The pediatricians that my son saw (several different ones at a military base) never said anything about autism, but when he saw the developmental pediatrician at age seven and she looked at the information I had written about him and the copies of message board posts from when he was preschool age, she said she was sure he had Asperger's, especially after reading a post describing him as talking like a little professor sometimes and reading without being taught at 2 1/2. But after she talked to him she said he did not have it. He has no trouble with social skills, has never had any trouble making eye contact, is able to discuss lots of different subjects which is a good thing because his friends are interested in different things. For instance, the friend that visited yesterday is very interested in history and politics so they talked about that for a while before they played video games. Today the one gifted friend that is his age and the only one of his friends who says he likes math more than other subjects, invited him over to his house. I doubt they will talk about math, but if this friend wants to talk about math, my son can carry on a decent conversation about that too even though it isn't his favorite subject. Another of his gifted older friends is very into Harry Potter and fiction so they talk about books--each of them talking about what they liked about their favorite books and trying to pursuade the other to read the books they find the most interesting. His friend still won't read the historical fiction my son likes best and my son still won't read the Harry Potter, but they still enjoy talking about books and making jokes and talking about the funniest You Tube videos. My son noticed before his friend did, that a girl in the acting class seemed very interested but was shy, so he told his friend about it and found other things to do so his friend and this girl could talk. I think he is more aware of body language than most people. He always seemed very perceptive and at times it felt like he could read my mind and he was my only child to really want to know more about me as a person, not just as mom. My son's personality and sense of humor is so much like his dad's and people really seem to like my husband at meetings and conferences. He was put in charge of training for the office because of his people skills and ability to teach and making people feel at ease so they can learn. This is what attracted me to him. When I meet people that have worked with him they tell me that these meetings are not quite so boring when he is there.
He never lined up his toys or had a problem with a change in plans, which happened often in his acting class.
When he was 4 1/2 a teenager in his acting class told me that he must be "autistic or something" to be able to memorize his lines so quickly and he sometimes said that my son was like a 20 year old in a little kid's body.
I think part of my son's "problem" is that he has a little kid voice but talks more like an adult. I will not tell him to dumb down his speech if he is talking to other adults. His older gifted friends understand him. I think by the time he is in college, he will fit right in.
My son does have a lot in common with kids with Asperger's because he has sensory integration dysfunction, motor dyspraxia and hypotonia and some but not all kids with these issues have Asperger's. He says a kid he met online who was diagnosed with Asperger's shares a lot of his interests and he deals with some of the same issues.
