Do you think sometimes really bright people are misdiagnosed

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I know several REALLLLLLLLY bright people (teens and younger so when this autism diagnosis boom was in full swing) who are classified as Asperger's. But, to me they just seem like really smart people who have a hard time relating to other people because of their smarts, not because of a disorder - like they relate to other really smart people just fine.

Or... maybe, why does high intelligence and Asperger's seem to be correlated? Or is it not? I'm not talking IQs around 110 or even 120, but HIGHER.

I think that's part of why I've been hesitant with my son. While he's still only three, intellectually, I'm pretty sure he's 'up there'. His dad has a high IQ as does his older brother and mine's not to shabby.

On the other hand, my husband doesn't show signs of Autism (or maybe he has some symptoms)... my older son does have some symptoms, but doesn't have a disorder.

Or is high intelligence just a protective factor in that they do better with their disorder (like my older son and his strong ADHD).

obviously you don't know what Aspergers is.
please look it up!

It is normal for us to have an uneven skill set. For example, my verbal IQ is 131 and my functional IQ is below 70. I can be brilliant verbally, but the way I manage my life is on an MR level.

I was in gifted classes all my life when it would have been more appropriate to place me in special ed. Then, I would not have been as overwhelmed socially and I would have had fertile ground to learn more in school.

As I said, I'm not an expert, but I have a son who probably is on the spectrum and have close friends with children on the spectrum. I know what the DSM-IV says and have read and read...

I tried looking up functional IQ but couldn't find anything meaningful. Can you point me to a site?

I would guess that the more intelligent someone is the better they might be at finding work-arounds for their difficulties.

That doesn't mean that the difficulties don't exist or that they would not benefit from extra help.

I think that some autistic traits help people to perform well in some 'intelligence' tests. Also to do well in some fields that many people would find daunting e.g. science, engineering or software development.

People will always be amazed that 'such a clever guy' can't tie his shoe laces.

I think there is some truth in what you say. I have a theory that those who score incredibly high in an IQ test (or some aspects of an IQ test), and I'm talking >99%, are able to do so because of they're autism. To use the layman's way of putting it, our brains are "wired differently" which allows us to use different areas for dong well in certain IQ subtests.

This obviously don't apply to all people on the spectrum; not all aspies have freakishly high IQ, but I was just wandering whether anyone else reckons that those with abnormally high IQ are probably autistic/ have some other neurodiversion such as dyslexia.

This is kind of what I'm getting at. I know it's not always true, but I think it's often true.

For instance, my husband was a wonderkind - reading at 2.5 years old - self taught from reading the Sunday comics. He was reading textbook type books by age 5. He learned, through reading, his multiplication tables by age 4.5 - again.. who knows when he learned to do them as just one day when his grandma said, 8x8 is 81, he piped up from the other room and said, "No, 8x8 is 64". HOWEVER, he shows no signs of anything with the autism spectrum. Walked at 10 months, talked early, potty trained early etc. But with that said, he is so very NORMAL in how he behaves and that sort of made him different. His IQ is very high, definitely above the 99th percentile.

Through him I've met several other EXTREMELY highly intelligent people and most don't appear 'different', but enough do. I could list off several...and they were often the most successful because they were so obsessed about their research and so on.

My son's best friend in school has Apserger's. She's also a straight A student, a HUGE vocabulary and while my son is very smart, I think she's WAY higher than that. I think she's a wonderful girl - a bit different, but I would never have known she had asperger's unless her mom told me (I didn't know if I believed my son - like I thought she might be joking around with him).

And I look at my 3 year old and I see such similar patterns. He's such an extreme - totally excells in intellectual things, way behind in others. We gave him for Christmas when he was 19 months old those Leapfrog fridge magnets in cap letters. We hadn't been practicing letters, but he took to those and within a day new all his caps. Day after Christmas I got the lower case letters - within a day he knew those, also immediately he knew that small "a"s looked like this font and the traditional "a" with the circle with a line. He knew his numbers to 30 by age 2 (or earlier) and just the last couple days he became obsessed with counting and can go as far as he wants as he understands. He usually stops around 105. He knows (and has known) about 30 words by whole word, he doesn't understand phonetics despite knowing how each word sounds. He understands if you have 3 cars and take away one, you have 2 cars. He understands the concept of zero and so on.

