So my son has been diagnosed with Asperger's....

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The fact of the matter is you might be right, you might not. at this age it's a little harder to tell, until he really gets into social interaction with people of his own age. I've read in a few places that AS sufferers can often can on better with people older or younger than people of their own age.

I really don't care either way, they are your children. It was you who implied that I am a bad parent because my son knows how to comfort himself.

When exactly did I imply you were a bad parent because your son comforts himself? It was you that implied I was a bad parent: "So when they wake at night they scream and you must coming running to soothe them again? Even a seven year old? I feel sorry for them. "
Don't make accusations you can't back up with proof.

And if you're referring to "Why is he soothing himself and not looking to someone else to sooth him? I think that's probably the point. I have never noticed any of my three children soothing themselves, they look to me for comfort, they would struggle to do this for themselves at their ages (1, 4 & 7). ", I was saying that this backs up the AS diagnosis, not that you are a bad parent. Children with AS don't look for comfort from others in the same way most children do, they find comfort in routines and repetitive behaviors.

If I were you, I would look into AS a lot more before you start questioning the diagnosis. The professionals probably have a lot of experience of children with AS and know what they are looking for, whereas you clearly do not. Questioning the diagnosis is most likely of no use to your son right now, perhaps you can find more information on AS and let him grow up a little more, he is still quite young. Then if you still do not agree with the diagnosis you can have him re-assessed. I can understand as a parent that you are frustrated and probably quite confused right now, but you need to do what is best for your son.

What is it about the diagnosis that you dislike? Does it scare you that your son is possibly autistic? Because it seems to me that you are trying to find any reason you can why this diagnosis does not fit. What diagnosis were you expecting?

As I said, he gets along just fine with his sister and shows genuine concern and affection for her. This, along with other things just does not fit the mold for Asperger's. Reducing it to "older or younger" to me is just trying to push the line to fit - it just doesn't. The fact is that children around the same age, in general, fight like cats and dogs.... do we say there is something wrong with them? Nope, the dust settles and they all go along nicely until the next spat. While my son is quite tolerant, he will stand his ground if pushed.


I'll reiterate: My son does not fit any of the key points of "Qualitative impairment". If not, how can he possibly be diagnosed with Asperger's?

As I said, soothing is quite normal and I believe that even your own children do it, whether you are able to see it or not. It is normal behavior, not something that points to Asperger's.

The fact is, that if I am present and my son is upset, or just wants a cuddle or company, he comes straight to me. He does not run into a corner and start playing with his towelette. He only uses this when he is ready to sleep. I put him to sleep every single night and am with him until he is asleep. Towellete or not, he would get upset if I left the room.

It should say in the doctor's report precisely what impairments were noted. As Callista noted upthread, functional echolalia actually makes Aspergers a poor fit since it's a language delay. They should have said autism or PDD, if there are other things that fit (which would be in the report). If the only difference that he has is the functional echolalia, I am wondering why they didn't go with a language impairment.

Something that I got caught up in at the beginning of my daughter's diagnostic process, which I think you may be caught up in too, is seeing the diagnosis as a value judgement. The professionals say that your child does things in an atypical way and you bristle and say there is nothing wrong with how your child does it. It's the other kids who ought to be considered wrong. I absolutely did that for about 3 years. But the bottom line is that what they are saying is that your child is atypical in a very specific way. It isn't a value judegemnt against your child.

My daughter is extremely affectionate with family members. The fact that your son is affectionate with and concerned about his sister doesn't disqualify an autism (or Aspergers) diagnosis.

and i care very much about some people i know - that doesn't mean i can't have AS.

2 points i'd like to make, and i want you to be honest with US and YOURSELF

1) are you SURE that you aren't either in denial or your simply not seeing it because you don't WANT to see it?
2) as with medicine, a 1 person trial = no trial at all. until he tries with a GROUP of people his own age, its harder to see. from what i understand AS makes group conversations etc more difficulty than 1 on 1.

