History repeats

It’s hard for me to believe it but it’s now been eight or nine years since Lego Lover was officially diagnosed with high-functioning autism. I suppose it is not so incredible when I consider he was only five at the time…But it doesn’t always seem so long ago. And yet it was the better part of his lifetime ago. I remember it was a reader of this blog who drew my attention to a condition called Asperger’s syndrome by forwarding a link to a news article. I’d never heard of it before although I was slightly aware of  (classic) autism. After reading the article I was half convinced Lego Lover had Asperger’s and half convinced that he didn’t. Recently I was reminded of something else that came to mind while reading the article. I remember thinking that half the traits seemed to fit Lego Lover and the other half seemed to fit Game Fanatic. If you put those two halves together you’d have a perfect Aspie. I didn’t give that too much more thought at the time, aside from it motivating me to eventually seek assessment for Lego Lover due to the difficulties that arose from some of his issues.

Strangely I hadn’t recalled that thought for many years but it came to mind recently while discussing Game Fanatic with the clinical psychologist who has worked with us for several years. Game Fanatic has long had a variety of issues like anxiety and obsessive compulsive disorder causing considerable impact on his life. Every so often red flags would go up that put me in mind of Asperger’s syndrome but then I would think about the overall picture and it just didn’t fit. It’s been an occasional topic of discussion with the psychologist over the past few years but it never went much further than that. That’s all changed recently as we revisited this topic and it seems that perhaps Game Fanatic may very well have Asperger’s. We spent our last two sessions discussing this more in-depth and there’s enough evidence from our talks to now to support the possibility. We are currently looking for a psychiatrist who has experience with autism and Asperger’s syndrome in older teens and adults to seek further advice and assessment.

It’s strange to be on this path again after so many years. It is familiar and yet it will be different because we are looking at this issue for an adult rather than a child. It’s also strange to think this hasn’t been obvious for all these years when I’d had such a thought so long ago. I think the reason for this is that Lego Lover has always been quite expressive of thoughts and feelings so we always knew a lot about how his mind works. On the other hand Game Fanatic has always kept most of his thoughts and feelings to himself. It’s only been in the last few years that he has shared enough of himself to allow us to understand him better. With this “new” information it’s easier to see how he might well fit into the Asperger’s category. Assuming that a diagnosis does happen, I wonder if I will feel the same relief and finding an explanation as I did all those years ago with Lego Lover.