How many of you here on WrongPlanet are bloomers?

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I would say I am medium functioning...maybe medium-high functioning.

*shrug* Is there some sort of test I can take online for an answer?

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Feel free to talk to me, if you wish.

Every day is a gift- cherish it!

"A true, true friend helps a friend in need."

Argh, yes! What is it with parents in denial trying to insist their autistic children are "just gifted" and don't really need any help? Giftedness is nice, but it doesn't cancel out autism, and it doesn't make it any easier on you when you have no idea why you're supposed to be "so smart" and you're "being rebellious" because you can't do what kids half your age do instinctively.

I'm not in the "bloomer" category; I have always been somewhere in the moderate range and probably always will be. But the fact remains: I was obviously autistic as a toddler, and nothing was done about it. It might have been more obvious if I had been non-verbal rather than simply having a library of phrases to fit into the patterns of speech--but I'm pretty sure my mom would have been in just as much denial as she was, and just as insistent that I was just being a bratty, strong-willed, badly-disciplined child.

I grew up in a BAP/ASD family with almost no NT influence. My father is not at all NT, my mother is only a little NT, my grandmother is even less NT than my father, and my grandfather is the most not NT of all. It is a totally different culture, where looking, pointing, speaking, listening, communicating, and socializing are unimportant. The bestest possible child you could have was the one who kept her mouth shut and played alone. That child was me, the inheritor of the genes from both sets of chromosomes.

I think that not getting diagnosed as a young child was a wonderful thing to happen to me. If I had been diagnosed, then teachers at school would have seen the label, matched it up to my behaviors, disregarded my abilities, and not adapted to me as they did. Instead of being autistic child with splinter skills, I was gifted child with communication problems. The two are usuallly treated verry merry berry differently.

One part of my education plan was that I learned eberrything through my eyes instead of my ears. The class listened to the teacher, and I read books and did worksheets on my own. This bypassed my problems with speech processing. I learned in the most effective way for me. On my own, I was also able to hyper focus and tune out the sensory stuff. The teachers didn't know about the autism, but this plan was just right for me. I enjoyed my isolation, autistic aloneness prrrfrrrt for me.

Of course, this plan is also super easy for teachers. Just give child some stuff to wor on, see if the work on it, and if they do, leave them alone.

Academically, yes. Socially, to an extent. In other areas, yes. Big changes in adolescence almost overnight. More like high medium to very high, rather than low to high.

Come to think of it, I did develop as a "bloomer" in one area--mathematics.

In third grade, I was doing first-grade work.

In fifth grade, I was caught up and doing fifth-grade work at an average level of accuracy, but a slow rate because I had not yet memorized any but the simplest math tables.

In high school, I was doing high-school level work and getting good grades, and finally memorized the multiplication table.

And now in college I am doing high-level math which most people never get to, such as differential equations and statistical analysis of research data.

My theory is that I lagged at first because I cannot memorize a concept unless I understand the idea behind it. So while my classmates just memorized things, I tried to understand them, but was not developmentally ready to do so. Only once I was ready to understand "XY=Z" could I memorize "8*6=48".

I'd be willing to bet that the "bloomer" pattern is not "first slow then catching up", but simply atypical development which can be interpreted as steady progress on its own schedule.