How Old Were You At Diagnosis?

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16 going on 17 (as the song goes).

In hindsight I really ought to have been diagnosed earlier. I mixed with virtually no one during secondary school, my interests and hobbies were not mainstream, my general social skills were not great and I was regularly placed into side classes for people with learning difficulties. I would have regular meltdowns, but these didn't really extend beyond quietly crying my eyes out so they perhaps weren't the 'obvious' kind.

I was 13. When the specialist who was working with me explained to me what AS was, I had no idea what my specialist was talking about.

Due to my inability to mask at the time, I was diagnosed at age 3, which may seem unusual for a girl.

Well my mother used to take me to lots of doctors because I would get sick a lot as a little kid. One of those doctors told my mother that I was autistic. She thought that was messed up, so she didn't do anything about it. I went on to have severe mental problems for the rest of my childhood and teenage years.

I had been called rain man by an NT ex-boyfriend who was probably trying to give me a hint? Who knows.

Then a good friend began to explain about autism and aspergers for a few years, probably trying to give me a hint?!

It wasnt until this friend sat me down in front of a computer and explained every symptom. He pointed out my issues and told me he thought that I had asperger's syndrome. Something in the way he spoke made me believe he was concerned for me. I think I was 27. My mother took me to a psychiatrist who diagnoses autism, and I was diagnosed with normal IQ autism. Also known as Asperger's syndrome.

I was 4 years old and non-verbal, when I got the autism diagnosis. My IQ was 140.

When I was 5 years old, I started a lot of things at the same time: speaking, reading, writing. And and 6 I was able to play a musical instrument.

My later diagnoses was PDD and PDD/NOS respectively, with an IQ between 130 and 135.

I’m surprised at how many received their diagnoses after the age of 50. I guess the system had a lot of catching up to do after introducing HFA and AS to the DSM.

A psychologist I was seeing about depression referred me on to a colleague of hers who specialised in autism. I hadn't even heard of autism, had no idea what it was. Anyway, diagnosed by a psychologist and confirmed by a psychiatrist at age 27 that I had autism.

Age 2 shortly before I turned 3. Classic severe autism level 3.

I was re-diagnosed moderate to severe level 2 when I was 8.

The later diagnosis was attributed to developmental delay.

I was 36 when I was diagnosed, but I suspect that if I were about 10 years younger, I would have been diagnosed at age 6 instead.

Teachers had been commenting all sorts of things about me that describe ASD in my early elementary school years, but Asperger's wasn't added to the DSM until 1994, by which point I was already in grade 8 and doing fairly well in school (academically anyway, even if not socially).

My parents did admit to me that they'd wondered if I had ADHD, but I was never diagnosed with that.

31.

I was officially diagnosed at 19. However, my mother and stepdad had a suspicion that I had it after my uncle's sister (who worked around children with special needs) pointed out that I showed signs of autism when I was around 4 or 5.

I realized the reason of my problems at 50. I learned that it's Aspergers half a year later just two week before I registered here. But I'm not far on the spectrum and I think that a diagnosis wouldn't help to solve any of the problems that I have. But to realize the reason of my problems and to learn that empathy is something that people really feel and to learn eye contact and how to read people a lot better this all helped me to improve my social skills a lot. It's better to learn all of this much earlier in life.

I was diagnosed at age 12 and it was mainly because of school and for my education and to keep me out of that behavior class. The school tried to say all my issues were behavior but they were not. But my mom knew I had something at a young age but she didn't know what it was and she had me tested at age ten for AS and the clinical psychologist said I didn't have it. So I am pretty sure my mom noticed symptoms in me and wanted to see if that was going on in me. I was already diagnosed with SPD, dyspraxia, ADD, Language Processing disorder, and OCD was suspected, and I was diagnosed with auditory processing disorder so I had all these labels. I also had Cluttering.

I used to think all my issues were due to my history of hearing loss but when I got to age 10, I knew it wasn't that. At age 12 I got to meet other kids in group therapy who also had problems and they all looked *gasp* normal so I then knew I didn't have a different look and no one could tell I was different just by looking at me. This was very confusing for me as a child because I couldn't understand why I was being treated so different and it wasn't like when kids look at me, they already see I am different and start treating me differently. So AS made sense when I read about it.

Just to support this, I was tested at the age of 3. I received a diagnoses of being lazy instead of autism.

BUT...

That was the sixties and autism wasn't considered a spectrum disorder. You had to be pretty severely autistic to receive an autism diagnoses back then. Fast forward 45+ years, and I finally got a diagnoses and figured out why so many things in life didn't work for me like things worked for other people.

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