I just found your blog and am really enjoying it so far.

In retrospect, I don’t think my son’s regression was typical — I think it was because we moved and the change in environment shut him down until he could slowly adapt. I wonder if his speech delay wasn’t because he couldn’t talk but because he wasn’t ready to interact that way. When he did speak again at age four, it was in complete sentences. (Albeit often a line from a TV show that seemed to fit the moment.) We always knew he understood language — he just didn’t respond in kind.

What I’ve noticed, is my son’s friends all have aspergers. He is in an autism inclusion program at his high school. There are prob 50 students enrolled. My son has friends, sleep overs, phone calls and invites to places. He’s been elected to be president of the autism club. Amongst his friends, he’s totally accepted and ‘popular.’ He’s happy. His current situation has raise his self-esteem by miles, his episodes of very dark depression have almost completely vanished and he has a confidence he didn’t have before. He’s the only one that’s ventured out to the general ed students and made a few lunchtime friends. In doing so, his friends have followed him out and done so as well. Sure, it doesn’t always go so well but he belongs with a group of kids that understand how difficult it is. They understand each other and I’ve even seen them group up and talk another out of a shut down or make sure they have space in order to have one (not sure how they decide what’s appropriate to shut down over, but they do). The kids that are leaving for college this year are promising to share everything they know to the others so they won’t be nervous.

These kids are quirky, eccentric and fun. When with one another their socially acceptable for exactly who they are. What I love is — and what they probably don’t understand yet — they are developing a community amongst themselves.

Sorry for the tangent! Just the whole dying of hair to hide or disappear made me think of these kids who hopefully won’t ever have to do that too much.

There is very little fundamental difference between Asperger’s and autism, in my opinion; there exist, in fact, people with Asperger’s who cannot live independently, as well as autistic people who are extremely successful. In adulthood, a verbal Aspie and a verbal Autie can be indistinguishable; they are diagnosed in adulthood by childhood history. I as an Aspie (early speech, early reading ability) am actually quite a bit less capable than many people with classic autism at my age, including two I personally know; and I’m not the only Aspie who fits in that category. There’s just a great deal of overlap…

The AS and classic autism categories seem to be artificially differentiated by speech delay and mental retardation; if you have either of those, you are categorized as “autistic disorder” instead of “asperger’s disorder”. Those are awfully arbitrary distinctions. A speech delay doesn’t necessarily translate to disability later on; and while MR usually does, it’s possible to have traits that completely match Asperger’s–except for the MR–and thus be classified as vanilla-autistic instead.

The distinction, to me, does not seem at all clear.

I’m surprised that the second doctor didn’t mention that regression isn’t uncommon for all children when they are undergoing a stressful change. Maybe less sensitive children are not as susceptible, but still in all, that doesn’t seem like enough information to say only autistics go through such things.

From what I observed about autistic children, they seem to want to express themselves at the same age typical for children but they are unable to. There is a huge difference between wanting to verses choosing not to. I would think that is something only a child’s mother might know.

What you’ve shared about your son brings joy to me. Don’t apologize for the tangent. It’s beautiful. 2008/10/09 at 11:41 AM

jef22, In regard to your exposure to a great deal of information pertaining to Autism Spectrum Disorders, I’d like to ask (out of curiosity) how much of it is from what’s observed about children verses the input studied (or not studied?) which Autie and Aspie adults reveal?

I’m sure you’re right chaoticidealism… I doubt the public sees Evan as he is. What was I thinking to say such a stupid thing?!

The reason I equated aspergers with being genetic is because the pattern I’ve seen so far with very young aspie children is that they only get sick with things like an occasional cold, whereas the very young autie children I’m aware of seem to be hit with a lot of ill-health problems.

I’m surprised that David Weeks (researcher and author of publications about eccentrics) has not mentioned Aspergers. Aspies are often defined as quirky, odd, weird, eccentric, and/or strange. The adult aspies (around my age) I know well live life with amazingly good health and have no need for meds. I remember reading somewhere ‘eccentrics’ don’t go to doctors as often as most others do.