where did you learn about Aspergers etc?

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I went to school and eventually became best friends with the first person I knew who had Asperger's. I admit that, besides her, I didn't know much about it besides how it affected her until recently. It was only when my mom told me that I probably would have been diagnosed with it myself if my dad hadn't objected to the very idea of trying for a diagnosis and had my current psychiatrist not been against diagnosing anyone with something that couldn't be medicated. After about a year of wondering about that, I started doing my research, and eventually ended up here.

My wife told me she'd seen it mentioned on the news about 10 years ago. I looked at a short description, thought to myself "this is a disorder? On what planet?" and didn't give it another thought for years and years.

Then my son was diagnosed. He acted quite a lot like I did at his age, and had an awful lot of problems I remembered having, only more so. Or at least more so than I remembered having. Then I took him to get seen for ADHD (which I also had a dx and meds for and could see that he was having trouble with) and the doctor gave him an Asperger's diagnosis to go along with it. She said that, in addition to his issues with eye contact, conversation, and so on, he had a certain "look" to his face... one which matched his mom's, even though she doesn't have any trouble reading emotions or social cues and she isnt't a brainiac (I thought at the time that that was a required feature). (Maybe she's just enough on the spectrum to connect with me without being disconnected from the rest of humanity like I am, and that's why we get along).

Then I took the aspie quiz (the one with the circular graph in the results) and came out heavily aspie. I poked around on the net, found some sites for partners that I found quite disturbing - but also heavily reminiscent of a few years ago when I withdrew from everyone including my wife and kids. I found some descriptions of how aspies have to learn social cues and basic emotion reading and so forth and thought "so other people are born knowing this stuff." I read more partners' posts and got more disturbed, then got a bit reassured when one recurring theme was that aspies absolutely cannot change things that I already had changed. Then wondered whether I was a "real" aspie or not, given how well I can tell certain things and do certain things... but the bottom line is that I did have to learn them, some of them fairly recently, so there is wiring missing.

Anyway, I'm still haven't 100% "come to terms" with the whole deal, but it explains quite a lot and I have to say that I am, in fact, an aspie. Even though my son's doctor said that she doesn't think I am.

Incidentally, I told my wife a few weeks ago that I'm pretty sure I have it, and she was unphased. I guess we're getting along well enough that the idea of me not changing further doesn't disturb her. Or maybe she just never found those partner sites that I did. (I wouldn't be entirely surprised to see posts from her dating back to 2005 or so, but I haven't found any yet).

Mom and I first learned about Asperger's syndrome
from an episode of the CBC Radio One science program
Quirks and Quarks.

It featured some psychiatrist named Mohammad Ghaziuddin
and some of his early work on various aspects of the syndrome.
Mom noted how well this seemed to fit my situation, and took me
to a psychiatrist who gave me my formal diagnosis in September of 1997.

I've learned about it from a nurse that I talked to at my local Mental Health office. She gave me a few sheets to read. I still thought in my mind, "Yeah, right...I'm HFA."

First time I heard the word was about ten years ago. I was at the park with my 2-year-old son and a friend w/ her 2-year-old son. The boys were playing together, running around. My friend said, kind of jokingly, that my son had some mannerisms that made her think about a condition called Asperger syndrome. She told me what she knew of it. My son used to do a kind of hand-flapping/finger wiggle thing. He also talked in an odd voice and liked to spin wheels. We just laughed about the Asperger thing, though. We knew he couldn't possibly have it because he was clearly playing one-on-one with his friend. And he looked people in the eye.

Four years later, he was officially diagnosed.

At that time, I began seriously researching AS, so I could understand my son and his needs. I joined an online parents of AS kids forum, and read about it all the time. Most of what I read focused on little boys, and I didn't really relate any of it to myself. But after a while, I began reading the personal accounts of adults with AS, and found that I deeply related to so much of what people like Dawn Prince-Hughes and Temple Grandin experienced. I had always had a vague feeling that most other people experience the world, and think, in a different way that I do. Reading stories of adults on the spectrum was like reading about a part of myself that I had never seen in anyone else.

Maybe I don't have AS; I don't know. I'm not sure if I meet enough of the official criteria, but I feel l have a similar brain style, at least.

I had heard of autism but I hadn't heard of AS until I accidently stumbled upon the page for aspergers on wikipedia while looking through articles on anxiety disorders. Naturally this caught my attention and through wikipedia I discovered WP. IN my first visit to WP I spent hours reading about the symptoms and I knew I finally had the answer to all the questions I had about myself and my personality. I basically discovered it completely by accident.

mother printed pages out about it for me.

When I was 13, the year they first tested me for it.

My mom. I heard her mention my name on the phone and started eavesdropping. I then heard her say something like, "I've found out about this thing called Asperger's and I am sure that my daughter has it." I then asked her about it and was very angry that she didn't tell me about it straight up. She then showed me the symptoms and I said that I think I've had it as a child but then grew out of it. Only later I've found out that it is pervasive. I told my friend that I have it because I thought that she would know what it is and that it would help her understand me better, since we had many classes together that year. I did not look into it further until I've realized that some of my anxiety and concentration problems are also a result of some symptoms of AS.

