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Understanding Asperger’s Syndrome

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Asperger’s syndrome, sometimes called nerd syndrome, is a neurological disorder categorized under the umbrella of autistic spectrum disorders.

Autism: An overview

by Marian Wilde , GreatSchools Staff

Asperger’s syndrome has become a controversial diagnosis to describe children exhibiting various difficulties with social behavior. Like autism it affects an individual’s ability to successfully interact with others.

Although children with Asperger’s syndrome (or AS) can have normal or above-normal intelligence, when they start school they often experience difficulty functioning in the social world of the classroom. In fact, it’s not unusual for these children to remain unidentified as having Asperger’s until starting school. The majority of AS children are diagnosed between the ages of 5 and 11.

“As we become more familiar with the variety of differences in our children, a growing number of school-aged children with impairments in complex social behaviors are being referred for assessments and treatment,” says Dr. Mariam King of the Pervasive Developmental Disorders Clinic at the University of California, San Francisco.

What are the symptoms of Asperger’s syndrome?

Children diagnosed with AS generally show normal development until age 4 in speech, self-help skills and curiosity about the world around them.

A concerned parent should look for many, but not necessarily all, of these signs:

Repetitive language
Impairment in the use of nonverbal behaviors, such as making eye-to-eye contact
Conversation that centers around the self
A voice that can be emotionless
Eccentric vocal characteristics
Dyslexia or other writing problems
A tendency to think literally rather than abstractly
Clumsy or awkward motor skills
Inappropriate or insensitive social behaviors

How common is it?

Although scientists have been studying autism since the 1940s, Asperger’s syndrome has only been researched intensively in the past few decades. It was initially described by Viennese pediatrician Hans Asperger in 1944, but it wasn’t until the 1990s that the disorder was widely recognized in the English-speaking world. As a result, there’s a lack of solid data on the prevalence of Asperger’s syndrome.

Our understanding of Asperger’s is still unfolding, with diagnostic criteria only recently being established in the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM) in 1994.

For many years it was thought that one in 166 individuals has an Autism Spectrum Disorder, a range of disorders that includes Asperger’s syndrome and the more severe disability, classic autism. In February 2007, new data released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) indicates that in many areas of the United States the rate of autism in 8-year-olds is as high as one in 150.

What is the difference between autism and AS?

Read more from GreatSchools.org on Asperger’s Syndrome

 

How to Get a Diagnosis

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Step 1: Take Notes

Become the foremost researcher on your child, examining your subject in a variety of different environments and documenting all irregularities. If your child has recurring odd actions that alarm you, keep a diary of what, when and how long. If your child has emotional breakdowns or explosions, keep a chart to see if you can identify what sets them off. You want to be able to specifically document your concerns so that doctors have the most accurate idea of what’s going on and can make the most assured steps toward a diagnosis.

Step 2: Talk to Your Pediatrician

Chances are, your health insurer will require you to go through your pediatrician before tests and specialist visits anyway. But it’s just as well, because your child’s regular doctor will likely have useful insights and advice to give you. While you’re the ultimate expert in your child, the pediatrician is probably the medical professional who knows your child best — certainly better than the specialists who will pop in for a short time, look at one aspect of your child’s life, and see you again in a year. A good pediatrician with whom you have a comfortable rapport is a helpful person to have filtering all those reports and test results and guiding you as to what to do about them.

For more see: How to Get a Diagnosis

Early Intervention

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Sometimes babies are born with a condition or special need that can affect their development. Other times a condition is not apparent at birth so over time, the parents or doctors begin to wonder if the child is developing appropriately.

In either situation, a child’s developmental abilities are evaluated. Once evaluated, the child is eligible to receive the therapy or other types of early intervention he/she needs and the family can get the support and education they need.

Early intervention means finding the specific ways to help a child become as functional as possible. In some situations, the therapy a child receives at an early age enables that child to reach developmental milestones on target or close to target. In other words, early intervention can sometimes help a child catch up to peers.

Early Intervention Helps a Child with Major Developmental Areas

Physical development a child’s ability to move, see and hear
Language and speech development a child’s ability to talk and communicate
Social and emotional development a child’s ability to play, interact and relate to others
Adaptive development a child’s ability to handle self-care functions, such as feeding and dressing
Cognitive development a child’s ability to think and learn

For more information: Early Intervention Support

Bad Reasons to Avoid Early Intervention

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So maybe your pediatrician has talked to you about getting early intervention services for your child, or you’ve let your doubts about your child’s development lead you into making a few phone calls about it. You’re worried about your child, but you’re also worried that getting help will mean there really is something wrong. These five reasons to skip EI may be nagging at you, tempting you to just go on and hope for the best. Don’t listen. They’re bad reasons. Here’s why.

1. I don’t want to label my child.
The “label” your child gets to qualify for early intervention doesn’t go on his “permanent record” — many kids go from EI right into regular education preschools and kindergartens. The idea is to label now so that there’s no need to label later. Because those labels that come later stick a lot harder.

2. My family thinks it’s a bad idea.
Mothers and fathers and in-laws and siblings are always full of advice, but as a parent, the buck stops with you. You spend more time observing your child than anyone, and if you have concerns, they need to be respected — if not by others, then absolutely by yourself. Follow your gut.

3. My child will catch up on her own.
Maybe, but you’re gambling with your child’s life here. When your child is five and still delayed, you’re not going to be able to dial things back and try early intervention. Early intervention will do no harm, and may do a great deal to help. Why take a chance when you don’t need to?

4. Children need to play and have fun, not do therapy.
Sending your child to early intervention is not like sending him to boot camp. It’s fun. Your child will think he’s playing as he does things to strengthen his motor skills and gain meaningful language. You’ll have fun watching it, too.

5. I’ll just work with my child myself.
Terrific! Work with your child yourself! There are lots of hours in the day. Doing early intervention doesn’t mean doing nothing else. You’ll still want and need to work with your child. But chances are the intervention therapists will be able to give you ways to do that so much more effectively.

For many more articles on related topics see: SpecialChildren.About.com

Raising Your Spirited Child

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by Mary Sheedy Kurcinka

In her book, Raising Your Spirited Child, Mary Sheedy Kurcinka, has a number of different tools to evaluate your child. The following are just excerpts from her book. If these are interesting to you, I encourage you to buy her book.

You can purchase the book from Amazon.com

 

Evaluating your child’s temperament

Evaluating the parents’ temperaments

The Introvert/Extrovert Survey

Evaluating Intensity

Evaluating Persistence