And now I wonder about my older son!

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I don't know if he would have a disorder, but now that I look - man... he has a lot of red flags too, but not nearly as many.

1. He takes everything completely literally.
2. He refused to say "sorry" for the longest time until we could convince him it was not saying he was bad or even necessarily wrong, but that it was the polite/right thing to do when you hurt someone's feelings. He's still slow to give it.
3. He's never been good with eye contact
4. He has problems with polite behavior
5. Pretty self-absorbed, doesn't think to hold doors open for others, doesn't notice other people when he butts in front.
6. Awful body position skills
7. Has a tendency of developing tics
8. Is diagnosed with strong ADHD
9. Since a small child has had a need to make repetitive noises.
10. Is very uncoordinated.

His best friend has Asperger's. Now I'm SURE his other good friend has Asperger's. Kids do tend to pick on him and he doesn't know how to handle that well and he gets very easily overwhelmed/doesn't know how ot start with big projects or mess.

Hmm...

sticky fingers

Last edited by DW_a_mom on 23 Mar 2009, 2:47 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Well ... he may be And he may not be. Many here were busy speculating during the Olympics that Michael Phelps was probably ASD and not ADHD.

How old is your older son?

The really cool thing about our smart kids is that they are often quite self-insightful. If you include him in some of your reading about your younger son, he may start to see himself in it, and ask about it. Then you could discuss the pro's and con's of a professional assessment.

If he's happy with things as they are and hasn't had any educational or developmental issues, then there is no need to look into something else.

My personal feeling is that these labels are only as good as what they can get for you. If a child is getting what he needs without a label, there is no point to the label. If a child isn't getting what he needs, then you find a label that will help bridge the gap.

hard to say.........if you feel so strongly, you could always have him tested again

He's 12.5 and in 7th grade - full time GT program. Funny you would say something about being self-insightful - he has a couple times (a couple years ago) thought he was Austistic with Asperger's and I was like, "No....., of course not."

He is having REAL problems with keeping organized with school. He has a crutch which is blackboard where teachers post all their assignments and worksheets. HOWEVER, he got a new teacher after midterms and that teacher does not use blackboard (he's supposed to) and he went from a B+ to a D+ because he is missing 7 homework assignments. Two of which he did, but forgot to hand in. He doesn't notice other kids handing things in, and I believe that. He doesn't notice a lot of things. Remembering to use an assignment book is like 'forget about it".

I hear this issue all the time on these forums. That is why I have gotten so involved in my son's homework this year. Every day when I pick him up the first thing we do is run down the new assignments, and review status on the long term ones. He got totally messed up the week he had the "honor" of being star student because he wasn't at his own desk when the papers were turned in AND they had a substitute. I caught the error on Monday and immediately emailed his teacher. But did he turn it in on Tuesday? or Wednesday? or Thursday? NO. I finally stapled it to the new work he was turning in on Friday. By that time, the best his teacher was willing to do was half credit.

I don't know how much is AS and how much is developmental maturity in boys. If you read the book, "The Trouble with Boys," by Peg Tyre, you will see that she says developmentally boys at these ages are behind girls, and that schools requiring strong organizational skills thus set the boys up to fail. They know they can't compete the girls, and it drags into their self-esteem and willingess to continue trying. I really see it. In 6th grade you have young women ... and boys that really are still boys, not young men. Add that to the fact that AS kids in general seem to mature slower than NT kids and you've got two strikes against the poor kids.

I find it so frustrating as a parent to see how smart my boy is, but also see him struggle to get grades that reflect that. It really brings front and center all the short comings of a school and it's grading system / expectations. I got myself put on the school's homework task force in an effort to be productive with that frustration, but even with the task force I find my hands tied in so many ways.

My son's school has gone onto a system called School Loop, and teachers are supposed to be posting homework assignments on there. So far, less than half do, but those that do are the strictest and most demanding of his teachers when it comes to homework, so checking the site is helping. One thing the task force is doing is pushing all teachers to post on the system. Which will help kids who are computer savy or who have parents who are ... but not the rest, unfortunately. It's all a struggle.

It might be time, then, to re-consider it. A lot has changed in how people - lay and professional - perceive ASD over the last 5 years.

PS - How are your GT teachers about accommodations? We really had to fight with ours over it. I almost lost it when the district specialist declared that advanced classes didn't HAVE to offer certain accommodations because there was an easy answer already available, ie move into an "on-level" class. WELL. I've spent a lot of time arguing about "best for the child" and "doesn't cost anything" so "why can't you do it????" In the end the resource specialist did an end run or two around the district specialist but we have never gotten the discretion to shorten assignments and the cost has been huge in knocking out my son's enthusiasm for middle school.

I just had him take an online asperger's test (self-test - meant to be that way) and he scored really low, like I did AND the ADHD meds do help a lot, they wouldn't help if it wasn't the right meds, right? And he's on a REALLLLLY low dose which I think we will need to up soon as he's growing so fast. He's on 27 mg Concerta. We try to medicate as little as possible so he still has to work on behavioral stuff to help himself too.

Our school district is actually pretty good for special services for the gifted program. They understand that gifted can go hand in hand with other things and that a lower level classroom is not addressing the issue. Though, that's my MIL's answer - "Maybe it's too hard for him." She stopped all that when she saw his IQ testing when we got him re-evaluated for ADHD. (The first was a 5 minute interview - that is NOT diagnosing!)

We haven't, however, done an IEP or requested an IEP yet. (He was diagnosed mid 6th grade). Though I think we are going to go ahead with it. When it comes time to SATs and other timed tests, he will have issues. When they took other timed tests, all kids finished except for him. His aptitude tests with time limits look like this: 50 questions, Attempted 41. # correct 40. Number not attempted 9. Score - 80 something percentile. For getting into Honors Algebra in 7th grade, they had to take and pass at Advanced Proficiency in 8th grade math (they were in 6th grade, taking traditional 7-8th math) and they had to take the Iowa's Math Aptitude test which is timed and get at least a 91st percentile. We practiced, NOT math problems, but HOW to keep track of time and so on. But still on the day of the test of 60 questions, he came hom and said he didn't get to 6 questions. Most kids finished. He ended up getting 91st percentile anyway, so he must not have made any errors or very few... But this will hurt him for getting his optimal score on SATs and so on. He just TOTALLY is slow, slow, slow on those timed tests and we should address that sooner than later.

My son's ASD classification gives him unlimited time on all tests. He's usually OK, though. My NT daughter is very slow which has been OK in elementary school - the STAR test allows all kids to take the time they need - and I worry about her later, too. She doesn't have any qualifiers for accommodations that anyone can figure out. She's just this total perfectionist who can get lost in her desire to draw a flower field on the paper.

Even though the IEP leaves open time on tests, as a practical matter, in Middle School, it's hard to take advantage of. When the period ends, the kids have to move. On so forth. My son has had a real issue this year with note taking, and all the information that comes ONLY in notes, but will be tested, that he can't get down fast enough and legible enough. He can't keep up on that stuff at all, and the accommodations there so far haven't been great, IMHO. The press is to get his typing skills up and until he does, he has to rely on memory.

Middle school is really hard on certain kids.