Ask for help right here, and get a personal reply....

[Gareth Roberts]

This section is brill! Here, you can post your questions.. yep, about anything Asperger related... and one of us... including me will reply to your question with an answer or solution...

Sound good? Even if there's no-one hanging about, I should be around most of the time. This time I promise..

Get postin' :)

[Kalia]

hi gareth. thank you for being there. truly. i was hoping for more of a response to my first posting. we are at the very beginning of a "second look" at our nineteen year old daughter who i feel in my heart sits somewhere on the asperger's spectrum. i won't repeat all that i said in that first post, but suffice it to say i am , right now, stuck square in the middle of being so very sad about the past....about how she was not diagnosed properly simply because she is very bright and her standardized test scores were exceptional. that's all that the school district looked at or cared about. in this past week of gathering TONS of asperger's information, i decided to contact her guidance counselors from both grade school and highschool.....the gradeschool one was the one who called us in for a meeting, with the fourth grade teacher, when chloe was nine years old, to tell us he wasn't sure what the problem was but that they felt they "couldn't reach her": that she was only scratching the surface of her intelligence and there was so much more inside that she wasn't able to access. we left that meeting not understanding what the heck the point was.

the highschool guidance counselor is a good man and was helpful throughout the ordeal of trying to figure out what the problems were. but now, when i talked with both of them, their attitude is palpable: they are afraid i am going to sue the district for improper care of my kid, i know they are. i can feel it in every response they give me, every careful little response that they utter. and it is making me so sad, and very angry. it is almost quite as if their attitude speaks volumes about their feelings of GUILT......maybe?

both of them are very quick to say they would NEVER in a million years have identified chloe as "an asperger's kid", and i realize now, after all the reading i am doing, that the spectrum of the disorder is huge and even ten years ago what was known about asperger's was limited.......there is certainly more information today.

i am not interested in digging up the past really, and i know that what i am learning now cannot change the dismal failure that highschool was for her. her father and i just want her to be able to function in the world, to understand herself and her limitations, and to get the therapy that might benefit her the most. while there have been therapists in the past, they were specifically for the anxiety disorder diagnosis and for the drug use she got involved in when she was a freshman and sophomore in highschool. we firmly believe that THAT has ended. we drug test her occasionally, by surprise, and she is always clean. (it was just pot that she was playing around with...)

i know i am babbling. i do alot of that lately. so much information coming in and the waiting game for the first appointment with the psychiatrist has begun..........it won't be long and he sounds so wonderful, so sincere in his desire to help kids.................actually he will only do an evaluation, due to time constraints...he is not taking any new patients. so there will be a series of three appointments: the first with my husband and i, the second with chloe, the third with all three of us. it has been two years since she has received any kind of treatment for ANYthing. she was going nowhere with the therapist she was seeing and hated going to see him........she didn't want to take drugs of any kind for anything...........we got very very tired of arguing with her, so we decided to let her take a break.

she got her G.E.D. last august with no problem, far exceeding the number of points necessary to pass; she has been working for two and a half years , after school, at a local car wash......she hates the job at this point and will be graduating from the career center photography program the highschool got her involved in in her senior year; the district paid for that year and we are paying for this second year; there will be a certificate received at graduation, she has learned a certain set of job skills that make her employable at any number of photo stores. but her anxiety over change is causing her to have a meltdown over the upcoming graduation and despite her hatred of the car wash job, she refuses to look for something more suitable. she owns a car now, in my name, that she is expected to make monthly payment on; she is supposed to pay the $80 a month for car insurance and pay her own phonebill. she repeatedly messes up on these payments.....shoots herself in the foot over and over again.

sigh.

thank you for letting me rant.

this is painful and confusing and totally exciting at the same time to imagine a proper diagnosis and treatment for her...so she can live as normal a life as possible.

[Gareth Roberts]

Hi,

Sorry for the delay in responding as I have been very busy recently, I'll check our your first post and see if I can offer any information or pointers.

I'll go read that now... take care!

PS. If it would help drop me a PM and I'll get some info from my Mum.

[joshua]

Hi Gareth,
My grandson is 9 yrs old and was diagnosed last year with aspergers autisim. My son has had
many visits to their doctor who referred them to the local hospital who made the diagnoses
but informed them that although it is called asperger autism it is not actual autisim and they could not help with any treatment. He is a smashing chap but has mood swings that
worries my son and my daughter-in-law. Can you please help and advise me where to go
for help and treatment as the local hospital cannot help. I look forward to your reply.

Regards,
Joshua

[Gareth Roberts]

What kind of treatment are you seeking? There is no medical treatment for Aspergers, only really support?

[lulu]

hi i am desperate for help.my son who is 14 was diagnosed with high functioning autism and aspergers last year.the family is falling apart and we don't know where to go for help.i have phoned my local social servies for help but they don't acknowledge that it exits. he is in mainstream school just but has been excluded from most of his lessons . he shall be going into year 10 in september. when i talk to people about him they dont understand and tell me to send him to bed early (what a joke) i am suisidle at the moment because i cant see that life with him will get any better and to see his 10 year old sister gettng phiscal and mentally abused breaks my heart please can you help i live in hertfordshire lulu x

[Gareth Roberts]

Lulu,

Things will get better in due course.

You need to speak to his school, arrange to see the head of the school and take them to this website - describe how it affects your son.

You need to approach them with thwack for it to sink in. Upon reviewing the situation and the problems your son has at school, you can come up with a plan.

The reason he is getting excluded could be because he cant cope with the lessons, its the schools job to meet his needs now and try and find a way to fit him in and help him.

Hope this helps. Feel free to contact me again.

[lulu]

thankyou so much to replying i shall inded contact the school the beginging of sept

[Gareth Roberts]

Let me know how you get on!

[katie eight]

Gareth,
Firstly, thank you for providing this fabulous resource.

I have a lovely 9 year old son who has been variously considered, semantic-pragmatic, social communication disorder, aspergers - but without an actual diagnosis because we've never felt that it was that important.
Through the years as each social or language problem has come up we have tried to help him through by finding a good speech therapist, or giving him 'rules' to help him understand social situations. This has always been successful and has helped him to function well amongst his peers.
Lately he has become more and more intolerant of noise (always a difficulty in the past) and this has led to an intolerance of the children in his class because he is a lover of rules and can't understand children who don't follow them.
Success these days, as far as he is concerned, is getting through the day without talking to anyone else.
This makes me sad and worried for the future.
I have had advice that's said leave him to it - this is his nature. But we've always managed to help him in the past and I don't want to give up now.
What is your advice? Leave him to it? or try and help him hold onto the few friendships he has and try and show him the value of having others in your life?

I would really value your opinion on this
SBxx