Did anyone get diagnosed based on a bad situation?

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I honestly think if my school had listened to me and to my parents and followed my IEP and actually have worked with me than trying to do it their way or the high way, I would not have gotten diagnosed.

Before 6th grade, none of the medical professionals thought I had autism, just ADD and other disorders that are basically ASD symptoms like dyspraxia or sensory processing disorder or auditory processing disorder. It was only educators that thought I might have autism and that was it.

So by 6th grade, they wanted to put me in a behavior class with kids with behavior issues and behavior disorders and my mom knew this would be a bad program for me because then I would start to act like them and learn to have a behavior disorder by mimicking them because this would be normal behavior to me. Then I would bring it home and realize "oops, we only do that at school."

Finally I got diagnosed by an autism specialist. I sometimes think there are people out there that are undiagnosable until they are in a bad situation at the right time and they happen to see the right doctor to get diagnosed. I think that is what happened with me. I just happened to be at the right place at the right time, happened to be seeing a therapist who forward us to this psychiatrist to see me and look over possible Asperger's because he was qualified to diagnose it. I sometimes think this happened because I was a girl so of course doctors didn't think I had any sort of autism other than "autistic behavior" they called it and I didn't have any stereotype autism symptoms like rocking or hand flapping and I played with pretend toys and pushed a doll around in a stroller or played with dolls and read to them and played house and I was very social but had difficulty relating to other kids my age and playing with them but I liked being around them. Also I did not avoid eye contact 100% of the time.

I sometimes wonder where I would be now if I didn't get diagnosed and how all these diagnoses I have would have helped me as an adult or would another situation have gotten me diagnosed?

remember Autism Spectrum Disorder now includes a wide range of symptoms
you do not need to have all of them to qualify

Also sensory processing disorder is not generally recognised world wide
only by a select few

If you suffer from sensory impairment, that it is highly likely you have ASD
even if without some of the other stereotypical Aspie behaviours such as flapping hands, rocking movement stimming and inability to make eye contact.

I do not exhibit standard stimming, i do get agitated though, and do have meltdowns
when this happens i generally swear at people

i do make eye contact, but generally am really intense stare type
which to be honest, is why some get worried when i am around

but this is also recognised behaviours of ASD

If the diagnosis really upsets you
you could always get in contact with your national autism charity and explain your perspective

they may offer you a second opinion

My diagnosis came about from a simple conversation with one of my son's psychology professors about 10 years ago; but if by 'diagnosis' you mean being called 'lazy' and 'stupid' by my 3rd-grade teacher, then yes it was a bad situation.

My mum was embarrassed to have a child who wouldn't talk much and who had meltdowns when they had nightmares. It was almost to the point that she was verbally abusing me when she expected me to snap out of my meltdown and tell her in a complex sentence, "Mum, help me. I had a nightmare." I was diagnosed at the age of 5 and a half. Being an autistic child in the 80s was hell. I'd always get in trouble for crying and I'd always get in trouble for repeating the joy that I had for my special interests.

I grew up when an ASD diagnosis was not possible. I finally got diagnosed after a series of bad situations--at 56 (obviously, I was not in a hurry, but I guess then that would have been ADHD. ). In hindsight, having the knowledge of my ASD would have put things into context and I would have been able to mange more effectively. Now, whether growing up with ASD from an early age is "better," I am not sure. I think there might be a point at which that knowledge is more useful to analyze a situation.

Naturally, this also assumes we live the same environment. We all have different background, families, cultures, etc. And, to quote Monty Python from The Life of Brian, "we are all individuals, we must all think for ourselves!" It is always a nature/nurture problem.

Sometimes I am unsure if I'd ever be able to get a diagnosis unless I was in a "bad situation", like intense burnout or something else that pushed my autism to its limits. When I got assessed the last time I was in a horrible place mental health wise, but I still wasn't really in a burnout yet and masked a lot. I didn't let myself stim at all during the assessment as I wasn't comfortable around adults (so I wasn't comfortable with the assessor) and probably didn't appear to have as significant sensory issues as I actually do.

I think professionals are overall reluctant to diagnose me properly because I am female and when they talk to my parents they say I played "pretend" and did other things like that, but it was usually by myself and was really restricted to specific things. I don't think playing pretend by yourself is the same thing as seeking that out with other children and acting out social activities with them. I never played "house" or anything like that, just pretended to be animals or my favourite video game characters.

