Asperger tendencies; son is hyperlexic (not with autism)

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I've taken tests online (the ones that aren't a diagnosis), done the Please Understand Me book test a few times, but the best diagnosis I can come up with is that there must be a spot on the spectrum between neurotypical and Aspergers and I think I have it. I didn't realize that I really might be on the spectrum until our son was unofficially diagnosed as Hyperlexic type 3 which is the one without autism. If you've not heard of the condition, it's essentially pre-savant syndrome. Many of the behaviors and characteristics of his Hyperlexia remind me of myself. Although, I doubt I was reading before my 3rd birthday.

This is my first post here. If anyone else has a feeling that you are not quite an Asperger but definitely have tendencies, please share.

Thanks.

One more thing - I'm a 46 year old male, married, and have struggled with this all my life but it gets worse as I get older. I find I want to withdraw from most of the world as the years go by and I fear one day I'm just gonna become a recluse.

Edit: I've also struggled with apathy (aka laziness) forever. As I get older, I just lose interest in all the fluff in life. I'm tired. I'm tired of acting.

Broad Autism Phenotype (BAP) is between autistic and neurotypical.

My son and I are similar, but I'm not comfortable with "hyperlexia III" as the full story. I have a hyperlexia bibliography at my blog "Intellectualizing" and there's a thread on davidsongifted you can google for. (I'm not allowed to post links as a new wrongplanet user, but these are directly about your question - just search the net for the site names and hyperlexia)

A thing to know is that autism diagnosis is not a bright-line exercise. It's more like asking the question "does this person have an IQ above 120?" than it is like "does this person have the flu?" - it's a line drawn on an imperfectly-measured dimensional trait, not a thing you have or do not have.

In some contexts people want to draw the line based on degree of difficulty in life, in other cases based on degree of autistic traits. In the end it's reasonably arbitrary and subjective, though validated tools like the ADOS can get around 90% of clinicians reaching the same conclusion, the design of ADOS itself is still drawing a line that could have been drawn elsewhere. It's intended to be a good guess at grouping people with some needs in common. But there's not a blood test or something, nor do people who cross the autism threshold on ADOS necessarily have all that much in common.

You don't say how old your son is. If he's preschool age, I'd definitely go get the objective expert eval (ADOS, SRS, etc should be involved). I think it's a lot easier to help a preschooler pay more attention to peers before self-consciousness and anxiety kick in. And before peers get old enough to start being mean. Our son is just like the "hyperlexia III" description from Dr Treffert's paper but has greatly benefited from about 20 hours per week of help with social interaction and other skills.

You may also be surprised by the expert eval. I thought my son was borderline but it turned out that I just had a skewed frame of reference due to a whole family full of people with autistic and autistic-ish traits. So the diagnosis turned out to be very clear, not borderline.

OP, I don't want to scare you in any way, but when I was 3yrs, my parents wouldn't have said there was anything to diagnose in me. I was really smart and already reading, so went to school a whole year early. And throughout my childhood, I probably came across as pretty 'normal', way ahead academically, but not a concern to anyone. By the time I was a teenager, this was not the case, although my parents would say even today that I'm perfect in every way. I've really struggled socially and with sensory issues, for all my life, but only came to realise I might be on the spectrum at around the time I joined this site and that was only because I'd figured out what was going on with my daughter and she was going through the assessment process.

My life is good. I have a good marriage and love being a mum. But, things I've been through are not what might have been, particularly academic and career wise, had I known why I had difficulty with this or that. I spent a lot of time being confused about what I had done wrong and wondering why I was so different from everyone else. I developed social anxiety and avoidant behaviour and have only recently managed to largely overcome that. Like so many women (especially) with Aspergers (or suspected Aspergers), I remain undiagnosed. I would take a guess that people like me make up a fair proportion of those who supposedly have hyperlexia type 3.

My daughter has been diagnosed so early (at 6yrs) because she presents with difficult behaviour at home and her concentration difficulties are evident. She doesn't have hyperlexia. Other than that, the apples don't fall too far from the tree and there's no way she'd have been diagnosed with autism at 3yrs.

Good luck.

Thanks to all for such quick and meaningful replies.

RHP - Our son is turning 6 in a week. We've known about his Hyperlexia for some time as his speech therapist pointed it out. He doesn't need speech therapy any longer, and he does not do well in a typical school environment (pre-K anyway) plus we do not have the funds to pay for more therapy. So we home school him as my wife and I are both self employed. He fits the Treffert hyperlexia III description perfectly, by the way. But I don't think that's the sole component.

I've thought for years about seeing a therapist to figure out what was wrong with me. But now I'm aware of it due to the bright light being shown on all things Autism in today's world. Diagnosis is not really the issue anyway. Figuring out how to live with it is. This forum is a good start

BTBNNYR - thank you for the BAP reference. I had no idea there was an actual term for it.

Mummy of Peanut - thank you. You and I sound a lot alike.

I am hyperlexic type II, definitely autistic, but talented with reading. I was reading anything written by age 4, though my comprehension lagged behind and did not catch up until high school, when my comprehension caught up with my reading skill and I was limited only by whether or not I had the background information required to understand the material. My mom didn't know that I was unusual since I was her first child; she just read to me and I picked it up somewhere along the line. I'm pretty sure she thought I was memorizing books--I did that a lot as a kid, just memorized stuff--so I don't know how old I was when I started reading; could have been as early as two. Reading really helped me to understand language, to move past pre-recorded phrases for conversations. It's easier to think about language when it's right there in front of you on the page, instead of something you have to catch out of the air as it passes.

Yep, there are many many people who are in between autistic and NT! Autism is a spectrum. There are autistic traits in the NT population. Get enough of them, and you're autistic; get just a couple mild ones, and you're BAP, subclinical, whatever you want to call it.

Being a little unusual yourself may help you to understand your unusual son. It gives you an advantage because you are used to connecting with the average NT, who is a little different from yourself. Connecting with your son, who is also a little different from you, should be a little easier for you than for many parents, because you probably haven't gotten into the habit of thinking that everybody is pretty much just like you!

Home-schooling can definitely be helpful. It'll keep your boy away from the craziness and bullying of the public school system, and will help him get an education that's tailored to him exactly. If he has some skills way ahead of others (hyperlexia does that to you), it would be hard to fit him into a standardized education plan anyway. If he's still lagging behind on socializing, make sure he gets some practice with that. Most home-schooled kids actually have just as much quality social time as public-schooled kids; there are home-schooling groups and kids' organizations of all kinds that you can get him into for extracurriculars like sports, music, hobby clubs, etc.

He might turn out to need some help as he gets older. The developmental demands will change, and he might "fall behind" (i.e., be expected to have a skill that is particularly hard for him to learn). Do be prepared for the eventuality that he might once again need therapy, like he did with the speech therapy when he was younger. Common issues are organization/planning, independent living skills like shopping and money management, and of course specific subjects in school which may be particularly tough for him.