I am a big fan of James Durbin ? a contender on American Idol this year who is now in the top four with a great chance of taking the prize.? In part, I enjoy his music. He is a rocker with true vocal talent and artistry.?? James also has Tourette?s Syndrome as well as Asperger?s Syndrome.<\/p>\n
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The Tourette?s I could identify right off.? His tics are obvious ? especially to a parent of a child with Tourette?s.? The Asperger?s though?? I wasn?t seeing it.? I did notice unusual social responses but I didn?t notice the seemingly typical ?cat like? personality traits.? It got me wondering.<\/p>\n
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Over the last year, I have been asked about Asperger?s syndrome frequently.?? Each time it has come up, I have defended that Ty could not have Asperger?s because he is the proverbial ?puppy? by personality and certainly not the cat.?? Further, when Ty was small his neurologist told me to never let anyone label Ty with ?autism? because he was ?far too social? for that.<\/p>\n
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James Durbin caused me to second guess myself (and the Dr.).<\/p>\n
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I started researching Asperger?s more thoroughly and was very surprised to discover that Ty does in fact score very high on an Asperger scale (high enough to definitely warrant an evaluation for it).? Minus the obvious puppy versus cat personality traits, the symptoms of Asperger?s describe Ty remarkably well.? (Keep in mind autism spectrum disorders have many degrees of severity from mild to severe).<\/p>\n
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Jim and I had a lengthy discussion about whether or not to pursue an evaluation for it at this time.? My personality leans toward ?let?s put this in a box ? let?s slap a sticker on it ? then let?s get busy doing our best to understand it and work with it?.? Jim?s personality attacks it from the opposite direction.? The thought of boxing up the symptoms and putting them under a specific label is absurd to him.? From his perspective, there is no argument that Ty has many symptoms of spectrum disorders but trying to create a bucket and throw all his symptoms into one just for the sake of putting a sticker on it is insane because no such bucket really exists.? Ty is uniquely Ty and his symptoms (while many) run up and down a very broad spectrum.? Giving it a name wouldn?t change anything and would then require us to add qualifiers to all the portions of the particular label that actually do not apply in Ty?s case.? At the end of the day ? what on earth is the point of that?? I?ll admit that I can think of a few reasons to do it anyhow but I respect Jim?s perspective and it makes sense to me so at least for now we won?t bother to go there.<\/p>\n
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Jim also expressed to me that I didn?t need a diagnosis to do what was right for Ty because I already knew what I needed to know.? He reminded me that mommy is the expert on all things ?Ty?.?? Regardless of any specific diagnosis, I can identify many of his symptoms on the Autism spectrum and seek assistance in the very specific areas as needed.? If you think about it, the term Asperger?s is simply a bucket title for a certain grouping of symptoms on the Autism spectrum.?? If Ty were to be ACCURATELY diagnosed, I think he would need his very own bucket and very own title (which would be a better word than Asperger?s to begin with LOL).<\/p>\n
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So for now, we throw the title out the window realizing we likely wouldn?t get a perfect fit for Ty in just a title anyhow, and we do our best to understand the symptoms in Ty?s bucket.? I want you to understand them too because it will serve to benefit all of us.? More about that on the next installment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I am a big fan of James Durbin ? a contender on American Idol this year who is now in the top four with a great chance of taking the prize.? In part, I enjoy his music. He is a rocker with true vocal talent and artistry.?? James also has Tourette?s Syndrome as well as […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[64],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3646","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-tys-world"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimanddoni.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3646","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimanddoni.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimanddoni.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimanddoni.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimanddoni.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3646"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/jimanddoni.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3646\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3696,"href":"https:\/\/jimanddoni.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3646\/revisions\/3696"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimanddoni.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3646"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimanddoni.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3646"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimanddoni.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3646"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}