I also sought after interaction with other kids sometimes, but it was mostly because there were certain activities that I thought were more fun/easier with other kids (they could help me do certain things, I like competing with them, etc.). The things I did do with other kids was really restricted, so they didn't want to play with me since NT kids don't like doing the same thing over, and over, and over. The two friends I had in elementary school for the first year or so we knew each other all we did together was pretend to be wolves at recess. lol

Had that been the case, I would've been diagnosed much earlier.
Probably before I ever entered school.

But no. Not really.

There are already concerns stretching throughout my childhood years, before I ended up with any speculations of any possible formal diagnosis.

Yet I understood the most of the whole picture of the circumstances, as to why my case wasn't really even considered earlier.

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I remember when I was aged 7 and I was very intelligent for such a young age as I could see through patterns and outcomes though I did not realize that the reason why that the new schoolteacher called a gentleman to look at me and two others, was that the new schoolteacher had picked up on a classic autistic style trait by the way my mind works. (I am not saying I am or am not on the spectrum as I have not yet been assessed).
Now I realized that if I did not spring to life and answer the mans questions in a specific way (I was too quiet and did not want to speak) that I would have to go to a special school in the big town and that thought panicked me, so I saw straight through the questions and I am embarissed to say I lied accordingly so that I could keep to the school near where I lived. (I do not like lieing but at the time I saw no option).
It was a good thing too in that the special schools in those days (I do not know if things have changed) would not have taught me according to my intellectual abilities. (Ooh. I am using big words. Hehe!)

So yes, I did react accordingly and also I will say that I could have saved myself from a lot of bullying, but I am one that would have done much better if I had been taught at home, but in those days the concept was frowned upon. My Mum is a very intelligent person and a great natural teacher so she would have easily got me to the age 16 school leaving level a few years before I reached the age of 16, because she knew how my mind works as she thinks on the same level. It is only when I left school and some of the engineering subjects were not in her realm of understanding is where she was not able to help me during my college years.

Teachers did not realize this but often it was my Mum at home putting things in ways that I understood it that got me through exams, because I was dead quiet and too embarissed to show myself up by asking odd questions in class, and the few times I did were usually negative experiences. (I usually ask those questions that everyone needs to know and everyone laughs at that I have asked them, but no one would know had I not asked them? Which is embarissing as people assume I am thick, but without clarification on the simpliest terms I would not be able to slot everything else in place because my mind needs to see the whole picture that I can visualize as a foundation before I can build on it in an interlectual way).

I don't think I would have got diagnosed if I hadn't behaved so badly when I was 4, when I'd just started school. On my first day I done things that were out of character for me, and apparently I even made the teacher cry. So if a 4-year-old can make a grown person cry like that then I must have been a little hellion. But nobody expected me to be like that.
I did settle down after a couple of weeks but I became a bug under a microscope; I was observed closely for everything I did, and me and my parents were FORCED by the school to attend meetings, appointments, you name it, to see what was "wrong" with me and get me a diagnosis. I hated it. I was unhappy. It made me feel like I wasn't normal. Five years of this, until I got a diagnosis of Asperger's.

I really wish I didn't start school behaving like a lunatic, then I could have just lived a normal childhood without being labelled with some embarrassing thing that other kids didn't understand. Apart from that, I was a normal kid. Like the OP I played with toys the "normal" way, liked being with other children, was very sociable and articulate, and made normal eye contact. I wasn't at all stereotypical. I didn't even have special interests, although I was scared of loud noises like dogs barking.

I got told about it because I was being bullied by chavs.

I already had diagnosis but they'd managed to keep it from me til then.

My argument is that my cousins wouldn't have coped in that kind of environment either. My cousins went to a rural school with 15 per class and no chavs. They're NT and I'm not but that contrast in schools made a big difference to how different we were as people.

I ended up finally being diagnosed when I was in the worst situation of my entire life.

Can people turn into sociopaths or are they always just born that way? I wonder if I was turning into a sociopath? Maybe I still am one. It's scary when I think about how I felt virtually no remorse as my behavior before my diagnosis got worse and my outbursts in the home I lived in got more frequent and severe. Of course I was sorry for getting into trouble, but I was not sorry for being nasty or violent and didn't see why it was such a big deal and I'd just do it again. Sometimes I would want to cry, but I couldn't. Everything was stripped except the hate.

I know i have a Jekyll and Hyde personality, and I can go from one to the other in a split second because I can only mask and tolerate what is going on around me for so long. I can feel it building up but I can't do anything except try to ignore it. And then it just overflows for hours.