Aspies For Freedom

When a tyrant meets a free man, who refuses to bow to him, the tyrant will conclude that the free man is either evil or an idiot.

"Vague and Unhelpful" == hasnt a clue

you'll find that yes, he does have a huge vocabulary stashed away. just..give it time. dont push too hard, or you'll "break it", if you follow.

does he show any signs of interests in anything...particular?

books, a certain type on animal, computers, numbers, anything, no matter how trivial.

Do you mean he becomes over excited in a bad way or a good way? I flap when I get excited by things, from being pleasantly excited or from wanting someone to leave me alone i.e. if I'm being tickled etc I flap. If he doesn't seem distressed negatively, I wouldn't worry too much. From those I know who flap, flapping isn't usually associated with negative feelings. The teeth grinding is something I'd say to keep an eye on, not for any autistic reasons, but because its bad for the teeth!

Remember he is only 3 and his personality is only starting to emerge. Don't let doctors bully you around about what your son should or shouldn't be doing. The important factor here is your son's own development and not the development of his peers. Some people are just slow to start - I had to have a speech therapist as a kid because I didn't communicate and tended to babble too. I'm at university now and hold down a communication-based job. Beyond the fact I tend to stumble over my words when I get worked up, I don't have many problems with that on a day to day basis. I suppose what I'm trying to say to you is, don't worry about all that because you know your son. You've seen him since he was a newborn, whereas doctors don't have that relationship.

With regards to eye contact, mine used to be really bad, but after loads of people pointed it out post-DX, I personally wanted to try and improve it. If someone had told me to work on it myself, I wouldn't have - why should I? But it was something I didn't like myself. Saying that I'm still respectful of the fact most auties don't like it, and thus it isn't my place to force it on anyone else.

ASDs affect everyone differently and there isn't one size fits all. There are common similarities but most Aspies I know of think the DSM criteria for diagnosis is outdated. When one of my relatives was diagnosed (leading to my diagnosis), I remember reading websites on it and getting really upset because people thought autism was a horrible, evil thing. Sometimes just speaking to other autistics makes you realise how much nonsense that actually is.

With regards to longer breaks and his vocabulary... well I'd always say you may find it helpful to go somewhere like the Early Learning Centre and see if there's things there that encourage him to express himself without it being a chore. And seeing what kinds of things he seems to be really interested in, and trying to work around that. It sounds like these exercises are about getting him to work to you, as opposed to you working to him. Does that make sense? Education should be fun, especially at that age, and I totally disagree with trying to achieve targets. All that does is encourage insecurity as someone ages.

Don't worry about what the future holds too much - right now, you are there, and thats the important thing.

I realise what I'm about to say may be hugely controversial, but I have lots of my baby and young child memories intact.  I've SID problems, obviously, and speech was so beautiful in all it's tonality and (back then) it's colour.  I think I may have had synesthesia that I grew out of.  I've get caught up in seeing a beautiful wave of colour from it and totally lose the idea that it had meaning at all - until my parents got mad with me.  It's kinda socially unacceptable now to get mad with a baby, but if they hadn't made the bad sounds with me wanting the good sounds back and realising that meant understanding the meaning, then maybe I would not not be aspergers, but would have drifted into autism.  There seems to be a line.  Too much bad pushes over the line.  Too much good pushes over the line.  A balance - can bring us back from the brink.  That's what I think.

*Sigh* - 'I would get caught up in etc....'

meaning - drifted into Kanners autism.

Are you trying Korrigan?    I hope you succeed.  The world is be blessed with many Korrigans here.  

I was on this brink in the summer of 2006, at 41. I've allways been a talker. And then I allmost lost it. It was beautiful. Really beautiful and calm.
But frightening too. Because I did not want to lose contact with my kids. They kept me in a verbal world. But it was a big effort. And I still know how good the silence felt, how tempting and how at home. It was a lot of stress that had brought me on this brink.
I've come to value words even more now. Not because I don't like non-verbal thinking. But the way I can communicate is by words.
I do push my youngest daughter to talk to me. She loves words, she loves to talk. But with me she likes to use sounds or expects me to understand her completely without her saying a word. That does make me angry sometimes. But I know she can talk.

I think most children like stimulation. But stimulating what is not yet possible is frustrating. As a mother you can look for signs to see if you're not overdoing things. What Ocampo said about flapping is important. A child likes to evolve. And it is OK to stimulate your child. And offering a child all kind of words is stimulation too.

I also think its important to talk to your son a lot too. Talk, talk about silly things. If he's in the room whilst you're chopping up vegetables, talk to him about it. Tell him little stories about it. In that way, he's being exposed to verbal communication, but not forced to take part in verbal communication.

I know what you're saying here.  I've skipped over to the other side before as a response to extreme stress, and it was very beautiful and peaceful, but also frightening too because when people spoke to me I could not understand them.  That just wasn't acceptable, so I came back.

I was aware of it when I was little.  When you're little you want to do what's expected if you can figure it out, but people need to go with thier animal instincts and then - I remember my father especially when I was in the inbetween phase repeating himself over and over and over again and signalling something he was holding until I made association, and he's slightly change the tone and pitch, and when he's see me drifting away he'd get annoyed and that would bring me back in a panic, but he had my attention and he'd go into soothing voice again and back with the repetition.  He did it when my mother was away.  He never knew anything about autism, it was just instinct and observation with him.

When I say 'I was aware of it when I was little, - I mean crossing over the line and back'.

Sorry about my tenses.  Sometimes I go right back and then it's like I'm there again and I get my present and past tenses mixed up.

Might I suggest you look for a different Dr? This one sounds like a curebie.