Taken from the National Autistic Society site here...


"Developmental disorders that are not in the autistic spectrum but often occur together with an autistic spectrum disorder


These developmental disorders can occur on their own - that is, the child or adult concerned does not have the triad of impairments. However, the disorders listed below very often occur as part of the picture of an autistic spectrum disorder.

One of the commonest mistakes made by clinicians lacking experience with autistic disorders is to observe the person's clumsiness, or reading difficulty, or poor attention span and to diagnose that as the main problem. They miss the fact that underlying the obvious difficulties seen on the surface is an autistic spectrum disorder with the characteristic social impairments.

It is of the greatest importance that the autistic spectrum disorder is recognised and the appropriate help and services provided.

Attention deficit/hyperactive disorder (ADHD)
Poor attention span together with marked overactivity.

Hyperkinetic disorder
Marked overactivity without poor attention span.

Attention deficit disorder (ADD)
Poor attention span without marked overactivity.

Tourette's syndrome
A condition in which the person has many sudden involuntary, jerky movements and vocal noises they cannot control.

Dyslexia
Specific difficulty with reading.

Dyspraxia
Specific difficulty with co-ordinating movements.

Developmental co-ordination disorder
The same as dyspraxia.

Motor coordination disorder
Again, the same as dyspraxia.

Disorder of attention, motor co-ordination and perception (DAMP)
Used when the person has a combination of these problems. The perceptual problem may, for example, be dyslexia."


My friend, diagnosed dyspraxic whilst at University. She has symptoms of autism, including a very noticeably heightened sense of smell, touch, vision, sound, leading to many anxieties. Her son, diagnosed dyslexic by his school, with the same heightened senses as his mother, together with the 'timetable' questions which Spaw speaks of above, wanting to know what is happening 'next' all the time..
My brother, severely dyslexic, with again, the same oversensitive senses. Deeply creative and now realising that he lives his life very differently to what others consider 'normal'.

Ii believe that there are many, many crossover points on the circle, and that is why so often the autism part is not diagnosed as it should be, as stated above by the NAS.

And then, of course...there is Tourette's....and again, I have a friend whose son was finally diagnosed with this, after years of her begging the doctors to investigate further, in fact, since he was a little baby. He never slept more than an hour a night...My brother was the same, two hours, if mum was lucky and that went on for many years...

And here is the amazing story of a man called Nick Van Bloss, who has suffered very severe Tourettes since birth. Then he found that playing the piano stopped the Tourettes completely. He has always loved music. He went on to become a wonderful pianist. He also went on a journey to see if it was the Tourette's that gave him his gift...and in doing so, discovered someone with a very similar story..

Nick's story - BBC Horizon documentary 'Glad to be Mad'

Nick's Website