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We discovered that my 10-year-old son has Asperger's when he started kindergarten.  We didn't need to have him evaluated for assistance in school until 4th grade.  He is extremely smart (definitely has the "little professor" characteristics), but has a lot of trouble with social cues, accepting change, fixation on particular subjects (for him it's dragons), very gifted in art, etc; however, he doesn't have the extreme problems with sensory sensitivities (aversion to sounds, textures, etc).  During the school evaluation, there were 4 check-off areas in order to qualify for autism assistance and although he has the three most important characteristics (such as inability to read social cues), he did not qualify for help because he couldn't check all four "boxes" (with the fourth box being the sensory elements).  I don't know if changing the definition of the diagnosis would offer him any more help because he was already evaluated on the autism scale.  If anything, we need to keep the Asperger's diagnosis and have a separate evaluation in the school so that my son could get professional help in learning skills in how to cope with his "differentness".  I definitely think there needs to be more resources for kids with Asperger's and autism.

posted 3 years, 3 months ago
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