Sorry I have to ask this

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I don't believe that it bothers EzraS, just that he is trying to understand the differences between Kanner autism and Asperger autism in real life, as opposed to theoretical. His was a great question. I have seen too many Wrong Planetians misunderstand the differences and their intensities.

Most of the people around me think that autism = nonverbal, self-injurous, & can't function at all independently, or it's not autism.

I'm not like that like. As a result, although people think that there's something wrong with me, they don't think of autism.

And far better to ask it here, respectfully as you did, than go on wondering and being confused about it when you're having 'one of your moments'.

Totally different experiences for sure. Mine was of denial and concealment, yours is of expression and support.


I'm not too familiar with Kanner; was he the guy who used to slap kids to make them look him in the face?

Anyway, the pendulum has swung from denial and marginalization to curiosity and burgeoning acceptance. It is an adjustment that I have a hard time making as the approaches are so opposed.

I guess it comes down to the question of what autism is. Once a psychiatrist told me that because I was able to behave in a socially acceptable way, I did not have autism. (At a later session he revised this to a diagnosis of "residual autism" as I was having a bad day.) But his diagnosis was based on a misunderstanding of autism and what it fundamentally is. Social deficits are only one part of it, processing stimuli, speech, clarity of thought are all things that are effected by autism

Because a lot of people aren't very familiar with autism or what it looks like. My family/teachers did notice differences with me but they never were able to pin it on autism.

I guess when I read someone saying they just found out well into adulthood and from what they say about themselves, it sounds like they were living a regular lifestyle the whole time and just felt like they were different. Those I know irl are pretty messed up. But it's a significant special needs school.

Because they look like normal people? How can you tell between autism and a kid just being a brat? How can you tell between a shy child and an autistic child? How can you tell between a normal child who needs a nap and an autistic child? That's how normal they look. How can you tell if someone is rude or autistic? How can you tell between an as*hole an an autistic person? How can you tell between a socially awkward person and an autistic person or tell between an anxious person and an autistic person? That's how normal they look. How can you tell between a difficult child and an autistic child? That's how normal they look. Even pediatricians will tell parents their kid is fine but sometimes the parent knows their kid has something because they live with them while the doctor only sees them few times a year for 45 minutes and that isn't even enough to see their problem. What is even the point in asking if there are any concerns only to dismiss what the parent says and tell them it's normal? It can be hard to tell between a normal behavior and an impairment if you are not there to see it. Some parents swear they are coming off as having Munchhausen by Proxy. I sometimes wonder if my mom ever came off that way too when I was a child because I looked fine and lot of people didn't understand me. I look just like everyone else. My mom would try to tell teachers how to handle me and discipline me but instead only do it their way and it wouldn't work and then they would go accusing my mother was not properly parenting me. I think that came from me looking normal who just has a language delay so they thought "Oh Beth is just behind in language, she isn't anything special" and then only be surprised how different I am acting only to assume "Oh Beth isn't parented properly by her parents." Even a lack of diagnoses made things hard and the only diagnoses I had then was language and that wasn't enough so she knew I had something. But I somehow survived and still got IEP and special ed and speech therapy and I still went to a preschool for kids with developmental delays. But I did deal with abuse in school because I looked normal. I am sure many others here dealt with abuse from their teachers and staff and their peers because they looked normal. I was lucky to have had good teachers and my mother made sure of it. I am not saying that any normal looking child with a diagnoses doesn't get treated badly either. I have had other diagnoses and that still didn't stop my school from treating me badly and my mom had to always had to fight for my IEP and to get them to follow it. They probably thought I was normal and thought they didn't need to follow it. I have seen some comments online by teachers saying how half their kids have IEPs due to "ADHD" implying they were just normal kids and had nothing wrong with them but there was an exception to a story I recently read on Reddit. A teacher wrote on there how he didn't follow someone's IEP and they had "dyslexia" but he saw right through him and made him work and the problem was the kid just didn't make an effort until he was given tough love and he finally did it. He wasn't dyslexic. I think that man was just lucky he was correct about his student and proved the parents wrong. My mom once proved the parents wrong too about a student she had. He was labeled as being ret*d but my mom knew there was no way this kid had a low IQ because she could tell by how quickly he processed things and understood and the problem was he couldn't read so she taught him and they proved everyone wrong. By the end of the year he was reading at the 3rd grade level and the kid was in 6th grade. I believed he thanked my mother because if it weren't for her, he wouldn't have learned to read and she was the only one who saw through him than looking at the label. So teachers may have been wrong about me while these other two were right about one of their students.

Plus other people who have gone through their childhood without an autism diagnoses were either diagnosed with other disorders instead like brain damage, learning disability, labeled odd or weird by doctors, labeled ADHD or dyspraxia or global developmental delay or language delay or any problems as having sensory issues or having an emotional disorder. Plus their parents knew they had something that couldn't be explained by doctors.

