Are children with AS good at creative writing???

[Blossomhill]

Just wondering as although dd doesn't have a dx if ever she did I think AS would probably be it, although doesn't fit a lot of criteria.
Just lately dd (5 and a half) has been doing some lovely, creative free-writing and I am amazed by it tbh. She excells in literacy anyway but to see her beautiful handwriting and the content is quite amazing (sorry, I am trying not to boast).
I just wondered if children with AS would be capable of writing creative stories like this. I am generally asking just out of interest.

Ds1 has been surprising me recently with his stories. Literacy is one of his strengths at school. At home he likes to make books. He tells me the story, I write it down for him and he draws the pictures to go with it. We put them all together to make a book. His current series of stories is about 3 dragons who all share a cave and have mini-adventures.

Despite a late start in learning how to hold a pencil he loves to write. If he doesn't know how to spell a word he will write it phonetically.

Just for the record, my nephew has AS and finds creative writing beyond difficult, almost impossible. He is a very bright lad who excels at maths and fails every english story writing exercise going. He is 12 now.

This is an example of what she wrote for Easter

Once upon a time in the garden the snow began to melt, the wind began to blow and the flowers began to grow. The birds began to sing and the eggs began to hatch........

It carries on and when her teacher showed me I was quite shocked as ds couldn't have written that at his age and he has always been in the top group since Reception. When the teacher gave it to me I said that someone must ahve helped her. She was like no have a look at some of her work and there were many examples of the same thing. I felt sad in a way as I didn't know she could write like that and in a way I felt sad that the school knew more about her abilites than I did!

She sounds very talented, BH. It's not boasting to be proud of her.

I sometimes think that school is almost like another world for ds1. I had no idea how much he was able to do until I went to a Parents Evening. I'd been into school several times before for IEP meetings but these tend to focus more on things like sensory stuff/social skills/behaviour etc rather than the more academic side of things.

Thanks Coppertop. I think I am relieved that she is bright as the SALT said it can make such a difference long term if she wasn't.

It also amzes me that she excels in literacy yet learns language in a disordered way. Doesn't make sense does it?

Your ds sounds as though he is really coming on. Do you think he is more AS than HF asd? I think Ihave asked you that before though. It's also great that he can go into ms as dd found that very difficult!

Hiya! That's fab writing Blossomhill - you must be very proud of her.

You have some idea of where we stand re AS or not, so I won't go into that here! DS1 is great at creative writing too.

Hope you have a great time at Bibic btw, and that it fulfils all your hopes and expectations for it.

I'm currently reading Tony Attwood's book on AS ... scary reading! Frighteningly familiar as always. DS1 ticks all the boxes, but atm it doesn't seem to cause him or school any major problems, and his social skills are improving, so I'm trying to be laidback about the possibility of a dx at some point in the future.

Hi Roisin .
It's funny as I didn't see too many similarities with dd in the Tony Attwood bok, although I know girls are different to boys and LD's do overlap with AS though.
I am reading Martian in the playground at the moment and that is fascinating as an insight into a child with AS, well worth reading.
Thanks for the good wishes with Bibic. I think I am trying not to expect anything and hopefully will be really pleased and if it helps me at least understand why dd behaves the way she does then it will be a bonus.

I think the only thing that stopped ds1 from being dx'ed with AS rather than ASD was that his language was delayed. I think one of the requirements was to have language development within the 'normal' time-scale. At the moment though I think a dx of ASD will probably get him more help than an AS dx.

I'm puzzled too about how ds1 can be good at literacy despite disordered language development. He started off with all the signs of hyperlexia. The only time a sound came out of his mouth was when he read out a word which he found interesting. This seemed to ease off a bit and when he started in Reception it was as though he went back to the beginning again and learned how to sound out words rather than just memorising the ones he knew. His teacher has said that he loves wordplay and that he is very quick to see patterns in words.

