That's me counted out then

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Someone said Tony Attwood says the diagnostic traits are present by the age of 7.

That's probably me counted out then. When it comes to knowing about early traits one is heavily reliant on parental know how. Mother's dead and father's recall of my early years is decidedly patchy. Best he could up with- I was not very well co-ordinated, stammered, wouldn't go to bed early and had nightmares.When asked he said he couldn't recall any evidence of imaginative games for my siblings and I!

Guess I'm neurodivergently homeless -born too early for ASD/NVLD/dyspraxia to be picked up on but still affected by it all.

No feedback/replies. Well , I guess that rather confirms things.

Don't take this the wrong way but I laughed when I read your initial post. I don't think a neurotypical person would put so much research into as niche a subject as Aspergers or Autism unless they work as a professor or healthcare or social work professional.

From my point of view even the fact you have studied this in so much detail is in itself an indicator of your having Aspergers. The very literal way in which you are interpreting one criterion is also a giveaway!

That shows a kind of black and white thinking style that people with Asperger's are well known for.

I think you would get diagnosed in an assessment.

I am going to get an assessment soon and my parents are useless as well lol. I had to fill in a large assessment form with a family member to see if I was viable for the assessment and my mum kept laughing and telling me she thought I was too 'normal'.

According to her the fact I was overly chatty, thew 'tantrums' everyday and got horrifically bullied was totally normal... Alot of other things as well. My dad was very ill when I was a kid, so often he was the priority and alot of things to do with me got 'forgotten'.

Anyway I filled the form in, dreaded them coming back and saying I didn't classify, and a few weeks later they messaged me about booking a half day assessment.

So yer don't give up, these people's jobs are to diagnose this stuff, trust them to know how to do it and go from there. Good luck!

You don't need to write yourself off. I've heard about people (in England) who couldn't bring their parents or someone who knew them as a child to their diagnostic and still got diagnosed. Their parents wouldn't accept the idea they could be autistic or they weren't close. Others parents had died.

Just tell the assessor what you know of your childhood and why you believe it implies you're autistic. You don't need to involve your dad. Some parents and family are downright ignorant about autism and will be a hindrance to an accurate assessment.

Last edited by KeepOn on 21 Jan 2018, 6:37 am, edited 1 time in total.

Can you remember any early memories? Even if they aren't full-on signs, just indicators that things that are present now didn't pop into existence, but had been present in some way from the start.

I'd written myself off as well by the time I went to my assessment , I was just listing all the reasons why I wasn't on the spectrum ( incorrect reasons ).

Your last sentence tells me you are convinced you're on the spectrum. If you can't get an assessment then your only option is to forget about it all or self diagnose , you seem like the type of person who would find self diagnosing adequate for your peace of mind.

Stop beating yourself up for something that is out of your control and not your fault.

I dunno, but I have a feeling that if your dad were brought in to a clinic to be interviewed by a professional specialist who knew the right questions to ask- then your dad would give the right answers about your childhood that would evince you being on the autism spectrum. I wasn't diagnosed until middle age only a couple of years ago. One parent was long dead, and the other was descending into dementia. So the doc interviewed my sister, and my girl friend. The doctor complimented me later about how both were "quite forthcoming" in what they had to say( I guess they both gave him an earful about what a weirdo I am!). So even though neither lady was the ideal source (neither were my parents) their testimony was useful in getting my diagnosis.

You're certainly not alone in that. I'm a Millenial, and I'm having similar problems. I had some pretty obvious signs when I was a kid. Speech delay, severe ARFID, sensory issues, etc. My mom refused to tell my occupational therapist, though she certainly remembers it well enough to recount these stories to me in private. She even prepped me on what to tell them: "Quiet, but normal." So lacking a good source of recorded symptoms from your early years is far from an unusual problem, and it shouldn't hinder you in getting a diagnosis too much, as I'm sure they'll understand that with your age it's made even more difficult. If you have older siblings, ask them to do the interview, and if not, try to recall early examples yourself. If it's the best you can do, and you're set on getting an official diagnosis, I think it's worth trying, even if it does encumber the process a little.

I don’t count you out....

It's a questionnaire that the parent has to fill out, it's quite detailed but what I found during my (recent NHS) assessment is that when you are being asked a whole load of questions about childhood things come out that I hadn't previously connected to ASD, so all your dad needs to do if fill in the questionnaire as well as he can. They will then asses you based on the about 200 hundred questions that they ask you over about 3 hours that also cover a lot of your childhood (that you remember) and your behavour during your assessment. In other words it's a broad spectrum so nobody is going to have all of the signs or all the parental information. eg there were no questions about imaginary friends but there were about nightmares. A lot of things that are mentioned on the internet as typical ASD are not in the questions so try not to think about it too much, are you on a waiting list?

What kind of questions do they ask in the questionnaire?

Similar to the ones in the “Aspie Quiz.”

To tell you truth I'm a born pessimist. Also I'm not even sure there is any point at the age of 61. It's not as though given all the water that's flowed under the bridge that in practical terms I'll achieve much with a diagnosis.

Of course there's getting a handle on why I am as I am, and being able to show that it's not down to things like laziness,passive aggressiveness or any negative jibe directed at me by psych professionals over the years. However is that in itself enough?

Then I tend to see myself as more NVLD than ASD ie I see myself as having autistic traits but doubt I meet the full criteria.

During my assessment, the pyschologist said it would be good if he could talk to my parents, but if I didn't want them to know I was being assessed for ASD, we could probably make do without talking to them.

In my case, I had already discussed with my parents the possibility that I might have Asperger's before the first time that I saw the psychologist, so I had no issues with the psychologist talking to my parents. But it does suggest that it is possible to be diagnosed without the psychologist talking to one's parents.

My autobiographical memory sucks. My memory of my very early years is a virtual blank. The best I ever got from my mum many times over the years was that I was an awkward baby/toddler/child/teenager etc. She never went into detail as to why.



8-13- What do I remember as a child was not having any friends ,apart from one who on hindsight may have just been a boy I got on better with rather than much of a friend . I say this because I tracked him down on Twitter and he blocked me! I was very much into solitary activities partly out of choice and partly because I didn't get included in games because I was bad at sports. Although bad at sports I have memories of kicking a ball up and down our back garden over and over again. At school the other boys once laughingly described me as the 'missing link'
I can't remember making much of an effort to try and interact with the other boys . When it came to my siblings they were much closer to each other than to me. I was basically the odd older brother out. There were no major special interests although I was quite interested in history but not especially good at it. One thing I did do ,not sure when but definitely before I was 8, was learn all the kings and queens of England . I have no memories of imaginative play. Like many boys of my generation my parents bought me toys like Action man and GI Joe but as for concocting scenarios around them - pass. It was hard to get past the fact they were just plastic objects.

13-18- Bullied a lot for being physically and socially awkward. Bullying started from virtually the first night when I admitted to the other boys, instead of boasting like them, that I knew next to nothing about sex. Well-it was a fact! That straight away marked me out as odd. One experience was having a load of monkey chants aimed at me while waiting for a geography lesson . Suffice to say that a lot of public school boys are nasty little s**ts. Again social rejection aside I made little attempt to try and socialise. As when younger I was introverted and shy.I spent all my spare time reading.

As you can see there isn't much to go on.