Does my step-daughter have AS?

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Greetings everyone! I found this website by studying up on AS on wikipedia and I would like to get some opinions from those with AS or know someone that has AS on whether or not you believe my step-daughter has it. My wife and I have been struggling with Raven who is my 12-year-old step-daughter and my wife's daughter. After doing much research we believe that she has Asperger's Syndrome and she has an appointment in two months to get an MRI and EEG to confirm this.

When she was younger, she was diagnosed as having ADHD, which I understand is a common misdiagnosis for AS and has been taking Adderall. She was up to 50mg which was the highest dose they made and despite this, it didn't help. They recently switched her to a different drug that was supposed to be the successor to Adderall (I forget the name) and this hasn't helped either. Below are some of the symptoms that she has.

-Very immature behavior for a 12 year old, she behaves more like a 6 year old.
-She rarely speaks using her normal tone of voice but instead will usually speak in sarcastic tones, cartoonish voices, or in a tone of voice that someone would use to speak to a baby in a playful manner.
-She is very hyper and is incapable of walking around the house in a normal manner. Instead she hops, skips, flails her arms around, crawls on her hands and knees, and basically does anything except for walking like a normal person from one room to another.
-She has the memory of a gold fish. We cannot tell her to do two things at once because she will either reverse them or forget the 2nd one. For example, if we ask her to throw object a in the trash and ask her to bring you object b, she will throw object b in the trash and bring you object a or throw object a in the trash and not bring you object b. She forgets things all the time, in fact her favorite excuse for not doing her homework, not doing what she was told several times, misbehaving, doing something she wasn't supposed to is that she forgot.
-She is a compulsive liar, in fact I don't believe she knows how to tell the truth.
-She is a clepto and has been caught on several occasions stealing money off her teacher's desk at school, stealing school property, stealing things from people's porches around the house, from her friends, and from us.
-When she brings friends over her age or slightly younger, the difference in behavior between her and her friend are like black and white. She becomes spastic, overly-hyper, giggles and laughs at things that aren't funny meanwhile her friend is calm, collected, quiet but responsive, and social.
-She is very difficult to teach something to because she becomes overly frustrated extremely easily and gives up immediately. If the solution to the problem isn't immediately obvious, the problem is impossible to solve in her mind. She still doesn't know how to tie her shoes despite numerous attempts to teach her how. She doesn't know how to spell at 12 years old.
-She expresses no empathy or pity for anyone or anything. We talked to her once about this and asked her if she sees a story on the news of someone getting murdered or when we discussed the September 11th attacks we asked her if she feels sorry for people. Her response was no, she didn't, this is when we really became concerned. A person that cannot feel remorse can be a dangerous person.
-She seems to not have the same emotional attachments that other children have. When we were forced to give away our dog that we had for a couple of years because he was problematic and we moved to an apartment and didn't feel that it was fair to the dog to not have a back yard, we expected her reaction to be of great resistance and sadness. When we told her we had to give the dog away, she had no emotional reaction whatsoever. It was like she didn't care. She only asked if we can get a fish instead. We also adopted two cats at one time, and one day we found one of the cats dead. When we told her after school what had happened, again we expected an emotional reaction. There was no reaction at all.


There is probably a lot that I am forgetting at the moment, but this is all that I can come up with for now. Any opinions or advise you have to offer would be appreciated.

Thanks!

Welcome to WP!

Hi Houston281 and welcome, she sounds a lot like me as a child. The best thing to do is read as much as you can as you know your child best and if after researching you still feel she could be, make up a list of reasons and discuss with your doctor.

These list may help:
AS Symtoms (Full Official Criteria)
http://asplanet.info/index.php?option=c ... &Itemid=63

Also this list/thread of list of Characteristics of Children to Adolescences AS symptoms
http://asplanet.info/forum/index.php?topic=161.0

Wow....Thats amazing. Out of the list of characteristics of children AS symptoms the ones that apply to my step-daughter are in bold.

General Draft List
Child -Adolescences (list of Characteristics of AS)
Anger, frustration, rage when dealing with emotion
Prefers to spend time alone rather than with others.
Feeling misunderstand by everyone
Isolated, alone, depressed
Lack of response to pain or bad situations
Feeling need to be in control, can be overbearing
passive, submissive, controlling in more subtle ways.
Repetitive behavior, picking at things
Rapid movements and fidgets a lot
Anxious when meeting new people
Get muddle when having to talk in class
Lack interest may abruptly walk or turn
Feels no one accepts them for who they are
Feel have to change to fit in
Motor skill delays - poor hand writing
Can be very obsessive in what they do
Dosen't like school - school bores them
Little or no interest in making friends.
Difficulty mixing with other children
Limited response to peer pressure.
Low response to social cues: teacher
Looks at ground a lot, show little or no eye contact.
Have inappropriate laughing and giggling
Repeating words or phrases in place of normal language.
Unusual formal style of speaking
Awkward or inappropriate body language
Visible clumsiness and poor coordination
Problem with balance,
Short attention span.
Lack of spontaneous or imaginative play.
Does not initiate pretend play.
Unaware of the codes of social conduct
Obsessive interest in single item, idea, activity.
Special interests that dominate person’s time and conversation.
Inappropriate attachment to objects.
Comments takes to heart, takes too personally.
Extra sensitive to sound, touch, taste, smell..
Tantrums for no apparent reason
Can get upset very easily
Resist changes to routine.

Nice to meet you, Houston281.

I have said yes at the moment.

Hi Houston281

Glad my list helps, but if you do want your daughter diagnosed then this is the sort of list you should make up before discussing with anyone, will make whole process so much easier...

And the other thing to remember which I feel is vital is to embrace her differences and allow her to have the confidence to be herself. But your already doing such a great job by wanting to understand...

