How educated were you of your AS when you were diagnosed?

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I just wanna share a frustration of mine, when I was diagnosed nobody ever bothered to explain to me why I was so afraid to talk to people and why social situations made me tense, or ever explained the hypersensitivity to sound that drove me insane sometimes. My parents didn't even explain what AS was to me at all. Their attitude was so passive my eleven year-old brain couldn't comprehend how big a deal it was gonna be. Like if I just slept for a few days and took in more fluids I would wake up and the AS would be gone, like a cold.

Everything I know about AS, everything I ever learned about AS was on my time. I researched it all myself.

Can anybody relate to this? I know there were programs I was eligible for but kept away from.
What did your parents do when you were diagnosed, that is if you were diagnosed at an early age.

I had no education about AS, nada, zip, zilch, nothing. Everything I know I researched myself.
I only wish my parents were still alive so I could have told them, got them to understand that I did love them, and wasn't defying their every wish, and I couldn't help myself as a child.


Merle

DX'ed at 21 or 22 with "mild autism." I was told little about it (and knew nothing myself), other than that it was a major reason why I sucked socially and was extremely obsessive. I told my mom about it, but she apparently forgot, as I reminded her about a year ago and she acted completely surprised. I didn't really learn anything about it until a little while ago, when for some reason I suddenly became interested in it. Maybe because of a second DX, or maybe because I want an excuse for all my failures in life.

I was only nine years old when I was diagnosed. Back then, I wasn't well aware of what AS was. In fact, I didn't have any idea what it was until middle school.

I had only heard the term once, when my daughter complained about problems that she was having with another student. She said that she felt that he was getting away with everything because of having Asperger's syndrome. I was like, what the heck is that? Then a counselor I was seeing mentioned that she thought that I might have it. This was in 2004. I did tons of research, and after two tries with narrow minded shrinks, got an official dx this year.

I knew nothing about AS when I was diagnosed. My mother would mention "That's called Aspergers" while she be helping me with my homework because I was struggling with it so I assumed Aspergers meant having troubles doing your school work because it's so hard for me to do. She never explained to me what it meant or educated me about it, she only told me I had very little and then I started asking at age fourteen if I had more, what would I be like and that's when she started to tell me what I'd probably be doing and she made them sound like real bad people. She must have gotten tired of me asking her about it because she finally pulled out a bunch of papers out of the filing cabinet printed from the internet and handed them to me. I read them and realized my mother was right all along and mine was mild. It also explained to me why I had troubles with having friends in school and why it was hard being with them and why they didn't want me around, and why I had troubles knowing when someone was teasing or being sarcastic. Things I read about it matched what my mother told me about my condition when she kept saying “It’s part of Aspergers.”
The more I read the more it explained about me and it also made me aware of what I have difficulties in I never even realized I had before. I thought I could read body language and know when someone is upset but it’s the literal language I can pick up but when it’s nonverbal, I have no clue.