Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Twice Exceptional What does aspergers look like in a 3year old?

Hello again,
So I have written here before about my oldest daughter; I suspected her to be highly gifted, and as a young mam, I couldn't handle some of the issues being thrown at me..thanks for the feedback and for helping me not feel so alone. It was challenging to say the least. On entering school we were advised to assess her. My suspicions were right and she is getting the help she needs now. All is well there.

I now have a son coming along behind and hoping you can give me some guidance. He is just 4 and I have different worries and concerns for him.. He also shows signs of very high intelligence, but he also has many other strange habits and ways and extreme focus on certain topics.. I worry about the idea of assessing him because I still hope he can fit into main stream school. His teachers are starting to comment on his outbursts and energy and his over sensitivities and I think testing would be a good idea at this stage before he enters preschool.. I have read online about all the traits and ways to spot aspergers/autism but i wonder from a more personal level.. how did you spot aspergers/autism?
Some concerning habits in my boy are incessant rocking when tired, stressed or concentrating. He also rubs his hands together when intensely talking or thinking or waiting. His development is always above average and his speech can be amazing when he actually uses it and isn't whinging and rocking coz something isn't right. He squirms in disgust at being dirty and is very particular and clean. He hates the textures of certain clothes and foods since he started solids. He would drop foods before he had barely picked them up if the texture displeased him and wouldn't touch or eat it. He repeats sounds over and over when he is upset. He likes music a lot and hums and taps rhythms over and over and goes into a zone. If you call him, he just doesn't respond, but when not in this zone, he always answers to his name etc. His eye contact is perfect with people he likes and knows and he loves to dramatically discuss things.. If he doesn't like someone that visits, he sits in one spot for up to an hour and rocks and wont even look at me. If i pick him up or disturb him he will scream and cry, but at times i can then hug him to make him come around, but most times i put him up to his room where he gets into lining up his cars to distract him.. something he has also done since he could crawl and play. If a crowd is in the house, even if it is all family, he hides in another room and prefers to eat at the kitchen table instead of eating at the dining table with everyone else. To a point of uncontrollable stressed out sobbing if we made him sit with us. We let him go to the kitchen usually coz everyone feels sorry for him.. it isn't a bold cry/tantrum. Lots of people and crowds really stress him out. Has anyone had any of these traits in their kids?

My daughter is PG and has high functioning autism (aspergers) but I know that girls and boys tend to have different quirks. It certainly sounds like he could have some sensory issues and is quirky, but it gets really complicated when you throw in giftedness and a young age. I think it would be worth having an evaluation, provided that you can find an evaluator who has experience with young 2E kids.

You could also request an evaluation through your school district, and/or other services (in particular, occupational therapy) through your medical insurance. You do not necessarily need a formal diagnosis to get helpful therapy from a private OT or your school distirct. They will evaluate and offer services based on your child's demonstrated behaviors, regardless of diagnosis. Having an official diagnosis can help you as a parent understand your child better, and it could mean getting more and better services via your medical insurance--but you don't have to wait for one.

The one thing about school districts and evaluators and sometimes even OT offices, if they're crowded, if that it can take foreeeever to get started. Autism or not, a kid with sensory issues will probably get a lot of benefit out of occupational therapy.

If you want to jump on this, here's how I'd do it:

1. Make an appointment with your pediatrician, tell the pediatrician what you're concerned about, and ask for referrals to a pediatric occupational therapist and to someone who can check on your Autism concerns (if you can find someone with experience in 2E kids, ask for a referral to them in particular). It may or may not take weeks or months to get an evaluation for either Autism or OT services, depending on your location.

2. At the same time, look up your local school district's Special Education department. You will want to find their Child Find contact, if they have one. If you can't find it, just call the special ed department and let them tell you who to talk to. You want to find out how to make a written request for an evaluation based on your concerns. (Email may or may not be ok.)

The way school evaluation timelines work, if you request this tomorrow, you miiiight get an evalation done by the end of this school year, with services starting in the fall if your child qualifies. If you wait until fall to request an eval, it's going to be an eval done by Thanksgiving if you're lucky. Which is why I suggest not waiting to make this request.

This brief roundup of links may be of interest:
- old post with link to article comparing gifted characteristics and ASD characteristics
- post with checklist comparing gifted and ASD traits (hat tip to BananaGirl)
- post with link to Gifted Resource Center of New England (GRCNE) article comparing gifted and ASD traits (hat tip to Nolepharm).

Smidge, I would venture to guess that more information is always better than less. But particularly with a profoundly gifted child, you may want to be leery of misdiagnosis. It could simply be that he is having difficulty contending with all the sensory input, particularly if he is processing it all at a much deeper level than most 4 year olds. And he may be struggling with overexcitabilities, rather than showing signs of ASD or Asperger's. Have you read about Dabrowski's theories?

Re crowds and the noise that comes with them: I still sometimes have to exit such situations quickly because the noise and other stimuli can make me absolutely crazy. I can't imagine how that would feel to a 4 year old.

Good luck sorting it out.