Take care Alyson

Welcome to WP, Houston281.

Maybe I'm wrong, or you worded this wrong, but as far as I'm aware, MRI and EEG cannot do anything to confirm a diagnosis of Asperger's Syndrome.

They certainly can be used where there is a possibility of some other disorder whose symptoms could be confused with those forming the syndrome. The EEG and MRI would confirm or eliminate those alternative causes of the symptoms.

There is also active research going on in these areas.



Those two are interesting.

The former may have a third, much more difficult to explain, interpretation. This would be that she has not thought through the concept and advantages of making true statements. I often state that I am incapable of lying. I think that is, curiously, the same thing. I did think it all through, very early on, and decided that truthfulness was what I wanted. It made life easier. I didn't have to remember any lies.

The latter is fairly similar. She maybe hasn't formed a good model of what is, and what isn't, her "property". Even the word "property" may not mean anything to her... yet.

I just want to convey they idea that she may not by lying and stealing in any malicious sense - she just hasn't worked out what all the fuss is about.

As for the lack of empathy I had no negative reaction to september 11 or murders I read about in the paper or to my rat and my sisters fish dying but i feel distraught when I cause sadness and upset in my mother or sister so your daughter's (you really don't need to say she is your step daughter) apparent lack of remorse isn't necessarily indicative of how she would react to for example you or your wife dying. The Sptember 11 attacks are just a few thousand people dying out of over 10 billion (anyone related to someone who died please don't be offended this is just the way i think and I understand how you feel) and murder in the paper is faceless and often nameless

Welcome Houston281!

Hi from what I have read she sounds like she has ADHD.

I put a thred here about if AS and ADHD were related

http://www.wrongplanet.net/postt60107.html

I'd be interested in what you find out. I'm still trying to understand myself...

It wasn't my idea to give her an MRI or EEG, it was the doctor's idea. My wife and I haven't yet brought the idea that she may have AS to the doctor yet, but we probably will now before she is due to have the MRI and EEG done and find out if its even necessary. I will definitely bring a list of symptoms along.

I don't think she's lying or stealing with malicious intent either...but she definitely doesn't understand when she does things wrong. Punishments do NOTHING to effect her. Taking away her TV, her computer, DS, and other privileges and it doesn't phase her at all. She's not like a typical kid where you ground her from something and she starts crying and becomes upset that she lost something. We even had her on an allowance schedule where she only had to do 5 basic and easy chores per day and check them off on a list on the fridge and as long as she did her chores for that day and woke up for school on her own, she wouldn't get any of her allowance taken away and if she missed something or was bad in school or didn't wake up on time, she would get $5 deducted until her total allowance of $20 was gone for the week. So basically she had to screw up 4 times per week to lose all her allowance. For about 6 weeks running she didn't earn a single dollar of her allowance so I finally ended up just ending the system and decided to not even keep track. I was even very lenient, and didn't take away $5 a lot of times where I could have per our agreement, and she still screwed up.

She kept getting to her classes late and because of this we got a letter in the mail from the police department with a court date because she has been late to various classes 16 times this year. We can potentially be fined $500 because of her. We are at our wit's end, and are even close to looking into giving her up to a foster home because she is ruining our lives. We have two younger kids together that are my children who are aged 2 and 1 and I fear that she will influence them in a bad way. I don't know what we're going to do. Its gotten to the point that I told my wife that she's her problem since she's her kid and I'm going to stay out of it. I now live in the same house as her but completely ignore her and pretend she doesn't even exist.

She has no remorse for the pain and difficulties she gives us. We asked her many times if she cares that I get phone calls at work from her principal telling me that she stole money off the teacher's desk and is hiding somewhere in the school. She has no response. She never ever once said sorry for anything. She only offers excuses and tries to deflect blame on other people like her younger brother and sister who are 1 and 2 years of age and cannot defend themselves against her allegations. I can 100% guarantee that if I were to die, she would not even interrupt whatever show she was watching on TV at the time over it.

If it was the doctor's idea, maybe they already have suspicions of something else being a problem. I'd not like to make you argue against the tests. On the other hand, taking some information on Asperger's, and how your step-daughter's symtoms match up, can't do any wrong!



Yes. I can go along with that. Punishments have no effect on me. They affect me not at all.

I've never brought up kids, so I'm no use here, probably, except...

I read Temple Grandin's "Animals in Translation" recently. In it she compares animal behaviour with autistic behaviour (maybe a little more so than makes total sense...). However, one of the points made in there (and elsewhere) is the general rule (even for "normal" people/children/animals) that punishment doesn't work.


That's a great pity. Except... it does form a basis for going forward. Positive reinforcement of desirable behaviour is something that works.

Ignore her completely - except when you notice her do something RIGHT. Then you praise her, even give her some sort of surprise/treat, and tell her why. As soon as she drifts off being a pain again, go straight back to ignoring her.

Stated like that, I suppose it sounds less work than watching her all the time to dole out punishments. A bit of inventiveness on the reward side of the game is called for. However, she'll learn that the ONLY thing that gets your attention is when she does something pretty spectacularly good, and then the attention she gets is nice, and (sometimes) comes with a bonus!

I didn't mean to sound like a mean person for ignoring her. Believe me, I tried and tried and tried to get along with her, to give her the benefit of the doubt, etc, but every time she starts to earn my trust, she destroys it by doing something deceitful and either steals or lies. She has had countless numbers of lectures explaining to her why it is wrong to lie to people and to steal from people but she continues to do it. We have tried various reward programs as well as various types of discipline, nothing seems to help. She just seems to be...well for lack of a better term, on the wrong planet.

I didn't think you sounded mean at all.
I think you sounded exhausted.

You're here, trying to figure out a new approach... so you obviously care.

To WrongPlanet!! !