Autistic people generally do feel and show genuine concern and affection. They might do it in abnormal manners, but we do feel sympathize with people, sometimes too well. The fact that you keep repeating this suggests that you don't understand how autistic emotions work. Autistic people do often care a lot about other people under that common use of the word "empathy" we certainly show empathy. What we are impaired at is understanding how people are feeling.

From what you are saying, I'm not sure that Asperger's is the proper label, but he certainly has autistic trains.




This isn't trying to push the line to fit, this is noting a common occurrence that you were unaware of. I get along with people who are older than me, or who are noticeable younger than me far better than people my own age. Others have their own sets of ages they get along with.



You keep going back to "something wrong". This is not about whether stuff is right or wrong. It's about whether stuff is normal or abnormal.

Your son has traits that are abnormal. Nobody is saying that you are a bad parent. They are saying he has autistic traits.

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If he only speaks via repeating things, it doesn't matter how well he understands what he's repeating, it still counts as a speech delay.

I see no reason why his "genuinely affectionate" behaviour could not simply be copied behaviour. I don't understand why you consider him to have no problems with spontaeneous sharing simply because in one instance he shared something with a family member. I don't understand why you think he has no problems with empathy simply because he can relate to his sister when upset, a feeling he can most likely identify with, AS or not.

Do you think AS means you have no empathy at all? Or that you don't share interests at all? Or that you only copy people and have no understanding of meaning at all? Children with AS usually do all of these things, they simply find them more difficult than most children, particularly when with strangers.

You have mentioned numerous characteristics of AS that your son has, unusual focus on interests, copying and replaying things he's seen. I don't understand why you are simply dismissing AS when you can see he has traits.

Is he diagnosed as having echolalia or have you simply observed this? Are you sure he understand's what he is repeating? You said he understands what he is saying and is not simply parroting, but how do you know?

I think you are looking for people to agree with you and dismiss the possibility that the diagnosis is correct. Perhaps you should find out more about autism as you do not seem to understand the diagnosis, and if you don't understand the diagnosis, you can't make a reasonable judgement on the validity of it.

Three and a half is quite a young age for the diagnosis to be made, particularly as it's pretty tough to reliably identify the social communication issues. The diagnostician must have seen enough areas of concern such as the echolalia to warrant these early interventions.

If you have some misgivings the best thing to do at this stage is to go back to him and ask him to justify the diagnosis to you, I suggest asking him to explain this to you in writing. If there is anything you disagree with you can discuss this with him. If you still have concerns then you should consider a second opinion.

If some sort of speech therapy is required then perhaps at this stage in your childs life, the AS diagnosis is a route to treatment and services. It's quite probable that if this is worked through, then the diagnosis will no longer be met within a year or so. You are much better off with a diagnosis now that can discarded if incorrect, than trying to get one in a hurry when he enters school and accommodations are necessary.

To help us give better feedback, it would be really useful to know where you are and what prompted this diagnosis. Also, how does your child interact with other children or adults? An AS child may not have any obvious social problems when interacting with his family, it's peer relationships which are usually impaired.

Jason.

It doesn't exclude autism in general, just the Asperger's type of autism.

Links to the lists.
Asperger's Disorder
Autistic Disorder

Asperger's is only diagnosed if "Criteria are not met for another specific Pervasive Developmental Disorder". A child who qualifies for an Asperger's diagnosis, but also has "stereotyped and repetitive use of language or idiosyncratic language" (this is a trait from the Autistic Disorder description), will usually be diagnosed with Autistic Disorder, at least if the doctor is using the criteria as written.

These are the traits that are in the Autistic Disorder description, but not in the Asperger's Disorder description:
Your son meets criterion C. If he met Asperger's criteria in addition to this, then he would be diagnosed with Autistic Disorder.

However, as I've said, I don't think your son actually meets the Asperger's criteria. This first section is the issue:
Your son seems to have no impairment on any of those points, at least at his age (if such an impairment becomes obvious later on, perhaps at school age, that observation can be revised). And that criterion is required for both Asperger's and classic autism.

