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    Joined: Sep 2007
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    Originally Posted by giftedticcyhyper
    Yep, we're trying homeschooling. Monday will be the first day he's officially missing school. I have no idea what I'm doing. I'm scared Child Protective Services is going to show up and find me with oatmeal in my hair, diaper rash on my baby's bottom and a three measly math workbooks. I'm still gathering information and deciding how to organize this endeavor.


    BTDT! smile

    It will be okay. I suspect you'll be amazed at how well it goes.

    That doesn't mean that you won't have oatmeal in your hair though. You should see the disastrous state of my house! eek But it's all okay. You get through it. I promise!


    Kriston
    Kriston #46376 05/02/09 02:52 PM
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    hkc75 Offline OP
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    LOL Kriston. The hs chapter in our area just did a survey on "free" counter/center island space. The results were that the average family had 47% of free space on their counter (out of 37 families). So we are not alone.

    Giftedticcyhyper- My son has always been sensitive to sounds especially (busy crowded areas, museums, malls, family get togethers,etc). I just figured he'd grow out of it. He tends to get the "flight" response. When he started getting the whole "restless, fidgety" labels, I knew something was going on. He can be sitting on the couch reading a book and if I turn on the vacuum, he will shoot up like he is on fire and run out the door. He used to run away when his baby sister would start crying. Stuff like that. He is my first so I had no idea other kids didn't do it. There were a few other quirks I checked off in "The Out-of-Sync Child" by Carol Stock Kranowitz,M.A. I also saw a lot of things in "The Mislabeled Child" by Drs Eide. HTH

    hkc75 #46414 05/03/09 08:07 AM
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    hkc75 and Belle,

    Can you speak to the SPD vs. Aspberger's at all? We had an Aspberger's/PDD-NOS diagnosis years ago (when my DS11 was 6) and as I read more and more about giftedness and misdiagnosis in the Webb book I am wondering if what we're really dealing with is giftedness and SPD, not Aspberger's.

    He has always had sensory issues and a lot of the things that we're really disruptive behaviors early on he has sort of learned to cope with over time.

    But the major factors that still present are his constant motion, repetitive movement and sensory type responses to sounds, food, textures etc. I know it is not ADD as he has no problem concentrating--he just doesn't sit still very much. (He is also a drummer so imagine the dinner table at our house!)

    He also does not seem to know where he "is in space"--he runs into me a lot, door frames, knocks things over, etc. though he is fairly coordinated with group sports like baseball and soccer and very good at archery.

    He is fairly inflexible in a school setting and that in part with his boredom in class and constant movement has led me to begin homeschooling several months ago. (He is much happier BTW).

    We have never done any OT for his diagnosis but I am reading with interest about the brushing, wrapping, etc. Any further thoughts?

    Can you recommend any good sources for further reading?

    Thanks a bunch.

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    hkc75 Offline OP
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    Elizabeth4, I am very new to all this as well but I have found "The Out of Sync Child" by Carol Krawitz (I don't have it in front of me) very helpful. Also the OT evaluation was extremely helpful. They told us he lacked muscle tone so even though he was in perpetual motion, he was very weak in certain muscles. He can not sit still becuz of this and sensory issues. Feel free to pm me and I can get into it more off line.

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    We started HSing 2 years ago for a number of different reasons. I thought I'd address your statement about CPS. Have you checked out the HSing laws in your state? It's really a good idea to make sure you are working within those rules (hopefully liberal ones) when you withdraw a child from public school. Or you do in fact run the risk of being hassled about withdrawing your child due to the mandatory attendance laws.

    I think you said your child was in kinder, in which case he may be young enough that the mandatory attendance law doesn't apply yet. But you should be aware of the rules so you can avoid any problems.

    Here's a link to a homeschooling website that lets you look up the HSing laws in your state.

    http://www.hslda.org/laws/default.asp

    Best wishes,

    Patricia


    Patricia - HS mom to 13 yo twins
    J - 2E, Crohn's, HoH, Dyspraxia, Bipolar/ASD?
    E - 2E, Aud Process+
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    Ah, what I wouldn't give to have 47% of my counters cleared...

    grin


    Kriston
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    As I understand it, the one key feature of autism spectrum disorders that helps to set them apart from other neurodevelopment issues like SPD w/o ASD is the child's reaction to or ability to engage in social interactions.

    A gifted child (especially one from a language rich environment) may have very high functioning language that masks this underlying deficit/difficulty. This is true with our son.

    Depending on the age of your child this can be hard to figure out. But here are some possible examples or ideas of observations that may help you sort this out:

    Does the child avoid direct eye contact or break off direct eye contact very quickly? This can be very subtle, especially in a child who is in "constant" motion. Repeated observation with peers and people from outside the family may be the most useful since he may have built up some tolerance for eye contact with close family members. It often seems as though there's a good "reason" for the shift in eye contact so regular observation over time and with different people may be necessary to identify this pattern.

    Can the child take the perspective of the reader when writing (for older children)? This is a major issue for my son and is why his writing is often disorganized and incoherent. He is almost completely unable to take the reader's perspective.

    Can the child engage in meaningful conversation with or "interview" another person about themselves? The essential skill here is the ability to generate a meaningful series of personal questions about another person's interests or activities that takes the other person's responses into account as the conversation progresses.

