Is it possible to be different without having Asperger's?

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Hello everyone - I wanted to ask the opinion of people in this community about my 5-year-old daughter, particularly those who have a child who is NT as well as one with AS. Briefly, the school psychologist, who met her once and saw a teacher's rating scale, suggested that she might have Asperger's Syndrome. I don't think she does.

I've looked at a couple of diagnostic tools. She meets some criteria, but not others. Mostly, she has trouble socializing - she doesn't know how to enter into a situation where kids are already playing something. She hugs people a lot, I think as a way of compensating for not knowing what to say. So this constitutes a check-box on the tool: developmental delays in socialization. However, when I take her into a new situation outside of school, she is seen by adults as polite and articulate, even charming. When I take her to visit other kids one-on-one, she relates well to the other children - they will play quite naturally together, share ideas and activities without arguing or being too bossy, etc. But of course, her teacher and the psychologist haven't seen this.

My daughter's teacher notes "lack of eye contact" on an assessment sheet, and "lack of understanding of personal space." However, since my daughter is often trying to get out of activities she doesn't want to do (circle time, especially), she is frequently under pressure. When children are being scolded, we often see parents demanding that the child "look at me." I would have guessed that she is feeling scolded, and turns away like any kid would. I do notice that she makes briefer eye contact with me than my son does, but then again, I am often busy, and don't look her in the eyes. So I think she finds it a little weird when I'm suddenly looking her straight in the face, as if I'm about to scold her. Not to mention that to this day my husband prefers not to make too much direct eye contact, as he finds it too intense. My father has similar feelings. Both appear in all respects to have normal brain function. So I suspect this is a case of natural variation, particularly since most of the other diagnostic criteria of AS do not seem to apply.

As for personal space, my daughter has never been very physically affectionate. She is very busy, wanting to read, work on art projects, or help out in the kitchen. She seems to behave quite similarly to the other children in most situations, for example, when getting dressed in the cloakroom. She doesn't get in people's way, talk too loudly, or lean in to people. I can only assume that the "personal space" issue the teacher is seeing is her habit of hugging people - but I don't think it's that far out to think that she has learned that hugging people generally meets with positive feedback, because up until she started kindergarten, it always has. But the psychologist's interpretation is clearly that since other kids don't do it, or don't do it as much, my daughter has developmental delays - at least, given that she doesn't have many other skills at her disposal. The instincts that the other kids have aren't there for her, so she seems to be learning by experimentation what works and what doesn't - more or less the same way I operated as a kid.

The other major criteria in the diagnostic tools I have seen - lack of empathy/understanding of facial expressions, physical awkwardness, obsessive, narrow interests, and concrete language use, don't really seem to apply to my daughter, from what I can see.

Empathy: I can change her attitude about something by making a face. She tries to take care of me when I'm feeling sick. She congratulates people for having success. She writes birthday cards for others. She sometimes wants to hurt others, when she is angry or feeling attacked (there is a boy at school who is physically aggressive toward her and encourages her to "do bad things"). She got very upset at the thought that I missed her when I was away for a while, because she didn't want me to be sad. She can describe both her own feelings and those of others with clarity and depth.

Physical activity: My daughter can throw and kick balls, though not with the adeptness I've seen in some other kids. On the other hand, she can climb very well, and dance. She can strike an elegant pose for a camera. She can write clearly and has been able to draw human faces and figures since before she was 3. She does have the impulse to move things around with her feet when she's eating or waiting for something. However, my husband showed the same behaviour as a child, and there is no reason to believe he is on the autism spectrum. I remember being fidgety myself. In fact, it seems like a stereotypical feature of children's physical behaviour that they often can't sit still. So I'm not inclined to view this kind of behaviour as unusual. However, her teacher seemed to be concerned that she saw my daughter spinning around on the playground, and shovelling sand into a garbage can. I had thought that just enjoying moving around was normal kid behaviour - I know I spent time spinning in circles as a kid, and so did my friends. And since there is only one small climbing gym on the playground, and no sand toys, I'm not sure what it is they're expecting her to do, seeing as she has difficulties approaching her peers.

Interests: My daughter has a wide range of interests, mostly in facts, but also in characters and stories. She does accumulate a lot of information, so maybe this is a flag. Again, my husband showed the same tendency, and so did I, to a certain degree. In any case, I wouldn't call her interests obsessive, narrow, or overly concrete. She shows no particular affinity for numbers, though she has math skills that are more advanced than those of her peers. She was described by the psychologist as "rigid" and "non-spontaneous" because she didn't want to move on to a new activity before she finished what she was doing. But on the other hand, she is always coming up with new projects that she wants to do and attempting to carry them out right away. I find I can usually get her to stop what she is doing as long as I promise that she'll have the chance to finish it later. Despite wanting to know what is planned for the day (as did my husband as a child), my daughter dislikes rigid routines, and wants the chance to follow her interests as they arise. So I don't think that the "need for routine" diagnostic really applies here, either.

Language: As for her language use, I can't say it strikes me as odd in any way. I can see how others might find it odd, though, since she sometimes makes reference to things she's read in books, assuming that the listener has read the same thing. Just as often, however, she will review the context of something she found funny before she gets to the punch line. She doesn't repeat herself when she's telling me about something she's thinking about, but she does get a little bit stuck on things that upset her sometimes - for example, one time she wouldn't stop trying to get me to change my mind about a decision. She does sometimes speak a little more hesitantly with unfamiliar people, but she seems alert to the cues we give as parents regarding whether someone is to be trusted - so if we take her to the home of a friend and act relaxed, she is much more at ease and natural with the adults there than she is in institutional environments when new people arrive (e.g., in community activity centres).

To me, my daughter lacks some of the social instincts that the kids around her have, but so did I as a kid, as well as my husband, and many functional adults we know today. I recall being physically affectionate (though with the boys, not with the girls, like my daughter is), even though I was sometimes rejected, and having trouble understanding how to talk to other kids (they didn't seem to understand what I said). Like her father, my daughter doesn't like group activities (unless they are doing something she enjoys, such as art) and lacks respect for authority until the authority figure has either shown affection or assigned adequate consequences to misbehaviour.

So she represents a behavioural challenge - there's no doubt about that. But I worry that a misdiagnosis of a true neurological disorder would have a very negative impact on a "normal" child. The school psychologist told me flat out (as I said, based on a single meeting and one rating scale) that my daughter will never grow out of her social difficulties, and that interventions are required - that is, there is something seriously wrong with her because she doesn't want to sit quietly and repeat rote lessons with the other kids concerning things she learned months or even years ago (it's a French immersion school, and my daughter is already basically bilingual while the other kids are just starting out in French), and because, like me and my husband, she relates better to adults than to other kids her own age. I'm upset because the school and psychologist seem determined to pathologize my daughter, despite the fact that they are sitting across from two ostensibly neurotypical adults who showed the same traits as kids.

Sorry for the long post - I just wanted to see what people's reactions are. How can social awkwardness be distinguished from Asperger's? And if it can't be, what does it say about Asperger's as a syndrome? I must admit I am sympathetic to the idea that Asperger's be viewed as a difference rather than a disease - I also suspect that it does no justice to people who have Asperger's if we throw everyone who deviates from the norm into that category.

Thanks for reading.