Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion Hi, brand new, and strange incident

Hi, I'm a bit of a neophyte here so I hope I figured this out okay.

We had something really strange occur. My son is untested, but probably hg or eg. He entered K three weeks before his sixth birthday, already reading at a middle of first grade level despite an approximate 1 year language delay. We chose the school carefully and transferred him to another district to find a half day K with toys thinking that, as an only child, what he really needed was an opportunity to socialize. There are no gifted programs for K within a 2 hour drive, but this was a solid school with lots of parent involvement so I thought it would be okay.

Over the first 2 1/2 months my son made some friends, began talking my ear off, and really seemed to be enjoying himself. He had a stomach bug with diarrhea late in Sept that happened to coincide with his first or second gym class. When I got his first progress report the gym teacher had made it clear without ever using the word that she thought my son was autistic. When I asked his classroom teacher about the specific behaviors of autism, though, she said she hadn't seen any of them. I am reassured and life goes on.

Then he was sick from Thanksgiving to Christmas mostly with colds. He missed almost all of school during this period because every time I dropped him off they would call me and have me come back and get him. I was surprised that they weren't at all concerned that he was out of school for that long.

So in January I went to school and stayed with him for a couple of days. I was surprised to see that during gym class my son did have autistic-like behaviors. I was really surprised because he had never acted that way before. I was dumbfounded. I wouldn't have believed it if I hadn't seen it with my own eyes. How did he learn to mimic autism so well? I still don't know.

I also learned that the Cat Mat Sat book the teacher had sent home was representative of the work my son was being given in class. A typical day included 4 worksheets the children had an hour to finish and my son finished in 5 min. This is not to say that my son did not have things he needed to work on, just that school was apparently not the place he was going to get to work on them. He also had manipulated his teacher so badly, without her even realizing it, that he got anything he wanted at school. This was not a good situation.

His teacher really wanted him to do socialization training with the school counselor. This is the child that begged me to send him to school so he could be with the other kids. He also loved going to play with his friends and always did well with others. This was starting to sound really odd to me by then. I objected mildly that my son was being singled out more and more. I was overruled.

Then the teacher came up to me one day and told me that I should make sure she picked my son's first grade teacher so she could make sure he was with someone that could deal with his special needs. Now this would have sounded better if it had not come from the teacher that I had been trying, unsuccessfully, to help understand that a child reading short stories probably should have something more to do then identifying the letter worksheets. I responded that we weren't planning to keep him in the district since we had been told at registration that the district allowed a limited number of K transfers but then the children had to go somewhere else after that. She then said that there were ways of keeping him at the school. I'm afraid I immediately thought about the district's financial problems and the extra money they receive for autistic kids. (But no, that couldn't be it.) In any case I started to wonder since they had made it perfectly clear by them that there would be no accommodation for his reading ability or his math ability. (He could count to 100, identify numbers up to and beyond 100 and was adding really well by then and the worksheets for math were about identifying the teens.)

Finally, somewhat in desperation, I commented to the teacher that my child was gifted. (I had not used the "g" word before intentionally with the hope that she wouldn't just shut me down as one of "those" parents.) Her response surprised me very much, she said that Aspergers children are gifted. She said it in such a way that implied that the corollary was also true: all gifted kids have Aspergers. She was sure I had just confirmed her suspicions.

After I picked my jaw up off the floor I realized another option was going to have to be explored. Unfortunately, I also realized that our time with the public schools in the area had probably just come to a close. This really was the most parent friendly, accommodating school in the area. There are also a couple of gifted programs that begin in third grade, but I would be fooling myself if I thought placement in any of those schools for K, 1, or 2 would be an appropriate placement for my child.

We weren't sure what to do. So we found the only private school in the area not affiliated with a religion and we went for a visit. It is a Montessori school and my husband fell in love with the whole program. That day we found a message from the principal of my son's school on our voice mail saying that our son had been sent to him for kicking and hitting. I arranged for my son to go to the private school the next day and he fit right in. I also noticed that his new teacher was aware of his attempts to manipulate her and gently, but firmly, asserted her authority as the adult. I thought it would be a wonderful place for him.

