Canopus

Could well be a phoria. It is possible to get glasses with an inbuilt prism that helps to correct a phoria. Lego Technic is an excellent construction toy. I still play with it today.

Does he have a phoria? That is when his eyes can't focus on the same point simultaneously? It is a something that opticians rarely seem to test for in children, but it can result in all sorts of practical difficulties such as lining things up or judging speed and distance. The traditional way to test for a phoria is a Maddox rod but I think newer computerised tests are also available. Another possible problem is poor colour vision. Many of the latest games require very good colour vision to be able to play them properly.

I had Capsela as a kid and that was back in 1987. Recently I discovered that you can still get it.

The feeling I had when I found out about AS is the same as when a policeman solves a crime that took place 20 so so years ago, but the criminal has died in the meantime.

Primary schools tend to value kids that are only average intelligence, work hard, and put pen to paper more highly than high intelligence kids that don't do much written work. Bad school reports don't mean much in practice and I know of parents who just rip them up and throw the pieces in the bin. I don't think that the education system will look at good points of AS kids until the attitudes of teachers change and that won't happen in the forseeable future. Teaching in Britain is a subculture that is badly detached from the real world. There are limits to what educational psychologists and LEA special needs reps can do, and at the moment they are about as effective as powering up the water pumps on the Titanic which delayed its sinking by 10 or so minutes.

It might be worth taking the 11+. If he doesn't like the grammar then he can always move to a comprehensive. I think its the fee paying grammar schools that the retired headmaster is wary of.

The ultimate problem with the state education system is that it operates as a one size fits all strategy. This is something that few appear to be challenging.

Now that is worrying as they will not have completed the full GCSE course and therefore won't be able to answer all the exam questions. I don't know where Y11 coursework is supposed to fit into things.

I used to know a kid who could have had AS and attended a grammar school. He said he wasn't very happy there despite doing well in certain subjects including physics and chemistry. Many of the staff didn't think much of him as he was disorganised and didn't involve himself in the extra curricular activities. He left at the end of Y11 and did his A-Levels in a 6th form college because he felt he didn't fit in with the school culture and his classmates considered him weird. This was about 5 years ago so things could have changed at the grammar school. I am tempted to say that grammar schools in areas with the 11+ have a higher proportion of AS kids than grammar schools in areas without the 11+.

If the school has a track record of dealing with AS effectively then it is probably fine.

Becoming a GP can be seen as a pot of gold at the end of a rainbow. Believe me, hospital doctors are very busy stressed out people yet most GPs have quite an easy ride. My parents work in the NHS and they think that many GPs are quite laid back people who are in the job primarily for the security and the money.

Teachers in grammar schools tend to be qualified in their subject and not qualified to teach. As a result, they are likely to know their subject to a higher level than a teacher with a teaching qualification, but are they capable of teaching or dealing with someone with SEN? Some may make excellent teachers but others can end up as "old Einsteins" or simply be incapable of understanding problems related to AS or dyspraxia. Officially grammar schools are set up for people of a high intelliegence that have few problems rather than for people that require services the state cannot provide. For example, someone might be a maths genius but have difficulty with writing or foreign languages. Do grammar schools provide extra help when one struggles with a certain subject or issue or do they simply discredit them? Another point is that a culture tends to run through the school that isn't really there in a comprehensive and if someone is an odd-bod then they can lose respect or get treated badly by the staff as well as their classmates. One example is sports and music which tend to take a higher status than in most comprehensives. A bad sportsman or musician will not be very popular regardless of their academic abilities. Finally, if someone has a serious interest in something outside of the school curriculum such as Ford Capris then where does that stand? If they spend most of their time outside school under a car bonnet then the school could interpret it as someone who wants to become a car mechanic rather than go to university! I will discuss the issue with the head master to see if he can provide more information on the merits and shortcomings of grammar schools for someone with AS.

A retired head master informed me that he doesn't recommend grammar schools for kids with AS. The reason is that the staff have less knowledge and experience of SEN than those in a state school, the SEN services of the LEA are no longer available, and the culture of the school isn't good most of the time for a kid with AS. Has anyone here had any experience with a grammar school and AS?

