THE AUTISM SPECTRUM

[Guest guest]

Oh boy,

Steve and I see a heated discussion in the making. Let me thow

a bone to each of you. OFICIALLY (and we all know what that means)

ADD/ADHD is not an ASD. However, My father has undiagnosed

Aspergers. I am the mother of 8 children and they are by diagnosis

ADD/ADHD, OCD, CP, Autism. Now you will never convince me that every

one of those children are not " On the Spectrum " My oldest is ADHD

and a mother of three. One of her sons has Aspergers.THe next one

down is ADD/OCD but in reality he has oppositional combatative

disorder because he is extremely frustrated trying to understand why

no one understands him and why he can't keep a job and why he has

things so hard in life. The next one down is ADD but in reality He

is ADD/Aspergers if he is ADD at all. Oh BTW the second child may

not really have ADD. He is about to be screened for Aspergers. The

next one is a girl and ADHD and I really believe that diagnosis.

Like her sister I belive she is more mildly affected by the Spectrum

and will be content to leave her diagnosis as ADHD. THe next child

down has CP and some mild mental retardation. I disagree with this

diagnosis and believe he is mildly Autistic and may be affected by

either Fragile X or Syndrome. He does not live with me so I

have no control over getting him screened. The next child down has

ADHD and is being screened for Aspergers. The next is .

is the reason I became a self educated expert on the Spectrum and

the reason my other children are being evaluated for Aspergers.

has a diagnosis of Autism. However, there is cause to believe

he may have syndrome or Fragile X. He is being screened for

these. However for the time being the diagnosis of Autism stands and

he is recieving early intervention, speech therapy, and Occupational

Therapy. The baby is Charity, only 7 mos old. She has low muscle

tone. So far that is the only symptom she exhibits. Perhaps she will

develop like the other two girls then again perhaps she will not.We

will wait and watch and see. Many times children with Aspergers are

misdiagnosed as having ADHD. If they are mildly affected like my

daughters who may very well have Aspergers then I understand leaving

the ADHD diagnosis in place. However if like my 9 year old son they

are more profoundly affected and the " normal " treatments for ADHD do

not work for them then I can justify exploring the diagnosis of

Aspergers. They are bright highly intellegent children and you do

have to deal with educators being paranoid about pushing these kids.

However, they are easily bored and need challenges. Like most gifted

children they want to learn and like most autistic children they

need sensory stimulation. The key here is to allow them to learn

through sensory stimulation. That way you feed their needs. Going

into denial about them being on the spectrum only prevents you from

using their need for sensory stimulation as a tool to feed their

need for knowledge. BTW the Aspergers kid in me has no problem

conversing with my computer it is jus people that intimidate me. I

design web pages for a living and I work from home. These kids can

do anything they want to do. Our job as parents is to keep the

naysayers at bay and get as many helpers on our kid's team as we can

find.

Don't be afraid of the ASD label that goes along with Autism or

Aspergers. However DO NOT allow narrow minded educators limit your

child's potential.

(Let me temper my remarks about educators with a statement that will

allow all the insulted educators to just POO-POO all my comments

anyway. I am a Homeschooling mom because of the narrow minded

educators I had to deal with while my older children were in school.

I decided to homeschool when my 9 year old began to exhibit the

signs of ADHD.(I didn't know about Aspergers then))