re: could my daughter have Asperger's

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I have been pondering my child's behaviour recently and I was wondering if some of the behaviours suggest a spectrum disorder. When she was very small, one of her first noises was a continuous clucking noise - I am quite superstitious and believed she had inherited it from my grandmother and that she was simply clearing my throat. But I recently heard that this was one of the possible markers.

Other behaviours she displayed was dribbling for a really long time, until she was seven in the end and often appearing 'spaced out' or within herself. she would often feel quite socially anxious especially with new people or in new situations and this often led people to find her aloof. She constantly use to wear earmuffs in the house because she was distressed by loud noises, but she did eventually stop wearing them. Around the age five or six she had a continuous recurring problem of walking into lamposts on the way to school and always had a series of red lumps on her head. My daughter also has very poor spacial awareness and can very easily lose her bearings in places that she has been before or should know.

She used very sophisticated language from a young age, and I always wondered where she sourced her language from, her school reports say that although she is well above average intelligence she would often find it difficult to adjust to new tasks or change direction. she is doing very well in school academically but she feels very isolated, not because she is bullied but I think she struggles with dealing with complexities of other people, and is almost like a little adult before her time, worrying about health and safety issues when she should not be so concerned about danger.

I think that's an exhaustive list of the features of her personality which make me wonder, on the other side she has never had a problem with imaginative play - she can play dress up and dolls with the best of them, and I think she displays appropriate empathy behaviours although I do think she would over think how to react to things it doesn't always come naturally to her almost as if she is researching how to be human. She has a real fixation with watching people - and when she does get involved in situations she would not always understand or cope very well with how she is being perceived - Oh and she speaks incredibly slowly and can take information very literally, and display a lack of common sense - and sometimes when she was a bit younger she would wear her shoes on the wrong feet or her jumper back to front - and sometimes I think I hear her muttering to herself in her room. Even though she is extremely bright, she can display poor organisational abilities - and can appear scatty or dizzy.

Any thoughts you have on these childhood behaviours would be most welcome.

Thank you

Hi there and welcome.

I have a seven year old son who is diagnosed with Asperger's and a lot of what you say about your daughter would seem to indicate that Asperger's may be a likely diagnosis.

I'd recommend that you get her assessed and find out if that is the case. Meantime, you may wish to speak to her school, if you haven't already, to find out if there is anything they can do to help you daughter with any difficulties she may have. My son gets help at school with things like turn-taking, for example, and some help with motor skills difficulties that he has, such as using cutlery.

The thing always to bear in mind is that a diagnosis is a tool, or a lever, that can be used to help your child achieve her full potential.

Another thing - I thought that my son's imaginative play was very good and didn't meet the criteria for Asperger's. However, during the assessment process it was considered that although he did seem to be playing imaginatively most of the words and actions he used were taken from children's books or programmes and that his play was inflexible.

Many of those symptoms may be Aspergers but some of them are not part of the AS diagnosis. It just seems that many people with AS do similar things. There's always a question as to if it's better to get a diagnosis and get help, or see if they can grow past difficulties. That is the essential litmus test. Will the small amount of help that your daughter will get from school outweigh the potential stigma of having the diagnosis. Can she get by without one?

If anything you may pick up some different ways of handling parenting from the WP members that help you regardless of if she has AS or not. So come and learn with us!

The way I understand it:

It could be worth having her assessed. As Marcia said, diagnosis is a tool, so it is also worth considering what you hope to get from the prcoess.

Imaginative play is a funny thing. My son is VERY creative, and VERY imaginative. What he also is is INFLEXIBLE. He can follow HIS ideas, but not anyone else's. The only imagination he can buy into his own. I think they really need to change the term there; it does't mean what most people think it does, when applied to an AS child. What is consistent is the not being able to leave your own world for someone else's. So some tester would say "lets pretend to be rabbits" and the AS child will ignore the tester and follow their own idea instead, perhaps some super hero if that is what the AS chid is into.

Have you looked into Non Verbal Learning Disability? When you said she gets 'lost' sometimes, that could ring alarm bells. Its very similar to AS, but different. Is the left side of her body weaker? Maybe google it, and see what you think!!