What are the major traits of apsergers.

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I am only just being dx a few years agos and just finding this website now. like what are the major traits of aspergers.

My sons are: (age 9)

Poor social skills, obsessions, and stimming (the stims have calmed down lately)

These are HIS main ones, others may have them in a different order.

I used to be bad with eye contact but have gotten better with it.

I could speak when I was little but had trouble with words. Mom use to say I would make up words in place of words I didn't know.

Learning problems. I was real good in some areas of learning and real bad in others that I wasn't into.

I had a hard time making friends. Maybe I was bad with social cues, I don't know.

By the time I got older I was and still am embarassed to carry on a conversation with anyone. I'm good at talking about topics that I know of but bad at small talk. It's hard for me to keep a conversation going or to answere right away.

Lot's of clumsiness as I've heard it can be linked to AS. I sometimes had trouble with balance when I walked and also suffered from tremors.

I'm very inflexible with my job, I get very scared of any change. When it happens, I sometimes go into a panic attack and ask a bunch of questions.

Interaction with strangers is my worst trait, I never know what to say when they ask me a simple question or chat with me. I think I said that earlier but a big one.

My major traits are extreme special interests unusual both in type and intensity and social awkwardness. I also have a tendency to do "dumb" stuff and to be somewhat absent minded.

Taken from the DSM-IV-TR (it's a nice sentence that sums it up):

Severe impairment in reciprocal social interaction (from having difficulty in socializing, and hence having few friends, to the complete inability to socialize at all)
All-absorbing narrow interest that one spends an inordinate amount of time on

A focused Specialist with no time for the mindless chatter of apes.

These are the "CORE" characteristics according to Dr. Tony Attwood:

(i) difficulties with the ability to consider another’s perspective during social interactions (Perspective-taking);
(ii) difficulty accepting change (Rigid adherence to routine);
(iii) a different sensory processing system observable by sensitivity to certain noises, lights, aromas and/or touch (Sensory sensitivity);
(iv) difficulty with ‘reading’ emotion in others, and in expressing emotion appropriately (Understanding and expressing emotion);
(v) a thinking style that is oriented toward facts, information and detail (Fact-oriented).

It needs to be stressed that the symptoms define aspergers (unlike most conditions which are the other way around). Not all symptoms have to be present and not all need to be equally strong from one individual to another.

Oh and... the word individual is really important too.

The only things that affect me are the obsessions and meltdowns (which have honestly gotten much better). Then again, I'm diagnosed as NVLD rather than AS (That was my original diagnosis though.).