I could use some help,please,please,please

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Hello,
I could really use some help. I will give a little background and then get to my questions if you don't mind. I have a 16 year old son, who has been diagnosed with bipolar, but I am pretty sure we are also dealing with either high functioning autism or aspergers. I have two younger children on the spectrum one, age 7, high functioning autism and a 2 1/2 year old diagnosed with autistic spectrum disorder. I could go on and on about the difficulties of trying to get help and services for them in rural Virginia, but that won't help and it will just get me frustrated,lol. So far I have been able to get my 16 yr. old into a psychologist who is very good. She is who diagnosed him with bipolar, but she is far away, so we also have a cognitive behavioral therapist that is local. When I talk to professionals about him they immeadiately say...Aspergers, but when they meet him they say, No, I don't think so. This is what happened with the psychologist and initially with the cognotive therapist. However after seeing the cognitive therapist regularly he(the therspist) says there is definitely something going on that acts like aspergers or autism. I do have another appointment with the psychologist to see if she sees this as well and will finally tell me what is going on. I'm sorry this is so jumbled up, but I am at my wits end.

OK, so now my questions.
Now everything you read and hear says that kids with aspergers act in a certain way.....you know, very stiff, unemotional, bookworms...that stuff, but I know with my other kids that people seem to think if you say my child has autism they picture a child sitting in a corner and rocking and that is not true either. So tell me about your teens, please. Can my son still be aspergers if he doesn't fit that stereotype?

You see my son is kind of a mix between a punk rocker and a baby,lol. He is extremely intelligent, taught himself to play guitar ( very good), reads at an advanced level, extremely ridgid in thought and routine (almost OCD), every new thing in his life becomes an obsession ( must research it and know everything), he is artistic(has talent), He dresses in clothes that resemble a grunge type rocker ( but will only wear shorts), he has extreme sensory integration issues, he has violent out bursts and tantrums when plans are changed or things don't go his way, he cannot see anything from another person's point of view, and he still holds onto some behaviors (not all bad) that I would put at about a ten year old level or from when he was very young. Now I know some of this stuff can be just teenage behavior, but add this to the main concerns to follow and to me it adds up to more.

One of the big differences to me seems to be the academic side of things. Most say Aspies are straight A students, but he is failing in school, he has trouble with math, but he could easily excel in all other subjects, but says he can't learn the way they teach him. Comments like, "I can't learn when the teacher talks at me and there is all this other stuff going on in the room, so I go to sleep". He seems to have no empathy for people. He cannot see anything from the other point of view. He doesn't understand that when he says what he feels, he might hurt someones feelings. He comes across as being extremely self centered. An example would be when I injured my eye ( not a good thing because I am blind in the other) and needed to go to the ER and his response was "Great, I guess I will be watching the kids for the day", not Mom, I hope you're ok. Then there is the social side of life. He has never been able to keep friends if he is lucky enough to make them in the first place. He always says or does something that gets them mad and they are gone. It was bad enough when he was young, but now that he can verbalize everything I hear heartbreaking stories of confusion. He tells me alot that he doesn't want to keep trying to make friends or have girlfriends because it is just too hard. He actually said to me, "It's like everyone else knows something that I don't, I just don't get it." He says school is like a huge social event and he has to work so hard just to get through the day that he can't stand it. He calls me on my cell phone to ask questions about stuff that should just come naturally. An example is when he called me and asked, "Why do people cry when they hear certain songs?", I explained it to him and then not thinking said, it's kind of like "tears of joy". His reply was," Oh Great; I don't get that either." I have been helping with social situations since he was young, explaining why kids would want to just chase each other around on the playground, and telling him he cannot script out every minute of play or no one will want to play with him.
So I do not have the amazing academic whiz kid, I do not have the bookworm, I do not have the geek, I have a very sad and confused 16 year old that I cannot help without some answers as to what I am dealing with. Let me hear from you and tell me what you experience with your kids and better yet let me hear from the Aspies and high function autistics that blow the stereotypes away. I really feel that he is on the autistic spectrum, could I be that wrong? Please help me understand more before we go back to the psychologist.