Not saying he's a wonderkind, but he's developing early in these things and looking at how he gets obsessed with it all, I predict he'll do just fine in his education and career.

When my older son was tested extensively for ADHD, one thing they did was to test his IQ separating out tests that just showed how much he knew/ability versus processing speed.

For his IQ, it was between 96th and 99.9th percentile on different subtests. For tests that scored processing speed, he scored in the 50th-60th percentile (which is one way they diagnose ADHD - seeing the disparity in these scores).

So, basically, without time constraints, he can score REALLY high, throw in timing, and he won't finish the test. It was suggested we make sure he get extended time on things to help solve these problems... That's easy enough if we get an IEP (which we are only still thinking about doing...) Medication can't help with processing speed. It's just part of the disorder he'll have to live with.

With my younger son, as I said, we think he too is really smart (doing things earlier than his brother did), but we are pretty sure he'll get caught up in other things which is why I find one of the previous poster's comments interesting. She thought she would have been better off in Special Ed... but I really don't think so because in Special Ed they spend so much time teaching the basic academic skills. A gifted learner in an environment where all other learners are slow learners can't be a good mix. BUT... I understand that her functioning skills weren't addressed (or so it seems from the post). With my son's ADHD, adding time to a test helps solve the issue, but it's more complicated than that with ASD. My son may be able to do math and reading at a high level, but like you said.. he may need help tying his shoes for a long time... and maybe need therapy on the side to help him with catching up as best he can on the skills that lag behind. Life isn't all about how smart you are - but how you function in life too, of course.

I met one couple who paid to have their own learning support assistant join their son in the classroom. He got to sit with the brightest of his peers and also had a fully trained assistant to help him. Great if you can afford it and the school allows it

In the top classes there are likely to be no assistants so he may well have problems being organised, focused or even knowing what it is he is supposed to do. If he drops down the work may well be too easy, he won't be extended and the assistants have little to do with him as he is 'doing so well'.

An off the peg solution will probably not fulfil his potential.

i think that it's possible to have a high IQ, and not have AS..........btw, my hubby has dyslexia as well as AS

Exactly - I am understanding why more and more people are homeschooling.

It's a really interesting discussion too. OK, this family you know paid assistants to help their child with school - for the functioning part, but... what happens in college? Once he's out of school and needing to function in society?

That's what I worry about with my son with ADHD. He is so smart and wants to someday work in Engineering or science fields, yet, he would lose his head if it wasn't attached. I make sure he's 'together' as I can every day heading for school, but that doesn't mean he'll remember to turn in his assignment. I can't hold his hand for the rest of his life. So he has to learn it, but he doesn't have the skills to do it. We try with teaching him about creating organization systems he can follow, but paired with his ADHD he has a lazy demeanor and a "whatever" attitude. We'll get him through HS, but I'm sure he'll be one of those kids at university who fails a term before getting their act together... and maybe he never will unless he has someone helping him through it. ADHD is so much more than not being able to keep still.

This is actually a marker used for ASD - having disparit scores among the IQ test components. My son tested 150 IQ in some areas, and 80 - 90 in others like processing speed. He is NOT ADHD; he has NO trouble concentrating on something that interests him; true ADHD is there ALWAYS, and I think a lot of ASD children have been misdiagnosed.

Big K, I loved your remark about "wondering why the really smart guy can't tie his shoes." That is my son to a T. He really perplexes people.

All these concepts fit together, really; ASD seems to result in a very uneven skill set, and that strikes me as the hallmark more than almost anything else. It certainly is why high functioning ASD kids ending up needing special education support. If they could function at genius level in everything, there wouldn't be an educational issue involved at all.

