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I am a mother of a thirteen year old amazingly gifted young man that has never done well in social situations. Though we have been to numerous doctors, psychiatrists etc.. NO ONE ever was able to tell me what was wrong. I just this past week have had the awakening to this disorder and though no formal diagnosis is made just yet. I know! Where do I go from here. Now that I know what it is and what may have caused this (and it wasn't my parenting), How do I help him make friends (or at least keep them?) If anyone has advice, please feel free to give me your opinion!

Have you ever thought about talking to your family MD and getting a referral to a specialist who deals with autism and asperger's syndrome?

Feel free to post more of his symptoms, and I and others will be more than happy to tell you how closely he matches to us! Even better, encourage him to post on this site himself!

Thank you all so far for your thoughts. There is a specialist close to us that has been out of town until today. Hopefully, I will get in very soon.

His symptoms really started at about 2 years old. He was an extremely happy baby but was running, climbing nonstop. I got divorced when he was 1 1/2yrs old and I just attributed alot of his problems that began shortly after to that. He was biting kids all the time at school but seemed to like to play with others. He would NEVER share. This went on until Kindergarten where I had him in private school. I taught him to read at 4 years old. When he was in Kindergarten his teacher was very concerned with his behavior and at one point, my son just got up and walked in front of the class and started teaching in front of his teacher. Then through elementary I had conferences quite often with every grade and of course, every doctor just said it was ADHD. So we did the Adderall route but every year he had less and less friends. I didn;t understand. He looked the part. Smart, gifted, handsome, (I dressed him well)- He had everything on the outside but something was not clicking on the inside. We went to therapy for years and still do! When he was little he would just cry at night wishing he had friends. But then other times it made no sense because it was as if almost like it had no effect on him whatsoever. Then we hit middle school!! !! This has been insane. The bullying, teasing, fights etc.. He knows he is not allowed to hit first but he is so intelligent, he knows how to manipulate any situation. Which he does. He challenges authority continuously. He has been told numerous times how arrogant, stubborn, defiant and disrespectful he is. By myself too!! ! I didn't understand. I always show him unconditional love though. He gets at least one referral per week. I know if it weren't for his straight A's (his whole life) they would not have let him stay. But then at other times he is the most wonderful kindhearted person you will ever meet. Anyways, more symptomss - he is always moving (not weirdly) but just moving - rocking in his chair, moving his leg side to side, tapping his finger on the table etc.. He has a hard time falling to sleep and appears to obsess about things at night such as (imagine living forever- it freeks him out) We have a strong christian home so that's where he gets the living forever thing. He is extremely gifted in math and science and just took the SAT'S and scored higher than all the high school kids and was invited to Duke University. He has won just about every reward possible. He gets talking about something and I swear you cannot talk about anythinng else. I don't care if I change the subject somehow it follows itself right back into our conversation. Aeronautics, any type of math or science and he can tell you anything you need to know. Actually, there is not too much he doesn't know something about. I could ramble forever about him, please give me your feedback!! !

Those all sound like typical aspie traits to me. In-fact, a lot of those sound like MY traits to me.

Of course, I can't exactly diagnose your child for you, so seeing the specialist if at all possible is your best course of action. However, if I were you, I would at least encourage him to review some of the material on this site, as it contains guides about how to approach different situations as an aspie, it could possibly help him out. You can also read through some of the forums and see what other aspies post about themselves, and see how closely both you and your son think they match to him, and maybe even have your son post him own comments and experiences on those threads, or start his own.

Try to involve your son in this as much as possible, unless of course he doesn't want to visit this site and other sites or review aspie related material. Trust me, the symptoms your son exhibits while around you probably aren't all of his symptoms, there are going to be some he has learned how to hide from others. He will also probably exhibit different symptoms at different locations. For instance, when I was small, I used to exhibit repetitive body movements and pace right in the middle of class in-front of anyone, yet I would always do this in private while I was at home.

Anyways, those are my thoughts on this. One last thing would be try to encourage his special interests, but also try to keep them to a healthy level, and not let them interfere with his schoolwork. As he becomes more independant when he is older, and can get away with more, his special interests might start interfering with his schoolwork more, since you will have less control over him. This is what I found with myself, my schoolwork began to suffer really bad after I turned 16.

I am very gifted, yet the pressures at school caused me to drop out, and I am paying for it dearly now. I am now, two years later, making myself go back to school to finish it. Without putting too much pressure on your son, do your best to make sure he finishes high school at least, and try to get him to go onto college. Once in high school, things WILL get difficult for him, as the social scene is on an entirely different level than the lower level schools, so try and be prepared.

Thank you sooo much for your input. He has read a lot of this material and he states it definitely sounds like him. He also took several of the "aspie tests" I found on this site and he failed terribly or should I say he passed exceedingly well to qualify as an aspie. I talked to him about starting to come into the forums and chat rooms but he has been grounded for a long time and recently has had freedom on the computer back and this is of course one of his obsessions and god forbid his time that he is alotted is used in other areas than games. I think I will propose extra time for this. I am almost worried that the more he finds out about asperger's the more he will know how to manipulate it. Isn't that awful, but he is soooo intelligent.
I just transferred his school for next year to another middle school because of all his problems at the last. (I know these will follow him anywhere) but does anyone have advice on the school situation (private vs. public) I cannot homeschool. Nor do I think I have the capability of broadening his extensive education.

Hey charity.

Yeah, video games used to be one of my obsessions at that age as well, before I grew out of it. Does he like role playing games? My favourites around that time were Final Fantasy 7 and 8, and the Resident Evil Series.

