Diagnosed young or older?

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I know alot of people get diagnosed with aspergers when they are older but one thing i was thinking was odd and that many people believe why one wouldnt have aspergers. To explain better, my cousin is 14 years old and he has alot of traits of aspergers but no diagnoses. My mom and my aunt were talkin about some of his odd behavior and my mom said about aspergers because i have it and it looks like he may have it as well but my aunt does not agree and wont have him evaluated her reason being is because if he had aspergers she would have noticed it sooner when he was little but i dont think that is necessarily true because alot of parents have kids and think that the way they are is just their personality type and dont think there is anything wrong. I was diagnosed at 6 yrs old and altho i didnt have significant issues i did have some. But i notice alot of people including my aunt dont even consider themselves/or someone having autism just because they didnt show any red flags when they were little but i think this is not true. Dont you think aspergers can either present itself more significant earlier in life sometimes for people and for other people it can present itself more significant later in life and be more obvious and might not have been noticed when the person was young child? And alot of times when aspergers presents itself earlier in a persons life it may get abit better over time and for some people, when aspergers isnt obvious early in life then later in their life it is obvious that the person has aspergers like when they are older. And i think thats one of the many reasons why its a wide spectrum..cus everyone who has it is different from someone else who has it and may be more effective in different areas in their life. And I'm not certain if i agree with my aunt that just cus one gets diagnosed with it at a young age does not mean the individual is more affected by it then the individual who gets diagnosed later in life. Because when i think about my cousin he is quite abit younger than me by 6yrs but i would say that if he were to be diagnosed with aspergers now doesnt make him any less effected by it then myself who was diagnosed at 6. Sorry If im sounding confusing. My mom was trying to get my aunt to realize its a wide spectrum and just cus one is diagnosed later in life does not mean he isnt effected enough with aspergers in order to recieve the help and guidance he needs. It just kinda irritated me.

People see what they want to see and ignore what they don't. I am 30 years old and I self-discovered my AS a little over a year ago. After doing exhaustive research I have all but confirmed it for myself. The reason that lead to the discovery though was realizing my son had it and making the correlation between him and myself.

Now I face the process of diagnosis. Which I'm not looking forward too or even sure if I should bother. I had to go through the mental health system to get treated for PTSD, which I got from enduring combat Iraq, and that experience has left me paranoid about the powers of the state in a case like mine.

I was diagnosed when I was 21

i was diagnosed at 31.

At 12.

Sometimes AS doesn't get very obvious until they are older because they reach their limits and because social rules change as you get older. Maybe your cousin has it so mild, she didn't notice. Or if he is an only child, maybe she didn't know what is and isn't normal. Sometimes parents don't notice anything different about their kids because they don't know about childhood development and I assume not everyone reads about it or else they would know. Same as if they saw other kids and saw what they could do their kid isn't doing. But sometimes they make excuses for their kid like "Oh that kid is older is why" "Oh every kid develops different." Temple Grandin's mother was the same way and then she realized her daughter was truly different and got her help. It all started with seeing another one year old play and she was a little older than Temple and she made these same excuses about her kid not doing what the kid was doing. but at least she didn't stay in denial or that wouldn't have been good. It's bad for the child when a parent stays in denial. And like someone says in this thread, some people would rather ignore the problems and only see what they want to see. Part of denial.


I was diagnosed at age 12.

I was diagnosed at age 23. My parents brought up the topic aspergers to my family doctor when I was little, but they were already dealing with so much. I am also diagnosed with Tourette Syndrome, OCD,sensory processing disorder and anxiety. My dr. thought both my parents and I had enough to deal with, so they didn't go any further with Aspergers testing. My whole life I knew there were something else going on with me, other then the previous diagnosis. I could never quite figure it out though. It wasn't until I was doing some research on google, when I found the symptoms of Aspergers. I brought it up to my parents and they said said the idea was thrown around when I was little but it didn't go any further then just talking about it. So I researched psychologists near my hometown, and I found a very good one, and made an appointment. 3 months and $1500 later, I have an official diagnosis of Aspergers. I wish it wasn't so late in life, but now I have it and am embracing it.

I was diagnosed at age 23. My parents brought up the topic aspergers to my family doctor when I was little, but they were already dealing with so much. I am also diagnosed with Tourette Syndrome, OCD,sensory processing disorder and anxiety. My dr. thought both my parents and I had enough to deal with, so they didn't go any further with Aspergers testing. My whole life I knew there were something else going on with me, other then the previous diagnosis. I could never quite figure it out though. It wasn't until I was doing some research on google, when I found the symptoms of Aspergers. I brought it up to my parents and they said said the idea was thrown around when I was little but it didn't go any further then just talking about it. So I researched psychologists near my hometown, and I found a very good one, and made an appointment. 3 months and $1500 later, I have an official diagnosis of Aspergers. I wish it wasn't so late in life, but now I have it and am embracing it.

8, but had no idea what it was or meant until age 13. Then began the cynicism with the world

I only worked it out at age 41 (no official diagnosis yet). Looking back it should have been fairly obvious there was something wrong but my mother is probably an Aspie and she grew up with an Aspie sister (only diagnosed as an adult) so she thought my behavior was normal. She thought my nephew was acting normally as well, though once I found out about AS it was very obvious to me that he was an Aspie. He was diagnosed last year.

When I was a kid autism was not very well known which didn't help either.

I was diagnosed at 15. In retrospect, it was very obvious throughout my whole life and it's amazing I didn't get diagnosed earlier.

Similar story with me. The signs were so incredibly obvious my entire childhood and my parents were completely ignoring them in the hopes that I would get better...I didn't. It took my high school counselor nearly all four years of my high school experience to finally come to the conclusion that I might have Asperger's. People in my life are either very slow or very ignorant when it comes to me.

I was 23. It was fairly obvious for years, apparently.

I was diagnosed at 17. My parents made sure to rub in the fact that I was different early on, but in a bad way to where I didn't feel good enough because AS was still unknown enough that they didn't have answers. I still don't think they understand AS that well, but what can I do.