His spoken language is still a bit odd at times. He often sounds like a tourist putting together words in a foreign language rather than being a native speaker IYKWIM. He also still says "mine" instead of "my" and has trouble with when to say"he" or "she". He loves anything to do with literacy though. Even better if he is allowed to type the words rather than write them out by hand.

I've only read the first couple of chapters of the Attwood book. I'll have to steel myself to read some more!

Martian in the playground is great, but it was the first thing dh read on AS, and it shocked/scared him a bit.

Apparently though Coppertop I think they are changing the AS criteria where langauge is concerned as all children on the spectrum have langauge difficulties. Can't remember where I rea dthat now!

It's all very confusing isn't it? Ds2's assessment report mentions AS - presumably because he had some words at 2. What it doesn't take into account is that ds2 only got that far with communication because we'd taught him the steps before that, eg pointing and when/how to use it. If we'd had the same knowledge when ds1 was a similar age I'm sure he would have been talking earlier too.

Both boys definitely have language difficulties though.

TBH Coppertop the whole thing is so confusing. When I spoke to the head of SALT for our borough she said all children in the unit and all children in general with communication type difficulties are so, so unique. You would for example never have a child with Dyspraxia that completely fitted the criteria for Dyspraxia, they would more than likely has AS traits/ADHD traits etc.

BH, this mixture is what I am starting to see with my ds2. Having been told last time that he wasn't on the spectrum they are now saying that he might have some ASD traits (sound familiar? ). I'm interested what you say about language though because his language was a bit slow to develop but not really outside the normal bounds (e.g. he said first word at 13 months, had 20-50 words by 18months, more than 100 by the time he was around 2.) At 3.5y he talks in sentences but can get pronouns and word order muddled and sometimes struggles for the right word. IMO his poor motor skills make dyspraxia the most obvious diagnosis for him but he does have some ASD traits like not pointing much, not answering questions, some echolalia. The paed is suggesting he might end up with several boxes half ticked, a bit like your dd.

J fits every tick box on the Attwood questionnaire for a dx of Aspergers...just out of curriosity how many children here have been dx with Aspergers but have had a language delay????

J was non-verbal until 3 and a half, he struggles with his speech terribly now. He uses echolia daily, uses made up words to describe things....upstairs = upertybumperty, umbrella = ella bella, and he shuts of from speech when things get too much and he is frustrated with not being able to find the right words to use or is unsure of his surroundings.

I ask how many children who have had a language delay have been dx with Aspergers because my friends son was non-verbal until he was 5 and he has been dx with Aspergers, yet I have read that the language delay is not one of the criteria for a dx of Aspergers.

Confussed or what?????

Jaysmum, am I right in thinking Jay has a diagnosis of dyspraxia also or have I imagined that? I think that might also cause problems in organising speech content. Ds2 definitely has problems finding words sometimes - he reminds me of when someone has had a stroke and they say the wrong word and they know it's wrong but they can't get the right word out. He doesn't have a diagnosis but he has a lot of the organisational problems associated with dyspraxia and I'm sure that affects his speech.

A lot seems to depend on the Paed IMHO. The Paed we saw for ds1 uses AS and HFA interchangeably but in the written reports she dx'ed him as "autistic". Ds2's Paed talked about AS. Ds2's first words appeared at 10 months but had gone by 11 months. His language started to appear properly at about 21-22 months. He's still at the single word stage and doesn't use language much tbh. Out of his 50 or so words he will probably use 3 or 4 in a day (mostly food-related ones ).

My sister with AS and a friend's little boy with AS both have very, very vivid imaginations but I'm not sure about creative writing, have to think about that. Maybe writing so well but with a language disorder is a sign of better expressive than receptive? Don't know. My friend's son definitely talked late-ish but he has been reclassified as AS from ASD in the last year or so and he's about 7.
BH, really hope BIBIC goes well, I'm sure it will be worth it.

Ah thanks Davros. You are so kind. Will obvioulsy fill you all in when I get back xxx