Another, personal observation is that my ASD guys (son and husband) seem to lack any flexibility in thinking during a stress situation. They freeze. If they've played all the scripts they've developed over time, they figure it's hopelessa nd they shut down. I don't - I almost always find a way.

All of these are things we work on with my son. He takes advanced classes now, in Middle School, but has an IEP and receives pull outs to work on specific skills. I have to work with him very closely to make sure all his homework gets remembered, organized, and turned in. Part of that is ASD, but part of that is also that schools expect way too much in the way of organization skills for what boys are developmentally ready to handle (read "The Trouble with Boys, by Peg Tyre - and excellent analysis of all the ways schools are now failing our boys). To the extent the issue is the later, I'm pounding on the school. I really had not expected to have to start investing 2 hours a day in my son's school work just for him to keep up, but that has been life since a few months into middle school (he started out wonderfully independent, but gave up after getting an "F" on homework he completed and understood - who can blame him?). But, yes, it's a constant reassessment of what our son needs and how to get that to him within our budget (many in our area love the Waldorf school for ASD kids, but unless I go back to work full time - causing other issues in the family - we can't afford it).

And I just wrote another post about how I wonder about my older son. Even with ADHD drugs (which do help with being able to stick to tasks)...

When my older son was going through extensive ADHD testing, they said that kids with ADHD could concentrate - hyper concentrate when it was something of specific interest.

But if I even MENTION That I think our older son might need to be looked at too for Asperger's he will think I'm bonkers.

It's all too confusing.

hi berryblondeboys,

I did read somewhere that gifted children resemble children who have asd. u should research gifted kids, maybe your son resembles that more than asd. my son has never taken an iq test but i know that he also scored very high in certain areas but was a little delayed in other areas.

The thing with Asperger's Syndrome is that it's often not as straightforward as a disability. In many respects it's simply a development delay. So it's not a total inability, just that Aspies aren't automatically equipped with certain skills or abilities. NTs (NeuroTypicals), 'normal' people are usually equipped with abilities relating to reading facial expressions and body language, for example, whereas Aspies don't have these innate skills, but are able to learn them. So they can often acquire skills and abilities they weren't born with or don't have an innate ability for.

One of the potential problems though, is that with their 'hyper-logic' Aspies can also think through situations and come to some, erm, interesting conclusions. You mention your son not being able to remember to hand in assignments. When I was in high school, I used to just not bother. With my own Aspie logic, I reasoned that teachers set assignments to consolidate class learning, that's what they told us was the purpose of homework, but in my case, I had an almost photographic memory and used to come top of the class, top of the year, in many subjects regardless of the effort I put in. Now, most 'normal' children, NTs, if they hadn't done their homework, they would lie or invent excuses, the dog ate my homework, my mom put it in the washing machine by mistake or whatever, but me, not being able to lie, I used to just tell the teachers 'I haven't done it' and they didn't know how to deal with this. To me, I was being honest and straightforward, but from the teachers' perspectives, they must have found my behaviour belligerent, and challenging their authority, so they didn't quite know how to deal with me. And they couldn't point to my exam results - look, you need to do your homework or else you'll fail your exams, because in my case, I didn't really need to do homework to consolidate what was taught and learned in class.

All you can do, really, is try to assess your sons strengths and weaknesses, and where he has weaknesses, perhaps in time management or organisation, come up with some means of improving his skills in these weak areas, or perhaps working around them. I wouldn't despair, though, because like I said, AS isn't necessarily a disability or inability, it's more akin to developmental delays and some Aspies are able to acquire skills that they weren't 'born' with. Just make sure also, that your son knows where to get help, e.g. at university, student services will often run seminars to help students learn time management, and how to be better organised, because they appreciate that it's a big transition from high school, and a lot of students struggle with self-discipline and motivation and organisation. He just needs to recognise when he needs help and ask for help when he needs it.