I had been a heavily-addicted member of ADD online forums for years. A lot of the people on those forums have the same issues I do....but there were issues I had that did not seem to be covered by the ADD forums.
I was addicted to a networking hub (if that is the right term)...for a long time called Tribe.net...It was neat because you could create your own "tribes"...
My tribes had names like "Tribe for the Socially Inept" and "The Social Anxiety Tribe"...another is the "dropped on the Head as a Child" tribe..(because I was, and always wondered if I was affected by it)
It was on the Dropped on the Head as a Child tribe, on a thread where we were all listing our quirks and difficulties...somebody said that she had always associated my particular quirks with the autistic spectrum....so I looked into it...and eventually got "kidnapped by the aspies"

It was a while before I finally found WP...Some of the non WP AS forums I found were somewhat humiliating and elitist. I joined..then left..then rejoined a Tribe AS group...

I mentioned the possibility that I had AS on one of the ADD message boards...and that was met with mixed opinions...but one member with diagnosed AS and ADD in her family said that females presented differently than males, and according to what I described, it seemed to her like I might be right.

AS might also be the reason I found it so difficult to get help at the ADD clinic...

I have-since finding out about the autistic spectum-been assessed as having Asperger's..but have gone in circles as to whether it counts as an actual diagnosis.
the lady who assessed me said that it meant that I did not really have ADD....I previously was given a tentative diagnosis for that by a GP...the one time I was prescribed meds...
But um...
howyousay...

If I AM an Aspie....I am one who is heavily affected by ADD symptoms...I have terrible executive dysfunction and organizing skills....My thoughts are often very jumbled...especially when actually interacting with people...I will say a sentence on one subject...followed by another sentece on a completely different subject....get easily confused and off track when trying to hold conversations...have trouble organizing sentences...stuff like that....

I first heard about Asperger's in 1996, when I was watching a BBC TV science program called QED. It was all about Asperger's syndrome, they interviewed Simon Baron-Cohen and several Aspies. One had "Aspie and Proud" on his t-shirt (my mother remembered).

I was watching it with my parents, I had my mineral books and some mineral specimens in front of me while I watched the program, my intense special interest at the time. I was so embarrassed watching it, I knew they would think I had Asperger's. We all watched in silence and when it was over, we said nothing. But the program seemed to imply that Aspies are good at Maths, I am very poor at Maths, so I thought I was not quite Asperger's. It let me "off the hook".

Later on, when in college studying for my PhD, I suffered from severe depression and loneliness - I recaled the QED program about Asperger's and learnt everything I could about Asperger's from books and websites. I was finally diagnosed in 2002 and it was a great relief.

I was reading the Donna Williams chapter of a book called Silver Linings which is about how different disabled people deal with their challenges. Her experience really resonated so I researched autism and learned about the spectrum. On average I'm near the mild side of Asperger's - not the best place to be growing up because it's a gray area where it's bad enough to make big mistakes but not bad enough for anyone (including myself) to think that I needed help.

What do you mean by "near the mild side of AS?" Do you mean borderline AS or moderate AS but it's close to being mild?

I would guess borderline just by the way you said it.

Autism has been an interest of mine for years. Initially I was very interested in becoming a foster parent. To prepare for that, I educated myself of many of the common issues children in foster care have to deal with.

Additionally, in 2005 I dated a man who was trying to cope with a son who was having extreme problems in grade one. I was with him through tests, doctors, teacher interviews, and finally a diagnosis of Aspergers. Once diagnosed I did LOADS of research, just so that I could understand what they were going through. Ironically, it never occurred to me to equate what I read with my son, or myself.

I also made many "acquaintances" on YouTube during that time, who were autistic or on the spectrum. I learned about Autism Speaks and the controversy regarding that. I read many books and researched many websites and even considered returning to college to specialize in autism studies ( a new diploma offered through my college at the time).

Only recently, when my own son started having extreme difficulties in school and I began to suspect ASD did I continue my research with a fresh pair of eyes. The more I learned (checklists and the like) the more I realized -sh** , this describes me too!

Okay- to be honest I didn't see it at first. It was my mother who told me those 'signs' all showed in me.

I started looking for other parents who might have advice or support to give me regarding my son, and so I found Wrong Planet.

THE END

While using the internet to read about what I thought was "Social Phobia", mind blindness and anxiety. It seemed like every article mentioned something like "this is also common in Asperger's".

I have a small theory that Asperger's would be almost unknown without the internet. Hmmm, thats basically a fact. I mean Asperger's would still be almost unknown without the internet.

Thank you for the replies. It's quite clear that everyone who self-diagnoses, and even many who receive a professional diagnosis, go through a long process of learning and questioning whether they really do have it.

The thing that made me ask was a conversation I was having elsewhere and someone who works in a school made the comment that parent-diagnosed Aspergers children take services away from genuine sufferers. I have heard this kind of comment before (not least here on Wrong Planet), but I am beginning to think that it is very widespread. I wondered what happens to a child who has been formally diagnosed, statemented, sent to a special school and then finds that the school staff think he/she is merely spoilt. It seems to me that that is potentially even more damaging than the old days when AS children just got to sink or swim in ordinary schools.

I'm wondering whether it would be possible to get an article into a newspaper or magazine or radio programme that is read by the sorts of people who say these things. Something describing the process of finding out about Aspergers and giving more information about what it is (I hear people say "Aspergers is not just about being a bit shy", but they don't seem to actually know what it really is about). Have people seen stuff like this already? Was there any really good articles about it?