Which one do you think i have?

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Someone on this site told me that "If you have a learning disability and delayed langauge development as a child then you have classic autism".

I asked my mother the ohter night and she told me as a child that i did have a delayed langauge development
i did have a learning disability since i needed learning suppourt assistants in nearly all of my lessons in school
I was told in school that i have "semantic pragmantic langague disorder" and that it makes me get obssesed over things
On my records from when i was 6 years old it states that i have "semantic pragmantic langauge disorder"
i have been suspected to have dyslexia as well even though i passed my english exams with good grades in school
when i get angry i flap my hands
get stressed and angry over small things
at the moment cannot really function well because of feeling angry a lot etc.....
i think i have a slightly montone voice
i do show facial expressions according to my family
i don't give eye contact because i think if i look at someone in the eye they can read my thoughts
i used to walk on tip toes and still do a little bit and just a generally odd gait.
do not always find it easy to get to sleep and wake up early in hte morning or the middle of the night and can't back to sleep
from the ages of 11-16 i attended a mainstream school in england and after that from ages 16-18 attended a popular mainstream college
my parents had to kinda fight for me to get into a mainstream school though because overwise i may have had to go to a special school


Do you think its more likely that i have semantic pragmantic disorder as opposed to classic autsim and aspergers or was i misdiagnosed as a kid? After a bust with my family on thursday my dad said to my mum "I think James has full blown autism"

I'm not sure what you have but some of the things you describe sound a bit like me. I have dyslexia which funny enough despite having dyslexia I was top in my class for english. I had a teachers assistant for a while, ended when I left high school to help me write things down or organise things. I have been attending mainstream school since I was six, including uni. I have odd facial expressions and I've recently been told my voice is ambivalent (apparently that's what makes me so charming ). I wake up early in the morning, waking up at 7.30am is normal for me. I have been diagnosed with Aspergers since I was 9 years old and I will admit my posture is odd. I hope you find out what you have, all the best

Look up semantic pragmatic disorder... You'll reealize its just a fancy name for the same thing

As autism I mean.. Not aspergers...

I think though i may have been misdiagnosed with semantic pragmantic disorder as a child and have been an aspie all along.

Maybe you have!! Aspies have trouble with understanding language too

I thought SPD was just a language problem not actually autism or AS?

Here's something for you to read.. Its really the same thing.. However it is a better tactic to diagnose a kid as having a semantic pragmatic disorder than calling him autistic.. Just because of the connotation the word autism has.. Parents are less freaked out.. And thats why they prefer using the term SPD.. Thats what my psychopathology teacher told us, he works with Autism/aspergers

The term 'semantic pragmatic disorder' has been around for nearly l5 years. Originally it was only used to describe children who were not autistic.

Features it includes are:-

* delayed language development
* learning to talk by memorising phrases, instead of putting words together freely
* repeating phrases out of context, especially snippets remembered from television programmes
* muddling up 'I' and 'you'
* problems with understanding questions, particularly questions involving 'how' and 'why'
* difficulty following conversations

Children with this disorder have problems understanding the meaning of what other people say, and they do not understand how to use speech appropriately themselves.

Soon both research and practical experience yielded two important findings:

1. Many people who definitely are autistic have this kind of language disorder (Dustin Hoffman's character Raymond in the film 'Rainman' being a typical example).
2. Most of the children diagnosed as having semantic pragmatic disorder do also have some mild autistic features. For example, they usually have difficulty understanding social situations and expectations, they like to stick fairly rigidly to routines, and they lack imaginative play.

For a while some language therapists maintained there was still an important difference between children with semantic pragmatic disorder and children who were truly autistic. They believed the autistic features seen in children with semantic pragmatic disorder were only a result of their difficulty with language.

However, further research has shown that there is probably a single underlying cognitive impairment which produces both the autistic features and the semantic pragmatic disorder . The fact that children with semantic pragmatic disorder have problems understanding the meaning and significance of events, as well the meaning and significance of speech, seems to bear this out.

Eventually the idea of an autistic continuum was used to explain the situation. All the children on the continuum have semantic pragmatic difficulties, but the degree of their other autistic impairments can be severe or moderate or mild. This parallels the autistic continuum relating Asperger syndrome, where all the children have a marked social impairment but those with Asperger syndrome have only a relatively mild and subtle language impairment.

It seems that children who are diagnosed as having a semantic pragmatic disorder might more accurately be described as high-functioning autistic. Clinicians tend to give all autistic children who have good intelligence the label Asperger syndrome, even if a child actually has very limited speech. But there are important differences between bright autistic children with semantic pragmatic difficulties and bright autistic children with Asperger syndrome. Children with semantic pragmatic difficulties have usually learnt to talk late, whereas (according to diagnostic guidelines) children with Asperger syndrome were able to talk in sentences by the age of three. Also children with semantic pragmatic difficulties do better on performance IQ tests than verbal IQ tests, whereas with children with Asperger syndrome the results tend to be the other way round. However, if a child with semantic pragmatic difficulties eventually becomes a fluent talker, the difference between the labels 'high functioning autistic' and ' Asperger syndrome' becomes fairly academic.

There is another aspect to the issue of labelling which is altogether more emotive. Many parents feel much more able to cope with the idea of their child having semantic pragmatic language disorder than with the idea of their child being a high functioning autistic. But many other parents find the label semantic pragmatic disorder frustrating and baffling, as they only begin to really understand their child's behaviour when they realise he or she has a form of autism.

Yet another issue is the provision of resources. It is a sad truth that many high functioning autistic children are denied the kind of educational language provision they desperately need, purely because of the word 'autism'. These children are more likely to be accepted into language units and schools when they have the label of semantic pragmatic language disorder. Perhaps the only real solution is to educate the educators, so they begin to understand the wide spectrum of autistic disorders, and to forget dated stereotypes. Even better, perhaps they could learn to look beyond the label and to see the child.

Since i might have HFA/Autism does that mean my life expectancy is going to be shorter than someone who has aspergers?

Its not easy to live with is it? We also think too much as well about small things.