him many times, both in this forum and in other places on DU.
I, as his proud mom, think he is one of the most wonderful people on the planet (his brother is another of the most wonderful persons on the planet, but brother is uber-normal). He will be thirty towards the end of December, so because Asperger's didn't enter the DSM until 1994, it was not until my son was 18 and half way through his senior year of high school that we figured out he had Asperger's, that there was a name to the way he was different from others.
I am very glad that he was diagnosed so late. For him, at least, there were huge advantages to not being labelled. Sometimes it was hugely frustrating, and I could not figure out why I had to keep on helping him with things that his age-mates didn't need help with. Why I had to coach him constantly about normal social interactions. Why he was ostracized in the lunch room at his public school. We had the enormous good fortune to be able to send him to a secular private school starting in seventh grade, and because of the smaller classes, and because at this school academics were valued, he fit in. He finally had friends, and he started doing things like Science Bowl (including, I must brag, going to National Science Bowl in 11th and 12th grade).
But still, he was different in a profound way. His teachers struggled to keep him on track. As late as spring of his senior year of high school I'd be at his school, and one of his teachers would stop me to say, "I hate to have to tell you, but your son has not handed in any homework for six weeks, and if he doesn't turn it in to me, he'll get a really bad grade this marking period."
I shudder to think what it would have been like had he attended the public school. And I must hasten to say that our public schools were -- are -- very good, but the class sizes are much larger, the schools themselves much larger, and he would have gotten lost in the crowd. I am grateful beyond words that we could send him to the private school.
Which brings me to the point that our public schools absolutely need to be funded to have the kind of small class sizes, the kind of individual attention that my kid got in his private school. It's not just the students with disabilities of some kind, but all kids, who would benefit enormously if we had the kind of schools that all kids deserve.
Because of my wonderful son, I have a deep appreciation of differences I would otherwise never have had.
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