An Aspie moment in time

I recently read this article about the possible removal of Aspergers Syndrome and PDD -NOS from the new DSM-V. Today at lunch I was mentioning this mostly to Boy Child, the Aspie in our house. Boy Child was a little concerned about being considered Autistic rather than an Aspie. You see in his class last year was a child who had a habit of doing pelvic thrusts while saying "Hey sexy baby" at people. This boy was Autistic and that is the first thing Boy child thinks off when he hears Autism or Autistic.

I tried to explain that Austism and Aspergers are part of a spectrum from the severe which could include being unable to communicate, and unable to look after themselves (my example to try to explain to my 11 year old - no offence intended to anyone) to people who can function without help but think differently as he does. Unfortunately spectrum was the wrong word to use.

To Boy Child a spectrum is like a rainbow, the spectrum or colours that you can see. So when I was trying to get him to understand that people could be at any part of the spectrum and still have an Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), Boy child was trying to assign colours to people based on whether someone was on the low or high functioning end of the spectrum. So in my example of a low functioning person Boy child would say "so that person is red, right? And I'm indigo". WT? He then went on with "The kid who did the pelvic thrusts is blue and C is either the one above or below me at Indigo." C is a child we know who is also an Aspie.

Um so maybe spectrum wasn't the right word to use. I was also trying to show what I meant visually as well. Perhaps I should have been using pepper and salt shakers instead of just pointing.

So that was today's amusing Aspie moment. Sometimes they are funny and sometimes they do my head in.

On the article well I'm not sure how I feel. I think perhaps Temple Grandin is right and PDD-NOS should go but not Aspergers. But what do I know I'm only a parent. I do know that I was annoyed about Aspergers being referred to as mild. compared to Classic autism yes it is. But compared to HFA? I think I'm in the camp of AS and HFA are virtually indistinguishable from each other. I think even HFA and Aspergers can be moderate rather than mild. As I said I'm just a parent and it's just my opinion.