4yo mensa card holder...

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http://main.aol.com/2013/07/22/4yearold ... d%3D347393

SO, does anyone else detect some signs of AS in this adorable little girl? I feel as a parent of a kid on the spectrum I am more able to spot it even subtle signs like here!

What a cutie!

Gee..her eye contact is sketchy, her affect is rather flat, she flaps, she has encyclopedic knowledge, her prosody is off, she likes to stack dice, she corrects her parents' grammar, she has rather rigid appearing body language for a kid her age...nah...I didn't see anything at all!

Add that to her super high IQ and I don't even know if it is subtle anymore.

I sure hope her parents aren't stupid enough to actually get a reality show. Poor girl. She's a gift, not a cash cow.

I remember the days when I thought my son was just exceptionally bright...

YES me too! Actually all his therapists always thought he was gifted and told me so, and told me that is why he couldn't really relate to his peers. UGH...to be naïve again!

Yes - ugh, the reporter really skeeved me out, too. I can see where her parents probably don't "get" what a reality show entails, and I can see in the statement "she's a handful," that they're probably really looking for help - I hope somebody steers them in the right direction.

You would think that Mensa would have their antennae up for kids like this - its not like there aren't tons of Mensa members on the spectrum.

You are very kind. I do not see how anyone of average intelligence or higher could possibly view being on a reality tv show as some form of "help" to assist with a kid who is a "handful." What they are going to do is put her in a situation that is going to make it highly likely that she will be unable to cope, and then display her inability to cope for all the world to see. It honestly reminds me a lot of making her into a circus freak show. Having thousands of viewers tune in to see what the 4 year old genius is up to. Making a spectacle of her. Shame on them if that is what they intend to do.

I feel very protective of this little girl and right now I wish she could come and live with me if her parents are seriously considering getting her a reality tv show.

Hopefully they didn't really mean it when they said it.

Children should be left alone to be children. People are too quick these days to judge and label them.

her eye contact so reminds me of my 3 year old. So does her voice. My son often sounds like a little robot. And the lined up dinosaurs. He's not mensa level but he is incredibly smart and was reading his alphabet letters in print at 18 months and is now at 3 starting to read sight words. He also memorizes songs he hears on the radio after one listen and can quote dialogue from his favorite movies and cartoon shows so well that he can do whole scenes. He was in trouble for something last week and he yelled at me quoting from The Lorax: I don’t care who you are you little crazy baby man! Get out of my house! Now! This is outrageous! .

While I love how smart and talented my son is I would never dream of getting him on a reality show or pretending he's just a handful and does not need help. Instead he's in a high needs special education preschool classroom and seeing a occupational and a physical therapist. I wish people would stop equating special needs with not being smart.

He does not have an official diagnosis of autism yet but my husband and I along with our school district and all of our therapists recognize him as a child who has special needs and that smart does not mean he doesn't need help in other areas. Our school psychologist praised our son for how intelligent he is but said he is just not ready to be in a mainstream preschool classroom like Head Start.

I feel so bad for that little girl. Especially if she has sensory issues like so many people on the spectrum do. Being on a tv show is just going to overwhelm her and cause people to say she is a little brat when she melts down. It sounds like her parents are just writing off any special needs she has as her just being a handful rather than giving her any understanding.

I don't think they made a one-to-one correspondence, but they might have in their heads that a reality show would bring in both money and specialists. I think an awful lot of Americans don't get that the train wreck families we see on reality TV aren't because of the reality show itself - I think they think the people start out crazy. I could see where proud parents like these might see it as an opportunity to show off their special girl and maybe get some resources to cope along the way...and of course, THEY aren't crazy like all those other people.

It takes a certain level of cynicism, education, and knowledge of the industry to see the little man behind the curtain screwing up the lives of all these people...not everybody has it.



I totally agree with you. Or maybe somebody who's a better parent than I am

Why do silly people always get the gifted kids???

Yeah, I think the kid's probably autie.

I hope they don't get a reality show.

I hope the young lady gets to go to nursing school.

I hope she doesn't quit because she's terrified she'll make a mistake and kill someone, like I did.

I hope she doesn't have to listen to people tell her that she's so smart she ought to be thinking about med school instead. I always hated that one. I'm like, "OK, I'm having panic attacks in high school, and you want me to be a doctor?!?!"

Having encyclopedical knowledge and to correct parents grammar is normal for a gifted kid, AS or not. She may also have rigid body language from being shy in front of a stranger and a camera, or maybe she is indeed AS.


Unless it's hyperlexia, sound like beyond mensa level (Then again a lot of peoples on the spectrum read early and have near photographic memory without having high IQ.). Mensa level is about the "smartest kid of the class", which is lower that said, triple nine society, which is "the smartest kid of the school".

Gee, she's completely different in the other video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K4NQzTwWdg8
Laughs, smiles, constantly looks at the camera ... I vote she was just nervous in the other one. Not adding a vote to the autie / not an autie discussion, but I find the difference in her behaviour in those two videos very interesting.

I think you're right about nerves - but her eye contact is still pretty bad - she only looks at her Mom, who's asking the questions, about 1/4 of the time and almost never at the camera or camera operator. Many people with AS are higher functioning in their home without strangers present.

She does what DS does - looks away like she's "thinking." We didn't realize when he was little that this is still a symptom of poor eye contact.

... oh.
Okay. I think you just explained why I've been told I have 'conspicuous' eye contact (or lack thereof), because I'm pretty sure I do the exact same thing -- probably / maybe that's why I didn't think it was strange? I never thought I was bad at it, and I wouldn't have thought that what she was doing in the second video qualified as bad eye contact, either! So thanks for clearing that up. The more you know ...

One of the reasons we struggled with my son's initial diagnosis of AS was that no one explained that this sort of behavior constituted "poor eye contact." It is a more socially acceptable form, but if you notice NT people, they do much less of that "look away while thinking" kind of a thing.

I think there are two distinct subtypes in eye contact - there really are Aspies and I think other people for whom eye contact is painful and frightening, and elicits the fight-or-flight response. The other ones are more like this girl and my son - they tend to "forget" to look at someone - or sometimes they will look too intensely (I find myself doing that.) It's more about not following the social cues than an aversion.

My son does this. I didn't even notice. I was thinking he had really good eye contact, but he often will make eye contact initially when he is speaking to you/ you are speaking, then look away for the rest of the time he is speaking.

Then I think there are three...I look away, not because I forget or because it is painful/frightening, but because sometimes I can't concentrate if I am looking at someone. I can't organize my thoughts in a way that allows me to communicate them. My son has maybe a 4th one...his eye contact is generally quite good, but if he is getting physically or psychologically overwhelmed, you will see it drop. It is almost as if under "normal" circumstances he is 100% OK with eye contact. But a shift from "normal" and it is one of the first things that drops out. I have asked him why. He said he doesn't know.

She is much different in the 2nd video, but I have to say that my daughter has the same "differentness" in different situations. There are days/situations when I think just about anyone would be able to peg her as autistic, then other days/situations when I think even a trained eye might miss it.

She is absolutely adorable, though. What a cutie!