I have a son with aspergers and I get the same problems. Everyone thinks autistics lack motor and verbal skills. The treatment for aspergers is different the the other forms of autism. I would rather aspergers be separated from autism and be its own disorder.

I understand your concerns but it is a spectrum and by definition means that there will be a variable level of ability. My son is severely autistic and has severe learning disabilities, maybe we should stand together for the rights of people on the spectrum and feel upset if diagnosis is made, atfer all it is not set in stone. People without our experiences are the ones that need educating.

As best as I have been able to determine, I have a few of the more outstanding and desired traits that appear in the various criteria for autism and Asperger Syndrome, and after several decades of highly focused effort I have discovered how to get in touch with what I call my "inner idiot savant" for purposes of writing prose and lyrics; composing and performing music; providing ad hoc and sometimes amusing advanced computing, economic, legal, medical, political, psychological, and scientific advice, as well as a virtual festival of other stuff, all of which is fabulous . . .

Fabulous!

And I have no doubt whatsoever that if all the so-called psychiatric "experts" at the American Psychiatric Association at the dawn of the early 21st century had been running the show in the early-1950s, I would have been consistently sedated at night and highly energized with what one might call "pep pills" during the day, because in great contrast to the 1950s and 1960s when the general perspectives of slow and normal folks regarding fast and bright people were that there was no need to do anything other than to make a reasonable effort to understand some of what they were doing, the perspective today among slow and normal folks is that virtually any signs of superior intelligence and creativity must be blunted as quickly as possible with a cornucopia of strange and bizarre biologicals, petrochemicals, and pharmaceuticals, primarily because it makes the slow and normal folks feel a lot better about themselves, which of course is the most important thing in our great nation as we enter the new millennium, for sure . . .

For sure!

As a bit of background with an example, when I was in the fifth grade, I would sneak out of the classroom--a portable building that was raised above the ground on piers--and crawl around underneath the building, which my fifth grade teacher apparently found to be a bit disturbing, but rather than ask me why I was crawling around underneath the building studying the way the various plumbing pipes were connected and run during the hour when she was working diligently (although with little if any success) toward the goal of teaching my not so bright age-peers how to multiply two-digit numbers, which I had been doing since at least the first grade, she soon began to suspect that there might be something different about me, so being a bit perceptive in other respects one day she asked me to help a fellow in another building who, as she explained it, was having trouble with puzzles, which I did, since I like puzzles . . .

The fellow in the other building certainly was having a lot of trouble with puzzles, all of which I thought were quite trivial, so I helped him solve all his puzzles and showed him a few strategies that he could use in the future when he had more puzzles that were too difficult for him to solve by himself . . .

There were a lot of puzzles, and one of them involved moving a stack of different diameter disks from one pole to another in a particular order (the "Tower of Hanoi" puzzle), and another puzzle involved having a 3-gallon bucket and a 5-gallon bucket and needing to get just one gallon of water into a bucket from a stream in as few trips as possible using the buckets one at a time, and so forth and so on, including geometry, word, pattern, and other types of puzzles and stuff, which in retrospect is a bit amusing, since over the years I have realized slowly but surely that being bright tends to travel with a bit of naivety, especially with respect to the patently incorrect and naive presumption that everyone on the planet is equally bright . . .

Soon thereafter, nobody got on my case about any of what they apparently perceived to be my eccentric behaviors, because as I discovered nearly two decades later--since nobody explained any of this to me at time--the puzzle fellow actually was a psychologist, and the puzzles were an I. Q. test on which my score was "well over 170", which as best as I can determine must have been off the chart at the time, since it is the only logical explanation for including "well over", all of which is fabulous . . .

Fabulous!

Jumping forward to the present, after reading and pondering the various intellectual and learning related criteria and definitions in the proposed DSM-5, I have no doubt that the folks on those committees have a dangerous agenda, for sure . . .

For sure!

The fundamental problem in the proposed DSM-5 changes with respect to autism and learning disorders--which immediately was recognized nearly universally by the only people on the planet who actually have the ability to focus for the amount of time required to understand something so abstruse as the proposed DSM-5 changes, specifically the folks who either (a) have been diagnosed as having Asperger Syndrome or (b) might fit the diagnosis in one way or another--is that the various criteria and definitions are so generalized that they make it not only possible but also likely that sometime in the not so distant future every child in our great nation will be sedated during the night and energized during the day by a virtual festival of strange and bizarre biological, petrochemical, and pharmaceutical drugs, which from my perspective is the only logical way to interpret the agenda of the American Psychiatric Association, especially when you take the time to do a bit of investigative Googling with respect to the various pharmaceutical and other industry associations and sponsorships of the various designated DSM-5 revision spokespersons and committee members . . .

