Does it sound like my 5 yr old has Aspergers?

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Hello All! I am coming here in hopes that some of you may be of help to me with advice. I have a 5 year old son who may have Aspergers. Since my son was born he was always considered advanced for his age. He learned to walk early (7 months), he learned to speak and complete sentences, count, recognize letters, numbers, colors and so on earlier then expected for his age! Everyone that gets to know him say's he is like a little adult. He speaks like an adult. The other thing is that ever since he was a baby he would get upset and show a bad temper. When he got or gets mad you know it! As a baby he would make eye contact and show emotions, but as he got to be a toddler his eye contact was no longer there. I noticed this first as his mother. He continues to be like this, even his Senior Kindergarten teacher mentioned it recently. He does not like change at all! He is very sensitive to noise, smell and taste! His fine motor skills are really bad! He hates to write or draw, he only enjoys painting! He hates wearing clothes! He will strip down at every possible chance he gets! He does not like meeting new people and gets overwhelmed easily when there are too many people around. He will act out by showing fits of anger or throwing things or running to his room and hiding. The one thing he has been diagnosed with is anxiety. We started taking him to a Psychiatrist about these things over a year ago. Also, I should mention he has amazing an amazing memory and repeats things over and over again. For example he will come home and repeat everything his teacher says to them in class all day, he can also tell you a storybook from beginning to end and repeat everything he watches on tv word for word. All these things we have mentioned to two different psychiatrists and they have both told us to wait and see. They wanted to get feedback from Teachers when he starts school since he was never in daycare. Well, his Teacher is noticing a few things and she is amazing with him! My question is how long do I wait? How can I help him? His teacher say's she notices he prefers to play on his own then interact with the other kids and he is constantly complaining that the kids are too loud!! He does not like to draw. She does say he is very obedient and polite, so he is not having melt downs at school yet. I think he wants to interact with children, but does not know how? He will build with legos and other kids will build something with him and then he will destroy it! At home he does not ever stay still or focussed for too long. Also, I don't know if he can tell real from pretend yet, he always asks me to take his cartoon friends out of the tv so they can play with him? At home he always has to be moving around doing something. He always wants to talk about things he only likes. When he plays games or races with us he hates loosing! He will get so upset about it and cry and cry! I love him and want to help him! Do you parents with children with diagnosed Asperger's see any traits in here? Should I keep pushing for a diagnosis or am I wrong? I should mention he is an only child and on my husbands side of the family his second cousins have two kids with diagnosed Aspergers (we are not close to them to observe them, my mother in-law mentioned it to me). Please help!

That's a lot of exclamation marks! And a very panicked wall of text.

OK. It's OK. It's OK to use lots of exclamation marks, and to type up a very panicked wall of text.

In other words, it's completely understandable to panic.

But it probably isn't necessary. This isn't the end of the world.

The first piece of advice: BREATHE. Eat some chocolate. Eat some more chocolate. It's going to be OK.

I'm going to go back and read the wall of text now (might take a while), so I want you to have this piece of advice first:

Even if you do, indeed, have an Aspie on your hands-- It's going to be OK. Congratulations-- you have a very intelligent child, and it's going to be OK.

*HUG*

OK-- Yes, it does sound a lot like Asperger's-- and though I am not a therapist or pediatric neuropsychologist or in any way qualified to make that diagnosis, I am a smart Aspie and allowed to tell you what I think.

So-- the first thing I think is that the psychiatrists were right to tell you to wait and see. It is EXTREMELY hard to distinguish between Asperger's, ADHD, anxiety, and Intense Little Kid up to the age of (about) seven.

He's well-mannered and obedient, so that's a good sign. He's quite bright, so that's a good sign.

You can hunt up a developmental pediatrician or a pediatric neuropsych and try to make that distinction now-- you might get a misdiagnosis and you might not, depending on how much symptom overlap there is with ADHD (some-- enough that I can't split the hair, which is the same boat I'm in with my own 6-year-old). How harmful is a misdiagnosis?? I don't know. Some ASD kids tolerate stimulant meds very badly-- sometimes that's how they spot the misdiagnosis (which, from my reading, is a pretty common error under the age of 7 even with a knowledgable clinician).

The second thing I think is to reiterate: DO NOT PANIC!! !! It's getting better, but it's still pretty common for people (both knowledgable people and laypeople) to get more wound up than necessary about Asperger's. It's a problem, but I've been more impaired by thinking of it as a devastating problem than by Asperger's itself. That's not everyone's experience-- but it is definitely mine, and there are quite a few experts out there who agree that this is both true and common experience.

