<p>jktbre:
I also looked up the article today. Very good to educate everyone about side effects from medications..thanks for the heads up!</p>
<p>Thank you. It s funny. When we were asked to do this interview, I was under the impression that Rex's story was the happy story, yet the article did not portray it that way at all. It also did not clarify that his hallucinations were a result of the ADHD drugs and that when he went off of those, the hallucinations went away. I was disappointed that it did not explain clear that he had been misdiagnosed. I did not want the kids at school to think that he was schizophrenic and torment him because of it.</p>
<p>To me, we were very lucky. Rex is doing great. He is on the honor roll at school, involved in sports, making friends. The TD does make his face grimace and his body twist and turn, but compared to where he was a couple of years ago, he is amazing. We can live with this.</p>
<p>Hopefully the article will make more people aware of the dangers of over medicating and alert them to what to watch our for if their children do need these drugs so that they can actively advocate for their kids. We just were not educated enough to understand the implications of all the side effects that we were seeing, or the long term effects. It was so very easy for the DR to explain off the things that we were seeing. </p>
<p>Plus, they did not air brush away my fat..very disappointing. lol.</p>
<p>jktbre..I could see that they had probably interviewed you and then used very little of it. But your son is very cute! I imagine you have a fuller story to share that gives a much more complete window into your son's life on another day..this time the author kept the article focused rather tightly on drug side effects. Interviews seem to always have surprising edit jobs in my experience!</p>
<p>jktbre..I could see that they had probably interviewed you and then used very little of it. But your son is very cute! I imagine you have a fuller story to share that gives a much more complete window into your son's life on another day..this time the author kept the article focused rather tightly on drug side effects</p>
<p>Exactly. The article was on the side effects of the drugs and that is where it went. Much of what we said was chopped and pasted together. I am glad that they did uncover much of what the drug companies have been trying to hide and I think the articles were great in that effect. I just am disappointed that it left Rex just hanging that way. There is so much more to him than what was portrayed.</p>
<p>I think he is rather handsome myself. Thank you.</p>
<p>jktbre--regardless of how the story was slanted, the pictures of your son portrayed him as a happy kid with a very loving mother--great images. I agree with Faline--he looks adorable. And I didn't notice the <em>fat</em>, LOL, you looked great!</p>
<p>And I didn't notice the <em>fat</em>, LOL, you looked great!</p>
<p>LOL, thanks:)</p>
<p>I've done some extensive research on Asperger's in the past and this is what I suggest:</p>
<ol>
<li><p>Watch movies with your kid, and make sure they're good movies. If he sees social cues in action, he will likely pick up on them.</p></li>
<li><p>Find someone at the HS who he can use as his "go-to" guy. Even a normal guy like me had one of these (the baseball coach) and let me tell you, it's great to have someone you can always talk to who isn't a member of the student body. A kid with AS will probably need this more than anyone--make sure this person has a good background of AS though. My top picks are 1) a school counselor, 2) one of the support/resource teachers, who generally deal with all kinds of disabilities, or 3) a teacher who shares a passion that your kid has, but is careful to not go overboard about it.</p></li>
<li><p>Attempt to educate them in a wide array of subjects. Let's make up a guy, I'll call him Jose, and give him AS. We'll assume Jose is very passionate about, say, cell phones. We all know cell phones are something almost everyone has and that every one of them is slightly different. Find something that has a similarity to cell phones. For example, how about the hands-free system in cars? Perhaps he will take the time to learn about cars. And then something could stem from that. The more topics he knows about the better. And I say this because kids with AS generally pick up on topics very quickly and want to know all they can about them.</p></li>
<li><p>I'm not sure how many friends your kid has, but as long as they are supportive of him all will be well. There may only be a few, and they may have similar interests, but that is a good thing. Someone obsessed with video games will obviously have a good time playing them with his friends.</p></li>
