age at diagnosis

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Diagnosed yesterday at 48 years old. Diagnosis was "on the spectrum, but too high functioning to be Aspergers". My shrink may just be one of those people who've only been around Aspies who have not learned some semblance of normal conversation. She's cool with me though, because as the knowledge base increases for the NT type professionals I believe she'll have the capacity to learn more. She was quite professional and fairly easy to talk to. I still had to decompress afterward since this was the first time I talked about my weird behaviors with anyone. Also, almost as soon as I got off the Ferry and stepped into SF there was a whole bunch of Free Tibet hippies on one side of a protest and people waving Communist China flags on the other. It was kind of fun encouraging the Free Tibet side to give s**t to the red side but on the whole it was loud and annoying. Since I self diagnosed almost 14 months ago, I have already been going through the pissed at the world phase, now I'm going to try and figure out how to have a less hectic life.

I was 15 when I got an official diagnosis of AS. In the year 2006.
At first I didn't want to believe it and tried to think up as many reasons as possible for why it wasn't correct. Then after a while I just came to accept it as who i've always been and realised that just because I had a "label", it didn't mean that I was any more or less important. [my initial fear is that i'd be treated badly as if I was a "circus freak" in the 1600's]

I think I would have been diagnosed at 4 or 5 if AS or HFA had been diagnostic options back then. My parents got me evaluated because they thought I might be autistic. One of the professionals did too, but the consensus was that I was not autistic because I was not language-delayed and I had a good vocabulary. So they diagnosed me with ADD - Predominantly Inattentive, meaning that I was in my own world most of the time, but I was capable of normal communication.

I started wondering if I was autistic as soon as I learned about it, but it took over a decade for me to get up the nerve to ask a doctor about it. Then a therapist I was seeing pointed out some AS behaviors I had not been aware of, and I learned more online, and then I went in for a diagnosis. That was last year. The doctor who diagnosed me said that it's obvious that I have AS but have learned to work around it to some extent (forced, mechanical eye contact, for example).

1 year ago. When I was 16

Well for me I didn't feel any better because I wanted to be normal back then. I struggled with trying fit in, keep my friends, trying to be like everyone else. In my elementary school, if you were different, then you were a mutant so they teased and make fun of you, that's why I wanted to be normal so bad. But the kids whom looked different than the other kids like if they were in wheelchairs, had Down syndrome, etc. they didn't get picked on. Took me until I was 14 to accept my difference.

Unofficial DX at 15 (physician, LD specialist), official at 23. I barely knew what AS was at 15 and had dropped out of high school, so my family felt no reason to go any further and officially "confirm." When I earned my GED and started college, I began experiencing many problems again, and several of my professors asked me if I was learning disabled. (My college roommates rotated between two theories: that I had ADHD and/or a brain tumor.) When I began graduate school, I decided to finish what I'd started eight years prior, mostly because I didn't want to explain to professors and colleagues that I was unofficially autistic and without documentation.

22

When I was 16 which would have been about 2 years ago.

I never felt bad about it since the psychotherapist who diagnosed me understood that there were significant benefits to Asperger's Syndrome. So I was never really shocked about it.

I was officially diagnosed with AS at the ripe age of 18, last summer. I had heard about it for a year before that, and due to the outstanding efficiency of the NHS, it took a whole 12 months to get the slip of paper.

Before that, I had never been diagnosed with anything. I had first been labelled as a 'problem kid,' then later as 'the tall guy who never says much.' The fact that I had (and still have) a neurological condition did not enter my mind until I first started reading up about AS two years ago.

49, and self-diagnosed at that. The medical plan I'm on gives 28 lifetime visits to an analyst, so I'm saving them for when I really go nuts...

I was 8 and it was in early 1998 I was diagnosed. To do so, Hasbro Children's Hospital payed a cab company to bring my mom and myself up to Providence. So my SSI wouldn't be canceled because i'm 18, the state decided I had to go through the hassle of being re-diagnosed. And the person who did so confirmed that I still have it. She also thought it was odd (of course the state referred to AS in the letter as "your temporary disability" and in another as "terminal illness". Bureaucracy.)

thats awful I hope your mum didn't spank you more that is so damaging especially as you couldn't help your "behaviour"

I haven't been offically diagonisted yet but I was "unoffically" at 17. I am suppoust to be very soon when I get an oppiontment done.

When I was 2/3ish. Parents noticed something "odd" about me, and got me diagnosed pretty quickly.

I was diagnosed three days after my 20th birthday, last year. I will be 21 this month, so it's almost a year.

I was thought of as fairly odd by lots of people as I grew up, and my mother had lots of concerns about me (I hardly spoke, would not tell her if I was in pain or converse at all, really, I did not seek out hugs or comfort, I would play by myself and I would stay in and read when my cousins played outside, and even the other parents at school noticed that I was a loner and 'different'), but no one ever thought to actually get it looked into. My family are fairly old fashioned, having little to no experience of psychiatrists and the like, and of the opinion that any diagnosis would be 'bad' and that anyone classed as 'gifted' could not possibly have anything 'wrong' with them (and initially AS would be something 'wrong' - my mum still refuses to refer to autism when describing AS to other people).

I think I was 32, but I get mixed up about it (I think it was 1997, but I'm sure I've said 1996 elsewhere, or have I already posted here - I'm getting senile). I self-diagnosed in Grade 8, in the late 1970s, but smart girls didn't get diagnoses back then, so I had to wait for science to catch up.