A lot of bright kids are late talkers (and a speech eval and therapy, if the eval deems it necessary won't hurt her), because they're a little inclined to be perfectionists. They want to do it right before they do it.

That would certainly fit in with how she learned to crawl and walk, though she did both slightly on the early side if anything--she went from not doing them to doing them well practically overnight, with no obvious intermediate steps. In evolutionary terms, she's a punctuated equilibrium kind of kid.

And I've sometimes suspected she's trying to figure out the whole package--speech, literacy, even a beginning degree of numeracy--all at once, and that could be slowing her down. She's fascinated by numbers and letters. She has a numbers board book, and she'll bring it to us and point to the numbers for us to name them. And whenever we wear shirts with large lettering, she loves to point to the letters, and I swear this morning she was imitating me when I named the letters on my sweatshirt as she pointed to them.

Dylan even swears that when he had her in Target this weekend, he heard her saying something like "uh uh aye aye" and looked to see her pointing at a sign noting that everything on that rack was $11.99.

So I just don't know what to think. She's clearly saying less than most 18-month-olds, and doesn't seem to grasp that she could use words to ask for things. But as far as I can judge her comprehension from nonverbal expression, if anything she's ahead of the curve. So I don't know what it means that she appears to understand so much without feeling much need to communicate back.

A lot of bright kids are late talkers (and a speech eval and therapy, if the eval deems it necessary won't hurt her), because they're a little inclined to be perfectionists.

Me, for one. Well, my momma thinks I'm bright. Anyway, I was late in speaking, and went almost immediately to complete sentences. And thence to scaring my older (by 8 years) sister's friends with my allegedly big words. Which I probably mispronounced because I read way more than I talked. But still.

I also had a hearing problem that was picked up fairly quickly and a vision problem that wasn't. Both contributed to me not interacting with other kids much. So, yeah, an over all check up probably wouldn't hurt, but there are a lot of things that Annabel could be dealing with. Including nothing at all.

I'll have to ask my mother if Hanna's diagnosis was just speech delay, or if she's considered to be somewhere in the AS.

I strongly suspect that my brother has Asperger's, though he was in the first wave of kids labelled ADD. (Back before they added the H to most of them.) Asperger's fits his actual behavior more.

As a result, I'll be keeping a careful eye on my own kidlet and knocking on a lot of wood until she starts talking.

Ugh.

A funny:

We went to a wedding on Sunday. The Bride walked down the aisle to the Them from Angel. I leaned over to Joe and said, "Do they not realize Buffy kills him like, 4 times?"

I think I'm borderline Asperger's. I find it difficult to make eye contact (so I pretty much never do) and am often oblivious to others' emotional states. Plus I have some other stuff, like social anxiety. Or maybe I'm just weird. But then, I took an online test that said I have AS so it must be so....

The problem with online tests for such things (other than the obvious) is that they don't differentiate between can't and won't.

I can go to parties and socialize and interact with the other humans, but by and large, I prefer not to. That's not Aspergers, that's just me being a curmudgeon.

The problem with online tests for such things (other than the obvious) is that they don't differentiate between can't and won't.

They also assume a certain degree of awareness of/perspective about your own social abilities that some of us lack. Which is why I routinely get in the low teens on those EQ tests.

hugs to all. not a good day, but everyone seems to have a plan and know where they are going with it all. so sending out the ma~~~ for smoothness and sucess.

and yay for Cali's mom.

I have a cousin who was diagnosed with Asperger's pretty young. He went to normal school but had an aide, and now attends a performing arts high school and seems to do well at the things he is interested in. Once my aunt learned how to work around some of the things that were challenging to him, like overstimulation, he was able to learn to communicate. He had a difficult time with language or any sounds if there were other noises in the background, for example. His brain couldn't process both at the same time.

A few years later, another cousin (same side of my family, different parents) started showing signs of autism, one of the main problems being almost no speech at all well into toddlerhood. Once she got to be 2, I believe, various family members started to tell her parents that she should be tested, and they refused. Instead they went into full denial mode and stopped speaking to anyone who implied there was something "wrong." Now we are told that she speaks just fine and it totally normal, although no one has actually witnessed any of it. She was also doing a lot of spinning, and staring at lights, no idea if that has stopped.

Long story short, way better to find out now, and end up like my highly functioning cousin than the one in denial.