Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Twice Exceptional Pros and Cons of Asperger's label

Yes. Some gifted kids with AS seem to fasten onto academic special interests. Mine sure did.


School personnel are not qualified to diagnose disorders, and they're unlikely to have the expertise to sort it out on their own. Ours definitely benefited from outside guidance.

Try your health insurance (often they will pay for a neuropsych eval if there is a suspected disability, where they would not pay for simple IQ/achievement testing). This may depend on what code your doctor writes on the order. In our county there is also public funding available for diagnostic testing. Find the right doctor to see, and then ask their office to help you figure out how to pay for it: they help people with this all the time.

That said, you do need to request an evaluation from school (parallel to pursuing the eval outside school) because they have to do their own educational assessment prior to qualifying him for services. If you think he needs speech, OT, PT, then he needs an IEP, and the school has to evaluate him even if you have private eval results to hand them.


There are pros to having the diagnosis only if it's accurate. Assuming he does have AS, it should be very useful to have a correct diagnosis.


Does he often do outrageous things? But yes, if it's provably a result of his disability, there is some limited legal protection. (Look at the wrightslaw website, search "manifestation determination" in their site search box.)


This helps some, although each kid with AS has his own individual issues to explain. We do prefer the label "AS" to "badly behaved child," for sure.


You need to know what's going on, in detail, because the recommended treatments for dyslexia and ADHD are very different from those for AS. You'd choose very different therapies. The school would choose very different strategies for teaching him and managing any interesting behavior that arises. It's not the label that matters, but the correct understanding of the problems leads to the ability to solve them. And choosing the right practitioners who will get you there.


Likely. Even if these things are not easily available at school, a good eval would tell you what he needs and help you start getting it.


Well, if you think you don't have the whole picture covered with the diagnoses you have, he might be misdiagnosed (underdiagnosed) now. Not saying he is, but saying he might be. If you're doubtful, it seems like a good idea to investigate.

If you choose a diagnosing doc (preferably neuropsych, ours works in tandem with a developmental pediatrician) who sees lots and lots of kids with AS, they will have it quite clear in their mind what to look for, and be able to make fine distinctions that lay people can't. This makes misdiagnosis less likely.

Biggest Pro: you don't say how old he is or whether he's frustrated with his own behavior. We found that knowing about his AS helped our DS enormously. Thanks to a teacher who really didn't get it, he had been made to feel that he was a bad child-- a child who simply could not do things right that everyone else does effortlessly. Having a name for his differences, and understanding that it's the way he's made, not his fault, was very important for his development-- he likes himself, he knows and accepts that he's different. He'll spend a lot of time coming to terms with it all over time, but at least he isn't blaming himself or feeling totally rotten any more. Knowledge really is power.

DeeDee