(my son is NOT aspergers, and i want to focus more on the aut kids, there is tons of info available re gifted aspergers 2Ekids, but not for auts who are gifted. i'm also not talking savants here....
I also want to note that "high-functioning" doesn't mean much-- it is not even an official diagnostic term. It is usually used by doctors who want to soften the blow of receiving an autism diagnosis, to avoid having the parents cry in the office.
"But he's so high-functioning" is often also a way for families to separate their kid from others on the spectrum, as if it put the child into a different social class or mark him as having greater potential than the sad cases. Because of this, I refuse to refer to autistics by "functioning" level.
(And it's not as if neurologically typical people function at the same level all the time, either-- find me on a day when I've lost my car keys or spilled my coffee, and ask me if I am "high" or "low" functioning.)
The practical difference between "HFA" (again, not a diagnostic term) and Asperger's often comes down to the diagnosing doctor's individual preference, unless there's something obvious in the history (as with your DS, who regressed) that would correspond clearly to one or the other label.
There is no reason for you to avoid making common cause with people across the autism spectrum-- Asperger's included-- not least because the struggles with social skills, pragmatic language, executive function, and so forth usually overlap. There is a reason why these diagnoses are being brought together in the new DSM. And yes, you will find more of the gifted autistics do carry the "Asperger" label, again more because of providers' and families' ideas of how best to describe the kid so people will understand the label than due to any real difference in symptoms or outcome.
DeeDee