I don't think anyone would guess autism either if they saw Temple Grandin and they didn't even know who she was. They might notice her odd tone of voice but think nothing of it or just think she doesn't have typical women interests and who says all women need to like fashion and make up, etc.? Many people don't go around placing armchair labels on someone just because they don't fit into a stereotype of "normal" or their gender or because they do something they find annoying, etc.

I'd have to disagree. It's obvious Temple Grandin is autistic. Especially if one looks at her in the past.

Otherwise, spot on as far as milder forms of autism are concerned.

Not 'regular'. Likely their (our) lifestyles have always been a lot more regular than yours, but certainly not regular by 'NT terms'.

That said, it's hard to know how much of that is in-built and how much is circumstance. If our 'issues' were identified earlier, would we have seemed more autistic as a result of knowing about them and being treated as autistic? Have we managed a level of 'normality' because we had no choice and never knew different? I certainly believe that there is a very real spectrum in all areas - some kids are non-verbal through their early years and others, like me, were early talkers. That's something that can't be influenced when you're a toddler/preschooler. But I think I possibly would have been better served by a very different school environment - and would I have seemed more autistic if I'd had that and not been carried along by the 'NT river'? Who knows?

Are you sure that's what you read, though? I've more often read that this same person may have struggled through maybe some facsimile of "living a regular lifestyle"......

....while also wondering why they melted down, shut down, didn't have friendships or relationships either at all or of a type that didn't fail badly and painfully; had sensory issues they didn't even know that was the term for it......

I don't seem to remember reading that any of these late-diagnosed people felt just fine about life and themselves, even IF "on paper" they had done "regular" things.

I've done some "regular life" things yet with ENORMOUS STRUGGLE. Pain, effort, doing it spectacularly BADLY too. And often YEARS LATER than my peers.

What I've read of my fellow late-diagnosed people it seems they more seem to have stumbled around their lives constantly wondering why they felt like such a freak or a fck-up.

As for me, I have strong reason to suspect my now-dead parents did very much know SOMETHING was wrong. I had too troubled a childhood to be able to say "Nobody knew anything was wrong."
Yes they f*****g did know. But my parents were all about "keep it in the family."

I do know for a fact that mother often talked about having deliberately told people trying to give professional help to back the hell off. She PUSHED AWAY help for me. It was the 1960s. there was STIGMA.

If I sat you down and actually got to tell you for several hours my actual life story and how I behaved at this age and this age and this age, and how I'm impaired by this thing and this thing and that thing to this day ----

I was about to say you'd get it.

But I get the feeling NOTHING would convince you. NOTHING.

You have no idea.

I always get the feeling from you, Ezra, that nothingnothing nothing nothing ever convinces you. #


because.....you HAVE asked this question over and over and over again.

You're an extremely intelligent boy. You are canny and you have slicing sarcasm. You know very well that this late diagnosed high functioning stuff has in fact been explained to you many times before.

She seemed pretty normal to me when I saw her so I figured no one would guess she has it if they don't know who she is But the reason why I knew was because I have heard about her and read about her and knew her past. I am talking about if someone saw her in public while she is out like at an airport or in a store and they talked to her but they had never even met her nor ever heard of her so how would they know about her past?

I think for a lot it's certainly more than simply feeling different, also typically that feeling doesn't come from nowhere.

Yep. Temple certainly learned how to compensate well. Can't disagree with that.

I am not familiar with the case you are citing. That they received a diagnosis suggests that they were struggling enough to warrant it.
Obviously autism is a spectrum, we all know that much. In your school, I suspect you are exposed to these differing levels of functioning.

What exactly is a regular lifestyle? Going to a regular school for normal kids? Having a normal family? Playing with other kids who are "normal"? Playing with toys? Talking to other people? Feeding yourself? Having normal self care and living skills? You can still struggle while still having all these things most people have. Temple Grandin seemed to have a regular lifestyle too because she wrote how she had to sit at the table with her family and have table manners, she still got punished for her "tantrums" and was expected to learn to control them unless they were sensory based. She went to a private school for "normal" kids but the classes were 10 to 12 kids. She had friends, she watched TV shows that taught social skills, she even trashed a teacher's yard with one of her school friends and lied to the teacher about it by blaming it on two of her bullies and they got the blame, she even made a welcome home thing for her new brother when she was about six when her mother brought him home for the first time, this all sounds regular to me despite her autism. Plus she wrote she tested her limits to figure out the rules, sounds like a normal kid to me. Kids do test their limits. It was her mother that made her have a regular lifestyle. She even answered the phone when she was 12 and her school principal telling her to not bother coming back because she threw a book at another kid in the hallway because the kid gave her a hard time about something. I felt she was provoked.

Denial on the part of my parents has created many difficulties in my life. I confronted them only recently about their treatment of me, and how their selfish denial has been damaging to me (e.g. they could not accept that I might have ASD, so they put all my ASD traits down to flaws in my character, and berated me for these 'flaws' every day). I don't think my teachers have worried about me, because my results are very high, and, although I don't interact much in the classroom, they think I'm just shy, as opposed to confused about how to interact. Additionally, by my age, most teachers no longer would intervene to inform my parents of suspected ASD, because they understand that it would already have been identified if I have it.