Can autism be "developed" later in life

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that makes a lot of sense.
Oh...that's why I was punished daily by my first grade teacher...

In the last few years I have regressed a bit again..my social skills have deteriorated....it seems like there are many things I need to re-learn.
In my early 20's my major obsession became organizing elaborate theme concerts to raise money for the pirate radio station I was involved in and other causes.
I was so obsessed with the finished product of my concert that I was driven to be social and interact with all these different people in all these different bands...granted..I was tripped up by stuff like face blindness...and ended up running into lots of people in public who recognized me when I didn't recognize them...and other situations like that..There were lots of people who picked up on the fact that I was "neurotic"...but I became somewhat good about networking....obsessive about it...
When I started Super Happy Fun Land with my partner, all those contacts I had established came in handy when establishing our core local support. This continues to this day, but i completely lost the ability to network and I became detached from everyone once again.
Sometimes the simplest transactions seem close to impossible, and it is something I really need to work on.,

Sorry for rambling about this...

http://www.murphyhouseproject.com/family.htm

I think this was the family in the documentary. I can't remember which child it was but it was one of the older ones. The 23 year old boy Jimmy is autistic but I'm not sure if that is him because on the show it said he went on to develop it in his teens and on the site it says he was born with it. It says he also has Down Syndrome. Can you have both?

Last edited by PunkyKat on 03 Jan 2010, 5:10 am, edited 1 time in total.

sorry to go on about Dr.Stephen Gutstein again.....

He talks about static forms of intelligence (autistics being ok to excellent at these) versus dynamic forms of intelligence - the kind of intelligence that is basically NT and is spontaneous, multi-channelled and complex. (social relating falls into the dynamic realm.)

SO, he maintains we ASD people can learn all sort of static forms of social relating - which is basically what silly old ABA therapy is all about. (look at the eyes. etc.) BUt we struggle with the dynamic.

In the case of networking, I believe it is certainly conceivable that someone on the ASD spectrum can do so.
It is just likely approached in a static fashion. So, you might collect people and focus on this networking as a task that is singularly pursued or required as a very important part of your special interest as a performer and musician and venue owner.

We can learn all sorts of skills in this fashion. We can learn so much, but it does not mean that we are truly dynamic and social in a way that an NT person is.
So, does it really make us more dynamically social and able to "go with the flow" and read social situations and their complexities with ease and comparatively relaxed approach? I don't think so.
What it indicates is that we have learned some scripts and skills and we adhere to these exceedingly effectively at times, once we are alerted to the "right approach."
And it does mean we can learn some mechanisms for success in our ventures, in an NT world.

The key is however, that often, the set of skills learned in one context is not necessarily transferable to a new context, because we lack the flexibility and dynamism that allows for smooth transition of social skills and networking skills from one experience to the next.
Here, I talk from personal experience. It is just interesting for me to have come across some of Dr. Stephen Gutstein's views (he's from Houston and I do not agree with EVERYTHING he says and does,) and yet for me, he seems to make some very valid points about why and how we get stuck in the real world where change and dynamism is the one prevailing factor and constant (and basically the one that is SO hard for us ASD people.)

When I was pursuing painting as a career i collected loads of "contacts" as part of my singular focus. But the way I approached it was static and very fixed, and unlike other artists I knew who, enjoyed going to openings and mingling socially and networking in a sociable and easy-going kind of way by going to parties and barbeques together, by going to lunches and talking art over food and wine. I did not and do not do that. Instead, I collected names and contacts in an email list and phone number and lists or mental lists kind of way --- clocking them up so they could serve the needs of my special interest at that time. The other artists were flexible and dynamic about it, enjoying the free-flow of contact and spontaneity with other human beings as they built their careers, whereas I was locked in and more neurotic, fixed and singular in my approach. In the end, I am always considered a bit of a weirdo. (fine by me.)

anyway, it is interesting to consider this static versus dynamic polarity....

