Cricket3-stop sign cookies is killing me, your DS sounds hilarious.
Newmom21C-since she was my first kid, I had no frame of reference except in comparison to her peers. She just seemed different, and I think because it is in the news so much, autism was the first thing I thought of. She never played with toys the way they were "meant" to be played with, often stood off to the side or didn't want to be part of the group activities at parties, playgroups, etc. The lining up of things was insane...we'd have entire armies of plastic animals and figurines lined up in queues all over the house. We'd wait and sneak behind her back and change the order of two of them, or turn one the opposite way, and she'd see it immediately and rush over to put it back the way she had it. Just...strange. When she tested into the gifted center I spent a lot of time reading and ran across the concept of overexcitabilities which really seemed to explain her better than AS. I certainly would not rule out the possibility of some neurological difference beyond her giftedness, but nothing I can put my finger on.
After reading your post I went back and read over the signs/symptoms of AS...mostly not her, except I will say that I perceive a lack of empathy at times, perhaps because I struggled with that as a child as well. We work really hard on that!
Perhaps there are even shades of Asperger's? You could certainly armchair diagnose several folks on either side of our family with both giftedness (at least 3 of 4 grandparents) and suspicion of Aspergers, most notably my father and her cousin on my husband's side.