The fact of the matter is that the slow and normal folks never have been able to make much sense of the fast and bright folks, which tends to work reasonably well most of the time, but every half-century (more or less) some of the slow and normal folks become a bit too frustrated with themselves and their abilities and soon thereafter embark on missions to improve their overall self-esteem by changing the way everything is defined, since when one arbitrarily defines all the fast and bright folks as being intellectually challenged, learning disabled, or autistic, then suddenly it becomes quite advantageous to be slow or normal, if only because being slow or normal maps to not being constantly drugged . . .

Yet another significant problem is that by eliminating and removing very specific diagnoses with well-defined and very precise criteria, such as Asperger Syndrome, the slow and normal folks essentially can label anyone in whatever way they desire for virtually any reason, and this is a dangerous ability to put in the hands of slow and normal folks, especially when one realizes without doubt that some of the slow and normal folks are sociopaths, which among other things maps to their having absolutely no qualms or hesitations with respect to doing anything that they might find to be self-serving or whatever . . .

Whatever!

One of the consistent strategies of sociopathic folks throughout history is that they clearly recognize the importance of attacking and challenging the fastest and brightest folks, since once you get the fastest and brightest folks out of the way, there is nobody remaining with enough sense to do much of anything to stop whatever plans and schemes the sociopaths have devised and put into motion . . .

Is it really such a surprise that the folks who have no difficulties whatsoever focusing diligently on one thing for the amount of time required to understand it intimately might be a tiny bit upset when a bunch of sociopathic psychiatrists embark on a nefarious scheme to enrich themselves with drug industry money by changing the criteria and definitions of intellectual and learning abilities to the point that they have the authority and power by design to label anyone in such a way that they and their cohorts in education and government essentially can use the judicial system to force anyone labeled this way to be continually drugged?

Not really!

And regarding getting in touch with what I call my "inner idiot savant", this is an example of what I have been able to do by pondering the concept of playing grand piano for a few decades without ever actually playing grand piano, an effort which started making excellent sense last year, at which point I decided to start playing grand piano but with the rule that I compose and play everything in real-time on the fly exactly one time, which is the same rule I use for drums, bass guitar, rhythm guitar, and lead guitar, so this is an example of what I discovered how to do in a primarily unconscious way, where I let my "inner idiot savant" do the driving, which is one of the keys to being able to do extraordinary stuff, because so long as you feed your mind enough information, sooner or later you have sufficient information to know how to do a lot more than you can imagine consciously, especially when you are able temporarily to suspend most conscious thinking, which for music is enhanced considerably when you have discovered how to use echo machines to have a bit of FUN with spacetime, which is as fabulous as it is mixed expressly for listening with iPod earphones or studio quality headphones like the SONY MDR-7506, since there is a lot of binaural and spatial motion stuff . . .

http://www.surfwhammys.com/music/11_Starlight_2.2_Grand_Piano.mp3

Fabulous!

I guess I am going to really offend everyone but why are so many of you parents and such willing to slap "handicapped" labels on your children? That label is stuck there for life! Is it a desire for special treatment or to get more money from the government? From what I am reading, children with Asperger's are generally quite gifted but socially awkward. Is that really such a huge deal? Does everyone have to fit into a mold of identical behavior and attitudes? What is so wrong with being different? Are you so afraid to stand out in a crowd and be different? Is it that traumatic? I have a son who the schools and others were so desperate to slap a label on as he had a processing "disorder". Big hairy deal. He learned to compensate on his own with me as a parent working with him. He did not need someone slapping a disabled label on him! He learned to celebrate being different the same as his two brothers. The world does not need anymore sheep! We need more sheepdogs.......people who are proud of just who and what they are and are willing to stand up and be different and go on and do their very best. And schools who are willing to work to give these students a safe learning environment to do that without fear of bullies and the sports crowd and the populars.... Schools today are not interested in turning out educated minds who are curious and want to gain knowledge. They only want to turn out student robots who will parrot the government line. Doesn't anyone read 1984 anymore or do you just laugh it off? Really look at it some day and you will see what happens when sameness is rewarded and differences are labeled handicaps!