In the bad old days before AS was known in Britain, such a condition was considered as schizophrenia. It was probably better for a kid to display their AS all the time rather than some of the time because they would be labelled as autistic rather than schizophrenic. My father is a registered mental nurse and has experience with schizophrenic patients. He claimed that I showed certain schizophrenic traits and that it could eventually lead me to a mental hospital as schizophrenia is normally viewed as a DANGEROUS condition. I asked him at what point does fickle become schizo and he still can't answer that question. I have a feeling that AS does have some slighly schizophrenic characteristics in that a kid can act quite normally some of the time, especially when they are doing something that interests them. If they are in an environment that they find boring, frustrating or uncomfortable then they start showing behavioural problems. In contrast, autism tends to show most of the time.

I think things have changed since the early 90s and special needs schools tend to be run by people who better understand the special needs than in days gone by, and don't run the schools like boot camps, prisons, or public schools anymore. My (now defunct) school catered for kids with behavioural problems and lumped together a diverse mix of kids. Some of the kids had AS, others were there because they required more attention than they would have got in a comprehensive, and others were truly nasty vindictive individuals who were simply not wanted by comprehensives. The headmaster believed that a traditional strict and disciplined culture to the point where one could not go home for 3 weeks was what was needed to get the kids back on track and turn them into citizens.

GPs can often be very laid back people who hold a narrow and blinkered outlook on life. Sometimes they become GPs because it is a recession proof job for life and they can never become unemployed unless they are struck off the register for malpractice. I know the feeling.

I attended a special needs residential school and it was generally an unpleasant place where child abuse and victimisation by both the staff and prefects was commonplace. The headmaster imposed a very harsh regime similar to public schools of old and made people live under an atmosphere of fear.

CBBC and CITV are sugar coated politically correct cr*p nowadays. That's why they probably aren't listed. Back in the 80s CBBC was brilliant. They showed excellent cartoons like Ulysses 31, The Mysterious Cities of Gold, Dungeons and Dragons, etc. CITV showed plenty of good stuff as well. I think that British TV has got like American TV. We have a telly for cash (satellite/cable) and a telly for trash (terrestrial). I rarely ever find myself watching any of the terrestrial channels and mainly watch stuff like Discovery, National Geographic, and the History Channel because thats where the good documentaries are found. The BBC has totally gone down the pan over the past 10 or so years and I think the TV licence is poor value for money in today's world. Don't even get me started about the political bias of the BBC and how it is being used to promote the Blairite cause.

I wouldn't be surprised if that were true. I have thought about working for NASA although many people have informed me that it isn't anywhere near as exciting as it was back in the days of the space race.

The worst background for a kid with AS has to be a chav community. Chav culture is defined as: complying with lots of unwritten social etiquette when it comes to mixing with other chavs - most of which is not applicable for middle class people, not having interests in things other than popular culture, being bad academically. All three of which are precisely the opposite of AS. If reasonably educated middle class parents had an 8 year old who was an expert with computers, could do calculus, and had an obsessive interest in radio telescopes, but the same kid hated football, couldn't ride a bike, had difficulty making friends at school, took no interest in popular culture and was clumsy and disorganised then the parents would probably try and get help at school but respect the kid's interests and expertise. If the parents were chavs then they would probably rip their hair out in frustration.

What do you mean we can't do calculus in our heads! Engineers are always solving differential equations on the spot and that requires calculus. Has Com got into differential equations yet? It is A2 rather than AS but it is a real FUN subject and was one of my favourite A-Level topics.

Somebody has actually been diagnosed with childhood depression. I suffered from quite bad depression during my childhood and much of it resulted from school and how my parents handled the problems ineptly. Many times I told psychologists and doctors I was depressed but the matter wasn't taken seriously at all. Nobody could understand how a kid from a stable two-parent homeowning family who lived in a "nice" suburb could ever be depressed. It eventually reached the point where I was deemed ungrateful.

In that case why not play algebra games. Start by multiplying two matrices.

There could be cultural issues as well to take into account. Many middle class people like to question and scrutinise things whereas many working class people were brought up with a culture of do as you are told; accept things without reason, question or explanation; respect authority and do not challenge it; do not kick up a fuss in public; and the authorities are smarter than you are. The situation is changing and working class people are increasingly questioning things.

I don't think that AS or dyspraxia are recognised by the DVLA although I suspect in 5 or so years time they will be now that they are official conditions and recognised by schools and LEAs. If one is not officially identified as having AS or dyspraxia but think they have then they need not inform the DVLA or their insurance company about it.