If you were going to work on something, I'd start working on the temper outbursts when engaging in parallel play with other kids. That seems to be his most immediate problem: He needs to be able to do Legos at a table with other kids without smashing stuff. How to do this??

Well, my folks weren't experts. My folks were coal miners. But I think what they would have done, had this been me (it wasn't-- my response in the same situation would have been to simply withdraw, which didn't raise eyebrows in 1983) is spend a few hours a week engaging in parallel play with me, talking with me all the while about it being OK for two people to do the same thing together, what was running through my head while we did it, and how other people feel when stuff gets smashed. Reinforcing that that's not an acceptable behavior. I think tolerance would improve with exposure.

Ditto losing at games-- that was something I did, throw fits over losing. Grandma dealt with it by letting me win, always, even if she had to blatantly cheat. I'm not a fan of that approach. My son did it too-- so we played a lot of games. Took him to Goodwill and let him pick out games, and played A LOT of games. He threw fits-- I put him in his room to cool down, and when the fit was over we talked about it a little. He threw fits-- wash rinse repeat.

Eventually, I started talking to him about it at the outset-- "Mister Edison, it's OK to want to win. Everyone wants to win. But that means someone has to lose-- if there's no loser, there's no game. It's OK to lose, too. It's all part of the game. The point is to have fun." Some assortment of that-- always with the "It's OK to win, it's OK to lose, the point is to have fun."

It took dozens-- maybe hundreds, I didn't count-- of repetitions, but he did get it. He still whines over losing, but it's been a long time (on the order of months) since there's been a fit. God help the playmate who cheats or doesn't get the rules, though-- they're in for a loud, shrill lecture.

Yeah-- pulling rein on that temper is probably his most immediate need. There are medications that can control that for him, and sometimes they are warranted...

...but I'd argue for trying behavioral interventions first, especially at this age. Some (most) of those meds are highly sedating with some (justifiably) unnerving side effects.

I don't know whether he's having trouble with fantasy vs. reality, or just (lightly mis-)using unusually mature concepts (metaphor or whatever) to tell you that he really really really really wants a playmate. I did this-- I had cousins and "force-friends" (children of parents' and grandparents' friends that got dragged to playdates), but I was lonely and used to ask if The Smurfs and/or my reflection could come out and play with me. I remember CLEARLY knowing that they could not, and wishing that someone would get what I was trying to say (that I was lonely, though I couldn't say it at the time). You saying that he has advanced verbal development makes me think this might be the case.

A good trick for eye contact-- though you might not want to teach it before any assessment, as it sometimes fools clinicians too-- is to teach him to look at foreheads, noses, mouths, or the wall behind, slightly above, and slightly to the side of someone's head. Grandma carped on eye contact-- I discovered this trick young, it made her happy, and it fools almost everyone unless I'm pretty upset (because then I tend to stare off, develop a strange cadence to speech, and go monotone).

If you like your husband's family, get in touch with the moms of those cousins!! Compare notes, share ideas, ask questions, get cozy. I wish I had some relatives with Aspie kids-- it would be nice to have the social group. Unfortunately, out of my dad and his siblings, he was the only one to get it, so at most my cousins carry a single copy of the mutation (and thus don't show symptoms and are less likely to get Aspie kids). There's a good bit of Asperger's on my mom's father's side of the family, I think-- or anyway there are lots of "off" cousins that I've never met and no one talks about-- but that family is made up pretty much entirely of shameful, back-biting, judgmental, nasty, foul people. I pity the ASD folk in it and want nothing to do with the rest of them.

Wow-- you typed a wall, and I wrote a book. Sorry. I'll see if I can make more sense later-- right now I'm late with some ramen and 28 minutes into my kids' homework time.

Did you catch that?? I have Asperger's, I had a lot of the symptoms he does, I didn't get ANY professional help until well into adulthood...

...and I still managed to build a life, run it well enough to keep it this long, and do some other stuff. DON'T PANIC.

**double post deleted. stupid computer.**

I think you would find a diagnosis helpful, so I would pursue one, but I don't think you need to "push" for it unless there are more immediate issues. Still, I can see lots of potential areas of concern down the road, particularly in connection with school, and the reason for the diagnosis is simple: so that the school will work with you and not just label your child a problem child. There are also many helpful services schools can now provide, which you will need a diagnosis to access (depending on the district, that might be a school one, or a medical one, or both).

I don't think the professionals that suggested you wait were wrong in that ASD can be difficult to catch in the younger years, so unless there are reasons to press for early intervention, it isn't really necessary. But the differences will become more and more apparent, and when you reach that point where services and accommodations at school are necessary, you want to be ready with that paper in hand. Waiting until the specific need arises can wreak its own havoc, because just as it is difficult to diagnosis very young, it is also more difficult to diagnosis once the child gets past elementary age.

