Welcome to Donkey Burger
What is "donkey burger", you ask? It's the phrase my nine-year-old son uses to refer to his Asperger Syndrome. (Think about it for a minute - you'll get it.) He has decided that if someone is hassling him about his tics or his avoidance of bugs or any of his other myriad quirks, he will just say, "Lay off, dude! I have Donkey Burger!"
It's as good a name as any.
We had a feeling almost from the start that something was not quite right with the boy child, but it was never anything you could put your finger on and say, "Aha! That's an unmistakable characteristic of XYZ Syndrome!" As a newborn, he didn't like to be swaddled or cuddled. He had problems nursing, slept a lot, and would sometimes scream as if in pain for no apparent reason. So we learned to let him lie on our laps rather than cuddling him, supplemented nursing with formula to bring and keep his weight up where it should be, and dosed him with various anti-colic remedies. And he was a truly delightful baby with a predictable sleep schedule, a laugh like a squeaky gate, and a fondness for visual contrast and silly noises.
The boy child didn't walk until he was 15 months old, which is not all that late, really. When he got his DTP shot shortly thereafter, he stopped walking again for a week or so. Once he was mobile, he loved to explore and touch everything. He studied things - opening a door over and over and over again to figure out how it worked, practicing new skills over and over until he had perfected them. His approach to everything - crawling, walking, talking - was deliberate and methodical.
As he blossomed from toddler to preschooler, a few more issues became apparent. The boy child had an ungainly gait. Getting him dressed was difficult, because he had poor body awareness and was not able to anticipate what came next - first one leg goes in the hole, then the other leg goes in the other hole, then we pull it up, etc. He was not able to accurately put his body into a position that allowed me to reach and dress him easily. He either stood too far away, or flailed around to the point that he would accidentally hit me or undo what I had already done. So he learned to stand or lie still as I fluttered around him, pulling arms and legs and heads through holes (but the latter quickly, because he didn't like anything touching his face). He complained about the tags in his clothes and I had to cut them out. Loud noises upset him tremendously, as did any change in his routine. But still, he remained a pleasant and generally cheerful child. He began to develop an astounding vocabulary and taught himself to read at age three.
When the boy child was not quite five years old, we enrolled him in half-day preschool three days a week to prepare him for kindergarten. Preschool was very difficult for the boy child. The atmosphere was chaotic and noisy. Once when I arrived to pick him up, I found him crouched under a table with his hands pressed against his ears. He had problems playing on the playground equipment. He didn't like to walk on unstable surfaces or surfaces that he could see through. He continued to have motor planning difficulties and low body awareness. He didn't seem particularly interested in children his own age, preferring instead adults or children who were much younger than him.
The boy child has always lived in his own head much of the time. We used to joke that he had the opposite of ADD - it's impossible to distract him when he's focused on something. Because of this, the first thing I considered when we became aware that something was up, was autism. But the boy was so interactive! He enjoyed humor, he conversed with us and joked with us, he was aware of his surroundings most of the time. He didn't zone out to the point of being completely unreachable - he was just hard to engage sometimes. And so instead, we looked at sensory processing issues and thought we had found our answer.
In the summer between first and second grade, we had the boy child evaluated for Sensory Integration Dysfunction and he came up positive. He began working with an occupational therapist on fine and gross motor skills, dyspraxia, and social interaction and made tremendous progress. We attributed all of his quirks - the extreme interest in and knowledge of various scientific subjects, his preference for reference books rather than fiction, his difficulty making friends, his poor handwriting, etc. - to SID and attempted to address them with occupational therapy.
However, there were some underlying issues that weren't going away. The boy child showed signs of obsessive thoughts and compulsive behavior. When stressed, he developed tics - throat clearing, shrugging, finger snapping, neck rolling, blinking, etc. He developed extreme phobias that greatly interfered with his quality of life. A trip to the pediatrician had us gearing up for a possible diagnosis of anxiety disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder, specific phobia, and/or possibly Tourette Syndrome.
And then we visited a child psychologist who deals with this sort of thing. And just yesterday, we got an actual diagnosis - one that has suddenly completed the puzzle of the boy child, rendering all of his unique characteristics comprehensible. The boy child has Asperger Syndrome/Pervasive Developmental Disorder. And it makes so much sense now. Now we can move forward with getting him services at school, and we can come up with a plan to cope with the perseverative thoughts/behaviors, and the boy child has a shot at learning how to cope with all of this before nature decides to throw hormones and whatnot into the mix.
