Asperger's Diagnosis (or not)

Matthew is undergoing his evaluation for Asperger’s. The ADOS, the Wissler Intelligence Test for Preschoolers (that just sounds ridiculous, doesn’t it? Intelligence tests for preschoolers…) and an attention test (can’t seem to remember the acronym for that one). We started last Friday, and we will have two more testing Fridays followed by a ‘review of the results’ early October.


There’s the official news.

So, we go into the psychologist’s office two Fridays ago – me and my hubby Jeff -- to meet with her and tell her all about our darling son.

We both immediately like the new psychologist – we aren’t seeing Gabriel’s Psychiatrist or Pediatric Neurologist because the wait is TOO DAMN LONG – and liking the new psychologist is a great start for both of us.

We get to the conversation about attention. I say, "Matthew doesn’t have a very good attention span for things that others choose." Like his teacher. Or me. "When we give him something he finds less than intriguing, then he leaves." Most likely going to practice coupling his trains so he can shunt some more jobi wood to the new rescue center or some other Thomas-themed activity. BUT, I add, that this is a skill that he has shown growth in during the last school year. During those six months, he has learned to participate in all of the school activities (none of which are coupling or shunting) and happily transitions from one to the other (by ‘happily’ I mean with an adult helping him to read his personal visual schedule and then with only two or three verbal reminders; happily).

Jeff quickly disagrees with me.

He claims this is not an attention issue. He says that because Matthew is getting better at this type of thing (paying attention to less-than-interesting things) he is showing an increase in TOLERANCE. Arguably, by my husband, a much more useful skill in real life.

You see, in Jeff's view, Matthew doesn’t have an attention problem, he has a tolerance problem. And in life, you always have to be tolerant of things you are less than facinated by. Like school lessons or wife droning on and on about topics that do not include cellphones, football or Star Wars.

The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, people.

The psychologist showed great attention tolerance while Jeff said his piece, then we moved on.
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