<li><p>Remember, he could outgrow it/mask it if he looks at examples through movies and to some extent other students. One of my classmates last semester had AS and I would have never known until he told me. This guy was as normal as any other and I was able to hold conversations about many different topics with him for long periods of time.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>AS is simple yet complicated. As someone who will be taking special ed courses to add to my elementary ed certificate I've been reading as many books on these topics as I can find. I find AS to be fascinating and I think some people out there have it--Bill Gates is a name that comes to mind. I've also read somewhere that Thomas Jefferson may have had AS (or at least some form of autism). Gates and Jefferson are both well-respected and are/were successful. One became a billionaire and one got his portrait on every nickel in circulation, so don't give up and most importantly don't let your kid lose faith in himself!</p>
<p>That final point brings up an example last year that's sort of unrelated but sort of the same at the same time. I have a very close friend who's sort of like a little sister to me. She is very energetic and hyper, and often has more drama than an entire play crew. Someone sent her an anonymous note saying that dramatic/hyper girls are horrible and ruin everything. She was very depressed for a few days and cried herself to sleep every night. I told her that there is nothing wrong with being dramatic at all, and that the world would be quite boring without dramatic people. In fact, I reminded her that her energy/randomness always made some people smile. You need to be there for your kid if something like this ever comes up. (cues Sting's "If I Ever Lose My Faith In You" here)</p>
<p>Hope this helps...</p>
<p>Watching a movie that shows social cues may not help an Asperger's kid if no one points out to him what the cues are and how they work and why. Some kids that have difficulty with social interaction cannot learn by watching and imitating --they must be told explicitly in words what is expected.</p>
<p>regarding difficulties with social cues: my son has mild AS; when he was younger he was in cub scouts and the boys were doing an activity for a communications badge where each boy took turns trying to nonverbally communicate a certain gesture or phrase. My son drew a card telling him to communicate "come here." He just stood there and frowned at the group. Finally the other den leader gestured to him with her finger and he walked right over to her. He understood this gesture when he saw it but was not able to use it himself. This just illustrates yet another social issue with AS, they may be able to understand a lot going on in social situations but not be able to apply it themselves in a similar setting. This has been one of my son's problem; he often seems to "get it" but then has problems expressing or showing his own reactions or feelings in a way appropriate to the situation. This is an example of what I refer to as splinter skills (a term I learned about when my son went through sensory integration therapy) where an individual learns a general skill required for a task, but cannot apply the skill to a similar task (for instance, my son could ride a trike but never mastered a big wheel when he was young). I think this applies on a social level as well as physical level for some individuals with AS.</p>
<p>quote
This just illustrates yet another social issue with AS, they may be able to understand a lot going on in social situations but not be able to apply it themselves in a similar setting.
end quote</p>
<p>Tranferring skills from one social situation to another is definitely a problem for my AS son demonstrates regularly. And I can understand it... Since he cannot read the situation, how can I expect him to apply the correct skill?</p>
<p>I often see him trying to misapply social rules from one relationship to another with unanticipated (by him) results (usually problems).</p>
<p>Strangely enough on a intellectual level, he understands that he has a problem with this, but cannot seem to discern when it is happening until it is too late. </p>
<p>Just joining this thread after discovering it recently. My son is not the goalie referred to in my screenname. That would be my daughter.</p>
<p>Looking forward to continued participation, though.</p>
<p>I have Asperger's SYndrome + social anxiety + inattentive ADD. I don't know about depression. I barely have any friends, and extremely limited interests, and my case is more severe than that of most other people I know, given that I have even more limited interests and fewer friends than them. Anyways, you don't suffer if you don't know anything - and I'm trying to find ways to make myself not feel bad over having almost no friends - does medication work, such as anti-anxiety meds? But my MAIN problem is inattentive ADD. If I could actually focus, then I could study and forget EVERYTHING about friends because I then wouldn't even need friends anymore, and then I would be much happier.</p>
<p>Nice article/story from NPR.</p>