Sounds like an Aspie to me, all right. It's a myth that Aspies are all great students. Many of us have a great deal of trouble with school, no matter how intelligent or academically capable we may be. Schools are NOT designed for people with Asperger's Syndrome or HFA. There are countless ways in which the autistic spectrum clashes with the school environment. Some of us even end up dropping out or being expelled before finishing high school.

I, for one, was a straight-A student for much of elementary school (although I was never good with math). Once I got to high school, my grades started to drop. They got lower and lower every year. It baffled my parents and teachers, because I would occasionally demonstrate my intelligence by overachieving in a class or subject area that piqued my interest and became an obsession. High school demanded good executive functioning, which I do not have and cannot muster. It demanded flexibility, a thick skin, good social skills, varied interests and a capacity for excessive sensory input. It can be an overwhelming environment for anyone, and it can be a whole new level of Hell for an Aspie.

Thank you for replying so quickly. That's what I keep thinking, how is he supposed to learn when every drop of energy is being used to try and be "normal".

Definate Aspie. I doubt he is even Bi Polar. (I was miss diagnosed BP. I think many Aspies show signs of BP. There is a thread here somewhere with a quiz that rates how BP you are. Most of us show that we "are". There are many reasons for this I think, that I can't get into. I doubt many Aspies actually are. they just share a similar profile with BP's.

You are dealing with some very hard core old stereo types of Autism and Asperger's. Really, you need to stop, and do some real routing for the right info and reform your opinions.

I don't have much time as I have hogged the computer all morning and my 12 year old needs some down time with it and will kill me if I am not off in 5 mintues, but please stay here, look around, and keep asking questions until you get this all sorted out!

I can though refer tyou to this thread for starters, there is a really really good discription posted on it in a white box, that should be your "start".

http://www.wrongplanet.net/modules.php? ... ight=write

I was misdiagnosed bipolar too.

The best description of Asperger's I've ever found:

http://asdgestalt.com/viewtopic.php?p=16830#16830

Last edited by Esperanza on 31 Mar 2007, 10:14 am, edited 1 time in total.

Dead ringer for me. he may have an LD too. Look into that.

I flunked 2nd grade. I was sent to a remedial private school for LD. Learned alot, although my mother blamed it for causing social skills problems, as it was a tank of "weidro's". (fellow aspies?)

With remedial help, learning how to learn, I sored to the top of the class. In college, my director told me I was the only one she would give a positive reference for! Although I always continued to struggle with courses that did not interest me.

My son flunked Kindergarden, put into grade 1, flunked, grade 2, flunked. Was going to be placed in grade 3. I told them enough, repeat grade 2. Started too. Still flunking. Pulled him out, homeschooled him. now back, without the right accomidations, D student. We do 2 hours of homework every night just to "teach" him what he can't learn in school. He pulled off the best report card ever, he got 6 B's, 7 C's, and 1 D! WoW!!

All Aspies are not extreamly intellegent. As long as his IQ is over 70, he could be Aspie. If it is over 90, very likely. This is "average" not "Mensa".

Aspies also can't demonstrate their full potential on IQ tests, so they do poorly and appear not that bright. Additionally, problems in school or coping with acedemics are VERY VERY common, due to not being able to process the instructions or information in the manner taught. Even without an LD.

I was also misdiagnosed BP. I think that is very common with aspies. I actually wonder if Aspies, who are missdiagnosed have not swayed the "symptoms" of BP. Is is possible being missdiagnosed, we have corrupted the BP diagnosis criteria? I was on med a year. Did not help. Off them, no difference. I suffer from an Emotional dysfunction. Common in Aspies, maybe cause of the Asperger's itself, we have such a hard time regualting sensory input/ output , why not emotions too? Also found in Borderline personalities and people suffering from Complex post traumatic stress. Perhaps a negative experiance with the outside world leads to this? Eventually we just can't function emotionally anymore? considering how much emotions play into socialization, that seems likely to me too.

