IS HFA a delayed form of Aspergers

[SueNYC]

Tony Atwood makes an arguement that HFA and Aspergers is really sort of the same condition but HFA is more delayed in their speech.  What do forum members think?  My son goes to a school where they keep the Aspergers separate from the HFA - and he says that his classmates don't interact well with the HFA's.  There is an HFa child in our building that we ocassionally make a playdate with - and though he likes Sam - Sam feels like we are forcing this kid on him. He does play with other kids from his school - and they twirl and stim sometimes next to each other- but there seems to be more communication.

Also, another mother with an HFA kid (we all wait for the school buses in the morning) seems to be almost hostile when I have invited her to autism get togethers (our school keeps us pretty well posted).  She keeps going on that she doesn't want to hang with Asperger parents because we have it so easy.  Secretly, I envy that she is on husband No. 2 and her kid goes to his daddy on the weekends.  Though I love my boy we haven't been by ourselves for a romantic weeken in 5 years - because no one wants to have Sam for an overnight.

Our parents with HFA oblivious to the fact that Asperger kids lose it too.  Instead of just moaning they scream at you and say horrible things to you. Sometimes, believe it or not, it would be easier to have a kid a little more obviously on the spectrum - it would be better than being accused by total strangers of having a spoiled brat and being a bad parent.   Pointing to the to two well behaved children just doesn't cut it.  I guess - it is hard on all of us - but I think it is unfair when one group thinks the other has it so much better.  When your kid has Asperger's they get diagnosed a whole lot later, and therefore, missed all that intervention that is supposed to be so crucial. I took Sam in for years - but because he did all the right things in front of the doctor - he wasn't diagnosed until he turned 9.  I missed 7 years of intervention that those with HFA got.  And supposedly three of our friends whose children were diagnosed with HFA were cured in their preschools and are now acting normally - so either their children never had it or those services really worked.  Children with Asperger's don't get the royal treatment when it supposedly counts enen though the parents are dragging them to the experts.

I really don't get too involved with Autism support groups - though we occasionally go to the outings - so I am not involved in all the politics.  Have other people witnessed hostility within the separate groups?  

Do most other people go through psychotherapy when they find out?  We spent alot of family time with his doctors learning how to deal with the stress of it - and basically - getting over the disappointment of not having the child we expected to have.  Are alot of parents angry  over having this to deal with it - or is it just mostly a stress/exhaustion thing.  We also noticed that there are alot of single parents with autistic children - do people feel that it strained their marriage to the breaking point or that one partner blamed the other?  I think there were times when our marriage was definitely stressed over it - but it was mostly due to the school situation.  We found that once we turned our anger on the school and how they were dealing with our child - our marriage improved greatly.  As my father the coach said, when the other team presses, best to press them back. I find when you advocate - the anger towards your own personal situation diminishes as you feel you finally have some power over what is going on.  anybody else feel that?

Just some random thoughts on the subject.

[Sally44]

Hi Sue,
I don't think there is a big difference between the diagnosis of autism and aspergers.  The only obvious one is usually aspergers don't have speech delay, but that doesn't mean they don't have problems with language/social communication.  I think all of the difficulties are experienced by both groups of children, but they manifest themselves slightly differently.  But there is such a vast difference from child to child with lots of other traits thrown in for good measure such as dyslexia, dyspraxia, Agnosia, tourettes, ADD, Depression, Executive Function problems etc etc.  
It can be very stressful having a child on the spectrum, but as you say, it is usually because no one is listening to you or supporting your child (especially in school).  I often find the institutions themselves are more autistic than my son!
As for free time.  Ha, Ha, Ha.  I'm still working on that one.  We go out together about once every three years.  We have the same problem.  Our parents are too old to handle both kids at the same time and we don't know any babysitter with experience of autism.  
I would recommend parent support groups though.  You get alot of information and support through them.  We have a really good one for children on the spectrum or with ADHD and their siblings and friends.  It is held once a fortnight in a community college gymnasium.  They put out all the climbing equipment, trampoline, bouncy castle etc for a two hour session.  All the children are happy to be in the company of other likeminded children.  It is great for siblings to meet other siblings in the same positon as themselves.  It is also great that friends can be invited to have fun and to meet other children on the spectrum.  Parents meet in another room to either chat, read, relax, vent some anger etc.  We don't do any fundraising or anything political as there are other meetings we can go to to do that.  We keep this as simply a social event.  For some parents with severly autistic children it is the only chance they have to get out of the house.
As far as marriage goes I think each person has to use their strengths and not expect their partner to do or approach autism in the same way as they do.  I tend to do all the reading/research/seminars/school visits/professional assessments/therapies etc.  My husband keeps us doing 'normal' family things and makes me take a break from my research!

