Can LFA people move up a spectrum to be HFA?

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Can peoplewith 'Low Functioning Autism' move up a spectrum to High Functioning Autism?

Yes they can. It's happened before.

Yes, they can, Temple Grandin is an excellent example.

It happens more often than not, actually.

Nearly 90% of children non-verbal at 5 have some language by age 9, for example. (Which makes Temple Grandin unusual only for her adult innovations, not for her childhood development.)

There are many who needed special ed in elementary school who are now in college.

There are others who had no friends in high school, who are now married.

That's another reason functioning labels don't make much sense: They don't predict future development.

that's pretty cool..didn't know that.

seems like my cousin who was lfa has moved up a bit now that i think about it.

Well, there are cases where learning is pretty slow, especially in cases where there are multiple disorders or complex disoders that include autism--Down Syndrome/Autism, or Fragile X/Autism, Rett's and CDD, congenital rubella syndrome, or other genetic disorders associated with autism. In those cases you get autism-plus, with the "plus" usually being a genetic disorder, or in the case of congenital rubella syndrome, due to prenatal injury. Global developmental delay slows learning in general, so that these autistics don't learn as quickly. But--and this is important--they DO learn. Maybe they will always need a great deal of help, but they do make progress.

The fallacy "Autistic people don't learn unless you magic them into the perfect therapy" is pretty close to the top of the list of ideas I'd like to debunk once-and-for-all.

I think I was more LF when I was younger, but I've had a lot of intensive therapy, so moved into the High Functioning group.

I know a guy who is my age (27) who was diagnosed with LFA at the age of 6 and used to be pre verbal and whose parents were told he would never be able to work or live independently. He now identifies as Aspergers even though his diagnosis has never formally been changed and has a successful job as a statistician and lives independently having graduated in both Bachelors and Masters degrees at First Class level.

I guess they can. It's what happened to my father and another member of my father's family.
My father started speaking later than then norm (he was 5 or 6 according to my grandmother) he also had troubles with coordination. But as he grew up he developed excellent gross motor skills and he was very good at sports as a kid. But his fine motor skills suck.

Yes. Tony Attwood discusses this, with references, in The Complete Guide to Asperger Syndrome (2007). I think the Markrams talk about it as well. I think it was them who suggested that a great many low-functioning autistics may simply be non-communicative, but actually highly intelligent within an overstimulated existence.

I knew someone who was diagnosed with low-functioning autism as a child. She never talked, but our mothers always found it strange that I always knew what she wanted. "How did you know?" they asked. "She told me." I said simply and they were shocked. These interactions led to my psychologists considering autism, then I was diagnosed with Asperger's years later.

Her diagnosis has changed as well, so now she's "high-functioning". However, I find "high and low functioning" labels irrelevant because there are some low-functioning people on this site and they communicate their ideas profoundly well, arguably better than most.

I do see the so called support that allistics provide is very unhelpful, rude and downright offensive and applied racist (autiphobia, aspiphobia) and actually hinders the thinking process of the picture thinking autistic person especially allistic people pushing NT communication styles onto people who do not use them instinctively. Actually Low functioning autism or high functioning autism are really irrelevant and the work of Amanda Baggs tends to confirm this intuition. Temple Grandin is another example of someone who was initially diagnosed as low functioning autistic but is now an animal physiologist and expert on autism.

The problem with so called support workers who are allistic is they think that they know best but they don't and it is almost pure arrogance as well as subtle discrimination and bigotry who interrupt an Asperger syndrome person's thinking style and will not let friendships flow properly. This is a form of isolation that targets the mentally accelerated but if most of the autistic spectrum suffers from mental acceleration what most refer to as giftedness then this could also be a possible source of some co morbidities such as temporal lobe epilepsy. which can be linked to either learning disability or mental acceleration which would be what is left after the anxiety of having an inconsiderate allistic person constantly interrupting what you say, not listening to what you say and giving out of date or even bad advice from the point of view of more favourable circumstance or even encouraging allistic strangers to approach you to ask you for money, directions, et.c. All this is encouraged because of being so called high functioning. I was thought to have had a low functioning form of autism until about 1974. I also never received physical, or emotional abuse until later on when it was proved I had allistic levels of cognitive ability. This may have happened in me either because I was taken off the valium the minor tranquilliser.

Unfortunately being high functioning having a measured IQ of over 70 does not grant you neuroprivilege like allistics have assumed always.