Check out this link, you need to get through the stereotypes and get to some hard core help. Please stay here, and read read read. You will learn a lot.
http://www.wrongplanet.net/modules.php? ... ight=write

Last edited by EarthCalling on 31 Mar 2007, 10:17 am, edited 1 time in total.

I'm no doctor, but this to me is pure Aspergers. Nothing at all you wrote indicates bipolar to me!! I could relate to every single one of his experiences that you describe. Bipolar has to do with dramatic mood swings with no known cause, not temper tantrums born of overwhelming frustration!! Aspergers is so completely frustrating, because it pervades every single thing we try to do, all day and every day. From the time we get up to the time we go to bed, we struggle to keep up with the world, cognitively, physically, socially, you name it!! Everything is twice as hard for us, with the exception of the areas in which we may be gifted, the way your son is with music. School can be an absolute nightmare, and the myth of the aspie straight-A student is probably just that - a myth. I think people often confuse "aspie" with "nerd," and that's just not the case. I noticed quickly in high school that even nerds fit it well with other nerds and with teachers!! I didn't fit in with anyone!! And he's telling you he feels the same way. Please get him to a professional who's an Asperger expert!! Don't let anyone talk you into doping him up when that's not his problem!! I don't usually get too emotional about anything, but this really makes me feel sad. He's clearly trying so hard to figure himself out, and to understand why he doesn't have the emotional reactions that other people do. That just breaks my heart, because he sounds like an outstanding young man! Please find some way to get him into counseling with a bona-fide Asperger expert, so that he can learn that there's nothing at all "wrong" with the way he is, and so he can learn self-esteem, stress-management, and communication skills. If you'd like to discuss this further, please feel free to send me a personal message. I wish you both the best of luck!!

My 14yo son had ADHD dx and possible bipolar/tourettes before he was dx with asperger's at 12. Your son sounds alot like mine in his academic skills.

I don't know how IQ got to be associated with level of functioning. The IQ test only measures the potential academic achievement in school, it's not a predictor of success in life. I know several "gifted" people who can't even hold a menial job. I wouldn't call that high functioning!


IQ Test: Where Does It Come From and
What Does It Measure?
BY JAN STRYDOM, M.A., H.E.D., D.Ed. &
SUSAN DU PLESSIS, B.D., B.A. Hons (psychology)



The most important criterion in diagnosing a child as learning disabled is the IQ test. The aim of an IQ test is to measure the intelligence of a child, which supposedly is an indication of the child's potential. But where does the test come from and does it really measure potential?

Intelligence testing began in earnest in France, when in 1904 psychologist Alfred Binet was commissioned by the French government to find a method to differentiate between children who were intellectually normal and those who were inferior. The purpose was to put the latter into special schools where they would receive more individual attention. In this way the disruption they caused in the education of intellectually normal children could be avoided.1

This led to the development of the Binet Scale, also known as the Simon-Binet Scale in recognition of Theophile Simon's assistance in its development. It constituted a revolutionary approach to the assessment of individual mental ability. However, Binet himself cautioned against misuse of the scale or misunderstanding of its implications. According to Binet, the scale was designed with a single purpose in mind; it was to serve as a guide to identify children in the schools who required special education. Its intention was not to be used as “a general device for ranking all pupils according to mental worth.” Binet also noted that “the scale, properly speaking, does not permit the measure of intelligence, because intellectual qualities are not superposable, and therefore cannot be measured as linear surfaces are measured.”2 Since, according to Binet, intelligence could not be described as a single score, the use of the Intelligence Quotient (IQ) as a definite statement of a child's intellectual capability would be a serious mistake. In addition, Binet feared that IQ measurement would be used to condemn a child to a permanent “condition” of stupidity, thereby negatively affecting his or her education and livelihood:

Some recent thinkers…[have affirmed] that an individual's intelligence is a fixed quantity, a quantity that cannot be increased. We must protest and react against this brutal pessimism; we must try to demonstrate that it is founded on nothing.3

Binet's scale had a profound impact on educational development in the United States — and elsewhere. However, the American educators and psychologists who championed and utilized the scale and its revisions failed to heed Binet's caveats concerning its limitations. Soon intelligence testing assumed an importance and respectability out of proportion to its actual value.

