Noetic

I've always pushed myself and abhor the idea of making excuses. Like yourself, I would rather smash my head on the wall over and over again trying to get something done that I "can't" do than give up or try and communicate to someone so they do it for me. I wouldn't know how to - at least when it comes to hard graft, I know how to do that myself!

So sweet - there is obviously the real Steve and then there is what his issues/epileptic problems turn him into/make him say or do. You know your lovely wonderful and charming/clever/intelligent boy is still well and alive in there

Could you give me the URL/address of your friend's Ebay shop please? �75 is still very cheap... compared to the American prices (and shipping)

Fluent speech doesn't always mean it makes a whole lot of sense. "Well-spoken" can easily mean "copied from books" or "rehearsed/stilted". Sounds a bit like the guy who made that comment only thought "Autism = doesn't speak" and was surprised your son did speak?

It doesn't work on Serotonin though, but on norepinephrine.

Most gum is sugar free nowadays, I guess it's one of these tooth health things.

To be honest a week "with no stresses" doesn't sound like "a normal week"...

Can you try this: http://www.nas.org.uk/nas/jsp/polopoly.jsp?d=522 It is a card that briefly explains what autism is etc. and you can hand them out if people moan and complain. And hey sadly people are narrow-minded and intolerant quite often - as long as those people you care about know what is going on, does it really matter so much what total strangers think?

I recently saw a girl who surely wasn't yet anywhere near a year old do the same, we were having lunch at a sculpture park and my Mum went "Gosh I can't believe that baby there is walking!".

I can understand why you feel upset but look at it this way - if they have such an attitude aren't you glad you didn't have to find out after something went wrong or your son was exposed to their attitude for any length of time? OTOH they may well just have been honest with you - the other AS kid might have been very demanding of their attention and they didn't want to stretch themselves further than they can cope.

With some kids, especially where they almost "blank out" and don't always remember what they did, there amy be some degree of seizure activity involved as well...

Try health shops - they do lots of different "cordials" and concentrated juices (pear is nice) that are not sweetened and usually have no additives. If it's not "cool" enough you can always put it in an old bottle of squash... http://www.goodnessdirect.co.uk/cgi-local/...et/sect/DS.html

I'd keep an eye on it, it's often the case that sibs of auties/Aspies have some traits too (esp. sensory things, could be that he has sensory issues/sensory integration disorder) but not necessarily anything diagnosable. But at least you have the experience, you know?

ROFL thanks for that

She was restrained as punishment for not going outside during breaks? That is horrendous!!!

Does he have any other signs of ASD? Poo smearing does happen more often on the spectrum and among kids with sensory issues *without* having an ASD, but if poo obsessions in NTs weren't something that happened from time to time I doubt Freud would have had so much to say about such, um, fecal matters (Actually strictly speaking that may have had something to do with his own pant-wetting problems, although I am not sure that was 100% true and no something Jung came up to "discredit" him with)

I know I had a lot of bath-poo incidents until I was ca. 5 or so, even though I toilet-trained early (at ca. 2 1/2 - I HATED going in nappies, it felt horrible), although I never smeared (I usually didn't notice it was MY poo and was so shocked I thought someone had put it in there...) I think at 3-4 it can be a fairly normal thing since kids do go through exploratory phases like that...

Thanks for that! For me visual processing is much more of a problem, auditory it's mainly a delay... but it's still there so I will devour the site ASAP

What APD site?

I used to think they were the same but I've read and seen enough to know differently now. There's a fantastic book called "The Asperger PLUS Child" which deals with differnential diagnosis, and everything the author writes about HFA applies to me perfectly, whereas what is generally written about AS (aside from speaking before I walked) does not for the most part.

I don't know about when I was growing up but I sure have a big noggin now

LOL that is absolutely hilarious! Although it is also proof of just how much she must have understood at the time, to know that that's what you say when you've burped!

HFA is autism with generally good intelligence. By the way: You don't need a speech delay for a diagnosis of autism, it's either a delay or an abnormal use of language (echolalia, not using it to communicate etc.) that counts. (Only 3 of Kanner's original 11 cases were nonverbal, and several spoke quite early - they just did not use speech for communication) Being able to speak does not mean you use that speech to communicate . With AS there is generally less of a problem with this side of things, i.e. regardless of when speech started, language skills are generally better and while communication is often one-sided, speech is mostly used to communicate (there is more of a need/desire to communicate, even if it is one-sided and in the form of monologues). Whereas with HFA there tends to be less communication, even if language skills are superficially better than in more severely autistic kids.

I was in a special needs school for kindergarten as a non-disabled "neighbourhood kid", and they had these trikes too - I loved them and I really think they helped a lot! Mind you I didn't learn to ride a bike until I was 7, which is normal where I grew up anyway. I'm not sure about funding though, is there no group or school nearby where you could let him ride on one of these without having to buy one yourself? Btw just to clarify do you mean these: http://www.tsm-schulzentrum.ch/ (That's the school I went to)

That sounds like something that would have really creeped me out as a kid - where the hell does that person think my tummy/ears etc. should be if not where they are right now? And LOL @ "demon crawler" I must admit I didn't start pointing to communicate until we got a TV and I learned about letters and numbers etc. (I pointed at ca. 18 months more as a sort of exclamation of "There" than anything else, and there are some really funny pictures of me and my godmother where she is pointing at her window while I am staring into the gutter below, and when I finally notice her and start pointing too, *she* is staring at the gutter instead! )