a little about our boys - too bad we didn't get
it in time to send it out before our trip....



>ASPERGERS TRAITS
>Asperger Syndrome is hard to diagnose, but behavioural signals include:
>Stressed or depressed behaviour.
>Behaviour indicating anxiety, such as pacing, clicking pens.
>Unusual repetitive movements such as hand flapping, finger twisting, tics.
>Unusual or no response to emotional situations.
>Being described as hyperactive, inattentive or unfocused.
>Highly developed verbal skills, poor writing skills.
>Difficulty handling unstructured times such as recess or gym class.
>Inability to make friends.
>
>ASPERGERS FACTS
>Statistics are vague and varying, but Aspergers
>occurs in roughly one in 1,000 people.
>Only one in eight Asperger children are girls
>but they often are very sensitive to any touch,
>including something as slight as that of a
>clothing tag. Some will eat only a certain food.
>Celebrities who have been reported to have
>Aspergers include director Steven Spielberg,
>actor Dan Aykroyd, scientist Albert Einstein and pianist Glenn Gould.
>The name comes from a Viennese psychiatrist,
>Hans Asperger, who noted the cluster of
>characteristics in the 1940s. A British doctor
>brought his work to contemporary attention in the ’80s.
>
>One mom's struggle leads to group offering
>practical expertise on baffling syndrome
>Dec 27, 2007 04:30 AM
>Catherine Dunphy
>staff reporter
>
>A 10-year-old girl refuses to wear anything but
>her bathing suit. In winter. To school. To the distress of her parents.
>
>A 12-year-old boy is obsessed with Toronto's
>transit system, memorizing the location and
>number of every city bus and subway route.
>
>Normal-looking and normal-behaving in many ways,
>these are GTA children with Asperger Syndrome,
>commonly thought of as a form of
>high-functioning autism. But it's rare and
>frequently misdiagnosed as an attention deficit
>or anxiety disorder, or even giftedness.
>
>In fact, Aspergers children are often
>overwhelmingly bright, but they can't process
>more than one thing at a time. Super sensitive
>to outside stimuli, they easily overload. One
>describes being in a classroom like being in a
>closet with 2,000 people talking at once.
>
>As a result, they often have highly focused, if
>unusual, interests. They may know the latitude
>and longitude of every world capital city, but
>they can't read non-verbal communication and
>therefore are duds at social interaction. Worst
>of all, they are smart enough to know it.
>
>"I'm so bad, I should be dead," Matthew Leaton
>told his mother, Nancy, when he was just 7. He'd
>fly into rages – punch and kick – but nt not be
>able to tell his parents why. But he is also a
>sweet, affectionate boy who loves reading maps.
>
>Then, last summer, at age 11, he was diagnosed with Asperger Syndrome.
>
>"He's happier because he knows it's not his
>fault now, that parts of his brain don't
>connect. They're all there; they just don't
>connect. Now we just have to learn the skills to
>get along with this," says his mother Nancy, a retired teacher.
>
>She is finding them – and moral support – in the
>new EglEglinton Ave. offices of the Aspergers Society of Ontario.
>
>For eight years, Margot Nelles ran the society
>single-handedly out of the pantry nook off the
>kitchen of her small home in Toronto's Wychwood Park area.
>
>There Nelles organized two ground-breaking
>conferences and helped publish a respected
>Canadian text on a syndrome that has really only
>been on the health radar for less than two decades.
>
>As a mother of two boys with it, she has become
>the foremost expert and resource for other parents.
>
>"Aspergers needn't be a bad thing but parents
>are usually devastated when they hear the
>diagnosis and often don't want to tell the child," says Nelles, 44.
>
>"If they don't tell, depression will happen.
>They are smart kids. They can see they are not
>connecting. The depression derails them. It's
>inevitable. Whether they are 16, 18, 23, it will happen."
>
>Asperger Syndrome was first included in the
>DSM-IV, the diagnostic bible of the psychiatric community, only in 1994.
>
>"It really is new," says Kevin Stoddard, a
>social worker with a practice specializing in
>Aspergers. "We are really struggling with how to
>identify these kids and adults and to
>differentiate high-functioning autism from Aspergers. It's still not clear."
>
>Eight years ago when Nelles was trying to get
>help for her eldest son, Zack, now 16, things were positively murky.
>
>"I had been looking for help since he was 2
>1/2," she recalls. She had been told repeatedly
>she was a bad parent, a hysteric; she was told
>her child – who would twirl on the floor for
>hours – was just going through a pphase.
>
>"She was a mess and he was such a sad little
>guy," recalls Carole Nelles, Margot's mother.
>
>Dr. Leon Sloman at the Centre for Addiction and
>Mental Health diagnosed Zack with Asperger Syndrome.
>
>When Nelles told her son that things would get
>easier now that they understood the nature of
>the problem, the boy replied: "I always thought
>I was a broken, rotten kid." Those words
>propelled her into action.Two weeks later,
>Nelles, at one time an associate television
>producer, was back in Sloman's office with a
>plan for a registered charitable organization
>and a board of directors. She had spent her
>savings to start a website for the new
>organization. Almost immediately the emails and phone calls started.
>
>"There was a complete vacuum in terms of
>facilities for these children," Sloman says.
>
>Nelles suggested group meetings so the children
>could interact socially. That was the start of a
>flourishing program that takes place at the
>Centre for Addiction and Mental Health every
>Wednesday afternoon. While the children are meeting, so are their parents.
>
>Nelles talks for at least two hours to every
>family who phones or writes her. "Why should
>other people take all those years (I took) to
>get on the right road?" she says.
>
>Nelles and her mother, who helps co-ordinate the
>parents' groups, scramble to pay the
>facilitators and the experts they bring in.
>
>They've never received government money but many
>of their 200 members do their own fundraising.
>Two years ago they received a windfall private donation of $50,000.
>
>Nelles' work is paying off for GTA kids with Aspergers.
>
>The girl in the bathing suit is now wearing
>regular clothing. She has a small gang of
>friends at school and plans to be a
>counsellor-in-training at a camp this summer.
>
>Matthew Leaton is starting a new school next
>month. It is for children with Autism Spectrum
>Disorders. Next year, fingers crossed, he will
>be enrolled in a special class for Asperger kids
>taught by a teacher with Asperger Syndrome.
>
>"Because he is bright they are telling us there
>is no reason he couldn't go to university," says Nancy Leaton.
>
>"There is hope," Nelles says. "Aspergers is not a dead-end sentence."
>
>[]
>
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