I know Im not a Doctor...

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I volunteer at the elementary, helping kids with reading in the first grade and yesterday I noticed a child rocking while he was reading. I didnt say anything to anyone but now I cant help wondering about his parents and if they are struggling with him..... is there anything I can do??

I don't think that rocking by a six-year-old would be enough to raise any issues.

Litguy is probably right but it won't hurt to keep an eye on the child. Perhaps you can also "chat up" his teacher and get his/her take on what might be going on.

If I could rewind time, something I would do would be to try to raise awareness of Learning Disablilites and ASDs for the elementary childrens' parents. I'm not sure how that would be done but I'm pretty such if I had been paying attention I could have found ways. Perhaps there is something YOU can do for the general parenting population. Most people don't even know about HFA and Asperger's so a shock campaign (along the lines of how common it is) would work.

BeeBee

When my son was diagnosed in the 4th grade with AS, his 2nd grade teacher approached me and told me that she had always suspected that he had AS, it would have been nice to have known it then. She was afraid of how I might react.

When he was diagnosed by his psychiatrist and a child psychologist, I had never heard of AS and when I was told that it was on the autistic spectrum and that she couldn't officially diagnose me but stongly suspected that I also had AS, I told his psychiatrist that she was crazy. I had to call and apologize after reading up on it on the internet and I found that it was a perfect portrait of him (and myself, during my childhood years especially). I still get that sinking, sick feeling when I remember my school years, I still haven't gotten over it.

I'm now homeschooling my son, as the public schools were torture for him.

It would be wonderful if some education could be done. I would have appreciated it, and I would have understood it better when confronted with it. Good luck!

one of the big issues at hand for many educators (at least in my son's school district), is that unless your kid appears low functioning~he/she couldn't possibly be aspie......even though my son showed signs for years, the only one who ever said anything to me was his first grade teacher ....she commented how he would rock back and forth in the cafeteria and complain about how loud everything was. i think the general population's idea of what autism looks like is skewed~and as far as aspergers...heck, except for the teachers i work with ( at a SED school) practically no one's ever heard of it. it is up to us as parents to educate the public.

Most people aren't aware of AS. I was a school nurse in the 80's and had never heard of it until I read something in a women's magazine and it sounded just like my son. That was when he was going into junior high. I admit as a parent I was guilty of not believing when the schools said there was something wrong. At home 1:1 with my son he seemed very smart and competent. He is my oldest and I had nothing to compare his behavior with. If you see more signs you might send an informative article home to his parents. At such a young age though, they probably won't be receptive yet. Nobody wants to believe there could be anything wrong with their child.

I would bring it up. I had to diagnose my son myself, after years of going doc to doc with no answers, I spent an hour googling his symptoms and kept coming up with hits on websites for something I'd never heard of AS or HFA. And I have an M.Ed. and worked as a paralegal doing medmal. Had someone said to me two years earlier, here, look into this, I would have followed that path. You don't know if maybe they are already wondering what is going on, and just haven't found the answer yet.

And perhaps, to misquote Frued, the child is just rocking because he likes rocking. But it can't hurt.