that is totally the way I did things with my contacts. I had a strict formula that I applied to each of my "events"..I seldom established any sort of personal discourse with these people....in fact I had trouble recognizing them from one occasion to the next. On the rare occasion that I did establish a personal connection, it was generally a long lasting one, and it involved people who happened to be unique enough to want to have anything further to do with me...as I did develop a "reputation"

I don't think it is possible to suddenly develop autism like that, but it is (as I know too well) possible to regress from higher functioning to mid functioning. Whether this is actually the autism getting worse, or because of environmental causes I cannot say. A lot of change happened in my early teen years and I got so upset that I just forgot how to look after myself (although mum did most of my care back as a kid). I stopped talking, stimmed more and had severe temper tantrums. I was also developing Tourettes at the time though, that could have had something to do with it...

Are you moderate or severe?

I had AS symptoms since my early years. I had more autistic behavior too.

The depression, the anxiety, all the stress can push me up in the moderate aspie range but just as long as I am in control of my environment, I am mild or don't have it. That's what my mother said when I was in my teens. Of course I still have it, saying I don't have it is like saying someone doesn't have depression just because they aren't depressed at the moment or even showing it or saying someone doesn't have Bipolar just because they aren't showing any signs right now or saying someone isn't a diabetic just because they don't need to take their insulin right now and they aren't having any episodes. My dad rarely has his but he takes his insulin everyday.

But the stress, the anxiety and depression, brings out more of my AS and I find it harder to control and my old traits can come back. But oveall I say I'm mild (or borderline).

This is just my opinion but I often wonder these days with kids going to daycare and preschools and all the "socialisation" stuff being forced down parents throats with their kids, what on earth is all this forced "socialisation" doing to these kids on the spectrum?

I never went to daycare, preschool, playgroups, yet I was a very very happy child. By todays standards I would have been labelled as "deprived" as I only ever was with my mother in the first 5 years and the only children I played with were my 2 older cousins who were 5 and 10 years older than me.

Went to a strict private school where I excelled in everything including sports. Was VERY popular, had a ton of friends, was well liked by almost everybody, there was nothing odd, strange , weird about me at all. No obsessions no stimming, nothing. Even when we moved when I was 10 to a new town and a new school I still fitted in and made friends from day one also. I'm still just blown away how someone like me with mild AS managed to do all that.

How old were you when you were diagnosed?

I went to daycare because my parents were both working swing shifts. I also had a lot of babysitters. I really don't remember interacting with the other kids very much at all, except for a few isolated incidents,,,,in most,it was like I was alone in a group....There was one girl who followed me around and called me "daddy" because I was a sort of boyish girl and maybe she was homesick....but she said I reminded her of her dad. Maybe she had issues too... ..or maybe she didn't realize that I was a girl...

No, you do not develop autism has you get you are born with it, it is a genetic anomaly (by that I just mean it is not the norm), it just that depending on degree of autism, the mental capacity of the said person and the less demanding social interaction at young age can make it so it is hidden from the common eye.


I am one of the late diagnostic of autism and after reading the different element that can be part of asperger I can insure you that I was autistic has far has I can make my memory go back and that I was even heavier when I was a child. For example I was taking everything word for word when I was a child unable to understand any expression or nuance in what a person said, still very accurate with wording but learned to be less accurate and using alternate word if I can't remember the accurate one. Also had a huge tendency to go into my own universe when people spoke to me has a kid, this is gone. Also had very good score at school but think I was still seen has a troublesome child by some of the teacher I had in elementary for when I hit high school I was placed in 2/3 (first 2 high school grades in 3 years) but at first report they easily saw the anomaly of me been placed there for I had an average of 90 while best student of that group never go above 70-75 normaly, so was given the choice of going to normal class, which I somewhat regret for there I was the odd new guy who also happen to be top of that class I switched to (so let just say I was an easy target for at least half the class (even the girl were bullying me in that class)).

Also came to have different test through the years at school to find out by what my trouble were cause, but there was never follow up to the testing for guess I came to score close to normal or above it.

Was just able to bypass most observation of normal people, until I began to see a psychiatrist for my depression, since to them I must just have seemed like your just odder then usual geek.