So he doesn't meet the social interaction criteria of either Asperger's or classic autism, does meet the repetitive/restricted behavior criteria for both (if only barely, because he stims), and meets the communication criteria of classic autism. That means he doesn't fit into either category. If I were a doctor, I'd probably just say PDD-NOS (atypical autism) and leave it at that, because that's a diagnosis that can probably get him whatever therapy he needs. PDD-NOS is just a catch-all for "This person has significant autistic traits but doesn't fit into a specific type of autism."

What I'd advise you is: If your son's current diagnosis gets him the help he needs, then don't worry what his specific label is. A diagnosis is a tool we use as shorthand for a set of traits, a way to define them so that we can get them useful services. If the diagnosis does what a diagnosis needs to do, then there's no need to mess with it.

If your son does not meet any of the social criteria for AS, then he does not have AS. Not meeting any of the social criteria for AS means that he is too NT to have AS and be autistic, that socialization and communication are his natural instincts at his young age of three, and the only tihng that seems atypical about his communication is the functional echolalia. I don't know what that means in terms of a language disorder. Maybe it is not an issue at his young age, and he will have spontaneous speech in the next year or whatever. Echolalia in autism is more like repeating words in a non-communicative way, sometimes understanding what they mean, and sometimes as sounds that you heard, then made. I mean as a three-year-old who does not have much communication due to language delay.

So skipped most of the second page of this thread. I do that when people start getting all emotional. I don't do well with emotions.

Asperger's is a difficult diagnosis to pinpoint. Some can have average intelligence and then you have little Einstein's. It's often stereotyped that people with AS have high intelligence. It's true for some but not for all. If there is a speech delay doctors usually would discount as AS diagnosis and it's either classic high functioning autism or PDD. Not all doctors do however.

An intense interest is when it becomes their whole world and they may not relate to other people their age, or they might not want them to come into their world. For example I've made my special interest as career move so I don't have to work or look for work, and I basically spend all day on my interests. I'm on a disability pension anyway. I tried to get work but no one wanted me so I went back to my interests. Before that I delayed getting a job so I could spend more time doing my photography and going to see bands live.

I have a six year old nephew who only cares about Mario, other Nintendo/ Sega characters and Ice Age. He's not diagnosed with AS and I'd think him more ADHD but he's always talking about these interests and once when I was trying to skew his attention toward drawing he drew Mario characters. Doesn't help his auntie has even more intense interests in science fiction and physics. But these interests are our whole world. For me my interests are another part of my personality, they shape my world. My bread and butter. Air for my lungs. etc.

I still don't think I'm explaining it properly. How about this: from the age of 2 to 10 all I could and wanted to do was draw cats and dogs. It was a seriously intense obsession. Even at 12 when I was coming out of it I had plastered from top to bottom on my walls pictures of dogs. My mother made fun of me by liking it to a serial killer. I also recorded every single piece of footage of dogs on TV I could get. Even if it was 15 seconds.

Keep an eye out to see if he is eventually capable of talking about more than his interests. I was only able to when I went on medication, for ADHD, but it helped with my social skills. That was less than two years ago.

I did puzzles very repetitively as a youngster too.

A functional routine is something that is productive. Stimming calms you down, yes, but it's not like... well for me I've turned my routine into a type of daily schedule. It's a lot better than what I had before.

Keep your mind open about AS but look into other things. Just ignore people who might have said something insulting. We have social communication issues here. It bothers me too but some people are just behind in skills.

When children are toddlers they might show autistic traits but they can be out grown. Yeah I study my nieces and nephews closely with a looking glass... Looks like I'm the only aspie in the family though.

You want as autism/AS diagnosis if he is really struggling to get along with other children, has 'tantrums' when he doesn't actually want anything, more for distress which is called a meltdown, learning problems (might be caused by disinterest or sensory issues or is a learning disorder), and watch for repetitive behaviour and spending far too long on his interests.

I can see my interests and routines are interfering with my communication skills and temper around other people, but darn it this book must be written.

