Belle - I'm sorry you've had to go through this. Very frustrating! I agree with the others who suggest finding another advocate, if possible. This one just does not get it, and does not seem likely to give up.
Thanks for the links. I think Dr. Amend's letter could be useful for us to give to the school when they start worrying about our DS5's social interactions. They have not suggested AS, but when they observed him in preschool in the spring, they noted as a red flag that DS did not interact much with the other kids.
All of the above characteristics are also commonly seen in gifted children and can easily be mistaken as Asperger's Disorder by someone not familiar with the asynchronous development and special needs of gifted youth. The unusual behaviors of many gifted children do strike many who are not familiar with gifted characteristics as a "qualitative impairment" in social interactions. Although the gifted child's interactions may technically show a "qualitative impairment," it is certainly of a different nature and likely has different causes (e.g., thoughts or worries by a gifted child about interacting).
Someone knowledgeable about giftedness could see these differences more readily than those who are not familiar. What I frequently see in practice is that when gifted youth are given the opportunity to interact with true "intellectual peers" in a particular area, their interactions are not only unimpaired, but also are often typical. In a child with Asperger's Disorder, one is not likely to see reciprocal interaction or discussion about a topic even if both children have an interest in the same topic. This is in marked contrast to gifted youngsters who will engage in extremely intense and also reciprocal conversations if both of them share the interest in, say, Pokemon or Harry Potter.
I recently had an interesting conversation about this very topic with a friend who is getting his teaching degree. He did a paper on AS, partly because he has a nephew with AS and he's concerned with proper ID'ing of this group. He gave me an example of how an AS kid and a gifted kid might respond in a particular situation, and the only difference is the motivation (which could be tricky for a teacher to distinguish without follow-up): A teacher tells the students in the class to bring their mats to the middle of the room. One student refuses. The teacher asks the student to please go get his mat. He doesn't budge. (And so on.) The teacher ends up talking a parent, who asks if the teacher asked the student why he wouldn't get his mat. She had not. When asked, he says that he does not have a mat, he has a rug. The parent explains that one part of the student's AS makes him take things quite literally, and he would have felt he was lying if he brought over his rug, which was not a mat as the teacher asked.
I could imagine a smart-alecky and bored gifted kid doing the same thing, but with a different motivation ("I don't have a mat, I have a rug" - just to be difficult and act out when in an unchallenging placement).
(Note - I really don't know that much about AS, and I'm just relating my friend's example. I hope it's not off the mark.)
