Do all children with Aspergers have an area of special interest?

[JollyPirate]

DS is currently being investigated (if thhat's the right term) for social communication disorder. He has several sensory issues which have improved but which still cause problems with attention and concentration. He is struggling with reading but slowly learning (albeit very behind). He is in Yr 2 and was 7 in December 2009.

Does this sound like Aspergers? He was late to talk but is a real chatterbox now. However, he does not understand the unwritten rules of social communication - always wants to be first and gets distressed if he has to wait (to a varying degree). Other children play with him and he enjoys playing but evidently he finds it hard to accept when a game is over. His Yr 1 teacher said he did not read facial expressions well and struggled to understand why sometimes other children got cross with him.

These issues have been ongoing from nurseryand although they have improved are still issues which impact upon his life.

Posted too soon - meant to add that there are some issues with eye contact especially if DS is being instructed to do something which he does not want to - both DH and I have noticed that. However, no real area of special interets - rather an obsession which might last a day or a week or longer (video games he is obsessive about).
He remembers many facts and other things - today he has wanted to know about Venus Fly Traps and insisted on sitting through x number of videos about them which he will tell his one to one worker about on Monday. He is getting 15 hours of one to one time a week to support him in school and his class teacher tells me that she could not manage him in the classroom without this.

Hi, i have a 6 year old dd1 with mild Aspergers, like your DS she likes to be first and finish before others, she plays with other children but they often get fed up with her as she wants them to play by her rules.

Dd1 has no main interest but goes through phases where she collects things such as cars, dinosaurs, shells etc and then she reads books about them to find out important facts to tell her friends. she sometimes gets obsessed with going on the PC and we have to limit the time she goes on there. Sometimes she will read 10 books before going to sleep at night (gets obsessed with reading).

Dd1 receives no 1:1 at school.

I think special interests are one of the many generalisations professionals make about AS. My ds who has AS gets very interested in things but after a time moves on, and he has never had one single over-riding interest the way that the textbooks say. In fact I don't see his interests as being that different to the interests other children have -- a bit more single minded maybe.
A lovely specialist AS nurse told me she calls them 'enthusiasms' rather than special interests, and I think that is so much better. 'Special interest' sounds so patronizing and pathologising ("if only x had proper interests intead of his special interest" kind of thing). So in my house, special interest, no, enthusiasm, yes, lots of it.
We are just waiting to see whether we get a statement because ds has learning (has dyslexia and developmental co-ordination disorder as well as AS) issues as well as major behavioural issues.

Oh yes, we have spongebob .

She also likes maps so i got her a giant world map which happened to have all the flags on it, she can now identify all the flags (which i am useless at) and when ever a country is mentioned on the news i have to go and find it on her map .

Ds has definitely been identified as having DCD to some degree' He is about to start a motor skills group via OT which will help in some areas. He is very fortunate in the 1-1 time he is getting and I honestly think it's down to the school as other children in my area who struggle get nothing like the support DS gets.

DS2 has very strong interests, but they definitely became more apparent with age . He has MLD too so his delay in speech and general ability kind of masked his obsessional mid until later on.
He always became hooked on odd things.. lining pencils aged 2..still doing it at nearly 13 and has to have them while he's Wikipedia-ing. A hideously long period of wanting Sesame Street videos...

He was 8 or 9 when he started to read and then it hit.. he learned to read because he was obsessed with the TV guide.. this turned into reading Wiki online and a while later we discovered he had memorized the production stats for just about every TV programme you could think of.. he doesn't WATCH tv but he can tell you how many episodes, when produced, who by, how many countries for literally hundreds of programmes.. he's a pub quiz dream...

In addition we have his Dr Who obsession and Michael Jackson...

Drives me nuts at times, BUT his obsessions calm and reassure him about his world and life, so we just run with them

However I also work with severely autistic children, and lots of them have no obsessions whatsoever so I don't think it's a given that ASD children have them

I don't think having a special interest is a prerequisite of having a diagnosis, it's just that many Aspie's do have them.
For my son his special interest become more intense when he is stressed as if it is his way of coping. He also gets vocal tics and has to perform all sorts of rituals which disappear when he is calmer.
I know of two Aspie girls who don't have special interests as such.

Sorry Aspies not Aspie's

if they have a special interest it can shift or they can develop multiple ones.