H. H. Goddard, director of research at Vineland Training School in New Jersey, translated Binet's work into English and advocated a more general application of the Simon-Binet Scale.4 Unlike Binet, Goddard considered intelligence a solitary, fixed and inborn entity that could be measured.5

While Goddard extolled the value and uses of the single IQ score, Lewis M. Terman, who also believed that intelligence was hereditary and fixed, worked on revising the Simon-Binet Scale. His final product, published in 1916 as the Stanford Revision of the Binet-Simon Scale of Intelligence (also known as the Stanford-Binet), became the standard intelligence test in the United States for the next several decades.6 Once American educators had been convinced of the need for universal intelligence testing, and the efficiency it could contribute to school programming, within a few years,

the Simon-Binet Scale, originally designed for identification of children requiring special instructional attention, was transformed into an integral, far-reaching component of the American educational structure. Through Goddard's and Terman's efforts the notion that intelligence tests were accurate, scientific, and valuable tools for bringing efficiency to the schools resulted in assigning the IQ score an almost exalted position as a primary, definitive, and permanent representation of the quality of an individual. Hence, intelligence testing became entrenched in the schools over the next several decades.7

Few people realize that the tests being used today — of which the IQ test continues to be the most popular — represent the end result of a historical process that has its origins in racial and cultural bigotry. Many of the founding fathers of the modern testing industry — including Goddard, Terman and Carl Brighan (the developer of the Scholastic Aptitude Test) — advocated eugenics.8 Eugenics is a movement concerned with the selective breeding of human beings. Selected human beings would be mated with each other in an attempt to obtain certain traits in their offspring, much the same way that animal breeders work with champion stock. The eventual goal of eugenics is to create a better human race. The Nazis took this idea to the extreme. All “inferior” humans, especially Jews, ret*d children or adults, and any individuals with genetic defects, were to be destroyed; and so many ill and ret*d people, and many Jews, were killed during World War II.9

The founding fathers of the testing industry saw testing as one way of achieving the eugenicist aims. Goddard's belief in the innateness and inalterability of intelligence levels, for example, was so firm that he argued for the reconstruction of society along the lines dictated by IQ scores:

If mental level plays anything like the role it seems to, and if in each human being it is the fixed quantity that many believe it is, then it is no useless speculation that tries to see what would happen if society were organized so as to recognize and make use of the doctrine of mental levels… It is quite possible to restate practically all of our social problems in terms of mental level… Testing intelligence is no longer an experiment or of doubted value. It is fast becoming an exact science… Greater efficiency, we are always working for. Can these new facts be used to increase our efficiency? No question! We only await the Human Engineer who will undertake the work.10

As a result of his views on intelligence and society, Goddard lobbied for restrictive immigration laws. Upon his “discovery” that all immigrants, except those from Northern Europe, were of “surprisingly low intelligence;” such tight immigration laws were enacted in the 1920s.11 According to Harvard professor Steven Jay Gould in his acclaimed book The Mismeasure of Man, these tests were also influential in legitimizing forced sterilization of allegedly “defective” individuals in some states.12

By the 1920s mass use of the Stanford-Binet Scale and other tests had created a multimillion-dollar testing industry.13 By 1974, according to the Mental Measurements Yearbook, 2,467 tests measuring some form of intellectual ability were in print, 76 of which were identified as strict intelligence tests.14 In one year in the 1980s, teachers gave over 500 million standardized tests to children and adults across the United States.15 In 1989 the American Academy for the Advancement of Science listed the IQ test among the twenty most significant scientific discoveries of the twentieth century along with nuclear fission, DNA, the transistor and flight.16 Patricia Broadfoot's dictum that “assessment, far more than religion, has become the opiate of the people,”17 has come of age.