my sense is that nobody with any evidence of anything even slightly similar to the signs of autism, aspergers etc has to worry about being booted off the autism spectrum (unless it is in someone's financial interest to boot them off). this spectrum is described as ranging from "normal" to extreme autism (ie "rain man"). i think the push to label everyone who exhibits even the slightest hints of autistic traits as "on the spectrum" renders all research concerning factors contributing to autism as severely flawed. i also think the people who will lose out as a result of this will be the people who really suffer from the serious problems that historically defined autism. to give an example in a different area, now that people routinely say they are "depressed" and frequent "therapists," it seems like the popular understanding of the seriousness of true clinical depression necessitating serious medical intervention has severely dwindled. "experts" who aren't really experts are busy, identifying every kid they can as "autistic" to get funding for therapy (which does not help them much unless they are actually true autistics). it seems like, if someone is worried about being booted off the spectrum, all he/she has to do is flap their hands a few times (at least if they are under age 10 and their public school wants more funding). parents actually have to hire attorneys to get real experts' diagnoses to determine types of therapy, if public schools have already diagnosed their children as "on the spectrum." weird world. i'm just left wondering how many kids in my 1980s elementary class would have been put "on the spectrum" if they were born today.

You know, there are a lot of people out there who are "really smart", but just "can't comprehend" certain things...we all know that really book-smart individual who can't figure out how to pay a bill on-line, or the brilliant author who just couldn't get through a math class to save his or her life...just because you have a toddler who isn't developing on YOUR "normal" timeline, DOES NOT MEAN there is anything WRONG with that child!! Study after study shows that development is a SPECTRUM, and fits within an x-y time period...babies in daycare learn to sit up faster than babies who stay home with their parents because they have a stronger and more enforced model to learn behavior from...defining your child as "slow" is more damaging to them than anything else that you, as a parent, can do to him or her. Children need to be accepted by their parents FIRST AND FOREMOST to develop as functioning adults! Labeling them as disabled certainly isn't good for their "whole person development" into happy, healthy, functioning, contributing adults.

I care because they treat the diagnosis. If they are lumped in with the other forms of autism then thats how they will be treated. For years my son was diagnosed with ADHD becuse symptoms can be similar. The treatment wasnt working though. He was in the principals office every day and it was a fight to get him to do any school work. We had him tested more extesively and he was diagnosed with aspergers. Treating the aspergers he is now an honor roll student in advanced classes.

I just think there has to be a distinction between what most people think of autism and aspergers.

No-it changes things for my child in that people(coaches,teachers and employers) lower their expectations as soon as autism is mentioned.

I'm disturbed that these people are up in arms just because they lose a medical term?

I find it far more disturbing that you refer to us as 'these people' frankly.

However, I don't see what the big deal is. It seems to me that Aspergers is already classified as a higher functioning manifestation of Autism anyway. I don't think much will change.

I'm with you. My son was diagnosed when he was about four. Frankly, he's never had a meltdown. he's very bright and was the top student in his class until 6th grade. He became "one" of the smartest in his various classes, an honor roll student thruout his years. He's the kindest and most caring person, and even his social skills have improved through the years. I don't think Asperger's and autism should be lumped together. People immediately expect less even if his temperament and academic level was higher than most of his peers.

I am sorry I cannot give you the name of a particular doctor as I am in Nebraska, but you might try looking to see if NJ has a state autism society. If so, they could probably refer you to someone. Also, your family doctor should be able to refer you as well.

As to your question about "idiot savants", not all autistic children/adults are a savant of some sort, only a few.

I have one nine year old son who has PDD-NOS (pervasive developmental disorder-not otherwise specified), yes that is on the spectrum. I also have a second son, 12, who had ADD and I am sure is also an Aspie, but has never been formally diagnosed. As a parent of both, I do not see that the inclusion of Asperger's in the Autism spectrum is necessarily a bad thing. They ARE on the same spectrum. I see many of the same behaviors in both my sons and therefore handle them very similarly. Secondly, my older son because he is not considered to be on the spectrum, does not receive nearly the same services through the school district. If he were, he might get more of the attention he needs.

my daughter has aspergers, not diagnosed until adulthood. She is an excellent dancer, was a cheerleader for many years and walks with the grace of a model. She can generally pick up any dance step in about five minutes.

this consolidation is probably financially driven- judging from how kids are being diagnosed now.

Hey, that is a valid concern these days. Re-writing the DSM right around the same time the government wants to run health care? I don't think the financial aspect is too far of a leap. You know the educational system is phase two for a new cradle to grave strategy. Is smart to be watchful of these issues.