Can one grow out of Asperger's / autism?

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That's exactly what my cousin is like, and nothing to do with his upbringing or anything (his sister was OK as a child). When he was a child, he easily met the diagnostic criteria, but now he wouldn't be able to get any diagnosis if they tried. He's turned into an NT somehow.

Yes I know! It's weird. Well not really studies in developmental psychology have shown a lot of changes in the brain as children are developing. That is why they do not use the term "personality" (instead replaced by the term "temperament") until they reach adulthood and personality disorders generally cannot be diagnosed in children.

Also I forgot to mention that autism is a axis 1 diagnosis which means that with appropriate intervention, it can be managed.

The point about diagnostic criteria is important to understand too. The longer one waits to be diagnosed, the higher the likelihood that one will have learned enough coping skills so as to longer warrant a diagnosis. For example, my DX is PDD-NOS, but I do actually have Asperger Syndrome. History from interviews with my father prove that every symptom was there as a child, but some no longer are apparent enough to include in a DX.

Doctors aren't "supposed" to include historical symptoms in their DX's, so if you aren't displaying enough of them anymore, they aren't "supposed" to include them, therefore you may learn to adapt so well you could conceivably get no DX of any kind of Autism, even if in reality, you have been Autistic all of your life.

Personally, I think disallowing patient's symptomatic history does us a huge disservice.

As far as I am concerned, I am, and have been all of my life, an Aspie.

The Psychologist who DX'd me agrees, but she as to follow the stupid rules.

I reckon that I am one of only a few people whose boarderline autism has improved dramatically over the years. I wasn't diagonosed until I was 12, but my parents always knew I was autistic from a very young age. They fought hard to get the help and support that I needed because I have other stuff wrong with me. I believe that the key to outgrowing autism is to just be yourself, react to real-life situations around you and to learn from the experience. Disipline works really well too but it depends if you learn from it. Realising that the way you act around people helps as well.

It is the really obvious answers but these worked for me.

From what I have been told, early intervention can make a world of difference. New neural pathways can be formed helping the child to develop 'NT skills' and I suppose can be seen as outgrowing it.

It definitely gets better, as you learn new ways to figure out the NT world. More importantly, with time, you also get to know yourself better, and figure out all those ways that you really don't want to fit in.

you can grow out of it if you address the compensating behaviors which caused it:

romanian orphans grew up with autism but are now leaving the spectrum after they were adopted by UK families (and getting the right social interaction):

http://childmyths.blogspot.com/2010/12/ ... ecent.html

blind people often grow up with autism, but leave the spectrum as they get older.

it gets called quasi-autism or other names to support the wrong theories of the establishment that autism is not solveable.

but its difficult and a lot of work.

Hi everyone

I am new here, and neurotypical. My father has Asperger, he never was diagnosed, as when he was a kid it was quite an unknown condition. But he is 100% aspie, with all the symptoms (no eye-contact, there are some fixed topics he always talking about, no clue how to join to a conversation, etc).

We always knew something is odd with him, also suspect it is something to do with autism, and recently I googled it on the net, what is that, when somebody has average or above IQ, and at the same time autistic symptoms, yes, it is Asperger, and it is him!

So my story is coming here: I really believe that when I was small I was much more in the autistic spectrum than now..just some example: I was about 10 years old, when I first made friendship with anyone from my age group. Before this, I was bullied, or I bullied others, that was 2 too kind of relationship, what I known.
I also think I just behaved and looked odd. I really have that faint and very uncomfortable memories, that some kids just started to picking on me, "at first sight" It was nothing to do with my general appearance, as I rather was pretty, but I think the facial expressions, etc just made me a weirdo..

I never had that maniac interest of anything, like my dad, but socially I was really uncapable. I remember at age 10-11 I tried to figure out and determine, how other people behave -by rules...

On a logical basis, that if I do this, they will do this, etc.

The things started to improve when I became teenager. (Maybe female hormons started to transform my brain)??
It was not a one day to other process, actually if I think it over, all my teenager years were about this. I ws dating, and used boyfriends like guineai pigs: I literally did experiments on them, what they will react if I do different things. sometimes I did really very very weird things.. I am afraid some of them still have not recovered fully.

So I think around at age 20 I was completelly over it. I think I am probably better in chatting and situational problem solving than the average neurotypical guys. I also dont need to do special effort to cope with social situation. I am still not a typical "social butterfly" havent got lot of friends, just couple of, but I think nothing weird about that.
But surelly it was not only "learning" but also some physical change in my brain, maybe really due to some female hormons, which are not really compatible with autism? And by the way, I also made a test recently, and I was actuallly "less autistic" than the average neurotypical.

I dont think that i have ever been so much in the spectrum, like my dad, but something was surelly off, and now it is surelly not off any more.

I have to concur with the other posters. Over time, we hopefully learn to fit in better. My guess is that our degree of success in appearing normal is correlated with the severity of our AS.

One issue I didn't see that was addressed is your inability to understand your emotional state. What you describe sounds like alexithymia.

I thought small kids never really can analyise their own feelings, so all of them can be considered to have alexithymia..Though maybe it can be right, my problems in my childhood was not so much about AS, but rather a reaction of to the social consequences of my father condition.
As in the 70-s in that little east european city people were not exactly tolerant

To the OP's first question: Hyperlexia sure looks a lot like AS at younger ages, but people usually grow out of it by college age. This can lead to the impression that some people grow out of Aspergers, as opposed to the more typical "learns how to integrate better in society" kind of grow out of it.

You might. I mean I showed alot of signs when I was a kid. Including over sensitive feet among other things. I mean coping clearly helps in social situations but why am I not as sensitive to stimuli anymore? Have I learned to filter that or something?

A lot of kids who 'flew under the radar' as undiagnosed mild Asperger's turn up with depression, anxiety and bipolar disorder as adults. Then they figure out it's been autism all along.

A lot of kids who were proclaimed 'cured' through ABA also come back as bipolar, schizophrenic and the like as adults, or burn out with fibromyalgia and other complaints, and then eventually they figure out it's been the autism coming back with a vengeance.

For example I've learned to 'pass' as NT from time to time, when it's necessary (like a job interview) but my abilities for passing and whatnot have gone down from when I was younger, because of the stress of doing so and lowered energy levels. Right now I can't pass successfully and people can tell that something's up. Then I've got to rest and go nonverbal to recover.

I don't think you grow out of it. I think you learn from people along the way and you adapt. Or you have people like my mother who was very patient with when I was younger and pushed me along. That being said, one thing I did use to do when I was young was rock myself to sleep and that I did grow out of because I don't do it any more.