A few questions

[Guest guest]

Hi,

My name is and I am a beginning graduate student studying

speech-language pathology. I have been reading the posts from this

group for about a month. I want to thank everyone for sharing such

wonderful, educational information.

I am very interested Asperger's Syndrome. I have a thirteen-year-

old son who has never been diagnosed with AS, but accurately fits

the description, from what I have read. I have had a few people

suggest that he might be an AS child. As a young child, he was

accepted into an early intervention program in MA. When we moved to

NJ, we were told he wasn't severely handicapped and didn't qualify

for any services. We put him into preschool,later than normal due

to his late development. They suggested that we hold him back from

entering Kindergarten, mostly due to lack of maturity and immature

motor skills. We decided to put him into Kindergarten against their

reccommendation, because he was so bright. He has struggled in

school and continues to struggle. We have had some wonderful

teachers who worked with him, and some horrible teachers who just

didn't like him. He is currently in the eigth grade, he maintains

about a C average, which is way below his potential. At around age

9, we took him to a child psychologist, who basically said that he

was borderline ADD, and taught us some coping skills to help us

avoid the tantrums, and help him with disorganization. This year, I

went in to the intermediate school to talk to a school counselor. I

told her that I had concerns about my son, he is very unhappy, has

no friends, he has kids that bully him to the point that he doesnt

want to go to school. I told her that his organizational skills are

so bad, that even though he is extremely bright, he is performing

well below his potential. She said " Unfortunately, your son is one

of the kids that just falls through the cracks. There's really

nothing we can do for him. "

So here is my question. I would like to know, what kinds of formal

testing would help qualify a child, who is high functioning and

getting by as far as grades are concerned, to receive some kind of

services within the school?

My second question, I've often thought that some type of

social/pragmatic skills training would be beneficial to him. Most

of the social skills material that I have encountered so far, seems

to target a younger child. Has anyone had success with older

children as far as social skills are concerned? What was done and

how?

Thank you very much. You can reply directly to my private email if

you would like: dreama098@....