New Parent looking for advice/opinion

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Hi All. I'm new to this site. My son is 10 years old and is currently being assessed for AS.

So far, all I have heard is that his cognitive profile is atypical.

He's a lovely little boy, very affectionate, great eye contact, clever - not gifted. He hasn't got a huge amount of signs, sure he has his obsessive interests (which change every year or so) - the main thing is that he cannot seem to relate to his peers. He prefers to spend time with adults, or on his own doing his own thing. He wants to have friends, but doesn;t know how to play properly or has no interest in playing games that involve imagination. he might go out to play with a child, but it last about 5 minutes before a huge row breaks out... His school says he does not mix well with other children and ''appears more sophisticated''.
Any childcare I have used (while at work) has been fine as long as no other children were there. Perfect 1:1 but if there are other kids, its just never worked out.

As a baby he was a head banger. he didn;t do imaginary play then either. he lined his cars up and played spin the wheel on them - and to be honest he enjoyed that. Hes quite literal alot of the time, but is learning that what people say is not always how it is.

Any other signs that might be relevant is that he likes to line our sofas up in a certain way, hes not happy with change but doesn;t really express it - his behaviour goes a little off for a while until things go back to normal. When he gets super excited he has a tendancy to grab my hair and pull it, and bite me at the same time. he'll do it to anyone who is around him, including the dog. When angry, he stomps around, bangs his head off the wall, or slams the door. He doesn;t direct anger towards people.

I don;t know if he fits the profile for AS, but he is certainly struggling socially. He won;t do anything in groups (that includes group work in school too), no team sports... however, he has always been good at swimming, riding a bike and catching a ball.

Any advice/opinion would be gratefully appreciated.
Thanks in advance...

Hard though it may be, you just need to be patient until he completes his assessment.

It sounds like he could be an Aspie but there are other atypical things that it could be. The most important thing is that you get an accurate profile of him so that you can figure out how to best serve his needs and help him develop into the best man he can be. He could be more gifted than you think. There are many forms of intelligence. The school environment strongly favors a few learning styles (verbal and visual usually) and children who have gifts that aren't easily encouraged in a typical classroom (kinestetic, auditory, natural and so on) are often overlooked. The testing that is usually done for AS will not even cover all the areas of giftedness a person can have but should still turn up lots of interesting things about how your child thinks and operates which should be very useful in helping him make the most of what he's got so that he can have an interesting and satisfying life.

Whatever his diagnosis it sounds like social skills training will be very useful for him. Sometimes schools will offer that and sometimes psychologists will do it often calling it behavioral therapy.

He sounds like he does have Aspie tendencies. Hopefully, you will get the answers you need soon, so that you can see that he gets the help that he needs.

Welcome to Wrong Planet!

Thanks for the replies. I appreciate the time you took. Yes he definitly needs help with social skills... in terms of playing with kids, should he be forced out to play (with encouragement etc) or left to di what he pleases if thats not what he wants... I;m never sure what to do there.

I agree with you on the various types of intelligence - and obviously I want to find out exactly what i need to do to help him along... I don;t want to change him, just make life a little easier..

I wouldn't force him to play like other kids do, but if you can help him find ways to connect to people that he's comfortable with I think it can help him in the long run. Chances are at some point he'll want to have relationships with other people and whatever skills he can build now will help. I've learned to talk through social situations and to explain in words the stuff that people don't normally say. My eldest son does not see social cues and is often baffled by why an interaction went wrong. He'll take every statement at face value and totally miss the sarcasm or other mood information that drastically changed the meaning of the statement. Over time he's learned to pick up on some cues and to ask when he's not sure.

Ultimately he'll have to decide how much he's willing to adapt his behavior to get along with others, but at least he's getting tools he can use to act once he has a reason to.