is my son an ASPIE?

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Oh, Ticker, yes - the girls have had their hearing screened a few times. Seems normal. Abbie just seems more 'atypical' than Evie, has more issues with change/transition, etc., but those are fading, too. Both have obsession. Their current obsession is the movie 'Monster House' - and dinosaurs

squaretail, you definitely seem to be a Spectrumite. Your son is likely on or near the Spectrum as well, given that your two girls are ASD, you're ASD or thereabouts, and he's showing some signs.

ASDs definitely aren't a black and white such as "You are autisitic" or "You're not autistic". There's a lot of subtler forms and perhaps may better be thought of in some ways as a cognitive style that runs through a portion of the population. Now diagnosable as "disordered" can be a different story. Disordered would simply mean that the group of characteristics are causing the person problems in one or more areas of their life (home, school/work, social, etc.). But a label doesn't change the genetics. It simply means this person has those particular type of genetics and the expression of them are problematic enough to actually warrant a label and possible treatment.

Knowing why one's mind works as it does can be invaluable; I know it's helped me enormously. This is what I've come to understand. But the label is only a measure of how much difficulty you're having in life. I think sometimes people forget this.

So it's not a black or white, yes or no. Your family definitely seems to have autie characteristics running through it. The best thing to decide for your son is whether he'd benefit from having an ASD diagnosis. And perhaps only time will tell.

That's a great point Sophist. There are obviously loads of folks who aren't wired up completely NT. I would guess that the majority of folks who are very successful specialists in some field at least have the perseverative characteristics, and many of them probably have some social differences, too.

The Phd. that dx'd my daughters explained that part of the diagnostic procedure, at least as she saw it, was, is this person experience difficulties in their life due to this set of traits? For my son, no (so far). For my daughters, yes - the would not survie in an NT kindergarten, at least not right now. It's not binary, at all, and NT bleeds into the edges of the spectrum and vice versa, and there are probably many folks like me, who straddle the boundary.

It would have been great if, when younger, some adults recognized that it wasn't simple belligerance or defiance that was causing me to underacheive, or at least have some appreciation for the personality traits that contributed to my troubles, even if no special accomodations were made.

It's interesting how my wife and I ended up together. See, I had many relationships early on, but at some point, usually after a few months, the girl that I was dating would suddenly decide that I was too much of a head case for them! DW and I stayed together because she never got to the point where my personality became intolerable to her. That's why we're together. Natural selection

Knowing your son is on or near the Spectrum may be beneficial even if he's never diagnosed. There's likely particular learning and teaching styles that may be most helpful to him, and you as a parent can help introduce him to those strategies which often work best for auties in school and life.

Visual and/or kinesthetic learning is usually good. And, if he hasn't developed it, getting him on a firm ground with learning organizational methods can avoid many problems in later school years and into college.

I know some of the biggest problems many ASDers may have in college (the social world aside) can be organization and keeping their school work to a routine schedule. (That can help us avoid cowtowing to the ADHD in us. )

But if you now have a better idea of his cognitive style, you know better how to guide him and help him as he's growing up.