"Oh, you have Aspergers? -I just thought you were lazy.

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So, have anyone else heard this line from friends / family after telling them about Asperger's, or is it just me?

"-Oh, you have Aspergers? -I just thought you were lazy all these years."

It's funny--most people never call me lazy. Just my mom. She called many of my autistic traits "laziness" when I was growing up.

My teachers--in high school and in college--tend to see me as an intelligent, scatterbrained, eccentric individual. None of them see me as "lazy" either. I've even been accused of working too hard.

The funny thing is, despite that nobody but my mom ever calls me lazy, I still believe that I am secretly a total bum--that I don't work hard enough, that I don't care enough. Statistically, considering the drawbacks associated with having autism, I am probably only average as far as laziness goes. It's not my biggest problem, not what keeps me from accomplishing things. That title goes to the way I focus on one thing to the exclusion of all else--so that when I'm doing one important thing, all the other important things get dropped.

My mom, an RN, told me she was taught that laziness itself is always a symptom and not a sole problem in itself. When you get to the point where you simply don't want to leave the house or do this or that there is always a reason. I'm not talking about someone who forgets to study every once and awhile, but hell you could really say the same thing: the bigger problem is that the person isn't truly motivated by their school work. If laziness is ruining your life then its a symptom being caused by a bigger ,underlying problem.


I suppose this all sounds like new age mumbo jumbo, I got called lazy plenty of times as a kid but as my condition worsened into adulthood and became aggravated after my stint in the US military my parents opened up to me about a ton of stuff they had never told me eg; being diagnosed when I was small but then immediately getting another more conservative doctor just so I wouldn't have an autism label. Hell, days before my doctors appointment I had frequent panic attacks, would go and confess to mom "OH NO I'M JUST LAZY, NOTHING IS WRONG WITH ME!! !" even after all the trouble, pains, and true issues we'd had for a long time. I blame the internet actually for this because for a long time I refused to try going to a doctor or getting any real help, thinking "oh no I'm just a lazy sack of s**t". Chrischan was all the rage and HFA was put in a very, very bad light. Hell, I don't like Chris at all and wonder if he even has HFA and not something else but he does have severe problems and not just laziness, like so many of his stalkers claim. It really bothers me when people say he needs to bootstrap himself up, he has tried s**t before that just did not work for him and failed miserably, like me.

This is very controversial speak but I really don't think laziness is something in itself by a by product of what IS your problem or issue that needs attention/soul searching/medical help.

My mother reckoned that I was "diagnosed" by a doctor as lazy at the age of nine months. Unlike the typical 9-month-old baby, I wasn't sitting up, and my mother took me to the doctor, who checked me out and said that there was nothing physically wrong with me, I was just lazy. I wonder now whether that was the first sign of my AS. I really don't think that 9 month old babies can be lazy in any moral sense of the word.

My father reckoned I was a bit of a dreamer as an older child. Many weekends he would get us to help him with the lawn mowing and gardening. As a 9 year old, I was supposed to pick up handfuls of leaves and put them in a bucket. My father reckoned that my older brothers would just do that, and at a reasonable speed, while I was more likely (according to him) to pick up one leaf at a time and look at it, and then put it in the bucket - so I was much slower (I don't know how much he exaggerated my behaviour). I have always been a little slow at those kinds of "speed" tasks (like serving customers - I tend to take too long).

I do think I have a number of executive function problems which an outsider might call laziness if they didn't understand what executive function problems are: significant difficulties with planning, starting, interrupting, and switching between complex tasks, despite a high level of intelligence. That seriously undermined my academic progress at university, and I achieved significantly below my "expected" level (based on my high school results). Getting a DX (AS) and understanding better the executive function problems often found in AS has helped me in recent years to come to terms with my university experiences.

hehe.. touchy question that is... NO IAM NOT LAZY!! !!
why so touchy.. why..
supervisers say this and I go faster
faster faster and there goes a fuse inside me
they dont see dat and still want faster faster
i walk and work but sumhow it isnt me... more like zombie

bout diagnoses LAZY as baby, that is crazy... those drs need a checkup
there not thinking for sure

My Dad called me lazy a couple of times before my diagnosis because I only worked four days a week. It confused me because when I worked full time I deteriorated mentally and physically, to the point where I was depressed and sick. Even working part time, I felt like I was trying so hard and still only just coping with the basics of life. I wondered, "How much harder do you expect me to work?"

Dad has been a lot better since the diagnosis. I think he can see now that I have been trying and that I've actually done pretty well for myself, all things considered.

I've been called lazy and have been told I don't have Aspergers. What I actually had was depression.

I think what people see as lazy in me, is my reduced ability to start things, and also my lack of motivation to do things outside of my personal interests.

I think I'm lazy. I never realised it was an AS trait, though - great, now I have an excuse. But seriously, is there an objective way to tell between "executive dysfunction" or whatever the "AS laziness" is properly called and just "plain old laziness"? I still think I have the latter, to be honest.

I've been called lazy a lot. It's just another negative label foisted upon me by certain others.