It has been 3 1/2 months now since he started at the private school. He has a best friend and a couple of other really good friends. His teacher allows him to read short stories to her for reading time and he loves their math program. He is happy and doing well.

Within about a month of starting the private school all of the autistic like behaviors disappeared completely, even at school. So, it seems really odd, but can a school cause autism somehow?

When I looked up a measure for autism I found that many of the symptoms do overlap with gifted characteristics. I'm feeling like I missed something here. Does Aspergers = Gifted and Gifted = Aspergers? If not aren't the measures biased toward identifying gifted children as autistic because of the overlap in symptoms?

Are the schools just identifying anyone who is different as autistic? Do schools identify children as autistic just to get access to the money?

Has anything like this happened to anyone else?

I'm very confused. I'd appreciate your thoughts and ideas.

Since you stated that the Autistic behaviors have totally disappeared it makes me wonder if these behaviors were stress related. Could the colds also have been a result of stress? I am wondering if there was something at school that was a stresser for him- could have been as a teacher's attitude.

What particular "autistic-like behaviors" was your son exhibiting?

My dd12 had symptoms that she never had before at the same age (6). Due to her bd, she was in 1st grade at that time but had the same issue with repetition and material that was totally inappropriate in terms of level. I don't think that an inappropriate educational match can cause autism, but I do think that it can cause significant stress especially in a child that age who has limited ability to cope with a large portion of the day being so stifling.

My dd's symptoms were more obviously stress related (crying at her desk -- she's usually very private and would never cry at school, shaking, working extremely slowly and missing all of her recesses to complete work, number reversals in writing, etc.). The teacher was telling other parents who came in to volunteer to ignore dd's crying b/c she was a baby and coddled. We, too, removed her although I wish that I had done so sooner than I did.

Yes it absolutely could have been stress related, though I didn't make that connection until E Mama (and Cricket2) suggested it. The gym teacher was the first adult he had run into that he didn't get along with. She also had the most complex games I've ever seen children subjected to. Then there were also the two little girls that took every opportunity to tell him what he was doing wrong. Add in the academic mismatch and that does sound like plenty of stressors.

I should clarify that I'm fairly sure that a reputable psychologist using the criterion from the DSM-IV-TR would not have thought my child was autistic at any point. But there are these lists of behaviors out there and the school seemed to be using them instead of the official criterion. The behaviors he had were flapping one hand, complex body movement, failing to respond to his name, not looking anyone in the eye if he could help it, had very selective hearing, looks like he is in his own little world, repeating words and phrases that other say, repeating his own words over and over again, not following the directions, getting stuck on something, prefers to play alone, is very independent for his age, does things early compared to other children, tunes people out, attachment to the schedule and delayed speech.

Some of this list are easily explained. I've known about the speech delay since he was two, but he hit all of the other milestones, most of them early. He also had a complex nonverbal language that he used to compensate for the speech delay. Some of the list of behaviors can be explained by his giftedness. Many can be explained by his belief that he wasn't being heard by the teachers. But I admit, when you look at everything together and compare it to one of those "signs of autism" lists it would be very hard not to think he was autistic.

He still has selective hearing at times, but neither his new teacher nor I will let him get away with it. He will usually tell us "just a minute" now rather then not saying anything. He is also still very independent for his age and does things earlier then most children. However, all of the rest of that list had completely disappeared within a month of starting at the new school.

Master of none, my son also tries out behaviors he observes in other people. I'm just not sure where he was exposed to this sort of behavior. As far as I knew there were no children who exhibited these behaviors in his class. There was a special class for autistic children in the school that had a completely different schedule. I suppose he still could have seen it on the playground somehow. That would help explain it.

Thanks to all of you for your comments and suggestions. I feel a bit less baffled now. If anyone has any other comments or suggestions please add them.