    Many very high-functioning ASD children can engage in what I call pseudo-conversation but when you closely observe the content of their conversation you realize that they are not really asking these kinds of questions. They may ask about things in the other person's life (what kind of car you own, is that ball yours) but not about the other person's connection to or feelings about those things (why do you like that kind of car? Can we play with the ball together?).

    Also they often turn the conversation very quickly to topics of interest to themselves or into a story about themselves that doesn't really have much emotional content or have much to do with the other person's conversational responses. For example, when asked to notice what was different about a series of photos of his speech therapist, my son pointed out that her hair was different in each photo. When prodded, he managed to ask the SP if she got her hair cut often. When she said that she did he immediately responded with a lengthy story about getting his own hair cut and failed to follow up with any meaningful questions for the SP about her own reasons for changing her hairstyle. Even when re-directed he could not come up with any questions for her. He is 13 1/2 and really should be able to do this at least a little. At the start of this assessment, when the SP asked him to interview her (after modeling this skill for him) my son flatly stated "I can't do that" and became clearly uncomfortable. He was right - he can't do that.

    Problems with peers can include developing complex rules for games - a very "gifted" sort of thing to do. But in the ASD child, the rules will be arbitrary and inflexible and often focused on ensuring that the ASD child wins. The ASD child has little ability to recognize that other children want to win too, that the rules they have created are self-serving, and that peers don't want to play when there is no chance of winning. The gifted child's rules will make sense in terms of making the game more interesting or hard but not in a way that offers no chance of winning if you are playing with them - provided you are can follow their logic and remember all the rules grin

    Difficulty with abstract thinking/concepts can be hard to identify in younger children but is also a fairly prominent feature of ASD's than may be helpful in distinguishing between gifted ASD and gifted non-ASD children.

    In the child with apparently excellent language skills, you may find that the ASD child knows lots of words but doesn't necessarily know the meaning of the words he's using. His usage may be just a little "off" and adults tend to just correct the child's usage rather than ask the child "what does that word mean?". I suspect this is a very mild form of something found in more severe PDD's where the child parrots back something like a jingle from a commercial, over and over. The gifted ASD child hears a new word and retains it but may not understand the meaning, especially the abstract or emotional/social meaning of the word. He uses it in conversation, "parroting" the way he heard it used because that's the only way he knows to use the word.

    It can be hard to differentiate these things and you may need to go to someone who specializes in ASD diagnosis with your questions.

    Patricia

    Last edited by rlsnights; 05/03/09 09:56 AM.

    Patricia - HS mom to 13 yo twins
    J - 2E, Crohn's, HoH, Dyspraxia, Bipolar/ASD?
    E - 2E, Aud Process+
    rlsnights #46432 05/03/09 11:09 AM
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    hkc75 Offline OP
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    Wow Patricia Thanks so much for going in depth. It is very hard to see the line. At what age did you really pin point the possible ASD? The other day my son "won" a date with mom. He turned into the most considerate gentleman, he opened doors for me, poured me a glass of pop, held my hand and offered that I order first since I was a "lady" among other things. These are not things he picked up from just watching dad as I am pretty independant and don't necessarily like to be attended too. So I am unsure where he got these social cues but they really surprised me as I know several men who would be clueless about such things. Would this be something an individual with ASD would be unable to do?

    I like your interviewing assignment. I will definitely use that.
    Thanks for your helpful info.

    hkc75 #46438 05/03/09 12:04 PM
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    I agree with hkc. It's hard to draw the line. I think one of the problems is that most of those things can be explained by sensory issues. Lack of eye contact could be hyper visual sensitivity caused by trouble processing auditory information. If a child is in constant motion, he or she clearly has either a vestibular issue or AD/HD.

    Also, the meaningful conversations could be lacking because of shyness. I know for example, my son is super shy in front of other people but the second we get home, he'll barrage me with a slew of insightful questions about the person that he met that day.

    Hmm. The abstract thinking issue and lack of ability to see things from someone else's perspective is hard one. I can't explain that any other way.

    rlsnights #46445 05/03/09 05:29 PM
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    Wow,thanks for the info. I will definitely try the interview thing. And I will watch the eye contact with others more closely and the tone of conversations--the back and forth give.

    I am very perplexed right now. DS11 has an official diagnosis (at 6) but several things lately have made me begin to question this diagnosis.

    First of all, I read the Deborah Ruf Losing Our Minds book and totally saw my DS in the overexcitabilities and quirky traits of the highly gifted. It rang so true, more so than any of the Aspberger's books I've read. I just kept thinking, this is SO my DS.

    I also read the Webb book on Misdiagnois. And, when I finally decided to homeschool DS11 (he was very unhappy in our public school)so many of the explosive, inflexible, uncooperative behaviors disappeared. He still has difficulty sitting still, transitions can be challenging and he has sensitivities, but these are minimal compared to the challenges we were having in the classroom and due to his extreme resistance to school.

    It is such a dramatic difference that I'm really questioning the initial diagnosis. His existing behaviors can be explained away as SPD, or giftedness or even being a boy. Many of the behaviors that presented as an infant to 6 year old aren't even an issue anymore. Can you grow out of Aspberger's? Do you just learn to deal with the challenges as you age?

    Anyhow, thanks everyone for the input. I didn't mean to hijack. This post just really interested me because I also wondered how SPD might effect DS's WISCIV scores and there seem to be a few of you who are particularly knowledgeable on this subject.

    Thanks smile

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