daughter with aspergers struggling with the label

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Maybe I missed it if you already said it (I am sleepy) but is your daughter's diagnosis used for anything at school (accommodations etc) or is she too high functioning for accommodations and the label has no pragmatic function? The reason I ask is that all teens mess around with their self-identity and if she just doesn't want to think of herself as AS and as long as you make sure to stress the positives of neurodiverstiy, I would let her define herself. She may change her view later on her own and she will value it more if she reaches her conclusion based on her own reasoning.

If she needs the label, that is another thing. Is she trying to avoid accommodations that she needs but that make her stand out or embarrass her? That is a much more complicated conversation.

Edited to add: I was not diagnosed as a kid but I probably would have resisted it at that age, too. I would not have liked my parents telling me that I had to do certain unpleasant things because of a diagnosis, and would have felt it was unfair. Now I have a son who does need accommodations and if he gets to that point where he resists speech or OT, I will have to figure a way, too. I would probably tell him that everyone has things they are good at and things they are bad at and that everyone should work to improve the things they have less aptitude in. It takes a certain type of wisdom and maturity to accept this and I would tell him this, too so he would feel mature and wise.

Sorry to go off-topic for a second, but your choice of the term magic interests me.

Years before anyone considered my son could be ASD, some specialists we allowed to observe him referred to him as a "magic" child. I've always understood that they meant it as a positive thing, but I've never understood what precisely they meant by it, and since it wasn't a formal evaluation no one ever said more to us than that. All these years and an ASD diagnosis later, and I'm still curious.

I'm going to put my story in this, When I was diagnosed (around 10) the only person with AS I knew was myself, I already knew 2 people with Classic LFA very well and knew I was not like them in the least. Compared to my peers I was far more like them then the autistic people I knew or thats what I saw anyway. Looking back I was not near as normal as I thought and maybe if someone had talked to me a little more to clear my misconceptions about autism and AS I would have accpeted the label long before I did. I thought my mom was a real nutcase when she told me I was autistic.

There is a term "indigo child" which is often expressed in terms of magic, for children who are perceived to be "the next step in evolution" http://www.amagicalworld.com/index.php? ... 9&Itemid=9 It is, basically, similar to what I'm talking about - a way of "justifying" disability by endowing it with all sorts of magical qualities that children may or may not have (by may not, I don't think any of our kids are psychic, but savant qualities, if rare, have actually been documented.) This idea is prevalent enough that it may have been what your specialists were referring to.

I was thinking more in terms of the TV trope of the "magical" minority, where the main character is a typical white male, but their "wise best friend" is a somehow better-than-human minority, whether that be expressed via race, disability, culture or gender (or other ways of being "different") http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/M ... rityPerson For instance, think about the TV show "Touch," and the wildly unrealistic to the point of being inhuman autistic-boy-sidekick-to-Kiefer-Sutherland.

The problem with approaching AS this way as I see it: I already struggle with my own and the world's too-high expectations for my son. I don't need him to decide that he has to "pay" for his disability with some kind of superhuman quality. He's just a kid.

Sorry again for following the off-topic tangent ....

Excellent point.

It's replacing one expectation with another, instead of just letting them be who they are, whatever that is.

There are the people that don't seem to see anything above average in my son at all, and are surprised when he wants to do something as simple (to me) as take an honors class, and then there are people who seem to expect big things from my son. As much as I want him to be surrounded by people who believe in him, and as much as he is very intelligent (PSAT scores were 97/99%), he isn't always as talented and smart as some people seem to think he is: he knows it, and we as his parents know it (we get to gently remind people that are awed by how much he taught them on a topic that he may not actually be remembering it all right). Ultimately he'll probably get through life much like his parents: smart and talented enough to always be wanted as employees or volunteers somewhere, but not having all the things it takes to really make a giant mark of your own.

I also wonder if it hurts his chances at awards and recognition. He never gets awards of any type, even though teachers and scout leaders rave about him. It seems like no one feels he needs a little extra encouragement, or that no one seems to realize how far he might be stretching just doing what is asked of him.

I am thinking those specialists used the term as a way of noting he had an extra spark, which he does. We just haven't figured out for what. As he says, for everything he once thought he was special at, he now knows someone in real life, in his own community, that is more talented than he is. He is really wondering what that means and how to put it all together in a college major and future career.

Trying to tie this to the issue the OP is facing:

Our kids get very mixed messages about what their diagnosis means. And all teenagers struggle with establishing their own identity and understanding who they are. I would suspect the label and mixed messages makes sorting out the normal teen identity issues extra difficult. And they are going to worry about being judged improperly before they've even had a chance to show someone (a potential date, a potential employer) who they are.

When my son was going through the tentative diagnosis process school, I was on a different ASD board talking a lot with a teen who wanted to have her diagnosis removed. I could see through her writing that the label was probably pretty solid, but I also saw how much she longed to be free of the associated expectations and assumptions. And since she had come a long way, it didn't seem like it would be a disaster if she was. I thought of that when it was suggested we go beyond the school-use diagnosis my son had received, and get a medical one. I then made the simple decision to "not get around to" that last step of getting a medical diagnosis. While there are some notes in my son's medical file referencing the school assessment, his diagnosis will officially drop when he leaves the district. Now that he is nearly 16 he is considering if he wants to pursue a medical one to have for the future, and I love that we have had the luxury of letting this ball be in his court. He has some control of his own destiny, which is something kids really value at this age. Maybe we'll regret it someday, but for now it seems to be serving him well.