Our son was diagnosed with autism when he was 5. For me, it was mainly reading child development books, and just seeing the difference between his strongest skills, and his weakest skills. For my son, he doesn't have the sensory issues that your child has. It's more that his verbal communication is quite low, and he has some rigid thinking. He also has a lot of anxiety. If you're concerned, you should get an evaluation done. We did ours through a developmental pediatrician through our medical provider.

Also, in some states, the district has less than 45 school days to complete the eval when it is at the end of the school year. So I would echo spaghetti's advice to start the child find process now.

For instance, I've worked in a place where the district had 10 days to respond to a parent request with a consent to test, and then 30 days to complete testing, and 15 more days to hold the meeting. That's 55 school days from start to finish (if you sign all the paper work and turn it in immediately), which is just under 3 months. However, the timelines are somewhat compressed near the end of the school year. So a request sent in now could easily result in a mandated meeting in June of this school year. Other districts I've been in have kept limited staff over the summer, expressly to keep timelines moving for evals.

Thank you all, some useful info.
@Aufilia we took the first step and have spoken to our pediatrician. It was there that we discussed about whether it was worth pursuing and for what reasons would it help him to have a diagnosis. He will go ahead with a referral on our say so..so i guess he sees what we mean. But i am still debating it. DS does have some quirky ways alright, but I was getting a bit bogged down as to whether he needs the diagnosis/label at all..and if the outcome will even be a positive.. Could social interaction help him in time? ..or will the stress of having to join in and all the noise just make him worse if he does have Aspergers? .. what does a diagnosis change? I was hoping some forum members had experience.. Does a diagnosis help so early on?
With DD, she was always alienated from her peers, but wanted to be social, and somehow adapted and fit in..so we didn't test until later when she was seriously bored starting school. She got help and is coming into her own now. But DS doesn't care how marginalized he is or acts..but maybe thats just "yet". Again hoping for input..
Thanks for the links @Indigo. I will read through them all properly, maybe get some info i am looking for.
@RRD Thank you, yes, I've read til my head feels like it will burst on the subject! ..some days i am looking at him thinking he is fine! everything will be ok for him.. then something odd happens or we get remarks from neighbours or relatives and i think.. hmm.. thats why I came here to just get some more personal views on the matter..suss out his quirks and whether they could be something worth checking out or are they just him!! Feeling lost on the topic..

From my perspective, I can only tell you that what might look like ASD may in fact only be OEs combined with a certain LOG. With DS8, some people thought he might be on the spectrum. In part, he had a difficult time making eye contact if he was particularly worked up, would be anxious when receiving too much stimulation, seemed to have an extremely difficult time reading any social cues, had some repetitive behaviour, and the like.

Beyond that, I can't offer you anything more than empathy. Hopefully others on this forum (or elsewhere) could help you with advice as to whether an earlier diagnosis would be helpful. Though actually come to think of it... we did end up doing ABA therapy with our DS and it really helped. So diagnosis or not, maybe it would be helpful to provide him some form of assistance with the more challenging behaviours?

For us, getting a diagnosis was necessary to start therapy. We have been doing ABA therapy for 3 years at home, and speech therapy at school. Our son is now 8, and in therapy, they work on social skills, reciprocal conversation, reading emotions, how to do chores, and how to stay focused for homework. He does 12 hours of ABA a week (MWF, 4 hrs after school). I think it's really helpful to dedicate that much time to practicing skills that he's weak at. My favorite book they're working through is called 100 social rules for kids. It explicitly spells out social rules that NT kids pick up on naturally.

Our ds was dx gifted and ASD-2 at 7 yo. He was our first child, and it took us a long time to realize that what we thought were normal childhood quirks were actually not. I didn't know much about autism. His desire to line everything up was cute. We laughed at how kids can really do the same thing over and over and over again without getting bored. We rolled our eyes at his social flubs and muttered "kids say the darndest things" regularly. But eventually, things just got harder and harder. Not only was he howling like a wolf for an hour at a time (I want to give my kids liberty to use their imaginations, right?), but now he was teaching his younger siblings to do the same, and there was only so much howling I could handle... I knew kids can get upset when you have to change plans, but was it really normal for a 7 yo to be crying about things as often as he did? I know battlebots is cool and all, but did he really have to talk about it for 10 hours a day, every day, for 9 months straight? And why, oh why, could he not understand that a very simple rule of "No throwing food at the table" also includes orange seeds, even though we don't TECHNICALLY eat them??

At 7, we wrestled with the idea of an evaluation. We ended up pursuing one after we sat on the couch talking one day after a row, and he just shared that he thought he was a good boy inside, but he didn't understand why everyone treated him like he was a bad boy all the time. Two years later, I don't understand why it took us so long to put the pieces together, other than the fact that we wanted him to have a fun childhood, and we had no older kids to compare his development to. And he's really smart, so he was limping by with a lot of coping skills he'd figured out on his own. But now, at almost 9, it's so much more obvious that he is different than his peers. It was really hard to tell at 3 or 5, because much of what he did could've been chalked up to cutesy or immaturity or some other such thing.