aspie family....

[onlycrazygal]

a few pieces of a very large jigsaw began to slot together just recently when my father remarked how similar my aspie sons behaviour was to my own when i was his age......i guess this got me thinking as to how withdrawn i was as a child and clumbsy, low self esteem , no spontaneous behaviour, very soldier like and controled ........anyway lol.....im certain my eldest son and myself are aspie also.....

im wondering what in fact it may achieve if i was to seek diagnosis ????

any advice on this would be well appreciated as i really dont know what to do, thanks,

paula x

[lotty]

i have found it almost impossible to find true aspie diagnosis as an adult. I know i am and certain mum is and grandad, two of my three boys are and my partner and also 2 brothers out of 4. and a cousin.

I was told at uni by the educational psych that i have a semantic pragmatic disorder, dyslexia, dyspraxia, and social phobia, but he wouldnt call it aspergers just under an umbrella. anyway, i have found that they are only happy to dignose it if you are a child.

in my experience that is,

i have also only recently realised that where theres one aspie, theres more there in a family

[Tally]

Ultimately, it is very difficult to get a diagnosis as an adult.

If you can afford to go private, this might be your only option.

The National Autistic Society may be able to help or advise you.

 

I was already being treated for mental health problems when I heard about AS. It was like reading my own mind. The more I read about it the more it made sense. I eventually plucked up the courage to talk to my counsellor about it. He arranged for a half hour session with a psychologist who, on the basis of my poor eye contact, agreed that in her opinion, I did have AS, although she was not qualified to diagnose 'officially.'

 

I cannot afford to go private, nor will I be able to get the cooperation from my parents that many private clinics require, but this is enough for me to feel better about myself and the way I am.

[mossgrove]

I eventually plucked up the courage to talk to my counsellor about it. He arranged for a half hour session with a psychologist who, on the basis of my poor eye contact, agreed that in her opinion, I did have AS, although she was not qualified to diagnose 'officially.'

 

Medical and support services for Adults with Autism are almost non-existent when yiou dohave a diagnosis, let alone when you don't.

 

Personally, I think you would need more than a half-hour session woth a psychotherpist to say whether you have AS or not. It is true that poor eye contact and AS are often found together, but AS is not the only reason for poor eye contact, and the idea that someone could say you probably have AS onthe basis of it is a little concerning. Was your psychotherapist an expert in Autism?

 

I would warmly recommend that anyone who has had 'thoughts' about their childhood should read 'Martian in the Playground' by Claire Sainsbury, which is about her early life as an undiagnosed Aspie. You will probably recognise a lot of what you read.

 

Simon

[Tally]

She may well have based her opinion on my counsellor's notes & my previous records as well, and there may well be other things she noticed but did not comment on. I don't think she's an expert in autism, but she told me she was working with several people with Asperger's. But yes, half an hour does not seem like enough. But I feel as though my suspicions have been confirmed, that someone outside of my own brain sees the symptoms I see.

[trance]

Hiya

My partner went for an ADHD assessment recently and they came up with a dx of that and aspergers which was quite a shock. He is still going through assessments.

 

It depends on the region you are in if you get asssessed. What he wants to achieve is a reason for the way he has been for the last 37 years and an explanation so he can then work on it.

 

If you are quite happy as you are then an assessment isnt going to do anything for you, if you think you need help then follow it through.

 

xx

[Richt]

I've put my views up here loads of times, maybe it's just to keep the topic current, because I think it's important that Adult diagnosis (Partial, possible, potential) is talked about. For Ch****'s sake (sorry Mods - don't want to offend anyone) ASD is a pretty new topic, I worked with a lot of "difficult children" in the early 90's, one was definitely Autistic, a couple would now be described and accepted as ASD.

 

In the olden days, I remember my Boss telling me that Jonathan was unusual in our community because he had an organic problem (Autism), the rest had "Emotional and Behavioural Difficulties" the new pc term for for "Maladjusted".

 

I'm willing to bet there were a lot of so called EBD children I worked with who were really ASD, fortunately the regime I worked in looked at the children and tried to manage them and integrate them in the kindest possible way.

 

As thinking moves on, sure the boundaries change, people become redefined and the problem for adults is they often spend their lives gnawing away at previous history, the maybes, should be's, could be's.

 

If only I could live that part of my life again with the understanding and perception I now have about myself...

 

I have literally shed a skin since my quaisi diagnosis ( the Psyche guy didn't want to progress to full diagnosis as he was pretty convinced in one meeting I was ASD and I also had too many coping strategies so I would be able to sit the tests and come out "normal" which would be the wrong result) I guess the tests haven't caught up with adults yet.

 

Is diagnosis the magic cure?

