When the doc went over the results with us and pointed to some of the things we had marked as leaning toward AS, we felt like we would not have chosen that if we had known that it was going to be used for an AS diagnosis. Some days we would put him on one side, and on other days we would have put him on the other.
I'm trying to say this gently... but it sounds sort of like you didn't get the outcome of the evaluation that you expected and that you were upset. I would guess any parent would rather hear differences were due to giftedness rather than Asperger's so that's not surprising. I'm wondering though, what sorts of evidence would you have expected the evaluator to provide for the AS diagnosis that was different from what you got? What would that evidence have looked like? It sounds like the evaluator has worked with many PG and many PG kids with AS - does that carry weight for you?
One thing I can say from personal experience with evaluations is that while it is easy to focus on little things from this test or that, at the end it is really much more about an overall impression than any individual test.
Since he's educated at home, he does not daily interact with other children. However, on the days when he does, what I see is that he seems calm, not stiff or anxious.
One thing you might want to keep an eye on is how he does in novel situations. That might be situations with kids he doesn't already know or in situations with very different expectations (much more or much less structure than he's expecting).
I'm a homeschooler too and I think it can be difficult to see your own child objectively sometimes and it can be even harder to get a really good idea how they compare to peers when they are typically in mixed age groups with many kids who may also have special needs (diagnosed or not).
He asked me last night: When someone falls down on the field, should I stop and help them up or see if they are okay, or should I keep going after the ball? He also wanted to make sure that it was "okay" to get in the cluster and try to get the ball when others were also trying to get it. Is this something an Aspie might do? Please forgive my ignorance. I don't mean to be offensive.
I'm guessing many typically developing children would be able to observe the unwritten social rules of this situation and know what to do without asking. I don't think there is a single "Aspie" response because people are all different.
He will take something that they have said and comment on it ("Oh, that's interesting. I didn't know that...."). He tries to share some thoughts, too. He does have one "sort of" friend who is 1-1/2 years younger. They do have normal conversations, but my son is so much more mature than this other child that he feels more like a big brother to him. Still, they do back-and-forth conversations.
There are certainly gifted kids with Aspeger's that age who would, just like their parents do, say "Oh that's interesting, I didn't know that..." and stuff like that in conversation. I wouldn't at all see using those sorts of expressions as something that would rule out Asperger's.
PG kids with Asperger's often find ways to use their intelligence to compensate. So, if you read general descriptions of Asperger's he might not sound "that bad". It isn't the case that PG kids with Asperger's are all bumbling around being nonstop windbags who don't notice or care if they hurt other people's feelings. (Not suggesting that's what you are saying, but that often that's the stereotype of kids with ASD).