So What are We Actually Measuring?
If an IQ test is supposed to measure a person's intelligence, the question is: What is intelligence? Is it the ability to do well in school? Is it the ability to read well and spell correctly? Or are the following people intelligent?

The physician who smokes three packets of cigarettes a day?

The Nobel Prize winner whose marriage and personal life are in ruins?

The corporate executive who has ingeniously worked his way to the top and also earned a heart attack for his efforts?

The brilliant and successful music composer who handled his money so poorly that he was always running from his creditors (incidentally, his name was Mozart)?18

The problem is that the term intelligence has never been defined adequately and therefore nobody knows what an IQ test is supposed to measure. In spite of this the futures of thousands of children are determined by the results of this test.

Already in the early 1920s the journalist Walter Lippmann maintained that IQ tests were nothing but a series of stunts. “We cannot measure intelligence when we have not defined it,” he said.19

In 1962 Banesh Hoffman told a shocked America about the “tyranny of testing” in his classic book of the same name. His book and others that followed stirred up much controversy, leading the National Education Association in 1976 to recommend the elimination of group standardized intelligence, aptitude, and achievement tests.20 Sarason quotes an advertisement that was placed by Psychology Today in the New York Times in August 1979, part of which appears below:

In the chaos of controversy, the standard IQ exam is flunking the test. Many educational psychologists feel that IQ testers have failed to answer two all-important questions: What is intelligence? What have IQ tests actually measured?

The National Education Association, with membership of almost 2 million teachers, has called for the abolition of standardized intelligence tests because they are “at best wasteful, and at worst, destructive.”

Yale psychologist Robert Sternberg says in P.T. that psychologists know “almost nothing about what it is that they have been measuring. The tests have proved overall to have only low to moderate power to predict such things as future job performance, income and status, or overall happiness and adjustment.”21

However, the dust soon settled after this uprising and the testing industry became more powerful than ever. The National Education Association has completely changed its stand and now “recognizes the need for periodic comprehensive testing for evaluation and diagnosis of student progress.”22 This is no wonder, says Dr. Thomas Armstrong, since it would have taken a major miracle to eliminate testing.23

Today, voices for the elimination of standardized tests are few. One is Linda S. Siegel, professor in the Department of Educational Psychology and Special Education at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada. She proposes that we abandon the IQ test in the analysis of the LD child. According to most definitions — although they are not conclusive — intelligence is made up of the skills of logical reasoning, problem solving, critical thinking, and adaptation.24 This scenario seems reasonable, until one examines the content of IQ tests. The definition of intelligence, as is operationalized in all IQ tests, includes virtually no skills that can be identified in terms of the definitions of intelligence. To support her statement, Siegel gives a detailed analysis of the subtests of the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children-Revised (WISC-R). This IQ test is composed of Verbal and Performance sections, and is nearly always used in LD diagnosis. In each subtest of the Verbal scale, performance is in varying degrees dependent on specific knowledge, vocabulary, expressive language and memory skills, while in the Performance scale, visual-spatial abilities, fine motor coordination, perceptual skills, and in some subtests speed, are essential for scoring.25 As Siegel rightly points out, IQ tests measure, for the most part, what a person has learned, not what he or she is capable of doing in the future (his potential).26

There is an additional problem in the use of IQ tests with individuals with learning disabilities. According to Siegel it is a paradox that IQ scores are required of people with LD because most of these persons have deficiencies in one or more of the component skills that are part of these IQ tests — memory, language, fine motor skills, et cetera. The effect is that they may end up having a lower IQ score than a person who does not have such problems, even though they may both have identical reasoning and problem-solving skills. The lower IQ score, therefore, may be a result of the learning disability, and IQ scores may underestimate the real intelligence of the individual with a learning disability.27

