AS is only diagnosed if the person causes problems.

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Don't know if I should really answer this, because I'm not really one of "you people." I did have a lot of outward signs, but I was suspected of having all sorts of things, and never the two things I actually do have (AS and ADD), but the problem wasn't because of lack of signs. The problem was, in my case, lack of awareness.

Results are pretty much the same though.

Those that actually have AS today but don't display that strongly aren't being misdiagnosed because they aren't "showing enough." They're being misdiagnosed because awareness still isn't as high as it should be.

You're talking about lack of awareness from the medical/psych community, correct?

Primarily, yes, but awareness in general too. We're getting there, but even professionals are not as aware as we need them to be. Heck, I could only find TWO professionals in my area that actually advertise Autism as a specialty. And I live right down the street from one of the most prestigious medical schools in the country!



We've got a longggg way to go!

Define "problems." It's all very, very, subjective.

I don't think you mean "outwardly showing symptoms" so much as asking about if we were not the stereotypical aspie trouble-maker. If this is true, then my answer is relevant. I without question showed symptoms when I was young, but we didn't assume that it had anything to do with autism or any disability. I was assumed to just be gifted. I was absolutely one of the 'too good to be true' kids, because I'll do nothing over something that I think could hurt someone else even now (ignoring meltdowns, but those didn't happen until after I had situations that caused extreme fear of myself giving up - shutdowns got to be scarier than meltdowns). My teachers only thought of me as the gifted kid (though a few recognized that I struggled in different areas than the rest of the class and tried to teach me the social aspects by taking advantage of my strengths).

As for how hard was it to finally get a diagnosis, not. It took years for it to be worth doing so, and it took a huge amount of self-relfection (even after 9 years on the subject I questioned actively whether I was right in wanting to self-diagnose). I had one other diagnosis in the process - social anxiety, but even then it was said that I likely also had Asperger's. I question whether the social anxiety diagnosis was a misdiagnosis, but don't feel it matters to have that confirmed either way.

I was lucky in that it was easy to find someone who'd do the evaluation when it came down to it, but that part was the only part that seemed like it would be a challenge for others.

I believe that's exactly the point the OP is making. It IS subjective.

I was also just considered "gifted" as a kid and my social inadequacies were attributed to "not relating" to people because I was gifted (doesn't make sense to me, but that's what people around me used to say). When I actually went to a psychologist for something else, it wasn't that hard for her to make the diagnosis, based on my experiences over decades and observations (I didn't try to "fake NT" when I was with her, as I often do in public situations).

~Kate

I don't think I was ever a good to be true child. I had a hard time following rules according to my report cards and I didn't know what the rules were because kids didn't follow them so it confused me and no one really ever sat down and told me what I couldn't do because I couldn't pick up on hidden curriculums. Plus I had a hard time controlling my behavior and I was hyper and an attention seeker. I was labeled as having behavior problems and I had all these other labels too by my school like ADD, sensory processing disorder, suspected OCD, cluttering, etc.


But I think my behavior problems were mild because I have seen other people mention their behavior problems and they all sound a lot worse than mine so mine were mild. But my mother says I never had behavior problems.

I was a too good to be true child as well. I did everything that anybody asked me to do, assuming that I understood what they meant. I was the teacher's pet and the one who actually cared about the material. I did well both academically and at home. I was the quiet kid you could count on to just stay in her room and not make a fuss. I got along with other children's parents because I got along with adults more than my own peer group. Likewise, I am also very emotionally undemonstrative. I never acted out emotionally at any age. I barely cried as a baby and that continues to this day.

All the same, though, I was the kid that was bullied and also the one who could never figure out why she had such trouble getting along with her classmates and why she didn't have friends. All of those things only really bothered me, though, so it was mostly ignored. I only found out about AS and other developmental disorders like ADHD this past year or so. It's been one revelation after the next. So many questions that I've had have finally gotten answered.

Yep, that's what my mother always told me, but it doesn't make any sense at all. You look at all the obviously gifted people in class and they seem to relate with others just fine. Hell, everyone seems to relate with *someone*, and if you assume giftedness covers 3% of the class, you start wondering what's up when you seem to be in the .5% group that can't relate to anyone.

Somebody causing problems doesn't mean they're Autistic. WP has got to remember that there are a lot more neurological differences/disorders/problems besides Autism.

Each time I hear of a murder on the news, I don't say, ''the murderer has Autism'', ''why?'', ''because he's just caused a problem.''

I was a difficult "problem" kid in primary school so in theory any AS related things should have been magnified by the behaviour and I would have been checked out mega early. But it still took them years to do anything about it, any discussions between teachers were never passed on to my parents until after the DX even though they'd been going on for years. I think that's mostly to do with the fact that I had a brother that died when I was 6 so people assumed it messed me up, but it had no long term effects at all. Socially I wasn't a complete loser since I had a close circle of friends throughout school, but just as many enemies since I had a big mouth with no filter and I lost my temper a lot. I think it took too long to get me checked out for the amount of trouble I actually was.

In highschool I was a lot more mellow and became super shy and quiet, the only real outward problem then was my organisation skills from hell. But by then I had been diagnosed so instead of being seen as a problem I was treated like a ret*d.

I have noticed the tendency to assess problem kids weith disorders more than the well behaved types, whether or not the problems have anything to do with said disorder. I'm convinced I was genuinelly just a little s**t in primary school and AS is totally seperate and it was just chance that they saw that too. And even then it's only a small part of me, I'm not exactly hollywood level aspie.

I have no idea how they didn't diagnose me with anything when I was a kid. I was bullied a lot, had 1 or no friends most of the time I was in school, skipped school a lot (I managed to miss over 100 days a year two years in a row before I had to go to family court the first time), refused to do a lot of schoolwork, and had selective mutism.

I agree with the sentiment of the OP. This is the main reason I was never interested in persuing any sort of diagnosis. A diagnosis would not benefit me at all and being that I have learned to cope pretty well with life and gotten on well on my own, it would probably even be hard to achieve. Or perhaps these things mean I am not on the spectrum. Impossible to say as diagnosis is somewhat arbitrary based on what doctor assessed you. I'd have to go back and explain how I was as a child and try to convince them that, yes, I used to be less normal than I appear now. To what purpose would I want to convince someone of this? Maybe I am, maybe I'm not, who cares? I am me I've grown and learned an amazing amount since I originally came here years ago with a different name and I am comfortable with myself and my place in society now.

I think you are making a mistake in logic here. The OP is not saying that autism causes all problems but actually the inverse: not all autistics cause problems and the media/medical community only sees the ones that do.

I find that stuff inexcusable. I can understand when an average person doesn't understand ASD, I mean after all who knows everything, but a professional in the mental health field should know in order to be competent.

I only really got diagnosed as I have depression and anxiety and struggle socially/in employment. If I didn't have a problem with that then I wouldn't have been diagnosed.