[Sally44]

Just read your posting again.
Regarding how they are separated at school I think this is quite logical simply because the strengths of Aspergers individuals tends to be that they do have quite high levels of verbal communication and tend to be able to learn in the same way as other children do.
Autistic children tend to have problems with language both producing it and understanding it.  They also tend to have problems with numeracy and literacy so their work needs to be taught in a different way.  But I would agree with Tony Attwood that the basic problem areas are still the same, but the profile is different.  For example both Aspergers and Autism have problems with communication/social interaction.  But whereas an Aspergers child might have a topic of interest and talk to someone (whether they were interested or not) and therefore appear 'odd', an autistic child probably wouldn't have the level of communication (or the desire) to be able to hold a lengthy indepth conversation on any topic with anyone.
But out of the classroom I don't see any problem with integration (if that is what they want).  Some HFA may find an Aspergers child overbearing eg. the HFA may be stood there with their hands over their ears and the Aspergers child is unaware of that and is still telling them about their new hobby.  

[SueNYC]

Luckily Sam isn't so super obsessed verbally with his topics of interest - he'd rather do them by himself.  Also, I think if the Asperger's kids topics of interest are useful - say in math or science, that they can be turned into an excellent career.  My husband comes from an Aspie like family and so do I - both families produce bushels of engineers, rocket. scientists, applied mathematicians and computer geniuses (and I mean systems - both code monkeys).  All of these people re on a spectrum - and some of them have amazing abilities to focus.  Sam also seems to be able to hyperfocus when it comes to math equations and logic problems.  He does big divisions in is head and can do logic problems without a piece of paper.  He seems to understand how to intuitively get around  a computer and my husband is now teaching him web design for fun.  We re looking to turn his interests into something that can be parlayed into a career.

Wow - I guess we spent alot more time with doctors than everyone else did.  I love NYU cause they give you the scopp on whose books to be trusted and whose to toss in the garbage.  I should ask the Asperger expert what the scoop is on Atwood - though I know he is in the more respectable crowd.

Bad book - Out of Sync Child - they told us not to read that one.

[Sally44]

To be honest I don't know anything about Tony Atwood, but as you mentioned him I had a look at his website and I listened to a radio broadcast he had done in Australia about Aspergers.  I think he was pretty on the spot from a 'what you will observe' in the Aspergers person perspective.  But what I find missing from alot of professionals in autism is that they don't actually live with anyone on the spectrum, so they know some quite rigid diagnostic criteria stuff and can give you explanations of where behaviours are coming from from a clinical point of view but they cannot give you explanations of where those behaviours/skills/defecits are coming from from an autistic point of view.  It is almost like a half built bridge.  Then from the other side are the autistics themselves telling us how they experience things and what their learning styles are and their strengths and weaknesses and that builds the other half of the bridge.  Now between those two half pieces of a bridge is a bit of a gap and autistic people jump that bridge every waking moment of their life as they try to understand and be understood in the world we live in.  But I frequently find that it is NT people who seem to have a 'defecit in imagination' and find it very difficult to jump the gap and imagine what the experience is from an autistic perspective.
I think I read somewhere that you too have many sensory differences.  So do I.  That is why, for a long time, I couldn't see what it was that was autistic about my son as they were simply family traits/behaviours that we all have.  I am touch/light sensitive; I frequently appear deaf and zone out, I have auditory processing problems, oversensitive smell, poor balance etc.  So at least when my son tells me what he is experiencing I do have an understanding of what he means.  I'm glad your son's doing so well at school.  We also have alot of engineers in the family.  I think my son would make a brilliant engineer and his visual spatial skills are remarkable.  He also seems to 'know' how electronic equipment works.  But he has alot of information retrieval problems and may also have dyslexia.  I too am looking at skills/stengths/interests as a way into a future job.  But at the moment he is not doing well academically and it is so frustrating because it is not a reflection of his intelligence.