Another assumption of the discrepancy definition is that the IQ score should predict reading, so that if you have a low IQ score you should be a poor reader and that poor reading is an expected consequence of low IQ. However, there are individuals who have low IQ scores and are good readers.28

The unreliability of IQ tests has been proved by numerous researchers. The scores may vary by as much as 15 points from one test to another,29 while emotional tension, anxiety, and unfamiliarity with the testing process can greatly affect test performance.30 In addition, Gould described the biasing effect that tester attitudes, qualifications, and instructions can have on testing.31 In one study, for example, ninety-nine school psychologists independently scored an IQ test from identical records, and came up with IQs ranging from 63 to 117 for the same person.32

In another study, Ysseldyke et al. examined the extent to which professionals were able to differentiate learning-disabled students from ordinary low achievers by examining patterns of scores on psychometric measures. Subjects were 65 school psychologists, 38 special-education teachers, and a “naive” group of 21 university students enrolled in programs unrelated to education or psychology. Provided with forms containing information on 41 test or subtest scores (including the WISC-R IQ test) of nine school-identified LD students and nine non-LD students, judges were instructed to indicate which students they believed were learning disabled and which were non-learning disabled.33

The school psychologists and special-education teachers were able to differentiate between LD students and low achievers with only 50 percent accuracy. The naive judges, who had never had more than an introductory course in education or psychology, evidenced a 75 percent hit rate.34 When Ysseldyke and Algozzine cite Scriven, they clearly show their belief that the current system is in trouble:

The pessimist says that a 12 ounce glass containing 6 ounces of drink is half empty — the optimist calls it half full. I can't say what I think the pessimist could say about research and practice in special education at this point, but I think the optimist could say that we have a wonderful opportunity to start all over!35


Notes:

Swiegers, D. J., & Louw, D. A., “Intelligensie,” in D. A. Louw (ed.), Inleiding tot die Psigologie (2nd ed.), (Johannesburg: McGraw Hill, 1982), 145.

Gould, S. J., The Mismeasure of Man (New York: W. W. Norton, 1981), 151-152, cited in Osgood, “Intelligence testing and the field of learning disabilities: A historical and critical perspective,” Learning Disability Quarterly, 1984, vol. 7, 343-348.

Gould, The Mismeasure of Man, 153-154, cited in Osgood, “Intelligence testing.”

Gould, The Mismeasure of Man, 159, cited in Osgood, “Intelligence testing.”

Goddard, H. H., Human Efficiency and Levels of Intelligence (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1920), 1, cited in Osgood, “Intelligence testing.”

Linden, K. W., & Linden, J. D., Modern Mental Measurement: A Historical Perspective (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1968), cited in Osgood, “Intelligence testing.”

Osgood, “Intelligence testing.”

Armstrong, T., In Their Own Way: Discovering and Encouraging Your Child's Personal Learning Style (Los Angeles: Jeremy P. Tarcher, Inc., 1987), 27.

Dworetzky, J. P., Introduction to Child Development (St. Paul: West Publishing Company, 1981), 82-83.

Goddard, Human Efficiency and Levels of Intelligence, v-vii, cited in Osgood, “Intelligence testing.”

Gould, The Mismeasure of Man, 167, cited in Osgood, “Intelligence testing.”

Gould, The Mismeasure of Man, cited in Armstrong, In Their Own Way, 28.

Osgood, “Intelligence testing.”

Buros, O. K. (ed.), Mental Measurements Yearbook (Highland Park, NJ: Gryphon Press), cited in Osgood, “Intelligence testing.”

Armstrong, In Their Own Way, 27.

Bjorklund, D. F., Children's Thinking: Development Function and Individual Differences (Pacific Grove, CA: Brookes/Cole, 1989), cited in P. Engelbrecht, S. Kriegler & M. Booysen (eds.), Perspectives on Learning Difficulties (Pretoria: J. L. van Schaik, 1996), 109.

Broadfoot, P., cited in Engelbrecht et al. (eds.), Perspectives on Learning Difficulties, 109.