Willard comes from the time before so many services existed, so in that context it would seem there is no need. But we are seeing huge gains for our kids from the services currently available. No, those services don't cure them, but they do keep our kids from enduring years of needless frustration and set back, allowing them to thrive better and be happier with who they are.

I do want to note one thing: much of what you describe as anger is probably NOT anger, but meltdown, an honest inability to handle what is going on. Anger a person can control; a meltdown, once started, they cannot. The brain gets all scrambled. Your son will need to learn to recognize the signs that lead up to the meltdown and seek assistance in mitigating it before it happens. That is the only route that will work.

I am really hazy myself about when intervention is useful and when it should wait. We had we been smarter could have gotten a diagnosis earlier than 4, which was when we got it. I have no idea what in pragmatic terms an earlier intervention would have meant, for good or ill. We would not have made it as far as we did in the school system without one, and it has given me insight how to deal with things that come up. That is all I feel qualified to say. If you need help, get it. If you don't need it right now...I am honestly not sure. I usually lean towards advising it, just to be on the safe side, but I do not know if that is the right thing or not.

Edited to add: In addition to having to consider the likelihood of the wrong diagnosis, you also have to weigh the fact that they are much more disposed to cutting your kid slack when they are real young and have a diagnosis then when they are older. When they are little and cute everything seems easier than when they are older and high stakes testing looms.

Edited again to add: I don't want people to think I don't still think my son is cute, (He is adorable) just that being very little and cute seems to make a difference. (I know nobody cares about the cute thing, I just felt like I was being unfair to my son, if I did not say I still think he is cute)

DW is brilliant and experienced. You should listen to every word she says with both ears.

She's right about the anger/meltdown thing...

...but I will toss in a caveat from my perception of my own experiences.

Learning to control anger directly leads to fewer meltdowns. If he can get a grip on the anger, he can learn to head it off before meltdown mode is reached. With exposure and experience, the meltdown threshold raises progressively. It is a SLOW, S-L-O-W process, but it does occur.

I still have meltdowns, and always will. The differences are these: The things that trigger meltdowns in me now are things that would set ANYONE off-- I just get more upset and take longer to calm down. And I can, most of the time, see them coming; oftentimes I can head them off by retreating somewhere quiet and/or doing something soothing or steam-venting, and if I can't stop them I can at least go have them in private somewhere. Now if only I could get my husband to understand that, when I grab my cigarettes and bolt for the porch in the middle of an argument, I'm not trying to shut him out or control the situation (and it's NOT a good time to follow me out and press the point).

Now-- I didn't get to that point until late adolescence, and I got there by imitating my father (that was his coping mechanism).

She's right about Willard, too. He (and I) grew up before Asperger's existed as a diagnosis (it was entered into the DSM in 1994). Willard is older than I am-- in my day, we were called "wierd" kids; in his day, we were called "bad" kids. I was teased and bullied at school, but more or less accomodated at home. Willard was teased and bullied at school, and at home his folks attempted to "beat him into shape." OWCH. That's an approach that doesn't work.

Willard has, however, one EXTREMELY VALID POINT. I think I raised before that some clinicians, some teachers, and some families tend to overreact to an Asperger's diagnosis. It's getting less common, but it's still out there and it's still a real threat-- especially as anxious as you seem right now. There is a tendency to kind of soft-hand the idea of "beating them into shape," which is to therapy, pathologize, and/or medicate the child half to death in an attempt to make them appear normal.

The problem with this approach is that they're NOT normal, and never will be-- and THAT IS NOT NECESSARILY A BAD THING. This over-reacting approach has a tendency to result in what I call "Broken Neurotypical Syndrome," or learning to associate "Asperger's" with "bad, bad, all bad, only bad." This causes of a wide range of issues (many of which are, in my view, more dangerous than Asperger's) like giving up on oneself, viewing oneself as a hopeless case, horrible self-esteem, high stress levels from trying too darn hard to act like everyone else, carrying around a lot of shame.

I have to fight with this "condition" all the time-- it manifests as things like self-hate, agoraphobia, generally giving up. My husband swears that it causes a lot more problems than Asperger's. I wouldn't be able to tell 'cause I'm caught in the throes of it, but based on the fact that I've had Asperger's since I was born and only really been a basket case since I had a lot of people overreact to that fact a few years ago (my war stories are all over WrongPlanet), I'd say he's right.

