What is Asperger’s Syndrome?

Asperger’s Syndrome, (or A.S, as it’s also known), belongs in the Autism Spectrum. and is characterized by significant difficulties, such as social interaction, lack of eye contact and restricted and repetitive patterns of behavior and interests.

The syndrome is named after the Austrian pediatrician Hans Asperger who, in 1944, studied and described children in his practice who lacked nonverbal communication skills and had a lack of co-ordination. It wasn’t until the early 1990′s that people started to get diagnosed.

In 1995, my Son, Matthew, was first diagnosed with Asperger’s Syndrome when he was just 3 years old. I started noticing things like, no eye contact, his video tapes were always put in alphabetical order and he would talk like a robot. When he was at Playgroup, although he was polite and shared the toys with the other children, he showed no interest in playing with them or joining in their games, he was happier playing on his own. Matthew loved reading books and would prefere a story to playing with his toys.

I found that he was very intelligent, more than you would expect from a child so young. At 9 months old, he was talking proper converstations, by, the age of 2yrs, he knew the whole alphabet forwards AND backwards, and by the age of 4yrs, he could tell anyone the day they were born on just by knowing their date of birth!! Times tables was his biggest thing!! What he didn’t know about times tables, wasn’t worth knowing!!! Matthew was also very interested in Formula 1 racing and football results. He could say who won what race/match on what date and was correct when I checked!

Matthew went through mainstream school and coped very well. He made some good friends who, although didn’t understand that he had Asberger’s Syndrome, accepted Matthew for who he is. He still isn’t comfortable going out and socialising, but he has tried it a few times now and says the evening was good!

Matthew will be 20 on the 22nd of June is training to be an accountant and at present, works for his Dad, doing the business books and website work!