Dworetzky, Introduction to Child Development, 348.

Lippman, cited in N. J Block & G. Dworkin (eds.), The IQ Controversy: Critical Readings (New York: Pantheon Books, 1976).

Armstrong, In Their Own Way, 26.

New York Times, August 1979, cited in S. B. Sarason, Psychology Misdirected (New York: The Free Press, 1981).

National Education Association Handbook, 1984-85 (Washington, DC: National Education Association of the United States, 1984, 240), cited in Armstrong, In Their Own Way, 27.

Armstrong, In Their Own Way, 27.

Siegel, L. S., “Issues in the definition and diagnosis of learning disabilities: A perspective on Guckenberger v. Boston University,” Journal of Learning Disabilities, 1 July 1999, vol. 32.

Siegel, L. S., “IQ is irrelevant to the definition of learning disabilities,” Journal of Learning Disabilities, 1989, vol. 22(8), 469-478.

Siegel, “Issues in the definition and diagnosis of learning disabilities.”

Ibid; Siegel, “IQ is irrelevant to the definition of learning disabilities.”

Siegel, L. S., & Metsala, E., “An alternative to the food processor approach to subtypes of learning disabilities,” in N. N. Singh & I. L. Beale (eds.), Learning Disabilities: Nature, Theory, and Treatment (New York: Springler-Verlag, 1992), 45.

Smith, C. R., Learning Disabilities: The Interaction of Learner, Task, and Setting (Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 1991), 63.

Tyler, cited in A. Anastasi, (ed.), Testing Problems in Perspective (Washington DC: American Council on Education, 1966).

Gould, The Mismeasure of Man, 199-212, cited in Osgood, “Intelligence testing.”

Cited in J. Sattler, Assessment of Children's Intelligences and Special Abilities (Boston: Allyn & Bacon, 1982), 60.

Epps, S., Ysseldyke, J. E., & McGue, M., “'I know one when I see one'—Differentiating LD and non-LD students,” Learning Disability Quarterly, 1984, vol. 7, 89-101.

Ysseldyke, J. E., & Algozzine, B., “LD or not LD: That's not the question!” Journal of Learning Disabilities, 1983, vol. 16(1), 26-27.

Scriven, M., “Comments on Gene Glass,” Paper presented at the Wingspread National Invitational Conference on Public Policy and the Special Education Task of the 1980s, cited in Ysseldyke & Algozzine, “LD or not LD.”

Sounds very much like my daughter who is dx'ed with PDD-NOS. It is also called Non Verbal Learning Disability. She also has a math LD which is typical of NLD and not so much for AS. She's nothing like my AS son whose social disabilities are much more pronounced while his academic abilities are more enhanced.

Good info on NLD here:

http://www.nldontheweb.org/about_nld.htm

The trend these days is to group everything everything under AS. I think that is confusing in that many people with the label aren't anything like Dr. Asperger's group of children. I also think the NLD label is misleading and describes the person on the spectrum who doesn't fit the "classic" subtypes of autism or AS. They're attempting to put NLD outside the spectrum.

Can I suggest letting HIM see this site and post here so that he can understand that he is not some kind of freak?? He sounds like a totally normal aspy to me. If he understands that he is different to "normal" people but by NO MEANS handicapped he can learn to cope, if only to make HIS life easier.

I wasn't diagnosed till about the age of 44 so you see it is possible to go all through life and survive without labels and medications IMO.. Sometimes it seems that the overdiagnosis and overtreatment is a worse problem for people.

Wow does that sum it up!

My mother always accused me of throwing "tantrums" or only developing a problem when I did not get what I wanted... I could not even put into words what I was feeling, especially "in the moment". But I knew I was not doing it to be manipulative or selfish...

Yes, there is no way you can describe the feelings of panic and frustration you experience when something unexpected happens that interferes with your routine! I just couldn't shift gears like other kids, and I would absolutely lose it! My dad and grandmother could never understand these outbursts, but they knew they were related to changes in my routine, my food, or interference with my special interests. They could tell, as this mother can with her son, that I wasn't a "brat" who was mad because I wasn't getting my way. My meltdowns were so severe and so unrelated to moodiness that they knew something else was going on. It's definitely not your average tantrum, as anyone who's gone through one or witnessed one can attest!