Oh and my big one is not liking change. Like hardcore anxiety and I DUN WANNA DO IT door slams and cleaving to my History of Astronomy book, rocking back and forward and humming. It's comforting.
Dislike of change can really make a child miss out on many great experiences. An adult too.

On empathy. We do feel it. There are cases of those who have struggled to and built up some skills. I'll include myself in that group. But people with autism have intense emotions and others emotions can be upsetting too. When people are sad around me I get angry. I can't deal with the power of their emotions. Sometimes I just freeze up. The whole 'lacking empathy' is not showing it in the way NT children do. Having an NT child under 5 showing empathy is pretty rare too.

I get along with old rockers too. Uhh...older mature sorts. They all seem to be either rock stars and artists, and I'll give my undivided attention to physicists. I'm good around kids aged 5-8. When you get 15-25 I just stand there and stare at them. I've never been able to get along with kids my own age. I've either felt too young or too old. I still see myself as a kid too.

Does he just speak in echolalic phrases? I must have missed the part where you mentioned that. Reading backwards, I am. By three I had a bit of speech, but I didn't just use echolalia.

There are many characteristic common in autism that are not in the DSM IV criteria.


Sorry for this choppy and poorly spelled post. I am tired.

I wouldn't be too concerned about it right now. He is young and it could just be hard to tell right now. Also when it comes to ASD remember its a wide spectrum everyone is different and i know alot of people including myself with AS who show signs of empathy. I would just wait it out. In the mean time try not to worry too much.

You keep asking "what is wrong with ____?" - I don't think you'll find many here who think there's something wrong with it, either. A lot of us are proud of our focus on, and skills related, to our special interests.

I don't recall "lack of empathy" being part of the criteria, it's just a phrase the public latched on to that tends to be misleading and seems to be misleading you. Aspies have difficulty reading the emotions of others (in varying degrees - plenty can read ones expressed as obviously as an upset baby expresses them) but that doesn't mean they don't care about others or sympathize with the emotions they can read. Some might not but certainly not all. In this case empathy refers to reading emotions and sympathy to caring about them, but of course empathy is often used to mean both. Because of that "lack of empathy" is really not a good description imo.

I'm not really sure how well the social problems could be detected in a three-year-old, though, unless they are very severe. I think the "lack of spontaneous seeking to share enjoyment" doesn't need to be absolute but only compared to a typical child. It could be that he might show things to you, but not to other children, not attempt to make friends or understand how, etc. Thing is, NT kids that age aren't usually that great at making friends yet either, so that wouldn't necessarily tell you much.

Yep. Many autistic traits don't cause disability by themselves; some are even beneficial. They are the result of underlying cognitive differences that do cause disability, but just because something's atypical doesn't mean it's bad. For an autistic person, it may be the most natural thing in the world to rock back and forth or arrange things in rows. That's how their mind works.

Indeed. If I were to replace "lack of empathy" with something else in the public mind, I would replace it with, "Difficulty with reading the emotions of others." Once you know that someone else is feeling something, you react to it just like you react to anything else, but getting the information in the first place can be difficult. Autistic children are as securely attached to their parents as typical children (they did a study on this a while back on young children--autistics do indeed love their parents and feel distressed when separated). They are just as likely to want to help others. Their ethical systems tend to be more rule-based, but are as solid as those of typical children. They are more likely to use explicit logic to make choices, but just as likely to make those choices in ways that benefit others. They have more of an attachment to fairness than the typical child. In short, autism does not cause a deficit in compassion. The only thing that's impaired is the transfer of information from one person to another. Blaming an autistic person for not understanding that you are sad is like blaming a deaf-and-blind person for not being able to see and hear that you are crying. Once you tell either person what is going on, they will respond to it just as anyone might. Sometimes the lack of social graces can result in a clumsy response from the autistics--lord knows I've had a lot of doubt about whether I am doing the right thing to comfort a distressed friend--but the intent will be there, and the desire to learn to do it more effectively.