Looking closer at the AS diagnosis

Today in the New York Times, there is a great op Ed article about the issue that has affected our family in pretty major ways. Will and I continue to struggle at times with how to describe, or label, Zachary to others. Mainly, we avoid any labels but I have to admit that labels have proved quite sucessful when needing to give a quick, down and dirty "heads up" to a nursery worker at church, or when trying to get our insurance company to approve speech or OT therapy.

This article does a great job of making the case for "Aspergers Syndrome" remaining as a medical classification for some of those on the autism spectrum. It appears the definition is going away, mainly becasue even those diagnosed with Aspergers are on such a wide range and have varying abilities and symptoms.

What I like is his daughters self perception of autism as her strength. I hope we can help Zach to have the same outlook one day.

Here is the lnk to the article:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/10/opinion/10grinker.html?scp=1&sq=aspergers&st=cse

let me know what you think!