Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Twice Exceptional Asperger's?

My child with AS is on the mild side of the spectrum, and I do want to remind people that it is a spectrum disorder that affects people to different degrees. DS 20 can often pass for "normal" but he usually appears very awkward and people can mistake his lack of awareness of non verbal interactions as rudeness.

As a boy, DS had low muscle tone, flapped his arms when excited, and had very scripted ideas about play. He'd want to reenact exact scenes from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and did not appreciate ad libbing. He allowed me to dress his lego figures but not to make them say things. He used to interject lines from favorite video games into conversation, not understanding that the lines were not familiar to others and had no meaning to them. He once hugged a store clerk who had been helpful, and had no idea when a person was done talking to him. He's come a long, long way, but he will always be different.

I think this is exactly what they were looking for

I wrote a fairly lengthy response to this yesterday but I guess I forgot to click on submit. Anyhow, I have experience as a mental health professional in working with children with Aspergers, and have diagnosed it in the past. However I did not have training in children that were HG and didn't know anything about that until my DS4 was about 2 years old. So I would imagine there are some professionals that don't see all the traits and quirks of HG children and could misdiagnose. There are times where it is hard to distinguish...but there are clear criteria that need to be met in order to have Aspergers. It's not just a lack of some social skills or poor eye contact. I just wanted to say that because even though your child may have traits it doesn't mean they have it. And they could also meet the criteria for mild AS there is a big range. I would suggest that you look for someone that does have experience in working with gifted children as well in order to distinguish, and also someone that is knowledgable about Aspergers. When my DS was three his pre-k teacher said that she felt he had something on the autism spectrum because she had never seen a child that bright that didn't have some sort of disorder. No joke. I was extremely knowledgable about AS and didn't feel that he had it at all...however I figured that it wouldn't hurt to have him evaluated and may answer questions for other teachers in the future. We had him evaluated by a developmental pediatrician who specializes in Aspergers, and he was very sure that DS did not fit the criteria. But that being said my DS does have poor eye contact at times, he used to spin as a toddler for fun, he is sound sensitive, and he does not really pretend play barely at all. He is very literal about things. However he has good social skills and enjoys asking about and finding out about others and their interests. He has a good sense of humor, he does not perseverate on things, he does not go on and on about subjects and seems to be able to tell when others aren't interested, he does pick up on social cues from others. Anyhow, just wanted to share our experience and hope that you get the answers you are looking for.

My daughter does have gifted aspergers. The singular thing that I found most helpful in underdstand aspergers, particularly gifted aspergers is an article called Giftedness and Asperger's Syndrome: A New agenda for Education, maybe this will work if not google the title

http://www.cec.sped.org/AM/Template...CM/ContentDisplay.cfm&CONTENTID=4171

It has two great tables that I like, especially Table 2 which specifically lists characteristics of gifted children and characteristics of gifted children with aspergers and compares the two. It was only when family read this article and understood this that they could see that my DD is actually an aspie. Much of the information written about aspergers is about aspergers in general and not geared toward gifted aspergers and there truely is a difference and that difference definately delayed my daughters diagnoses. there are tests that are specifically geared toward gifted aspergers children where they may pass a standard evaluation. My daughter passed all the standard speech therapy tests with high scores and completely bombs tests specific to aspergers children with gifted IQs.

The other thing to remember is that social characteristics of aspergers will become more pronounced with age without intervention. They will also begin to show in English Language arts for instance when a child doesn't understand inference meaning and may struggle with fiction. I could go on and on but better stop there, you get the idea.

Wow, that is a great article. Thanks so much for sharing! I plan to share it with other mental health clinicians that I have worked with and school officials that I currently work with. Very good information!

yeah that is a great article! thank you

Thank you for the awesome article.:) I have sent it to the kids' special ed teachers.

Hi, I tried to ask this earlier; now I really need a response I started the process to have ds checked out for possible ld (maybe auditory processing disorder, maybe other stuff??). I have a good lead on a neuropsychologist, but it was also suggested to me to speak with the pediatrician first. I met with the ped last night. She was really understanding, commented that some of the issues ds and I related could be due to being gifted.
Issues related: boredom/daydreaming in class, rote memorization issues with math facts, having trouble making friends - granted we did change schools this year - very high energy (bouncing off the walls at times), and the big one, what appears to be an inability to hear in certain white-noise settings (car, computer lab).
She said it would be extremely rare for a child with excellent school behavior to show up as adhd, but might as well do this Vanderbilt scale sheet for parents and teacher to fill out. At first I was freaking out, now I am more ok and think the bit about thinking in terms of his age and the last 6 months helps keep me from thinking of his issues as 'very often'.

Also, she is recommending a developmental pediatrician, so I will likely make an appointment for that soon. She said that this dev. ped. would look more closely at the possibility of asperger's, but to not freak out on that either because a good bit of social ability can be learned - maybe he just needs the therapy Lord knows I am probably not the best 'social butterfly' example a kid could have.

I would say that in general it seems like issues he's had with memory, high energy, etc. seem to be getting gradually better over the last few years.

I thought that if this other ped. thinks we need more full assessment he/she would at that point likely have us go to the neuropsychologist and from there possibly the audiologist.

However, lastly, she said get the school involved for the ld testing (audiologist, etc).
I think it was Grinity who warned against involving the school at all...
Now I am really wondering what negative experiences could I run into if we involve the school?
Are you mainly referring to misdiagnosis (due to lack of recognition of some of the overlap of gt flags w/symptoms of aspergers, etc.) ?
I feel pretty well warned about that ....but I don't know how they make the diagnosis and call for additional services for a child.
Very confused.
If I couch this in very specific 'auditory processing issue' terms would they test for just that?
Also wondering if I can't just ignore the whole thing and it will go away...
not too down about it, but wanting some input from those who've gone down this path.
Thanks!

My personal experience, and it is just that, with my daughter was this...I wasted my time going to the school before I had an outside eval. done. Unless there is a financial problem or a testing problem ,I would get an outside eval done and then approach the school. First because an outside eval is going to be much more extensive. We spent five days some of which were 4 hour days testing and discussing results with the pediatric psychologist that did my daughters testing. The school spent and hour for one session and about a half hour on another aspect, done. Yes, they will do their testing but then you already have an understanding of what is going on and what you want to advocate for. Secondly, the school district did testing last year, limited testing at best and decided that my daughter was fine based on those tests. The CASL test is commonly used and is a very poor test with gifted children. Because of there intelligence they often test above average on this test which in the case of Aspergers can be very misleading and just plain wrong. My daughter was denied services which is when we had an outside eval done. After much prodding the school purchased the PLSI test this year. It accurately states that my daughter tests in the poor to below average range in pragmatic language skill and, fingers crossed, according to the speech therapist should receive services this year.
I also discovered that the people who are supposed to understand aspergers don't necessarily understand gifted aspergers. That would be my reasoning. May I ask, how old is your son?

Thanks for the response - my ds is 8.5, 3rd grade. He is doing really well in school, with the exceptions noted above. He came really close to getting an s- in technology last year; after observing the class I held off on being overly concerned about things because I could definitely see why a kid could fall asleep in the low humming, warmish room with a soft-spoken teacher repeating things. you. already. know. zzzz...

But more and more, I think he really does have a hard time hearing or at least understanding me in the car, so I began thinking differently about his slow behavior in tech. lab.

The social thing has gone on for a while and seems to be less severe now that he has a couple of kids from his gt program that he seems to relate to ok. Time will tell more on that front. After reading this thread and related articles I have strong doubts he would turn up with Aspergers but it was mentioned in the consultation.