 

Absolutely not, it raises more questions than it answers, for example ignorance was bliss until then, I could say and think pretty much what I felt, now I have to think a little harder and believe it or not, that is a relief, but if anything it makes me appear less confident, less self assured, less assertive to the world. It also lets me use my phenominal mind processes to solve problems, that to me seem easy, but in the job I do now, believe me, some very competent folks honestly can't see the wood from the trees.

 

Luckily my job involves thinking "outside the box" in a world that requires middle of the box thinking. All I have to do is provide the avenues to the outside of the box to allow development.

 

 

I'm lucky I guess. Jimminy Cricket, the nagging doubt on my shoulder, has been replaced with an internal understanding, I'm no longer trapped, I beat myself up about normal stuff - you smoke and drink too much, now I feel strong enough to address those face on, I'm 40, don't have any feelings either way about being dead tomorrow, but just maybe I'd like to be around for a while longer, that is becoming my obsession. I guess you could say I've wasted 40 years scrabbling about in the dark, trying to discover myself. Now's the time to live.

 

What a ramble, if it's any help good, if not, so be it.

 

R

[Canopus]

I'm willing to bet there were a lot of so called EBD children I worked with who were really ASD, fortunately the regime I worked in looked at the children and tried to manage them and integrate them in the kindest possible way.

 

I went to a residential school for kids with EBD and there were definitely kids there with AS and ASD. My EP specifically stated on my statement that I needed a school for EBD. The regime at the school was hard discipline.

[Richt]

I went to a residential school for kids with EBD and there were definitely kids there with AS and ASD. My EP specifically stated on my statement that I needed a school for EBD. The regime at the school was hard discipline.

 

 

canopus

 

I don't know where or when you went to school, but (facing facts) before 1940's no-one had ever thought that children were anything other than "Naughty" a good hiding sorted them out. During the war, people like Winnicott and Homer Lane got their head round the fact that these children weren't naughty, just different. (Angry, upset, traumatised and acting out as a result, but not malicious - perhaps simply crying out for attention) In the 60's folks like Marion Benathon pushed it a bit further, somewhere along the line people like Robert Laslett started to question and a whole new movement was created, the children were labelled "Maladjusted", they didn't fit into the nice picture of society as village greens and cream teas.

There was a move to make the label less damning in the late 80's, so children became EBD.

 

I remember Paul visiting(around 1990), he was 10 or so and looked like he came from the "Persil" family, white BMW, white shorts, white T shirt. I was very new on the staff then, having met the family I had to take Paul down to show him the classrooms and meet his potential teacher and the rest of the children.

 

Later I talked to the teacher and the boss and asked them what was "wrong" with Paul, they steered me to the notes, which I read. Hindsight is a wonderful thing, today, I'd cut through all the psychobabble and be fairly sure he was ASD. So there's a rise in ASD diagnosis, or possible diagnosis, big surprise, it's been diagnosable less than 20 years, people are catching up. When I was working with Paul neither of us was aware we were both possibly ASD, we understood each other, had empathy.

 

Later, much later, my boss told me that Paul's problems stemmed from the fact he didn't understand that his parents truely loved him, they did all the right things, but he didn't pick them up. My boss was (still is I guess, very insightful - I haven't been invited to the funeral yet) By then I was a key worker for Paul. Paul "got better" because he learned how to receive, understand, accept, (dare I say it?... Love) he began to recognise that if his dad gave him a sweet, it was because his dad loved him, before, it was just a sweet.

 

Behaviour Modification is a totally seperate animal, punishment and reward, all the child learns (maybe) is how to comply, but it doesn't help with understanding their condition and "place in society"

 

Not much help I guess, I'm definitely no Torrey Hayden, just a bloke who has drifted through life and finally found out who he is

 

B******* (sorry Mods) to all of it, you is what you is. So long as you make people happy around you, get on with being you, sod the diagnosis, always seek to be you and love the skin you're in, loving your skin is the first step (I kind off like myself a bit at the moment) I know who and what I am and accept it.

 

Hey ho

 

R

[Canopus]

I was at the school during the early 1990s. The emphasis of the school was behaviour modification using rewards (interpret this as everyday kids rights) and punishments. Maladjusted was a term regularly encountered at the school. The staff made no effort to explain kid's conditions and their place in society.

[Richt]

Canopus

 

If you are really angry about this, I'm not going to defend other people's misguided thinking. Some children respond well to behaviour modification, but they are nt kids who understand boundaries, they can be angry about paula stealing their toy, lash out and then be "punished" so they learn that stealing and lashing out are not acceptable.

 

The whole point of BM was it missed children who were truly bemused about action, and consequence. Rightly a teacher might say "it's not nice to take your trousers down in class" , but the teacher should have some understanding about why the trousers are down and respond appropriately to the child (Understand the motivations and circumstance)

 

I think that only happened in some places, the rest were just interested in making the children compliant