Mummy2astar

I have a very open mind for my son Paul. I believe he can do anything he sets his mind to and he's only a very tender age at the moment. His specialist doctor was the one who said he would be limited in what he can do and understand, which made me very angry, it still does when I think about it. He's proving the specialist wrong all the time by progressing in areas the specialist said he wouldn't. ;-)

I understand what you mean about super talents. To me even my son pretending his cars are having races and flying off ramps, and playing trains, going 'choo choo' are a super talent as his pediatrician told me he would not be able to do pretend play as his imagination may never develop. I value and appreciate the small things he can do just as much as any heightened ability. ;-)

Hello A little bit confused. My son was diagnosed with Autism/ASD last year but we believe he has traits relating more to Aspergers. Yesterday I spoke to a mother who's daughter was diagnosed with Aspergers, but said doctors no longer refer to it as Aspergers anymore but call it ASD. I'm now wondering if our son's diagnosis could mean Aspergers and that they just put all into the ASD category or would they use the word Aspergers on his diagnosis? Is there a reason the term Aspergers is no longer used to diagnose?

Hello I'm new so I hope it is ok to write here. I don't have any super talent but I believe my son may have. My son is now 5 but was diagnosed with autism in March 2013, though we still feel he has many traits of aspergers. I believe his gift is his memory and spatial skills. As mentioned in Paul1234's post we don't really talk of any ability outside the family as it may seem to others that it's showing off. He struggles with so many things that other children can do naturally that we would love to celebrate the things he's good at with others. From a toddler he's been very interested in gadgets and computers. On his 4th birthday we bought him a Kindle tablet. He never really bothered with toddlers games but loved jigsaws, tangrams and quizzes. He completes jigsaws and tangrams faster than we could and he needs no thinking time at all. Then he got into football badges, car badges, logos and flags. Before long he knew every football club badge of the Premier and Champions league. We put this down to him being football mad. It wasn't until May last year on a visit to London we realised just how much of all this he was taking in. He loves buses, so we took him on the sightseeing bus tour. Travelling past the foreign embassies he shouted out the flag of each country. People started turning round, staring and were amazed, as were we. We realised it was something he loved so we bought him a world map, flag posters and more apps. His favourite app involved a flag appearing and a voice saying the country to whcih the flag belongs. At this point he could not yet read and had only just started to learn phonics at nursey school. Within a few weeks he knew every flag of the world by sight alone. One of his other apps involved a map of the world as a jigsaw. You have to place the missing country into the right shape. He now sees the countries by their shape alone, even if its only an outline and will name any country you point to. He gets very anxious when in a new environment so everywhere we go we carry a poster of flags with us. It helps to calm him by going through them and naming them. There are not many places we go because of his anxieties but if he sees a map somewhere, he's completely at ease and will start to name the countries. He is also fantastic at logos and car badges. We can't walk through a car park without him naming every make of car. At school he struggles socially and it took the teachers over 7 months to get him to set foot into the small playground. However his reading has started to flourish. After reading a book he memorises the words and recognises them in other books. His love of countries comes out in his spelling and he frequently writes Australia, Kyrgystan etc on anything and everything. He loves numbers and maths and is starting to add and subtract everything in the house. He's very much a typical little boy and loves to play with (and line up ;-) ) cars, trains etc. He loves angry birds and mario kart but he often puts these to one side to stare intently at a world map, lol. He adores to sing and listen to songs so I'm hoping that he develops a lifelong love of music. If anyone can offer some advice on how we can help and support him further it would be much appreciated.