Could my son have Asperger's? Need help!

[Indie]

Hello everyone -

I'm so glad to find this forum and need some help from those of you who are "in the know" about Asperger's.

A little background:

My son is soon to be 13. His birth was normal, no trauma, and he was full-term. No health issues. When he was an infant, he would rock back and forth on his knees and bang his head on his crib to fall asleep. I didn't think much of it other than that my other kids (he's my 5th) didn't do that. He was a very happy, pleasant baby who talked and walked and all that jazz on time. As he got out of the toddler stage, he stopped the head-banging.

By preschool, he was very charming to adults and preferred to talk to them. His pre-k teacher and my husband and I were aware that he seemed to prefer talking to adults and ignored his peers. But because he played with his siblings, we didn't think much about it at the time. As the years have gone on, he's made only 1 friend and has had a recent meltdown about how he wants friends but feels like he's a third wheel.

He's in an Academically Gifted middle school and struggling, even though he's been identified as gifted. His 4th grade teacher told me mid-year that year that she thought he had Asperger's. By the end of the year, she said she no longer thought so, as he'd made some friends in the class. Since middle school he's become a loner but doesn't want to be. It takes him HOURS to complete assignments that could be done in 30 minutes - highly distractible (ADD? Don't know).

He is focused on building with Legos (makes some amazing things free-style) and military history. He seems "stiff" now when talking with adults and picks arguments with his siblings and his dad and me. When he talks, he's LOUD. When his little brother makes normal little brother noises, he EXPLODES in anger (yelling). But he seems to get jokes, likes to make jokes, makes different facial expressions - especially angry ones - and he can be extremely affectionate.

When another boy was getting picked on on the bus, my son came to his rescue and asked the other kids to stop. Then he apologized to the boy. He did this on his own and wasn't coached to do it. Even though I've wanted to have him evaluated, but I'm afraid the school system will label him. Frankly, I don't know what to do any longer.

Since the school year began he's developed various tics (throat-clearing, neck cracking).

Can anyone put in your 2-cents?

Thanks so much!

 

[Retired]

Even though I've wanted to have him evaluated, but I'm afraid the school system will label him.

It seems unfair to your obviously gifted son to be denied the medical evaluation he deserves, so that if there is a diagnosis that requires special measures to be taken, his development into the most productive and well adjusted adult he might be could be hampered by your apprehension to know his true condition.

A professional evaluation would provide your son with the tools and strategies he would need to deal with whatever the diagnosis may or may not be. Learning these strategies would serve him best during his formative years, than to have to seek therapy and readjustment later in life.

Is you local school system unwilling to serve or prejudiced against children with special needs that you feel your son's education and development might be compromised?

 

[Indie]

Hi Steve - thanks so much for your response. Yes, part of the problem is that our school system isn't the best at integrating special needs kids, and the other truth is that I don't want my son to feel like I'm somehow labeling him. Yet he seems pretty miserable at times; so it's six of one, a half-dozen of the other, I'm thinking. Your reply has given me good food for thought, though, so I'm going to 'chew' on it!

 

[Daniel E.]

Even shyness often needs to be taken more seriously:

Shy children only gained notice when Jerome Kagan, one of the most eminent psychologists of the 20th century, began looking at the roots of shyness.

What he posited shattered previous assumptions about child psychology.

Dr. Kagan, a Harvard professor, found that shyness is more a product of nature than nurture. Among infants he studied, 15 per cent showed a few striking biological similarities: elevated heart rate, sweaty palms and higher than normal levels of cortisol - the chemical trigger for fight-or-flight responses...

Shy kids will never outgrow their unrelenting anxiety in social situations, but Dr. Coplan can show them how to cope with it...One of the first lessons deals with making eye contact...

Parents, too, improvise their approach to reserved offspring, often to a child's detriment. Most parents take one of two approaches: protect or attack. Dr. Coplan uses the example of taking a child swimming to illustrate them both.

An overprotective parent might see that their child is too scared to jump in the water with friends and whisk the kid away from the pool altogether, never to return. "It's a self-defeating strategy," says Dr. Kagan. "The kid will never learn to deal with these stressors."

Many parents will have the opposite impulse, throwing the child into the deep end and ignoring all signs of fright.

"There are parents who get angry with their kid's shyness," Dr. Coplan says. "In some group meetings parents will tell us they consider shyness as being rude and disobedient."

Dr. Coplan has found that graduated exposure works the best...

Early intervention can prevent shy kids from becoming troubled adults - The Globe and Mail

 

[rdw]

Your son already knows he is different from other students as shown by his acting out behavior. He is already labeled as "gifted". That label allows him to receive special attention from the education system. A diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder would also allow him to receive special services from the education system. The sooner a diagnosis is made, the sooner he can learn coping strategies that will help him adjust in school and in life. A label is just a label - it does not change who your son is.

 

[Daniel E.]

So-called "label avoidance" can also be due to internalized stigma or, I assume, loss aversion as well:

“Label avoidance” occurs when people choose not to pursue mental health services because they do not want to be labeled a "mental patient" or suffer the prejudice and discrimination that the label entails.

http://books.google.com/books?id=ysJTB5MTOmEC&lpg=PA94&dq="label avoidance"&pg=PA94#v=onepage&q="label avoidance"&f=false

---------- Post added at 07:25 PM ---------- Previous post was at 07:16 PM ----------

If you yourself have had a mood disorder like anxiety or depression, you may be more prone to loss aversion than most, such as by overestimating risks and underestimating the ability to cope, but everyone has loss aversion to some degree -- preferring the known to the unknown, even if the unknown may be significantly better.