Is it better to know about AS since childhood or not?

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I thought it would be better if I knew about AS as a child. That if it were known, my parents or teachers would prevent bullying at school. I might find my friends in some support group, if not in school. I wouldn't worry about what's wrong with me. I didn't explain it like my stupidity or ugly appearance. I would know I'm not the only one...

I recently met a young Aspie boy. He said "I never will be able to live independently.", "I can never...". I don't know him and I know he can have more severe AS than me. But it comes to me that he gives up without trying, like an excuse. Something else would be if he was older and tried it. How could he know if he didn't try it? Perhaps he could learn something.

After that meeting, I think maybe it's good that I didn't know it and especially that my mom didn't know it. No special treatment, I had to somehow cope. It wasn't easy, I didn't have friends, I had extended my studies, dozens of interviews before I found a job... Once my dad told me, if I want something, I must try all options and if I fail so I will at least know I did everything for it, I couldn't do more. If his mother is too protective and doesn't try to teach him to be more independent, I think it is maybe worse than don't know about AS since childhood.

I am quite content with not finding out about my aspie-ness until about a year ago, for exactly the reasons you have cited. I have struggled all my life to find out ways to cope with what I found difficult, but as a result, I have good coping skills.

In my work, I see a lot of autists crippled by their parents micromanaging their lives.

I feel fortunate in knowing about it since childhood—that there was “something wrong with me”

The problem lies when people treat the disabled like they are disabled, and don’t allow them to strive to reach their potential. Parents, for various reasons, seek to “protect” their disabled child, and don’t allow them to make their own mistakes, like their “normal” counterparts.

In my case, it tends to favor both positive and negative aspects, as I learned what had been giving me a great deal of trouble and the aspects of my aspergers which if applied properly could be utilized in a manner whereby, I would have a semi-contented life including long term occupation etc. On the negative side though, my diagnosis came later in life whereby, I was already past the age where I could have literally benefitted from resources found in many educational institutions found these days, so I've had to struggle to make up for the lack of such, as well finding myself in a myriad of low-paying serf/indentured servitude jobs that have absolutely no place for autistic adults in the work place whatsoever!

I will continue to do what I can to reach a contented median regardless of how eternally damned long it takes me, even if that means another 30yrs.

I didn't find out about my Autism until I was a teenager. I went to the bigger school and suddenly everything became so much harder. I avoided people and socialising as best I could and I tried to stick to a routine which wasn't easy. I'd always been like that but it wasn't so obvious to everyone until I got to secondary school, I think before everyone just assumed I was a little weird.

Being diagnosed as Autistic as a teenager was hard, I was growing up, my body was changing and I was seeing the world and people differently. I sometimes think being diagnosed as a child might have been better, but then as you pointed out I probably wouldn't be as independent as I am now, so in a way I was better of. My eldest sister is really protective of me, she still thinks of me as a child rather than a 21 year old which can be a little annoying sometimes

My parents helped me as much as they could after the diagnosis, they gave me love and support and that's all I ever really wanted and needed. I didn't have many friends at school but those I knew were very supportive

My Autism hasn't really improved since my diagnosis, if anything it's worse now. I washed my hands so much that it's caused my skin to actually redden and peel off (ouch) and I worry on a daily basis. I worry about people staring at me because of how I look. I'm told I'm pretty and I know my breasts are a good size so that's always bothering me too. I have depression which doesn't help, and I am a very lonely person. Family life is good but my parents health isn't the best, so that can cause me a lot of distress and worry from time to time. But being here on WP has helped me a lot already, so hopefully I'm getting back in control of my life again now. I'm not on any meds yet, but I know my doctor wants me to go on some... But for now I am resisting that.

I often wonder whether or not me being diagnosed earlier would have made much of a difference, to be honest I doubt it. I think I would have always ended up like this.

But I have you guys here, my health which is fairly good, my family and a pretty good happy life and that's all I really want

Bullying is a hard thing to prevent. If you parents are wealthy you can go to private schools where they have the staff to prevent the bullying of autistics, but most parents can't do that.

https://www.commonsensemedia.org/lists/ ... sabilities
Sometimes it helps to watch movies with characters who have similar issues. I thought Wonder was a good movie.

I'm unsure about knowing in childhood; I can certainly see the potential for ending up wrapped in a blanket and helicoptered over, and having to get by without assistance at school certainly helped me to develop a thick skin and determination to find my own solutions to my own problems.

On the other hand, before diagnosis, I had thirty years of chronic mental illness, which I can now see were caused largely by the difficulties of living with autism. Treatments for the mental illness were often inappropriate, or even damaging, because my autistic traits weren't taken seriously or were explained away by other diagnoses (mostly depression and GAD; even bi-polar or a personality disorder were suggested, though quite obviously wrong.) I think I would have preferred to have know by my late teens, when the mental strain really started to become apparent.

My biggest concern with early diagnosis is that supports may not be as effective as claimed, or even create the conditions that can lead to other problems. Most interventions seem to be about reinforcing the idea that neuro-typical behaviour should be our primary aim, with very little recognition that masking can involve an exhausting amount of effort and denial of one's own instinctive behaviour, possibly leading to frequent burn-outs, low self-esteem, a people-pleaser mentality, and mental health problems. I'm certainly not against social skills training, speech therapy, etc. as they can have huge benefits. However, these skills should be presented as tools to be used at the autistic person's discretion, rather than as the only option, which can impair a person's sense of autonomy and agency. This is little different to the self-learned masking that I forced myself to do because I didn't know there was any other option; as I have said before, many of my problems haven't been due to being autistic, they were caused by all the pretending not to be!

