Hi,
I have one son who has ADHD and i think my eldest son may have AS. My eldest is very quiet and placid. He is bullied at school and prefers adult company to his peers. He doesn't go out anywhere preffering to stay in and play on games on the PS2. He is very straight to the point and can be quite rude if he beliefs he is right and you are wrong. The only time he is chatty is if it is something he is interested in. He walks with a stoop and doesn't like to look into peoples eyes when speaking. His eyes dart everywhere but into yours and he also blinks and when he does this his head jerks slightly. At school he really excels at history and thats the only subject he likes.
Could anyone tell me if these are the traits of AS please, as i feel i may be reading to much into it.
Also he gets very depressed at times but i have put this down to the bullying.

Hi Jo
Your son really sounds like my son, if i would not go on at him to go out and try and play with the children here he would just sit inside and play lego or PS2 or tv. In school everything he likes like history or something to do with nature he will do really well, he also can get very depressed at times if things dont go well for him or something has upset him . He is also very funny with diffrent smells .you more then welcome to write me an e mail and i will get back to you.
Tanja

Thank you for that, i thought i might be over reacting. My other son has been to the doctors today and i have got Nathan an appointment for testing. I was told it would be a few weeks before he gets in but its a step in the right direction. I will let you know how it goes as the doctor has said that it does run in families and that AS and ADHD are quite closely related.

have you spoke to school about the bullying its hard enough without and they should be encouriging work such as history that your son is good at best luck linda x

Hi Linda,
The school are aware of the bullying and one boy has been expelled for it. The problem is that the school has no concerns over him. He is very quiet and gets on with his work even if he hates it. At juniors no teachers noticed anything either, all the attention has always been on his brother with him having ADHD. I had never heard of AS until a few weeks ago and as i read it i couldn't believe how much it described my eldest. Nathan has never been destructive though and i know he has no behavior problems at school. He's mainly in a world of his own and can't understand why other children pick on him so much. The school didn't realise how good he was at history until he came top of the class. He also got an award for art. They describe him as having low confidence, which he has but he does put his heart and soul into the one subject. He's not much of a talker unless its something he likes and that isn't much.
Do children with AS tend to have behavior problems?

well my james whose 7 can have a hell of a temper at times, but likes his own thing eg bus obsession so much that at times he appears very aloof dont know if thats a similar thing let us know how u go ps i go to a local autism group very good x

Hi,
Nathan has had his appointment through for the 26th of september. He has also refused to go back to school causeof the bullying. The school and doctors are now working with him to get him to go to school and outside the house as he gets quite upset at the thought of doing so. The school has allocated him a speacial needs teacher to work with him and she is trying to get him to go in for one hour a day for now, working up to two hours when he feels ready.

My daughter is asd, she is 6, when did you notice his eccentric behaviour. good luck with your appointment?

Hi Debbie,
I don't really know when i first noticed. All my attention was took up by my other son Daniel who has ADHD. I always thought Nathan was a very gifted child. At age 1 1/2 he knew every single Thomas the tank engine character, if you said a number he would tell you the engines name and colour. His photographic memory carried on with the reading. If you read him a story, he would beable to read back every word you had said without him haveing the book. He managed to go to school today for one hour(i'm so proud that i could cry) and he had a litracy test. They told me that he is well above average for his age.
Also the fact that he has very poor social skills and is very much a loner and he doesn't make eye contact unless he can help it. He doesn't lose his temper much (only with his brother and sister) but he will argue his point if he believes he is right. Nathan is also very clumbsy and hates sports + walks with a slight stoop. But with all that said i must add that he is the most loving child (only with me and close family) and i wouldn't change him for the world. I just want him to be happy.
Love Jo

We went to the doctors today and she strongly suspects that nathan has AS. A questionaire is being sent to school and one to me to fill in. It shouldn't be long now before he gets a diagnosis.

Jo, your son sounds alot like mine who is now 15. I don't know how old yours is. Mine was diagnosed at 12. He was really struggling with bullying and grades at that time. Once we figured out why he was different it made alot of difference. I took him to private counseling for 2 yrs and eventually put him on medication which is night and day difference. He also decided himself to gain respect due him from his peers by studying hard and getting good grades. He started working out and got stronger and even tho having NEVER done sports has managed to participate some. Alot of this came from within him which I'm very proud of. We told him what was going on and explained to him what AS is all about, since he was so intelligent, felt he should understand why certain things are hard for him to understand. He qualified for speech and language help and they have worked with him on social skills and idioms etc, social language so he sounds less like an adult in a young body. His peers have now kinda embraced his eccentric behavior as the way he is and the other kids who say things to him he just ignores. Someone told me once to have the kids think of a duck and their feathers and just let the bullying words roll right off and not soak in and for some reason this analogy seemed to work with him. His confidence 3 yrs later is much better. I'm not pushing medication, we put off doing it until we had worked with him as much as we could, but it was tremendous for him. He was working so hard to concentrate etc. My son also kinda has the blinking eye thing, worse when he's stressed. It's only a mild tic. We tell him to work on eye contact so its improving. For the fire thing, with your other son, I would get all lighters and matches etc. absolutely out of the house to at limit his opportunity to play with fire. I know there is some medication for obsessive behavior also that some kids are taking. My son's obsessions like music and game boys are socially appropriate so they haven't really been a problem. We monitor how much he uses them of course. Good luck. Sorry this got so long!!

Thank you Carol, sorry its took me so long to reply. Nathan has now been diagnosed with Aspergers and we feel so relieved. The doctors aren't going to put him on medication though and i don't think i'd like another son on tablets. Daniel has now been put on Concerta because the Equasym wasn't doing nothing for him. The fire obsession is getting easier to deal with as i had moved everything out of his way, but school is awful. Every day he ends up getting a detention and he will be getting his first exclusion from this school soon. At juniors he was getting excluded every few weeks. I thought that maybe he would learn how to control his temper a bit better at this school, but he hasn't. On a different note though, Nathan has started doing his maths and english lessons again. Hopefully he will be back in full time school soon. He has also found that he has a gift for algebra, this is something i can't give any help in as i don't understand it at all.
Hope everything goes well for you and your son. please let me know soon.
Love Jo