Three Aspergers Kids and Mom STILL Slipping Thru Cracks

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Problem is everything is getting done. he's got back-up everywhere. He has the IEP and everybody loves him (well maybe not the principal) his speech therapist, school pyscologist, physical therapist, occupational therapist, and a couple more. Granted he got suspended for some minor infractions to begin with but once they understood, they only suspended him for 0 tolerance issues. I think we finally have the violent out bursts under control (he has had a problem sense birth of not taking any s**t) but he's still not paying any attention in school. It's not that big a problem right now because he already knows how to read write and do basic math. But what about after kindergarten, when he is actually going to have to pay attention, follow directions, work well with others. I guess I'm just scared because I know what I went though and I never want him to feel like that. I survived by the skin of my teeth as the cool chick who always knew where the parties where. I don't want him to feel like he's not good enough. I pushed everyone away because I always felt so different and am really lucky I didn't kill myself in the process. My kids grounded me, how do I ground them?

Problems with getting an adult diagnosis:

--Incompetent professionals who aren't clear on diagnosing ASDs.

--Consultation is a structured Q&A on a topic that the Aspie has obsessively prepared, making the Aspie appear socially competent. Ask my son about Pokemon and you will have an interesting conversation. Ask him about soccer and he will tell you about Pokemon. Put him in the middle of other kids his age who are playing a ball game and (if he stays) he will monologue about Pokemon.

--An adult has decades of coping experience that can get them through certain situations. The coping mechanisms don't cure the underlying deficits.

--Asperger's doesn't pay the bills for most mental health professionals. Many get money by prescribing medication. They can monetize anxiety, depression and other diagnoses.

--Mental health professionals often focus on curing symptoms and aren't too concerned with identifying an underlying problem. Many view it like a doctor prescribing medicine for a cold, they aren't concerned with what caused the cold, only alleviating the symptoms of congestion, cough, etc.

AspieForty, I can (slightly) understand why you've had such bum luck with psychs. When you first started seeing them, AS had been published in the DSM-IV only four years previous - and psychologists are just as human as anyone, and just as reluctant to let go their precious preconceived notions. (Just one of the reasons I maintain that psychiatry, like medicine, is not truly a science - a real scientist, when confronted with new facts, changes his theories to fit those facts, not the other way around.) The notion that "girls don't get AS" and that "AS is a disorder of childhood" are powerful memes, which are still being overcome today.

Note that this does not excuse their execrable behavior, especially the ones who confused psychiatry and religion. Sometimes, to understand all is not to forgive all, but to become even more pissed off at how willfully ignorant some "professionals" can be.

However, knowing their "reasoning" might at least give you hope that as time goes by, you'll encounter better-educated psychs, capable of seeing the facts in front of their noses and reasoning successfully from those facts.

On a side note, are you still into collecting police patches? My oldest brother is a cop, and might be able to get you some samples from towns in the Puget Sound area...

Would love that.
With all those 9/11 restrictions, if he will, ask him to send it to :

Shallotte Police Department
Attn: Chief Rodney Gause
114 Cheers Street
South Brunswick, NC 28470-4509



Sharon

Amen. And these are THREE of my biggest piss points with the so called "Mental Health" system.

After years of their errors, misdiagnosis... which resulted in genuine malpractice and trauma for myself and my children (which too were dragged through the same mental hellth trauma)... once, there were so many "professionals" crawling my oldest daughter with their wrong diagnoses and presumptions (I did not know we were Aspergers at the time, but my gut instincts were telling me the whole situation was wrong... the professionals were wrong...) my daughter was getting crawled right and left by people.. and it was driving her nuts. To a point (incapable of properly processing and verbalizing her thoughts / needs / feelings) so she grabbed her hair and pulled a chunk out... it was her way of expressing her needs, the best she could, locked in her Aspergers world alone, suffering in silence.

Guess what they did? Sooooo Neurotypical... they started slapping on diagnosis of a disorder where people pull their hair out, If I remember correctly it may have been a disorder called "Trichotillomania".

My daughter comes to me, pouring tears, "Mama, make them stop. I want to just be left alone. Make them stop."

When I saw my child in pain, I stood up to the system, Oooooh, I was informed by one supervisor, well, I just didn't know how to communicate with my daughter... I HAD THE PROBLEM. Yeah, I know, she was getting state money for her group, at the expense of my daughter's misery, grief and suffering... and (ironic) "mental health". don't tell me I don't know about MY DAUGHTER condescending and the arrogance! I don't care what that piece of paper hanging on the wall might say, or how it may mislead you "experts" to conclude you're a god. (Perhaps that's who needs to seek some counseling for a College degree-induced, schizoid god complex).

I stood up to the system and told them "Back off."

Seemed the wrong thing to do in their "professional" opinion. Why, with my daughter crawling with mental illnesses and their "attentive casework" newly unravelling all of it... but somehow, I got them to listen, and they backed off, at least to some degree. But then handed the worst piece of advice to me... and just as I predicted it lead to about two weeks of legal bureaucracy and... I'll save that story for a rainy day.
The point is, an Aspergers knows what's best for an Aspergers person, and when they and their incompetence "just" backed off (in spite of their "better judgment"), how strange that my daughter just calmed down and returned to normalcy.

