Daycare says my son should be tested (potentional Aspergers)

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My son is almost four years old. I work part-time and go to school full-time. I was dropping him off one morning at daycare when his teacher approached me and told me basically that my son is VERY smart, quite ahead of some of the other kids but that something else was WRONG with him. She continued to tell me how he would only play alone in the corner with the train set (he is obsessed with trains!) and that he would freak out if anyone interrupted his play.

She also told me he has issues with anything being off in his schedule or that he would get very upset if they changed the layout of the playhouse and would pester the teachers until they were put back the way he thought they should be.

After a long list of reasons why my son is socially awkward (I would list them all but if you want to know you could just read the symptoms of Asperger's, that's him) she told me that she believed he should be tested. She was very careful to not make any suggestions as to what he should be tested for. Even when I asked she just repeated he should be tested. I was very upset at first, I cried. It's hard to have someone tell you there is something wrong with your son, I researched and found that his "symptoms" (I'd rather call them quirks) most closely match Asperger's. I'm over it, my son is fun, hilarious and intelligent.

The hardest part is dealing with how other people will see him or treat him. Or how he can do better in a busy environment like daycare. We don't have these problems at home so I think it might be the over stimulation of twenty other kids around him. As parents of children with Asperger's do you have any advice? Do you have anything at all to say to me that might help, I'd appreciate it.

I have an appointment tomorrow for my son.
I don't care what they say. He's still perfect

Welcome to WP!
You are 100% correct, your son is perfect! We have all been through this and each of us has had our own response to the discovery that our child is different. Wrong is such a bad choice of words. I think the words that the teacher and pre-school director used when they had that conversation with me is that there "is something going on with your son besides difficulty transitioning to pre-school" which is what we had been attributing his difficulties to up to that point. It was hard to hear and I cried too. I'll steal a sentiment from one of the mom's who posts here a lot, a diganosis is like being handed the keys to open doors that would otherwise be shut to you and your son. A good evaluation will not only determine whether or not there is a label to be applied, it will hopefully point out your son's strengths and weaknesses and provide guidance for where you can work to support him in each of those. You are at the beginning of a road you probably never guessed you would be on but overall, I don't think its worse than any other, just different. I have found this forum to be a great place to learn, be reassured, vent... I hope it will help you too!

It sounds similar to the way teachers spoke about my husband when he was young. If he is like my husband, this will cause him issues as he gets older when things are more strict than daycare and he is expected to just go along with whatever the teachers tell him to do just "because." He likely will find this hard to accept.

I'm really a strong advocate of diagnosis, but many times it can help a lot when one is diagnosed as a child. It can (but not always) help the school system to see that he can't be treated like all the others. This might help with the above issues that my husband experienced when young because no one where he lived knew anything about AS and he had an extremely hard time in school because no one could understand why he was being so "defiant" all the time.

Anyway, I guess what I am saying is just be aware that he will likely have some of these troubles and getting him assessed may be the key to helping other people to understand and accomidate his needs.

Onion:

I remember just responding to your post about IEPs. It looks like our sons are about the same age.

I'm really sorry that you are going through a hard time. Our son was recently diagnosed by his pediatrician with ASD.

At the risk of sounding strange, and because of my personal experience with our child that I will share below, I think this daycare worker helped save your son's life. Here's why:

It takes incredible courage to tell a parent that something needs to be paid attention to about a child, especially when it's about a serious matter like AS or ASD. Too often, the teachers or workers will chalk it up to problem behavior of the child and try to boot out the child, than do the right thing. It would have been easier to tell you to find another daycare, your child is too much trouble, and keep you mystified and in the dark, and maybe your child turns 10 and you still wouldn't suspect much. We parents have a way of explaining away what we see, if we fear to admit what we may be looking at.

Our original ped was suspecting autism even when our kid was 17 months old. We were so upset, we left this ped. We were in denial and we couldn't believe this could be true. We had this stereotype image of what a kid with autism "should" look like.

But we had enough sense to follow through with a state-sponsored evaluation (done through the regional center). This was where the break down began. First, we didn't get the right evaluation (we had a OT evaluation, not a psych assessment, which was what we truly needed). From there, my son was suspected to have "only a speech delay". He went into an early intervention program for a year, 3 days per week. During that year, I began to see behaviors that concerned me. I brought him back to the regional center. A psych saw him over 3 sessions and couldn't administer all the tests that should have been administered. So the psych wrote a series of diagnoses that included the speech delay as the primary deficit, instead of seeing these behaviors as a warning.

The school then took that, and ran with it (using the IEP). The result? My son is 4 and his ASD did not receive treatment for 2 years -- and young years are critical years when intervention can do a large amount of good. I blame myself, because I was in denial, but I also trusted "the experts" who made mistakes or were incompetent (or both). None of these experts said the "A word" to me. In fact, when I talked with my child's teachers, I was brushed off and patronized. Up until then, I didn't want to believe that the school wouldn't do everything it can to act in the best interest of my child.

But from this experience I'm learning that there is a difference between "labeling a child" when it's within a care/intervention system versus in society. The insanity is that within the care system, if your kid doesn't get the label, he will not get the treatment he needs to get the appropriate education and have a chance at leading a productive and independent life.

Ask the daycare teacher if she would be willing to write a letter to the evaluator, detailing the behavior that she has observed. It will help the evaluation, and may make the difference between getting diagnosed with AS instead of PPD-NOS, which sometimes makes a difference in what therapies your insurance covers.

All I can say is how wonderful your daycare teacher approached you. I find with higher functioning children autism is harder to spot. My daughter was in two different preschools and neither found her behavior unusual enough to tell me. If I hadn't hid to observe her on a few occasions I would of never seen her running away from the rest of her classmates or not joining circle time. I never heard anything from her teachers because I don't think she was disruptive. She was more avoidant than disruptive.

it is better to find out now and start the testing process than to find out when the problems start to come out more and then be stuck waiting for evaluations when you should be taking action.

How's it going Onion? Any news?
Our little one's been seen by Ed Psych at school & no one's REALLY explained why. Got meeting this week with EP & SENCO.
You're lucky the playschool staff are being open & honest about his quirks. I got a few comments from preschool staff that made no sense at all at the time, e.g. He doesn't play with toys properly - what does that mean? He likes adults more - they have more knowledge. Why does he read so well? Er, well I read a lot to him and he just picked up on it. I was also told he "didn't get out enough" due to his "large movements", which was a totally untrue & misinformed opinion.
It's just fairly recently I discovered AS (thanks to a friend suggesting).
I'd always assumed my kid was "perfect". But maybe cos kids are a little different to the norm the staff don't understand them.
As long as we love them & they're happy - surely that's what matters?