[Sally44]

I forgot to say, my son isn't Aspergers he is probably HFA.  

[SueNYC]

We were pretty lucky - becaus of NYU Child Development Center's excellent team - and even in the big ol' USA tere are only a couple of these full service centers - they spend alot of time explaining to us our kid and how he thinks.  But then, they have tested him for over 20 hours total - he is one of their favorite subjects.  As I said, we went through 2 years of parent training to learn how to stop the runaway train from leaving the station.

Alot of the academic problems with Asperger's (and I assume HFA) has to do with executive dysfunction.   Although, for some reason Sam seems to have skipped this deficit, many have problems with inferential thinking  and are too literal- making comprehending a literature book very difficult.  We had a kid in his old school that was a real hard core Aspie - and he was having trouble in school because he could not distinguish fact from fiction.  Stuart Little, in his mind, was a walking talking mouse.  Or, n the magic land of third grade, when all kissing is regarded as sex (and the kids are teaing each other about who had sex with who) - he stood up in class and proudly announced that he had sex with his mother.  His mom went to a psychologist once with him - and he was diagnosed with low self esteem.  the school was prodding me to talk with her because she couldn't face up to what her kid wa dealing with.

Me - I kept out of it.  He did draw the most intricate motorcyles that I ever saw - leading me to beieve that he was more HFA than Asperger's - because Asperger's have a terrible visual memory but excellent verbal comprehension.  It is those non-verbal skills they lack.

Many HFA's have a high intelligence - you just have to figure out how to teach him.  we spend alot of time reorganizing Sam's writings with him.  You have no idea how many fights we have had over irrelevant information being added to an essay.  Sometimes people with autism are very stubborn trying to get their own thoughts down - even though they are not answering the question that is asked.  We make him read the question out loud and explain why his comment is useful.  He takes practice - but we are getting there.  Writing, by far, is his worst are.  Though gramtically perfect - he gets caught up in useless information or he brushes off details.  Part of it is his ADHD, but another part of it is his autistic nature.  We tell him that the grader really doesn't care, he doesn't know him , and his answer is one of a thousand they might see.  The reader can't read his mind, they have a checklist in front of them, and thy don't give a rat's *** about that you would have preferred a different question to answer.  On a multiple choice - he is great - expressing himself is far more difficult.


It is especially hard of him because we come from a Type A family. My husband is an immigrant Greek - and the immigrants are perhaps the toughest on their kids.  To be honest, it was the only way to move up in American society.   Everyone has advanced degrees.  We spend about 3 hours on homework eat night (all of them) and sometimes we don't go to bed until 11.  My children all go to a Japanese cram school - which oddly Sam loves.  He tried his evil behavior tactics on the instructors - he slammed doors, he whined and groaned in his chair, he locked himself in the bathrooms and would burst out into tears. The instructors (all very Asian) didn't care - they were very calm.  They told him he was dishonoring himself and his family.  They said he could get upset - but the work was due (with corrections) during the next session.  This went on for a year and I was sure she was going to make him drop out.  The teacher looked at me - and said - We have 700 students - "What makes you think he is our only difficult child?" No one at Kumon (including my child