I find it totally irresponsible for teachers to make these types of assessments and be locked into them. Count yourself lucky that you left that school!
I am happy to hear your son is doing well at his new school : )

I would only add that I think I recall reading several stories here on the forum of children displaying behavior that looks like add or adhd or something else, and suddenly the behaviors vanish when they are moved to a "better fit" school. You might also want to read Living with Intensity which explained over-excitabilites and giftedness to me.

We have really appreciated the Montessori approach for my dds. As long as the school is flexible, and you make sure there isn't too much repetition, it can be wonderful. I would say that in our experience in general Montessori teachers really really understand and appreciate the individual differences among children.

I was concerned about that E Mama because I didn't want him locked into a label that didn't fit. I had him informally evaluated for autism by an early childhood educator, who had just been to a course in identifying autism, and a doctor back when we discovered the speech delay. In the one case she was able to point out specific differences between my son's behavior and autistic behavior, and the doctor also gave specific reasons why he wasn't worried about it. So it just doesn't fit my son.

I will take a look at that book kcab. It sounds really interesting.

I thought I understood the concept of over-excitabilities, but no matter how I tried to explain it to his first K teacher she just took it as one more evidence that he had aspergers. It was really frustrating. That was why I wondered if "gifted" and "aspergers" had become synonymous.

I appreciate your comments herenow. At my son's Montessori school the director also had gifted children so she is pretty flexible. My son is in the 3-6yo classroom right now (by his choice) but he still has access to the math and reading programs through the fourth grade. Next year he will move to the 6-9yo room and there he will have access to the entire curriculum, depth and breadth, through 8th grade and beyond. I feel very lucky to have found such an enlightened school, and to have it be such a good fit, at least for now.

What symptoms were you seeing? Are they gone, or is the new school simply more skilled at providing your DS with workarounds?

Not all people with Asperger's are gifted. Most are of average intelligence. Asperger's is just autism without a significant delay in language development. Since your child had a language delay, he probably wouldn't qualify as having Asperger's-- but obviously I can't say whether he'd be on the spectrum or not. The teacher appears to not know very much about this issue.

Schools very rarely would identify a child as having a disability to "get the money." The money that is supposed to flow to schools to fund the education of people with disabilities is partly fictitious (the federal government has never fully funded IDEA). It's not a get rich quick scheme; districts typically lose money by identifying children for special education. I'd say that the teacher was really seeing something that concerned her, even if she didn't have the technical knowledge to identify what that something was.

My DS8 had the opposite problem in kindergarten: nobody at the school wanted to identify him. "Oh, he's just a little odd" or "bright but quirky" was what we got, while he struggled with social and behavior issues (and was bored out of his mind academically). The boredom didn't cause the behavior problem, though, the Asperger's did. I'd say this is the more common scenario for a gifted/Asperger's kid-- "he's so bright, he couldn't possibly have autism." And yet it's perfectly possible to be gifted and have autism.

From my personal perspective, I don't buy the talk about gifted children having "overexcitabilities." Asperger's consists of mainly social deficits that impair a person's ability to succeed. But these deficits are treatable, as long as we don't ignore them or write them off as quirks of giftedness.

It's great that the new school has improved matters. I would say this: if there are still things that make your DS's behavior atypical in ways that bother people around him, I'd recommend working on those things, possibly with professional help. A formal evaluation by someone experienced with both autism and giftedness would not be a bad choice to make.

DeeDee

oooh. I think I am jealous (or drooling on my keyboard ) to have that environment and materials up to 8th grade!! It sounds like you made it through a really rough school fit to a really really great one. Good for you. If I may, the only advice I would offer is to just keep track/watch very carefully. So much of what happens in Montessori stays in Montessori. There are not a lot of worksheets, etc that come home. It can be hard to see how far along your child is. I hadn't been paying quite enough attention to my dd's progress last year. It has been a scramble this year to keep her "working on the edge of her capabilities".