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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;Topher, post: 227584, member: 8489&quot;]I have a son who has been diagnosed with Asperger&#039;s Syndrome.&nbsp; He will be 8 years old next month.&nbsp; For those that don&#039;t know, Asperger&#039;s is classified as an Autistic-Spectrum disorder.&nbsp; One of the characteristics of AS, is that with certain things he is overfocused and extremely intelligent, and for other things, it&#039;s as if he&#039;s oblivious.&nbsp; (He forgets to look both ways when crossing the street for example)&nbsp;&nbsp; It is often misdiagnosed (and certainly was in our case) as ADD or ADHD.&nbsp; There are two things that we have discovered that my son enjoys immensely, and when he is doing those things, he can remain very focused, and doesn&#039;t have a meltdown.&nbsp; (severe tantrum).&nbsp; One is studying and drawing maps.&nbsp; (He has no trouble giving my wife directions from the backseat, even if he hasn&#039;t been there before, all because he has the map memorized!)&nbsp; The second thing is studying coins.&nbsp; Canadian coins, American coins, world coins, it doesn&#039;t matter.&nbsp; We keep our collection cheap.&nbsp; (I&#039;m lucky to have maybe a dozen coins worth more than $1, and very few silver coins).&nbsp; He can sit for hours and search pennies and nickels with me.&nbsp; We have filled most of those books for him, and are now looking for things like the 1985 pointed 5 penny, and seeing how many different countries we can get.&nbsp; As a parent, it&#039;s important to be able to connect with your child, but it is especially difficult to do with an AS child.&nbsp; I happen to have found that one thing that we can both enjoy together, and I could care less if my collection has any monetary value, because it&#039;s real &quot;value&quot; is much, much greater than that.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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