one after another without prompting but.....he has an eye for detail that astonishes me and recalls the smallest piece of data on his "chosen subject". It's a funny old spectrum!!

I think your son needs assessment specifically for an autistic spectrum disorder and you may find that you need to bang on a few desks to get it.

Two good books I've got....

Tony Atwood "Asperger's Symdrome"
Richard Lavoie "It's So Much Work to Be Your Friend"

The latter is excellent for unravelling the social thing.

Empathy? When my husband left a month after my son's diagnosis needless to say, it was a hard time for me. At age 4, he would come and sit on my knee and stroke my hair and give me a tissue because "you look sad, mummy".........enough said.

thankyou, i will read the book you suggest lokovatoress. i have read the freaks geeks one and didnt really relate to that which is why i thought talking to some real people aka mumsnetters would be better.
what age was your ds diagnosed chickchick ?

thanks wendihouse , i am now on the library website ordering some books!

when the high school suggested aspergers i was shocked. to my mind i knew why he was isolating himself , he was being bullied , hadnt any friends and high school was far too big and scary for him to cope with. he had gone there not knowing anyone. His words were 'they are all like wild animals'
They asked him why he didnt smoke or swear and called him a mummys boy.

He had friends at primary.

Afterwards i started to do some thinking and actually he had coped ok at primary it seemed BUT his behaviour at home had been bad for a long while. making weekends a stress.
he didnt like primary but he did his work and the teachers were happy with him BUT he had a fair few fallings out with his friends that i would help him fix the day after at the school gate/door and quite often the kids would explain to me that ds2 just got 'all stressed' i thought he was just very sensitive.

maybe he is very sensitive i dont know!

after things got so bad at high school i took him out and had him referred to camhs. we had an initial assessment with them but how have to wait 6 months for the psychologist to see him !

The new school does not seem promising to me , i thought they understood but today they have told me it isnt possible to put him in the form with the boy he was friends with at primary.
i have just had to jump through hoops to even get him in a form with anyone he KNOWS.

he starts tomorrow.

Oh dear, I feel for him. And you. Your son has been out of school for 2.5 months?!! The school have a duty to provide an education for him in a safe environment. Don't they have policies on inclusion?

CLEARLY, SOMETHING IS AMISS.

I've always been lucky with schools and my son doesn't go up to secondary til 2012. He's going to a mainstream which has an ASD unit attached so, he'll be in mainstream classes mostly, with the support and expertise of the unit, as and when. I met some of the kids who accessed the unit whilst looking around the school (4 times!!). They were ordinary kids, engaging, RELAXED and mixing with the mainstreamers.....

You may need to get VERY FIRM with all those involved in making this assessment/diagnosis.

I used argument that there was no time to lose. My son needed a Statement NOW (2008) not in 2 or 3 yrs when his education had gone down the toilet. He needed TA now, not when his confidence had disappeared completely. I have requested an assessment for dyscalculia (dyslexia with numbers) because I truly believe he may have this and there are teaching methods which, if he does, and they put measures in place, he MAY come out of school with some basic understanding of maths. I want that assessment NOW. It's no good when he is so utterly traumatised by the math experience that he simply cannot access any learning.

I may sound like a pushy parent. I'm not. I have never, ever raised my voice nor lost my temper. I am calm.... I keep needling them..... and I am persuasive. I have the satisfaction of looking back with hindsight and knowing I was right. And he's had the help needed, pretty much when he has needed it.

I really do hope you can get some help, and quickly.

"His words were 'they are all like wild animals'"

that's very much the opinion of my son too - he isolates himself because of that and bullying, but the reason that he finds it so hard to understand the behaviour of the other kids and the reason they manage to bully him is because of his Asperger's

so , do i see how he gets on at this school and see camhs in 6 months ? or do i / could i get them to see him sooner ?
they said cutbacks had caused massive waiting lists!

Just wanted to wish your DS all the best Cheeryface. And you as well as it is a big thing for you too I am sure.