I reiterate, because it bears reiterating: THIS IS WHY YOU NEED TO NOT PANIC. There are ignorant people out there; there are also unscrupulous people out there. Case in point: The people who overpathologized me (and gave me something so like PTSD that my therapist refers to it as such in the process) have since been relieved of their jobs over a MASSIVE Medicaid/SSI-D fraud scandal. YOU are the only thing standing between him and those people; YOU (and luck, or God, or whatever) are the only thing that can stand between him and those people. YOU MUST BE CALM, AND KEEP YOUR COMMON SENSE CAP ON.

Thank you all for your insight,experience and feedback! I do really apologize if my post sounded like I was really panicking about this. What it comes down to is, am I crazy for thinking he may have Aspergers? And if he does, it's not that I want to fix him or cure him, it's more for me as someone here stated. It's for me in the sense that I will know why he behaves the way he does sometimes, so I don't punish him for just being a "bad kid" as other people like to label him. For example, we have a family member that once came over and was saying hello to him and because my son didn't look at him when he was saying hello back this family member called him rude and then tried to force my son to look at him. I was livid and this family member will never try that again needless to say. I don't ever do that to my son so why should anyone else? It's not that being diagnosed with Asperger's will excuse every behaviour, but it will help me to help him deal with his behaviours. I want to make use of every resource that's available for me to help him deal with behaviours he cannot control, like the meltdowns. I know he can't control these and sometimes after having a really bad one he will on his own come to me and apologize and say he is really sorry and didn't mean to . As for meds, I am not against other parents medicating their child, but it's not an option I'm willing to consider at this point. I have read that it is really hard to diagnose between ADHD, Asperger's, Anxiety and I have also read that a child can have all three and OCD. Whatever the case is with my son, I know he will be ok and he can still thrive in life and live a happy life because at the very least he has two loving parents who will do their best to do their part in helping him achieve all of this! We will continue to deal with this one day at a time, one step at a time.
Again, I'm sorry if I made it sound like I didn't want my son to have Asperger's or that knowing he had it would freak me out. That's not the case at all. Thank you for taking the time to reply to my post!
One more question, when your child or you were diagnosed with Asperger's, how did you explain this to family and friends, or did you find it not necessary to inform them?

As you describe, that as a baby he did normal eye contact, but started to "loose" that when he became a toddler.

The reasons for autism are still various, and according to actual knowledge its mostly a change in the brain, that can be caused by several reasons.

I remember someone in my german autistic forum discribing that very similar. She recognized, that the "badening" of the symptoms started as well, when she started to get him off breast milk and instead feeded him with normal babyfood. Her baby had no digestive problems or anything, but when she mentioned that the symptom started as well with the foodchange, she tried that typical non-gluten, non "milk-protein" (Do not mismention it with milk-sugar = lactose. There are various lactose free products, that still have milk protein in them.) diet. After about three months she could mention that the symtoms got better again. So her kid was still a little Aspie, but not that deep in the spectrum as before.

It made me curious that you mentioned your child doing eyecontact at the start, and then suddenly undoing it, which seems unnormal to me, because either you are able to get informations from eyecontact, then this will become better with further brain development, or you dont receive anything from it, but then you dont start with it.

Dont focus yourself to much on it, there can be various reasons and there are tons of people not reacting in anyway to that typical diet, but its worth a try if you think it might fit for you. (So more symptoms with foodchange.)


About the cloths: Just as you mentioned it with other sensory inputs and disturbances, autists can be very sensitive to as well skin-sensory disturbances. I would try to avoid tough clothing, as well as care that the sewing lines inside of the cloths are very soft. The less sewing lines, the better to wear. Best things in my oppinion are stuff like cozy joggers or trainings suits.

And yes, other people are often loud and disturbing. The world has become so much nicer, since I have some ear fitting noise cancellers. Because of him still growing, that will be yet not possible, but there are as well external noise protectors (look like headphones) that he might accept, and so could wear them, whenever he likes?

Thank you for your reply!

To be more specific about my sons eye contact...I was looking back at baby video's we have of him. In the videos I notice that when we would try to make him laugh or get his attention he would laugh and look at us and giggle and squeal. He did this until he was about 18-24 months old. Then when we would talk to him it's like he completely ignored us. I thougth he was just being rebellious and showing his terrible 2's. I even thought to get his hearing tested. His hearing was fine. He continued on like this. He will speak to you and look somewhere else. He will hug my husband and I it takes a huge effort when anyone else asks him for a hug. He will either run away or force himself to barely hug you.
Also, you mentioned the milk. He is lactose intolerant since he was a newborn. I started with breastfeeding and then had to stop due to an infection and we noticed he got very sick from the formula. We had to buy the most expensive kind that was completely lactose free. I will have to look further into this and other diet changes that may help him.