Amazing. One of the workers spoke to me a couple years ago, recalling the ordeal... because it defied everything they'd been taught by textbook.

I'm there. I've been there. The day (in 2006) when they called me to the school, and sit down and told me "We think your son may have Aspergers Syndrome ...Autism."

It came as a shock... a bomb... I read it, and found my life described in detail... it explained the "curse" of isolation, as well as the "blessing" of being able to do about anything I set my mind to do. If there's one thing that will tick me off, that's a shrink setting to my face (myself and my children are among the Aspies who have high IQ's), and ASSUMING TOO MUCH, that just because I'm sitting in a psychiatrist' office, therefore I must be:

1) Mentally Incompetant
2) ret*d
3) Incapable of making decisions for myself, or taking care of my own

Yes, I was asked by the Quack "If you become incapable of making decisions for yourself, who should we ask to."

Ho ho! I began counseling VOLUNTARILY 5 years before, while cooperating with federal police against my ex-husband's crimes, because I am a law-abiding citizen who follows the rules... and needed something to help inhibit the nightmares (from his terrorism and threats by mail and phone 24/7 -- at the time I had a job as an administrative assistant) but somehow by _voluntarily_ beginning counseling, the "mental health system" was turning into a downward spiral, where you just get sicker, Sicker, SICKER, SICKER and SICKER and you never recover... one diagnosis, becomes two, two become four... four become eight... and you become consigned to a lifetime of insane hopelessness and inability to take responsibility for your own actions... dependant on their snake oils, and ... no thanks.

I am a United States citizen and I value my civil rights.

Times like that.... are what make me *think* of a violent reaction... but I am intelligent and mature enough that I have learned to control my emotions/behavior. Otherwise, she might would've left her office that day with a couple less teeth than she came in with.
I restrained myself, I told her to get that book off the shelf and read those symptoms to me, and when she read them off, they were NOTHING like myself.
MISDIAGNOSIS!
MALPRACTICE.

One example, what had I done the night before that she marked off as a symptom of "Manic Depression". Well, about a week before I ordered a new sewing machine (I love quilting which is a North Carolina tradition, and during my youth, worked in a sewing factory). I ordered a sewing machine. It arrived just the day before, so, it took a few hours getting it up and running, and then tinkering with it for a few hours... until about 1 a.m. in the morning, so I went to bed.

Ohhhhhh.... that was something a "manic depressed" person would do was the Quack's excuse.

No, that is typical for any woman (Asperger or Neurotypical) and what they would do, if their new sewing machine arrived.

If I could sue the Quack for a million bucks, for all the pain and suffering and emotional scarring...

Welcome to WP!

Welcome to WP!

Welcome to Wrong Planet.

I may be a lowly "Raven", but welcome all the same.

Reading your story of your attempt to obtain an adult diagnosis, I can emphasize. I am streetwise enough not to bother for official diagnosis in the first place. As I am not a student, and not employed, just a full time carer. I already have a disability of deafness diagnosed when I was 2 years old. Plus with glaucoma, any further diagnosis would make me appear more vunerable and make me appear that I cant cope. In reality, I can cope looking after myself and my father, therefore I dont need any more official labels.

Thanks, and



Of all the labels on the market, Aspergers is not one I'm afraid of. Anyone who presumes it is, has already proven their ignorance imho, Bill Gates, Bobby Fischer, etc.

Hi AF....

I've been following your thread and now wanted to give my opinion. I find it most interesting that these professionals overlooked your children's symptoms and diagnosed it as something else. Then again, I'm not surprised at all. Doctors are taught to train the symptoms. They're not taught to get to the "root cause." When I was very young, my mom knew that something was "different" about me. So she went from one professional to the next to the next. Was given a different answer from a different professional. However, nothing matched. Eventually, she gave up on going to professionals, and raised me the best way possible. No wonder why my childhood was so messed up and such.

Because nothing was done in my childhood, my adult years have been messed up until *recently*. I say recently, because I was able to find a common denominator which has resulted in this "root cause" that I'll be starting counseling sessions for next week. I am thankful and grateful I found this "root cause," when all these professionals who were trained and such could not find it. I was mis-dx'd for having cerebral palsy, being "mentally slow," blah blah blah. Much of what has happened in my life is due to this "root cause." Some of it is AS-related. Some of it is AD/HD-related. But most of it is with the "root cause." I am thankful and grateful I was intelligent enough to figure it out for me.

Once I have gone through what I perceive to be months of counseling, I will be able to live my life as I hope. As an even more productive member of society than I am now. As someone who is attractive in the eyes of women (I don't mean just physically attractive). I want to be all I can be, that I was meant to be as an "agent of change" in this world. I want to make an even bigger difference in the lives of other people. I have been beaten down for so long, it's not funny. With the help of counseling and my choice to remain mentally strong, nothing is going to stop me. Nothing.