Sadly, I very much doubt if you could get anybody to see your DS any sooner. If there is a waiting list then there is no way of jumping it unless you go private. 6mths+ was the waiting time round here and a lot of other places 6 yrs ago so I don't think they can blame cutback for that one!

Can I also say that if you think he might need specific help, you don't need a diagnosis to get it. You can push for it without one. Do you have something in particular you think he needs help with?

cheeryface - my son was 10 when formally diagno sed. our ed pysch told us he thought he had it at age 7 when he was being assessed for dyslexia but as he was home schooled then i didnt take it any further. however when he wanted to go to school we knew we needed a statement to get him the help he needed.
i think 6mths is a long time to wait. if there is any way you can make that shorter - private or ringing them every day - i would.

I'd be trying to get him on the waiting list as soon as you can, I don't see any point to waiting how he does at school first - you can after all always take him off again, but I honestly think it's as well getting him assessed even if it's to rule it out

Dd1 has AS (i say mild as), she's 7, she knows when someone is sad and loves teaching other people how to do things (as she thinks she knows everything). Her main problem is with Anxiety (not being able to cope with 'what might happen').

thankyou niecie
im not sure what help he needs really.
He has started to get a bit worried tonight about going into school tomorrow. it hasnt helped that the school gave us little notice and i havent been able to buy him the new trainers he wanted for p.e (had nothing in his size tonight at the shop). He has taken it out on me by being very cheeky and angry and kicking things.saying horrible things to me , that he has a mum who doesnt care etc etc
now hes in bed feeling sorry and cant get to sleep.
why is this parenting lark so difficult ?
sorry , now im just moaning !

My ds1 understands irony and sarcasm pretty well (he would have to with his mother), has a wicked sense of humour and fantastic imagination, is thoughtful and well meaning, and understands peoples' expressions and what these mean, but he has a diagnosis of aspergers. What he seems to be a bit blind to is WHY people feel the way their expressions indicate they are feeling, or what their motivations are. For example, if he were to look at a scene of a child falling into a river and another child running to help them, he might interpret that as a child jumping into the water and another one running around the lake... And if someone bumped into him in the playground, he would have a much harder time than a non-AS child working out whether this was deliberate meanness or an accident.

Oh, and his eye contact is a little bit odd, but not so obviously odd that you would notice it quickly - he will give people eye contact, but not hold their gaze for as long as others would, and tends to look into space when he is talking before returning his gaze to the subject of his conversation once he's finished. So, he's not interpreting how people are reacting to what he is saying until he's finished...

MumsLife

I would now go all out to now obtain a Statement for your son from the LEA particularly before he gets into secondary school. You do not need a dx for a Statement.

Would also suggest you meet with the SENCO at the proposed secondary school say a year or so before your son joins that school. Many children on the spectrum can and do struggle badly at such places particularly if their additional needs are not supported properly. Secondary schools can be vast impersonal places.

Cherryface....let us know how it goes for him. Poor mite!

He was obviously very anxious last night.

Thinking of you both.

@ Cherryface

Aww bless him no wonder he is stressed out after his last school experience. I hope he had a good day today at his new school. He is bound to be nervous, just take one day at a time :)

rabbitstew , funny you should say about when someone bumps into your ds as the other day we were walking along the street and a group of teenage lads were coming towards us. one of them came passed much too close to ds2 and bumped into his shoulder. Ds2 looked at me and said OMG did you see him ? i told him not to over react it probably wasnt deliberate , i think ds2 thought it was.

also ds1 was lay on the couch the other night swinging his arm about , ds2 was stood behind his head so ds1 couldnt see him as he went to throw a kit kat over for him , ds1 arm swung back and they collided. i was amazed that ds2 was so mad and adamant that it was deliberate when it was so obvious it wasnt !!

thanks for the good wishes , he had headache and felt sick this morning , was terrified. He wanted me to come right into school with him but i refused thinking he may get stick for that and stood anxiously watchimg him walk away.
nervous wreck today !

I hope your ds's day has gone OK, cheeryface.