I was so glad to find this thread! My son is 13, and when he was probably 10, his pediatrician convinced me to take him to a psychologist because she was sure he had Asperger's. The psychologist agreed, but referred him to the local University psychiatrists to have him diagnosed. Well, the "experts" told me that he tested "just below" the threshold for Asperger's, so they would not give him a diagnosis. I have to say that I was crushed, probably very selfishly, because an official diagnosis would have validated my feeling that he is different. The older he gets, the more I am convinced that he does have Asperger's - I don't care what the experts say. So I'm really interested in hearing everyone's ideas on this topic. He is very intelligent and gets straight As in school, but I have a hard time getting him interested in anything other than video games. We live on a 5 acre farm that I am slowly transforming into a permaculture farm. I'll definitely be following this thread to see how I can try to interest him in more outdoorsy things.
As an interesting side note, leila hamaya mentioned in a previous post about "gifted" and "learning disabled." I always felt that my daughter, who is now 5, was very intelligent, so I was perplexed this school year (she is in kindergarten) that she struggles mightily with reading, writing, and math. They put her in learning lab (for learning disabled children) and recommended her for speech therapy. As part of her screening, they did an IQ test, and she tested at 139 for the non-verbal portion, which is in the gifted range, and 118 in the verbal portion, which is above average. Overall IQ is 131, gifted. Go figure. The speech therapist explained to me that gifted and learning "disabled" are not mutually exclusive. I prefer to think that she just learns differently from most children. Luckily, our school has a wonderful program to address her needs, but this was an eye-opener for me! The speech therapist suspects dislexia, but is hesitant to put that label at such a young age.