Of course, you've got to know in order to have any options at all, including parents coming to places like this for support based on autistic people's real experiences; so overall, I think it's probably better to know sooner rather than later.

My parents knew I "had something." And I knew I "had something."

My parents treated me like any "normal" kid. They would be concerned when I went out on my own, say, on the subway....but they allowed me to do so.

I wish there were a way for kids to "free range" again. I believe this would help the kids of today.

Finding out that I had Asperger's as a child was nowhere as painful as finding out that I had Bipolar Disorder as an adult.

I was a child in the 1960s. This was a time when anyone with any handicap other than an obviously physical one was considered a "ret*d" and placed in "Special Ed" classes, which were essentially day-care rooms at each school.

Also, anyone with any handicap was marginalized, if not segregated from family, community, and society as a whole.

Finally, my parents were raised in an era when having a handicapped person in the house was a shameful thing -- families in my parents' time (and before) were expected to "send away" (if they could afford it) those members who were crippled, chronically ill, or mentally challenged. Those who could not afford it would keep those members out of sight in attics, basements, side-rooms, or outbuildings.

Had I been diagnosed as a child, I would have been treated even worse than I was -- people would have treated me like a "ret*d" in the ways that I've mentioned above. As it turned out, they thought I was just lazy and stupid, without realizing that I simply could not understand instructions the way they were presented (Who cares about John Napier's biography? Just teach me how to use his damned logarithms!). It took longer for me to learn things because I had to learn them my own way! But learn them, I did. Had I been in "Special Ed", I would never have been presented with algebra, geometry, trigonometry, or the calculus.

I was beaten up at school, and then physically punished at home for getting beaten up (Strange how the kids in "Special Ed" seemed to have some kind of immunity from this kind of treatment).

Yet I eventually put myself through university and earned my degrees, just to prove my detractors wrong!

Is it better to know about having an ASD as a child? Maybe in modern times. Maybe. But if I had been diagnosed with an ASD as a child, I would likely be either homeless or dead by now.

I was told that I'm autistic at the age of 15. I wish my mum would have told me when I was 12 so that I wouldn't have made a fool of myself in grades 7, 8 and 9. I would have acted more normal in a school setting instead of doing stupid dances. I would have kept my obsession with The Beatles to myself. There are a lot of things that I would have done differently. The one thing I wish I would have done was prove my dad wrong and took the college courses I wanted to get and if I would have striven to become a psychologist. I'm a Hippie-Mod artist for the time being because I'm temporarily unemployed. I think a career would be a better idea for someone on the spectrum than ordinary jobs that people can be laid off from at any time. I'd tell the autistic teens of today, "Don't be that Hippie-Mod artist. Choose your own college and university courses and pursue the careers of your dreams."

Fnord I completely understand because I grew up in a small rural town in South Georgia and to this day being a kid who has any kind of learning disorder or mental condition automatically gets you labeled as a "ret*d". I was bullied by classmates all the time who used to say I reminded them of Forest Gump and I had a couple of teachers who seemed to have it out for me just for having autism (but to be honest most of my teachers were very wonderful and supportive).

Of course being gay didn't help with the bullying either. Somehow the kids were able to tell that I was gay before I even knew I was and they were so cruel to me about it.

People tell me that the earlier the diagnosis the better. Maybe it has it's good points to some people, but it made me a rather bitter child. I didn't really feel that different to the other children before my diagnosis, I knew how anxious I got compared to the other kids but it still didn't make me feel different. Then when I was 8 years old I was given this diagnosis with a fancy name, and i became miserable about it, like hating myself and the diagnosis, and I wouldn't allow anyone to say the dreaded A-word.

I felt like it took away the innocence of my childhood (maybe 'innocence' isn't the right word?) All the other kids I knew didn't have a diagnosis to deal with, they were all ignorant to it, because they were kids. Then adults started blabbing out my diagnosis to the other kids. I remember once my NT cousin pointed to me once and said "you got Asperger's syndrome!", and she was only 3 years old, she obviously didn't know what it was. Typically all the kids didn't know what 'Asperger's syndrome' was, they just knew it was associated with me and as they became older they just looked upon me as the special needs kid, and it got me socially isolated. It also made me feel like a bug under a microscope, being so I was the only kid in my whole class with it, and sometimes I felt paranoid like I was being watched all the time. Having the label made me feel more different to the other kids than the disability itself. When I was older, between the ages of 12 to 14, I was really lonely at school. I literally had no friends. The other girls in my class were told about my diagnosis before, so you would have thought that would have made them more educated about it and that they'd be used to me by then, but it just made them go "ew, she has a label, I don't want to hang around with somebody with a label". It hurt. Then at age 15 I finally managed to find some friends who weren't in my class and didn't know I had the diagnosis, and things were much easier. I felt like the label wasn't following me around so much, and I even got included and hung out with them after school.

I also feel, as a female, having a diagnosis earlier in life makes me feel severer than what I am. I often read about girls on the spectrum not being diagnosed until later on in life, even those that are born in the late 80s+. I shall never know that feeling of living a childhood ignorant of it, then receiving a diagnosis in your 20s or 30s, and feeling relieved that it explains everything.