I was diagnosed 4 years ago at age 42.

I think its fact your born with it or you aren't but:

Is it possible that many symptoms of a person with AS/Autism can remain dormant until a trigger event? Such as an accident or maybe puberty? The person could perhaps have AS, but not show many of the traits until puberty due to hormone changes?

I don't know, so I am asking.

That possible but I would more say it is because the complexity of brain operation augment has you age, the last stage been gained by most during puberty to early 20s (some never attain it through), so some symptoms are just impossible to perceive before a certain age because the brain don't have the capacity to execute them. So in a way you are correct with your guess, but I think it is not because they are triggered but because the brain only has the capacity of execution for them at a certain point in life.

Yes. In fact, Down Syndrome individuals are a great deal more likely to have autism as well.

Exactly.
If Warhol was indeed on the spectrum, (and who knows,) my guess is this is also how he would have approached his networking and "star collecting..." - in a very static and collecting kind of way. From what I can gather he built his reputation in this manner also.

elderwanda, I agree with this, and I've also often felt it worth mentioning that because I was my mother's first and only child, she had never previously had much to do with children, and she seldom socialized with other mothers and their children after I was born, she had no 'control' figures to compare me to. She says that I appeared normal as a small child, but providing I didn't seem distressed - which I did not - she would have assumed that I was probably perfectly normal because there was nothing to make her suspect otherwise as she might have done if she were attending mother and baby groups and so forth and observing me in a group of other children.

I myself remember first starting to feel 'different' when I began infant school. It has definitely become more pronounced the older I have gotten and the more I have been expected to intuitively understand and conform. Possibly the earliest indications of any kind of disorder are peculiar episodes that I still have now and are exactly the same as I recall having around the age of five that I have come to think are probably some kind of partial seizure.

A year ago in a thread, someone was talking about how people MUST notice when you are young, how your parents would notice etc.etc.
I stated very clearly in that thread that it depended on who was watching and noticing!


My mother is CLEARLY on the spectrum No question. She admits to many traits but cannot quite call herself AS. She toe walks, is a current affairs fanatic, lives a fairly solitary life and listens to the radio obsessively. She also reads and reads and reads and monologues and is very detail oriented.
She had 8 children and for most of my upbringing she was factually based, brilliant and fairly unable to respond to the emotional needs of her children. When her husband left her, (my dad) she spent a good ten years in a state of permanent meltdown/breakdown.

She now reflects that the indicators may well have been there, but back then, she had no reference point and her view of the world was indeed subjectively coloured by her own traits and what she perceived as fine and quite normal. (she saw nothing strange about my obsessive collecting of branches which I strung from my bedroom ceiling. Nor did she see any problem in my fanatical love of the World Book Encyclopaedias, because she shared that passion for information and loved her button collections. Nor did she find anything vaguely strange or obsessive about my wine label collection or my western suburbs rugby league scrap books which were somewhat detailed for an 8 year old. Nor did she find anything strange about my eldest brother's rather odd prosody and way of speaking, his obsessive attention to his comic strips, and his composing. Nor did she find anything odd about another sibling who was totally fixated on rigid routing and cleanliness to the point of fanaticism (for a ten year old.) Some of us were very insular. We did not really socialise with friends much, beyond the family. We stuck with the routine and the familiar!

She saw absolutely nothing wrong with her odd children. (and a few of us were VERY odd and eccentric growing up in the 60's.) In those days however, the oddness was not perceived as ASD's. There were however at different time, some comments from teachers and som interventions for some of us because of some behavioural and other issues.

and prior to my father's departure, he saw nothing odd either. He spent the bulk of his time reading Latin, French and Italian, spending his time at work making detailed radio programs and also composing australian catholic hymns for the church here (for which he received a belated honorary doctorate just last week.)

We were an odd family.
We didn't notice, - our house was ramshackle and unkempt but filled with books and instruments and all sorts of junk and things.
No...we didn't notice...but the neighbours did....................