I agree that he sounds 100% aspie, and that the bipolar diagnosis sounds questionable. Depression in aspies is common, "meltdowns" are common, and getting obsessively interested in something might be mistaken for a touch of mania. Some of us are geeks, but the stereotypes are mostly inaccurate, AS is one of those "buffet" sort of diagnoses where you get to pick one or two traits from this category, one or two from that category, and so on. It's a whole, huge range of possibilities. And misdiagnoses have been common, as AS hasn't been very well known until recently. People got hit with labels like OCD + Tourette's + ADD, when really they were just aspies. Bipolar is another common misdiagnosis.

Anyway, good luck with the new diagnosis, I hope & trust that it will be more accurate than the last one.

Can only answer for myself. I have a very average intelligence, even though I sometimes can seem to others as a genius, I still lack several important areas. I have managed to learn several languages not knowing how, and I still can't do simply head multiplications without thinking very hard. School flaked out seriously when I was 16 and I suddenly no longer found it interesting.

I'm 36 and have very serious trouble just remembering to take my prescribed medications, and remember to take a shower. My college grades is about 1- (french) 1- (math) 1- (english) and so on on a scale of zero to five. But my honest approach to others has also helped me with life, I am partly Forrest Gump, Partly Einstein...

Only reason I stayed in school was because I couldn't stand my parents by then, pubertal with a body full of hormones bouncing around. My 11y elder brother gave me the best 14 year gift I've ever recieved, a full stack of NE555 with the NE555 applications reference manual. That probably saved my life by then. Suddenly I wasn't considered odd, I was accepted. I ended up even attending his courses in technical physics university studies and got access to a electronics lab that was a wet dream least to say at age 15. I liked the formal way of approach in university and got to understand a lot of the older students in ways of pranks and so on, but they also had the sensibility of that I was 10 years younger.

I'm having a hard time learning to live alone, not having anybody telling me what to do and how to do it. I have small spreadsheets taped up everywhere in my apartment to remember what to do, and when to do things. Otherwise I'd forget to take my life essential EP medications or forget to eat, because I don't feel hunger, just a feeling of it's time to eat.

It sounds to me, according to my experiences and references, as a AS problem. As long as you explain what has happened, even in extreme cases, the most logical selection of things is chosen and nothing more with that.

i remember the frustation of getting my son dx-ed.....we went through so many dx-es by so many different docs...ADD,ODD,MPD, Bipolar, etc, etc, etc.............it took a LONG time to get him the dx of Aspergers because everyone saw him as "an enigma"~ in some categories he just didn't fit the classical symptoms.
even with all the different alternate dx-es, we treated our son as if he had aspergers~because we were certain that this was the case.......

I've got a high IQ and I had a hard time in high school math. I just thought it was boring.
Then, I grew up and found all kinds of ways that I needed to use math, and when I had practical uses for it, I can be pretty good at it.

I need math to figure out how much fabric to get to make a quilt, or to adjust a knitting pattern to the right size. It's useful at work too, I frequently catch computer errors because the numbers just aren't right. Math on it's own bores me, but math as a tool to do fun stuff is great. The problem I had with math class was that it was just numbers on paper, not being used for anything.

Are there many punks in your area? I've had an easier time fitting in and making friends in subcultures than in mainstream culture. Punks are especially tolerant of differences, there are very few social rules amoung punks, and if he knows a lot about the music and the history, that can be very helpful with making friends.

I've heard that lots of male Aspies have trouble getting dates. I'm female, so it was never a problem- I have TITS, and most guys wouldn't notice if I didn't make eye contact, because they weren't looking at my face. Girls are more complicated, so it's harder for boys.

Get him on here! It really helps to feel like you aren't alone.