How can a autistic person go undiagnosed till adulthood?

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You are physically healthy.
You get good grades in school.
You seem to do fine in some extracurricular activities and/or sports.
You can hold down a job.
You graduate college.
You can live on your own without assistance.

If you live this life, there is really no concern or obligation to get you checked out. If you meet the basic criteria, no one will give two craps about the "extra" stuff".

During the time I grew up (which wasn't all that long ago), a kid who didn't make or retain friends much was just considered weird or nerdy or a loner. There was generally no clinical or emotional concern for that individual.

In the end, if you're undiagnosed, it's probably because you didn't realize anything was wrong and no one ever cared or thought to get you checked out. And if you're an adult and got looked at, what of it?? So it's the same old story: no one cares...

Matt, you were missed because when you were a kid, if autism was even a diagnosis, it applied only to the most severely affected. There was no such thing as HFA back then, and Hans Asperger's work was still largely unknown. (For that matter, anybody who did know about it was probably still being misled by Bettelheim and his followers.)

I am reminded of an anecdote my mother related to me a few years ago; my younger sister was at the time undergoing such therapy as there was for her autism, and her psychologist used to have chats with me. (I didn't understand the purpose of the chats at the time, but she and my father were the only two people who even pretended to follow me through them, so...) When I was in third grade, the school wanted to hold me back, convinced that I was "slow". The psychologist assured her that "slow" children don't hold coherent conversations about the tensile strength of water's surface tension (this would have been shortly after I read the James Blish short story "Surface Tension").

(I was, of course, missed because AS wasn't a diagnosis until I was in my thirties.)

Slip through the net with big holes.

because the people who are supposed to help you do not ,until you have to prove you're a struggling
deficit unto yourself no one is gonna give a damm. why should people care? are they friendly towards
god driven people who want to make a difference to their lives? perhaps not. but the stratedgy is still there.
in this country its all a big hassle to 'count people in' to a normal society. well government and society dictates and does
not allow for people to have a right to their namesake given they are in a minority does not make a blind bit of difference
to the way of thinking here. there are too many rumours floating around in the jar as it is and the reaction
is more like lets blame it on the weather, rather than signalling any clue whatsoever in appearance to the main shifts in modern
times. i.e technology

I think for me, It was mostly being misdiagnosed. Most of the problems I had in School, I blamed on being a Nerd/Geek and as such, I blamed that for the socializing problems I had.. When I finally quit school. I still was having social problems, but then again. I was blaming it on the fact that I never really learned how to socialize in School. My mom passed away when I was 26 and I sold her house and ended up with some money to play with. So for about a year. I went on a geek fest. I traveled the world and went to just about every geek/nerd/hacker convention out there. All in hope of finding my place in this world. Sadly though. I was having the same social problems as I was having everywhere else. By the time it was over. I was so honorably depress that I wanted to commit suicide a couple of times. Not only was I out $14K for the travel expenses. But knowing that the very utopian world that I spent my entire life seeking out was not anything close to how I envisioned it to be. My biggest mistake in life was believing that I could learn how to socialize. It would be 15 years later before a psychiatrist finally came up to me and said "No kid. You have Asperger. You will never be as good at socializing like a normal person.". It Sucks knowing that there is no cure for it but a lease I now know that the horse is dead so I can finally stop beating it.

My mom was poor and probably had some issues herself so couldn't afford to take me to the doctor for something as inconcrete as mental health. And it was a long time ago, when ADD was the "in" diagnosis for kids with normal intelligence and issues in school. As for the sensory problems, she just thought I was being overly dramatic and the social issues, I was just shy.

My father, a colonel in the Air Force, was convinced that I lacked "discipline," and so he was on my case 24/7. My "personality" was a huge disappointment to him. There was no autism back in those days. And it makes you wonder how autistic people were treated historically?

In my family I wasn't considered that weird. My dad doesn't look people in the eye, doesn't hardly talk, always does things the same, and doesn't socialize with anyone outside of the family. About half of my siblings had language delays, a few of them jump and flap their hands, all have social problems, ect. But then again we were homeschooled, so anything odd about us was just attributed to that, my complete lack of eye contact was put down as low self-esteem, and when I had trouble talking it was because I like making other people angry and I was yelled at for it. When I tried to tell people I thought something was wrong, they would tell me that no one liked change, some people just don't like loud noises, all teenagers feel different, and other stuff like that. Finally the subject of OCD was touched upon as an explanation for my reliance on routines and other things, but it was never a formal diagnosis. Finally at college things started getting really bad. I would get so frustrated because I knew I was smart and I understood the material in class and everything, but I didn't understand the assignments, many of which were given to us as a long series of verbal instructions we were supposed to just write down and remember, I couldn't stay organized, I couldn't keep on top of my deadlines, and then when I had one teacher who gave us a detailed syllabus at the beginning of the semester with all of the assignments and their due dates already listed then proceeded to change the syllabus every single week, if not every class period, I fell apart and nearly failed that entire semester. I was finally diagnosed with PDD-NOS and it was such a relief.

Now my mom is realizing that many of my siblings are on the spectrum, but she hates labels and so they are not going to get diagnosed. She is actually refusing to tell one of my brothers, the most severely effected of us, because she doesn't think he could handle it.

It's very easy; people want to deliberately misread the signs as the signs of a contrary or 'willful' child vs. actually enlightening themselves to the fact that not everybody is Neuro-typical and that it is not 'abnormal'. Additionally, these same parents perpetuate the willful ignorance via believing that all psychology is b.s. even when contemporary neuroscience is discovering more and more as we speak. The other 'also' is the religiously brainwashed parents that embrace Ignorant anti-science philosophies.

My parents followed the anti-psychological bent re. my issues. I was a willful/'untruthful' child according to them and I had Many clashes with their authority via the fact of my native persona. Also, I was born in the 'Dark Ages' (1971) when HFA and it's relatives on the Spectrum were less researched and known about in general. The school I was attending (1st grade) actually wanted to put me on meds apparently (!).

The other problem is that the coping mechanisms are seen as signs of normalcy and if said seemingly 'able' person claims to have said condition of being, they are misread as being weak or whiners in some eyes or told, 'Tough s**t, this is how the (normal??) world is and YOU need to adjust to It; not It to You.' This doesn't help the person seek help via a potentially confirming diagnosis of their alternate D.O.S. and further extends the time as an adult one remains undiagnosed (I was diagnosed only a year ago at the age of 43!).

I didn't realize it until I had my son, my wife was concerned and talked to me and I said its no big deal he is just taking after me, which she was curious about. Then I said I was a late talker and.......yea huh well I'll be that does sound very familiar.

Then I realized I probably was diagnosed as a child, but my parents covered it up. They said all those child psychologists said nothing was wrong with you. I started talking at age 6 and they put me in public school and I never gave much thought to it.

I mean I told my wife I was weird up front, but she was like you did not talk until age 6?!

I guess I didn't spend much time dwelling on the past.