Now, we have Donkey Burger.
It's as good a name as any.
We had a feeling almost from the start that something was not quite right with the boy child, but it was never anything you could put your finger on and say, "Aha! That's an unmistakable characteristic of XYZ Syndrome!" As a newborn, he didn't like to be swaddled or cuddled. He had problems nursing, slept a lot, and would sometimes scream as if in pain for no apparent reason. So we learned to let him lie on our laps rather than cuddling him, supplemented nursing with formula to bring and keep his weight up where it should be, and dosed him with various anti-colic remedies. And he was a truly delightful baby with a predictable sleep schedule, a laugh like a squeaky gate, and a fondness for visual contrast and silly noises.
The boy child didn't walk until he was 15 months old, which is not all that late, really. When he got his DTP shot shortly thereafter, he stopped walking again for a week or so. Once he was mobile, he loved to explore and touch everything. He studied things - opening a door over and over and over again to figure out how it worked, practicing new skills over and over until he had perfected them. His approach to everything - crawling, walking, talking - was deliberate and methodical.
As he blossomed from toddler to preschooler, a few more issues became apparent. The boy child had an ungainly gait. Getting him dressed was difficult, because he had poor body awareness and was not able to anticipate what came next - first one leg goes in the hole, then the other leg goes in the other hole, then we pull it up, etc. He was not able to accurately put his body into a position that allowed me to reach and dress him easily. He either stood too far away, or flailed around to the point that he would accidentally hit me or undo what I had already done. So he learned to stand or lie still as I fluttered around him, pulling arms and legs and heads through holes (but the latter quickly, because he didn't like anything touching his face). He complained about the tags in his clothes and I had to cut them out. Loud noises upset him tremendously, as did any change in his routine. But still, he remained a pleasant and generally cheerful child. He began to develop an astounding vocabulary and taught himself to read at age three.
When the boy child was not quite five years old, we enrolled him in half-day preschool three days a week to prepare him for kindergarten. Preschool was very difficult for the boy child. The atmosphere was chaotic and noisy. Once when I arrived to pick him up, I found him crouched under a table with his hands pressed against his ears. He had problems playing on the playground equipment. He didn't like to walk on unstable surfaces or surfaces that he could see through. He continued to have motor planning difficulties and low body awareness. He didn't seem particularly interested in children his own age, preferring instead adults or children who were much younger than him.
The boy child has always lived in his own head much of the time. We used to joke that he had the opposite of ADD - it's impossible to distract him when he's focused on something. Because of this, the first thing I considered when we became aware that something was up, was autism. But the boy was so interactive! He enjoyed humor, he conversed with us and joked with us, he was aware of his surroundings most of the time. He didn't zone out to the point of being completely unreachable - he was just hard to engage sometimes. And so instead, we looked at sensory processing issues and thought we had found our answer.
In the summer between first and second grade, we had the boy child evaluated for Sensory Integration Dysfunction and he came up positive. He began working with an occupational therapist on fine and gross motor skills, dyspraxia, and social interaction and made tremendous progress. We attributed all of his quirks - the extreme interest in and knowledge of various scientific subjects, his preference for reference books rather than fiction, his difficulty making friends, his poor handwriting, etc. - to SID and attempted to address them with occupational therapy.
However, there were some underlying issues that weren't going away. The boy child showed signs of obsessive thoughts and compulsive behavior. When stressed, he developed tics - throat clearing, shrugging, finger snapping, neck rolling, blinking, etc. He developed extreme phobias that greatly interfered with his quality of life. A trip to the pediatrician had us gearing up for a possible diagnosis of anxiety disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder, specific phobia, and/or possibly Tourette Syndrome.
And then we visited a child psychologist who deals with this sort of thing. And just yesterday, we got an actual diagnosis - one that has suddenly completed the puzzle of the boy child, rendering all of his unique characteristics comprehensible. The boy child has Asperger Syndrome/Pervasive Developmental Disorder. And it makes so much sense now. Now we can move forward with getting him services at school, and we can come up with a plan to cope with the perseverative thoughts/behaviors, and the boy child has a shot at learning how to cope with all of this before nature decides to throw hormones and whatnot into the mix.
Now, we have Donkey Burger.
posted by Miss Anthrope at 1:05 PM
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