<p>excellent article! thank you for posting it.</p>
<p>Actually, I tend to hate movies. I don't understand a single bit of ANY of them. And while I can sometimes enjoy fiction stories to a small extent, movies I just can't understand at all.. So when someone makes me go to a movie, I just look at it, not getting a single part of the plot.</p>
<p>Documentaries are ok though, as is Star Wars for whatever reason.</p>
<p>Simfish, I am sort of the same way somtimes for two reasons. Being a guy who produces movies for people (such as school sports teams and clubs) I often go to movies just to get ideas for camera shots and effects. Also, I'm not very fluent in pop culture so a ton of stuff in "mainstream" movies often sails over my head, and I am especially not up to it when it comes to raunchy comedies--I wind up searching the net for synopsises after I watch it to see what it was about.</p>
<p>The raunchy comedies (ex. Wedding Crashers, Meet the Fockers) have so many bad things in them that I just tune out, which is probably part of the problem. The references they make are sometimes foreign to me as well, but that could be, as I said earlier, because I'd likely get about a 25% on a pop culture test.</p>
<p>If I am going to a movie with friends and I know I'm not going to get it or I know I'm watching it just for ideas and effects, I'll read the plot ahead of time so I can chat about it afterwards. And as for one that I know I'm not going to get when I see it, I try to find any redeeming camera work or editing in it that I can perhaps apply to a work of my own (though I prefer technical films for this).</p>
<p>Oh yeah, reading the plot ahead of time will probably help. Nonetheless, movies are designed for the enjoyment of neurotypicalls and I just find most of them extremely shallow, unless there is an explicit plot that is clear even with the movie. I think Star Wars was more explicit with its plot than most other movies that tend to focus on more mature themes, I guess...</p>
<p>I know absolutely nothing about mainstream pop culture. I kind of feel proud of that too...</p>
<p>My son is a rising college junior with AS. His results in being accommodated at college have been somewhat mixed. He brought dynamite testing done by a school neuropsychologist to the college disability office, and was granted every accommodation we requested. However, the devil is in the details. Colleges/professors can have subtle ways of making it difficult for students to actually receive their accommodations.</p>
<p>This is a great thread! Someone sent me to this thread, as I had started a similar one yesterday. My son is 17 and was diagnosed with Asperger's as a child. He was in special ed during middle school, but did not seem to need it toward the end, and now is completely mainstreamed. He had a lot of the problems interacting as you guys have described, no friends, considered weird, etc. However in the last year or so, he has made great strides. My other son has told me that some people actually think his brother is cool. I have also had a couple of his 9th and 10th grade teachers tell me that he actually came in out the blue to give them hugs during the last week of school. Right now he is away for 3 weeks at the Governor's French Academy, where he is allowed to only speak in French the entire time. This is his first time away from home, and after about 2 weeks, we have only received 2 letters from him, both very positive about his experience.</p>
<p>Sorry to ramble, just trying to let you parents with younger children with Asperger's that it does get better as the children get older, at least in our case. It's hard to believe my son is the same kid.</p>
<p>By the way, has anyone ever heard of a girl having Aspy? It seems to be all boys.</p>
<p>Yes, girls have AS also but less frequently and they may be harder to diagnose because they may have more social awareness than AS boys. On the other hand, social expectations for girls are higher.....</p>
<p>Glad to hear of your son's progress!</p>
<p>Here are some interesting articles about AS and college:</p>
<p>Supporting students with Asperger's Syndrome in College:</p>
<p><a href="http://www.tcd.ie/disability/docs/pdf/Asperger.pdf%5B/url%5D">http://www.tcd.ie/disability/docs/pdf/Asperger.pdf</a> </p>
<p>Asperger's Confounds Colleges - A surge of students diagnosed with autism-related disorder poses new challenges:</p>
<p><a href="http://www.grasp.org/media/chr.edu.pdf%5B/url%5D">http://www.grasp.org/media/chr.edu.pdf</a></p>
<p>Autism Spectrum Disorders and Choosing College Courses (mother's view):</p>
<p>mother's view of the first year of college for son with AS:</p>
<p><a href="http://www.aspennj.org/coulter.html%5B/url%5D">http://www.aspennj.org/coulter.html</a></p>
<p>From Univ of Wisconsin Whitewater - Understanding Disabilities: Asperger's Syndrome:</p>
<p>Difference in High School and College for Students with Asperger's Syndrome:</p>