9 year old Aspergers

[sstarz]

I have a 9 year old with Aspergers. I welcome the idea of anyone who would like to chat about their child. I am always open to new ideas and thoughts on how to handle day to day issues when dealing with AS.

:rolleyes:

[zaida]

Hi. I also have a 9 year old son. He is not been diagnosed as HFA but for years I have seen many characterstics in him that are typical of children with Autism.He started talking really late and even now at 9 his conversations are very immature and he sticks to one topic. He was diagnosed as having receptive and expressive language delays at 4 years old. His speech has improved but he has a really hard time expressing himself. I know that he senses that he is different and it breaks my heart. He is a very sweet kid and I worry that he is being picked on at school. He doesn't have many friends and has not been invited to a birthday party all year. He doesn't complain but I can't help but worry. I would love to know more about your situation with your son and how you are coping.

[Dani Marks]

Hi,

I am new to this site... I have a 6 yr old son that was just diagnosed with Asperger's and Hyerlexia in January 2006. I am new to all of this. I would be glad to chat about our kids and share ideas and such...

Dani

[gbeachkids]

Hello,

I'm new to this site too. My six year old daughter was recently diagnosed with autism and I would love to hear about your experiences. Sometimes I feel if I educate myself about her condition and get really proactive I can overcome the fear that sits in the pit of my stomache and other times I feel angry because the world just doesn't seem to "get it." I'm desperate for support and help, but I can't seem to find it. I live in a tiny town on the ocean and our educational resources and support groups are sparce. I wonder how things are for you. Is your child in kindergarten yet? If yes, how is that going? How are you feeling? Thanks, Angel

[Dani Marks]

HI,

I know the feeling of support and resources being sparce. We live in a small town too and from what I hear, there used to be a support group that met in a larger town near us, but they no longer meet (not sure why). Yes, my son is in Kindergarten this year and there are differing opinions as to how it is going. His teachers say that he is doing fine and nothing needs to change and then also tell me that he wont do his work and that the teacher has to sit beside him all day to make him do his work. She also says that he has some trouble with some of his fine motor and some of his gross motor skills and that he seems to get thoughts mixed up in his head and his thoughts come out jumbled. Also, she keeps telling me that "He has got to socialize!" With all of this that she says about my son, I don't see where she gets that he is fine and nothing needs to change. At home, I see that his aggression is starting to come out more and I know for a fact that he is extremely bored in school. I have also tried to give the school ideas about what works with my son at home but they dont seem to take me seriously. I think that if they would just challenge him more at school that they would have more success with him in other areas. You see, he has been reading since he was 3 yr old (self taught). He had a psychological test with IQ test done last summer by the county BOE. He scored genius levels in math and reading. It was determined that he was reading on a 5th grade level and doing math on a 3rd grade level. However he has trouble completing a thought and like I said before, it seems that he gets his thoughts jumbled.

This psychological test was the first inclination we had that something was wrong. It came back on the test that he was borderline for Asperger's Syndrome. The school told me not to have him retested by a doctor, but I did anyway. We always knew that he was a very bright child and that there was something a little "different" about him, but him being our first child after 2 miscarriages, I just dismissed the signs even though they were there early on. I just marveled in anything and everything that he did. (I still have some guilt about that). I just contributed it to him being a boy and boys maturing slower than girls. (I grew up with sisters and my older sister had all girls up until this year, she finally had a boy). I had never been around boys much until I had my 2.

I took him to his pediatrician and he sent us to Augusta to a developmental ped. They both said that it was definate, he has Asperger's and Hyperlexia. I am in the process of looking into further testing for him. I still don't know what all he is going to need or what testing I should get for him. I don't want to go overboard, but I don't want to do too little either.

What steps have you taken?

The signs that he exhibited when he was a baby and toddler were: He was facinated with the pictures on his bottles (would stare at them for long periods of time), He didn't start talking until after he was two, He was facinated with letters and numbers at a very young age (he knew the alphabet and could count to 50 by age 2 1/2, was counting to 100 by age 3), he was facinated with stop signs and would place ones that we made for him in our hands and "fix" them how he wanted and check from all sides to make sure they were perfect, He was facinated with Nascar cars and still is (he knows every driver, the type car they drive, who the sponser is of each car and the numbers of all cars, etc.), he liked to watch things spin and liked to spin himself, he didn't really play with his toys, he would set them up in specific ways and then sit back and check them out. He was and still is in love with computer games and playstation games.

I don't know if this helps you any, but I hope that it does. Maybe we can be support for each other since it is so sparce where we live. Take Care nd God Bless.

Dani

[jimali168]

Wow, whatever you described about your son is almost identical to my 5 1/2 year old son. He started playing computer games at 18 months, and I mean he actually knew how to play and not just pressing different keys. He reads maps whenever he's not playing his playstation games or doing his homework. He doesn't watch TV much but read constantly. He, as well, loves race cars and wanted to be a race car driver when he grows up. He already finished getting all of the licenses from his GT4 game! He already knows how to do multiplications in math and memorizing dates of special events is a breeze for him. He actually remembers what specific date was raining heavily or what his classmates did on a specific date in the past. He loves to look at and examine diagrams and tables. All these goodies make him look like a genius but he lacks social skills at all. He already gotten picked on constantly by his classmates in kindergarten because he doesn't know how to say no to them or avoid being near mis-behaved kids. He doesn't initiate to play with other kids. Whenever he got picked on, he will just stand there and let them do whatever. When other kids hit him, he just stand there and let them hit him. He doesn't even know how to walk away! That hurts me when I heard that kind of things that happened to him. Got to go...