How would I know if my son had Aspergers?

[Conundrumish]

x posted

I've become a bit concerned about my DC2 (a 6 yr old boy) and I'm not sure if I am reading into things too much or not.

Part of my problem is that DC1 is totally different and I'm not sure if my bench mark is out of kilter.

He seems to be bright and appears (though I am not 100% sure as I have never asked) to be in the top set or 2nd top set out of 4 in a high achieving church primary school. He's recently been sent to a workshop for 'more able' children, despite having really quite poor gross motor skills which shows itself in his writing and drawing. He has a fantastic memory, a good imagination, good at maths and is quite focused at school. I've noticed he is clumsy (so is my DH, and me a bit, I'm not sure if that is relevant). What worries me is that unlike my other DC nearly all our conversations are about the things he is interested in such as lego, starwars etc etc and seems almost incapable of talking about anything else. He is very chilled and doesn't get upset when my DC1 would do (i.e. received a nasty injury recently and just seemed to absorb it all without any thought). He has got out of bed to bother us just once in his life (!) and just seems to get on with things.

He's not really found a 'proper' 1:1 friendship like my DC1 has and seems to drift between groups of friends sometimes. I think he is quite shy, but he can sometimes come across as a bit loud too, which might intimidate other children sometimes. I don't think he is really connecting with his friends and it seems that people aren't really important to him at all.

I can't work out if he is at the 'boy' end of the spectrum and is showing typical male behaviour (whereas my older son is unusually articulate etc for a boy of his age) or whether there is a problem. I have read through the usual websites and some of the behaviours ring a bell with me but the descriptions are very vague.

That all sounds fairly normal to me. Perhaps he is just very different to your older boy. In my experience AS kids aren't generally described as 'chilled' by their parents.

Thanks Cornsilk

I'd say that if you feel his behaviour is causing him problems, then maybe ask to be referred, but if he's (and you) managing ok then I'd probably leave it.

My son's paed said that we are all somewhere on the spectrum, but it's only when it interferes with everyday life and is a problem that they call it a disorder.

fwiw, my 2 eldest lads were both very bright at school and had obsessions, but compared to my ds3 I'm pretty certain they don't have asd.

It might be worth going through each of the things that you've noticed and looking at how/if they are affecting him.

So, for example, you say he is chilled out because he doesn't get upset about things you would expect him to (eg the injury). Think about whether this has caused problems at all in the past. My own ds, for example, hardly used to feel pain or illness at all. The only way to tell whether he was ill or hurt was if there was a physical sign of it, eg bleeding, high temperature etc. This caused problems because it meant that sometimes we had no idea until there was a problem until things got more serious.

Again with your ds' tendency to just get on with things in general rather than telling someone about things. Does he tell you or another adult if he has an actual problem that needs to be dealt with? If not, has this caused problems? My ds, for example, has the typical ASD thing of assuming that I can read his thoughts and so must already know if there is a problem. He has had to be taught to tell us or his teachers if something is wrong.

(You don't need to answer those things on here. These are just suggestions of things to look at for yourself.)

If there are no real problems then it may well be a case of just having a different personality to his brother. If you think the things you've noticed are causing difficulties then I would ask for a referral.