Thank you for that Aimee.
We have an appointment with a psychologist in October through Children's that may lead to the neuropsych exam. This process was launched by our ped who was kinda clueless on DS, but could see what I was talking about.... I'm the one that started the process that lead to the testing above by getting his hearing fully checked. The audiologist noted some things that looked like language processing problems, and so we were sent to the Speech and Language clinic with those observations, and a few more I tacked on about the rhyming issue.
I have an appointment with the kindergarten teacher in two weeks. I asked that she take some time to get to know DS before we met, but I'd like to go over the test scores with her. I'll talk about dyslexia with her at that point, but I also need to talk to her about the math. I tried to get in with our new assistant principal (who I'm told will be my ally), but she passed me off to the school psych (who I know is not my ally). The district is also under the gun on the dyslexia front with a new parent group making the administration circle the wagons. I'm being somewhat cautious on that front as a result.
Asperger's isn't really a consideration at this point. There are really no indicators of it with this kid, and a few things I'm told are specifically contra-indicators. He understands what others are thinking and may or may not understand, and he can verbalize his reasoning. He's aware of other people's moods. He's flexible with new routines and sudden changes in plans. He can tolerate a variety of levels of stimuli; he varies his interests and play over days to weeks. He likes playdates and can play well; he gets puns and jokes. He doesn't really flip out, and when he does, it's easily resolved.
Alright, so I just googled a bit and read through a bunch of "Asperger's checklists." Not my kid. The -->only<-- thing that sort of fits is "unusual interests" or "unusual play interests." He's a 5 year old that plays chess and does Sudoku. He's really interested in things like rocks, the Earth's interior and Earth's history (see my user name: it's part of the home environment). None are at all obsessive (OK, our sitter would think the chess is obsessive, but that's mostly a reaction to her trial-by-fire need to learn to play herself.)
Edit: Upon rereading, it's interesting to me: Note I didn't list math as a particular interest. We talk about math and mathematical ideas, we all watched the Nova on fractals. He lobbies for candy in the grocery store by calculating for me *how cheap* it could be (but mommy, it's only 20 cents an ounce!) He did beg for math homework last spring, which led to him working through a Singapore book when printing worksheets off online was putting too much wear and tear on my printer. The Singapore book was shelved for much of the summer, and I noted yesterday that it was back out again.
Last edited by geofizz; 08/30/11 07:44 AM.
