Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Twice Exceptional Absence Seizures, ADHD, or GT and lost in thought?

We just agonised over when/how to tell our 11yr old DD that she has Aspergers (only just diagnosed). When we did tell her (using the attributes method recommended by Tony Attwood) she interrupted to ask if she was ill, then if she was German (hello focusing on weird details) and then moved right along to "So can we go shopping now please?" and has not mentioned it since... She knows she has strengths and weaknesses other kids don't, she knows she seems to go see specialists more than other kids. She seems more interested in her dyslexia... It was a big deal to us, particularly DH, and really like nothing at all to her, that will change over time but ideally it will be as DeeDee said - just something she knows about herself, like her eye colour...

We explained it as being like left handedness - i.e. Nothing is wrong with DD - she just learns in a different way from the majority. DD doesn't even know who in her class is left handed but when DH and I were in school it was a big deal because those kids had to have special scissors and some teachers complained about having to alter assignments for the lefties. When her grandparents were in school it was considered a bad thing to be left handed and the poor left handed kids had to try to learn to do everything with their right hands. There was nothing wrong with them - they just did things differently. But people didn't understand it back then so those kids had a really hard time in school.

It's the same with the way DD (and DH and his father) learn. Her brain (as well as DH's and his father's) processes things differently so teachers have learned over the years how to make learning easier for kids like her (and DH and his father). We are so lucky to have spec ed teacher who knows how to help her. When DH was offered the help as a kid his parents said no - they didn't understand that school would have been so much better for him if he could have learned in the way that was right for him. Poor grandpa was treated like he was a bad kid because they just didn't understand back then that some people just learn differently...

She still doesn't want to be seen as different but at least it has been framed in terms of "different" rather than "wrong". Now if only we could get her classroom teacher to understand this little lesson...

It's interesting, because DS doesn't seem to be too bothered by who he is, which could be part of why I'm in no rush. I've thought of the fact that a diagnosis would explain to him why he thinks the way he does (ie racing brain), and I guess I'm waiting for it to be clear that he needs that info.

He seems quite secure. He matter of factly says to DH and I: "I'm smarter than both of you because I have a young brain." He likes to be silly because he thinks it's funny - if you ask him what the other kids think, he'll say "they don't think it's as funny as I do." ok... so how does he feel about that? "I don't care what they think. I like to be funny."

I think part of the reason is that he's in a class with other quirky kids, so he's not the only atypical one. Also, he has friends, and the school staff seem to really like him. Basically he doesn't really have any reason to feel badly about himself. He likes recess and PE, which are prime times for kids to be bullied, so that seems to check out ok. (I was bullied as a kid, so I'm hyper-vigilant to the possibility of him being bullied).

Self esteem is SO important, and he doesn't really present as having self-esteem issues. Both the school anxiety counselor and a private anxiety counselor at our psychologist's firm say that he doesn't seem to have any atypical or problematic anxiety issues. He's very happy go lucky.

I don't know. I think my feeling is that if I tell him he might start to feel down on himself. The upside is that there's no medical test for ADHD, so I can present it to him as just "the doctors' opinions... no one really knows for sure."

The AWESOME part is that he's SO much like me (I think I have it too), so we can relate to each other.

I think when the time is right, I'll be able to tell him, but the benefits will have to out weight the possible negative effects. He seems pretty content with himself at the moment.

Yes! This is the way to do it, I think. (I mean really, who's to say that ADHD/ASD/Dyslexia/etc is wrong and only typical is right? They're all right, just in different ways)

LOVE this book:

http://www.amazon.ca/gp/product/0738215244/ref=ox_sc_act_title_1?ie=UTF8&psc=1&smid=A3DWYIK6Y9EEQB

Update: our family doctor doesn't see a seizure in the video: she says that during absence seizures, the child is "gone" but in the video you can see DS8 thinking. (This is what I see too). She did recommend we ask the ped for a second opinion, so I'm going to do that next.

When we were trying to figure it out I googled Absence Seizures and found bunches of videos posted of kids having them. I must have looked at 100+ videos and found exactly 2 that looked familiar. One was a little girl dancing in a circle - she never stopped dancing just slowed down for a few beats and then went back to normal speed. The other was a little boy doing his homework who looked up and away for a second or 2. Neither was what I expected to see based on what I had read. You may want to try watching these videos to see if anything looks familiar to you.

Good luck!

I watched a bunch... none of them really fit. I have another question, though, re: seizures... can they develop suddenly? DS8 has been watched like a hawk since KG, and no one has said anything about this before.

CNN, I don't know for sure if seizures can develop suddenly (except that they can develop suddenly if there has been injury to the brain). I think that one thing that is possible though is that seizures may go unrecognized for a long time (even years) and it's also possible (per my dd's neurologist) for seizures to gradually become longer-lasting and more noticable due to changes in symptoms.

Of the people I know well who have seizure disorders, one didn't have seizures that she was aware of until she was an adult. The other had what everyone thought were fainting spells every few years as a child, until she fell once when she "fainted" and hit her head and had to go to the hospital to get it checked out - and the hospital staff realized she'd had a seizure. The third person I know well is my dd11, and as I mentioned before - she had seizures for several years before she had a seizure that was obvious enough for her parents to realize she was having a seizure.

DD also had a therapist several years ago who had her first seizure as an adult - it was a grand mal. And now that I think about it, ds13 had a friend when he was younger who had her first seizure when she was in kindergarten (during school). She went on to have fairly frequent seizures...

Soooo... that's my random and limited sphere or knowledge re seizures... but from that I'd guess it's possible that they either might start suddenly in a person with no history of seizures or they also might seem to start suddenly simply because the previous seizures were small enough to go undetected.

polarbear

Polarbear - thank you. That all makes sense.

It occurred to me this morning that maybe it has been ongoing, but the school has been seeing it as autism rather than seizures, so they've never said the word "seizure" before.

They may not know about the overlap between seizure disorders and ASD so they may have never thought to call it seizures. Once our autism doc weighed in and said that DS doesn't seem to meet the criteria for ASD, the school then had to reframe DS's zoning out behaviour: "well if it's not autism, maybe it's seizures instead" ...meanwhile the behaviour may have been going on for years at school.

Sometimes the schools are harder to figure out than the kids, lol. (sigh)

(And who knows... maybe DS8 actually has both...)

Last year the folks at school kept telling us they weren't seeing anything out of the ordinary with DD. In an IEP meeting late in the school year we were asked once again to describe what we were referring to and I demonstrated DD zoning out. 2 days later there was an incident where a teacher (not her regular classroom teacher) scolded DD for "not paying attention" and "looking away". DD got very upset because she had no idea what she was doing wrong - as far as she knew she was "just doing my work.". They were unable to calm her down and removed her from the classroom. Wouldn't you know the speech pathologist trying to calm her saw *exactly* what I had demonstrated just a couple of days earlier. I mean *exactly*. It was the only time anyone in the school reported seeing this. Afterwards the spec ed teacher and SW asked me to demonstrate for them again. They both indicated that this was very different from a previous student with absence seizures and they realized they had been looking for the wrong thing. The spec ed teacher thought it was likely that she had in fact seen this behavior from DD before but did not understand what she was looking for. This is an excellent, experienced spec ed teacher with almost 40 years of teaching experience.

As the saying goes when you believe it you'll see it...