Hi! You don't accept private messages (which is weird, because I'm sure I PM'd you before, so maybe Admin needs to fix a bug on the site here), so I'll just post this note to you:

Hello! I've been meaning to write to you! When I was at that conference at Stanford, I started chatting with a lady who has a 20 yr old son who has Aspergers. She said that back in the day, her son was toe walking and doing all sorts of things that were definite clues, but the pediatricians told her that her son would grow out of it! Her son's diagnosis was confirmed by half of the doctors they saw, but not the other half. Anyway, I told her about you and wrote your blog info down. I told her about the birthday party thing and about how well your son is doing. She was very interested to hear that your son has progressed well enough for driving and moving out! I don't know if she'll ever write to you, but maybe she is a silent blog fan (or maybe she lost the slip of paper).

She said that her sister was definitely on the spectrum. But her parents hadn't realized that and just blamed the girl for being socially awkward and clumsy. Also, she said that she was 32 and her physicist husband was 40 when they married, so she thinks that she and her husband passed on some "autistic" traits. Actually, the conference sort of confirmed that theory, that certain types of people tend to marry later. The conference actually bolstered that older-parent-autism-age theory. Wow, I was going to post that, but I've been so scatterbrained lately getting ready for my road trip. Plus my mom-in-law is visiting! Great timing on her part, huh? She's sweet though.
Nicole