Sorry to quote an entire post, but referring back to the original post... fwiw... I agree with absolutely everything DeeDee wrote below.
I've also been in the position as a parent of receiving input from a teacher that I didn't want to hear - and an opinion from that teacher that pointed at a diagnosis which of course she wasn't qualified to make. I also knew my child has an extremely high IQ and hadn't seen the same struggles the teacher was seeing at home (or so I thought). So it felt natural to me to come to the defense of my child an think NO WAY is what this teacher is saying valid (she thought he had ADHD). My dh and I brushed off her opinion for months because it was easy for us to attribute his behaviors to either being bored in class or being a perfectionist or any 900 million other things that appear on lists of characteristics of highly gifted children - when really, nothing the teacher noticed negated any of those things with respect to our ds' intelligence, but we were completely ignoring that the person who was concerned about our ds' behavior had years of classroom experience observing a wide spectrum of children and she was noticing things that she realized were a problem and challenge for our child.
I think that when a teacher or other adult notices something puzzling or troublesome in a child's behavior they may think it's ADHD or Autism or whatever simply because they have known other children with the same behaviors who had official diagnoses, and that's the sum total of their experience with kids who had those behaviors. Most of us draw conclusions based on our past experiences. What a professional such as a developmental pediatrician or neuropsych can tease out for us though are the underpinnings of what's causing those behaviors. Our ds is diagnosed with Developmental Coordination Disorder and has been evaluated for both ADHD and ASD. Our neuropsych has a chart which shows how there is a very large overlap of shared symptoms between ADHD, Austim and developmental disorders such s Developmental Coordination Disorder. While there are many overlaps of symptoms, there are also very distinct symptoms which are markedly different between each, and that's where having a full and complete evaluation becomes so very important.
It's easy to think, as Astroboy did, these things must be happening because my child is gifted, so I'll get an IQ test and show that my child is gifted and that proves nothing else is going on. But being gifted doesn't rule out any of the other, and if you limit your view to just looking at gifted it's easy to miss out on something else that is very very important.
I've told our ds' story before here and also been very honest - I absolutely had no respect for his 2nd grade teacher when she was trying to tell us our son was struggling and possibly ADHD and/or lazy or dumb. I was quick to find a reasonable explanation for everything she was telling us based on what we knew of our ds - but in hindsight, I am *forever* grateful to her and have a ton of respect for her for having the gumption to speak up to us as parents and not back down, because her concern was spot-on - no, our ds doesn't have ADHD, but yes, he has some very big challenges. I only wish we'd listened to her the first time she approached us.
Stepping off my soapbox again
polarbear
Mk13 and everyone else. I just dont understand why they just dont get it! Why are they so keen to diagnose autism? Seriously, if my son had autism, and I was confident in the doctors assessment, I would accept the diagnosis and look at interventions. But he absolutely does not have autism. Spend five minutes having a conversation with him and it is obvious. It just frustrates me!!!!
If a teacher notices that something's up, there usually is, even if the teacher is not equipped to accurately identify that something. My feeling is that if something's been noticed as atypical, it's a good idea to get an evaluation with a capable professional. A developmental pediatrician or a neuropsychologist is a good place to start.
My DS10, who is both gifted and on the autism spectrum, flew under the radar until kindergarten. Nobody believed he could possibly be autistic-- he was, after all, so smart-- even though he had many of the classic signs. He really is autistic, and he could have benefited a lot from interventions in those early years.
Autism is neither an insult nor a death sentence; it's a neurological difference. Nobody is trying to hurt your feelings by suggesting your DS might be on the spectrum-- they are likely trying to help.
DeeDee