I'd say that might be a good idea. For instance, if he is alotted 3 hours on the computer per day, and he uses all of that time to play games, continue to alott him 3 hours for random computer activity, and possibly another half hour or hour for Wrongplanet, or similar sites.

I don't think you should hide anything about Asperger's from him. He may feel resentment in his later years. When I found out on my own that I probably had Asperger's (I am positive, yet still undiagnosed) I was convinced that my Mom had known about it but didn't tell me, and my feelings about her quickly became negative. In the end, I found out she had suspiscions, that something was wrong, but she had never considered Asperger's and I was never diagnosed with anything. The negative feelings quickly went away of course.

Let me tell you that he is extremely lucky to have a Mom that would be willing to transfer his school. I lived with my Grandparents while at his age, and was basically told "this is where you're going to school, live with it". I have never been to a private school, so I cannot comment on this, but I would recommend at least looking into it.

Charity

Your longer posts would be much easier for me to read if you pressed enter twice to put a blank line between ideas/paragraphs a little more often.

Your kid sounds a lot like me too.

I bit other kids at school before I learnt it was a bad idea.

"social stories" are a great way to teach him what is appropriate and why. Try to make them a little bit open ended so he doesn't get mad at other people for not playing by the rules, in fact you could do a little social story about why sometimes people don't "play by the rules".

He also seems to be a "type II challenging" on the gifted and talented profile.
http://www.aps.edu/aps/gifted/profilechart.html

And I was that too - I'd correct the teachers.

Sharing social story: You share your stuff with others because if you never share, not many people will want to share with you. They might once, but that will be about it. Not everyone will want to share if you share, they might be like you used to be. You don't need to share something that is still new and precious - just say you're not ready to share that yet. The best people to share with are people that have stuff you'd like to share and people who you can forgive if they break your stuff, and you could have a reasonable expectation they will try to make good if they did accidentally break something. Sharing things can help other people be friends and feel good about themselves and you. It is an honour to be trusted with somebody else's treasured possession.

Playing by the rules social story: Rules are mostly there to keep things orderly and fair for everyone. However sometimes people don't play by the rules. Sometimes this doesn't matter much. Sometimes it will cause life threatening situations, such as people who run red traffic lights. But there are always situations when people will break the rules because they have a need that is greater than what the rule was made for. Example - emergencies.

While it is better in an emergency to continue to keep the rules, especially the life and death type ones, occasionally, people will break the rules because a life may be lost if they don't. This is why ambulances and other emergency vehicles can go through red lights and drive too fast. Sometimes when someone is too far away from an ambulance they might decide they can break all the rules to get someone to hospital or they will die. And often people in emergencies don't think straight or sensibly so they do stupid things and break the rules. There is no point being angry with these people, or trying to correct them. They need calming down and help.

So when someone breaks a rule, they might not be thinking straight for lots of different reasons. They might not know the rule. They might not think the rule is very important or understand why it is a rule. Sometimes the rules are not so important, and sometimes they are. Trying to enforcing a rule that is not so important can make you very unpopular, especially when rule enforcement is not your job. Or even when it is - I wouldn't like to be a parking inspector, though I don't like it when they're on strike because there are no available parking spaces in town at all.

I'm sure you could come up with a better social story than that. But if you can combine being detailed and specific, with a flexible outcome, those are the best ones. Pay attention to what your son has latched onto for defining the world. He seems to like the christian rules, be sure to emphasise the tolerance of outsiders as described in the new testament. Some of the old testament stuff can lead to a great deal of intolerance for other people and ideas. And if your son wants people to tolerate him, he may have to learn enough tolerance himself so he can learn to teach them how.

Aspergers is often confused with ADHD. It is possible for the two conditions to co-exist but not common. The reason they are confused is because people with aspergers have a hard time paying attention to anything perceived as boring. A highly intelligent and well educated aspie will have a hard time tolerating fools - often his (or her) teachers are included. And this will seem like ADHD as well.

Fortunately for me, I learnt a lot of acceptable displacement behaviours in class, like having a more advanced text book on the subject, or doing homework for other classes, this looks ok until the teacher gets close up and doesn't disrupt the class. Or even having text books on other subjects to read, so I'd be learning but not disrupting in class. I also used to draw pictures in my notebooks. Again this looks ok from a distance. I'd draw paper darts, the desks, the view out the windows, caractures of the teachers etc. And if the teacher asked me a question, I'd ask them to repeat it because I didn't hear it and I'd answer it. For most classes I could come up with a sufficiently plausible answer even when I had not been paying attention. Of course I couldn't answer the questions about "tell me what I'd just been discussing", but teachers didn't ask me that often enough to get me to pay attention. I think me paying attention to a crappy teacher was worse for them than me quietly doing something else. Type II - questions the teacher's knowledge - not so good for the teacher. I think mostly they were relieved it wasn't me trying to answer all the questions.

Please tell your son what I wish I'd known - you only need to answer one question in class and then you can leave the rest to other kids so they all get a turn. You can save your answer up for the hardest question if you like. Teachers don't like to have the same kid answer all the questions. If they were smarter/fairer they'd have all the names of their students in a hat and pull them out one at a time at random for answering questions, until the hat was empty. I don't know why they don't do that.

Encourage him in his special interests, and encourage him to enjoy helping people for its own sake. With these two things, aspies can do great things in the world. He will get friends who respect his integrity, his expertise and his helpfulness.