Did your parents consciously decide not to have you treated?

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My mother refused to send me to a special school, saying she knew I'd be fine in a normal school.


My mother also refused to put me on anything as a kid or a teenager. She said in retrospect that I could have been on antidepressants as a teen, but as a kid they might have harmed me. I would have refused them anyway, and she said "I know." She also thought about it when I was in high school sometimes but didn't want to put me on anything that might make me suicidal.

My parents walked into the secure mental ward where I was being held, saw what was going on, then walked out again. Three days later the hospital staff managed to get in touch with them and my father told me that 'I was being chastised for my sins due to God's wrath'.

My parents were as*holes and I'm glad they're dead.

Ed Almos

I was born way too early to have been diagnosed as a kid, let alone to have been prescribed an SSRI or whatever. But I can answer as a parent.

My kid is unmedicated. He takes some extra vitamins and stuff, he has been home schooled some of the time, and he got a little speech therapy, and tips on dealing with various sorts of social situations. But he has never received "treatment." I'm not sure what I would even want him treated for. He isn't depressed. He has very poor social skills, and sometimes he has a hard time focusing on things which are unrelated to his obsessions, but there is no treatment for those traits, learning and experience are the only things he can count on to make those easier. He stims sometimes, but he's learning to minimize his stims and keep them socially acceptable, just as most of us have done.

If a treatment specifically for AS is ever developed, I will certainly take a long and hard look at it. But right now, there aren't any, so there's nothing for me to evaluate.

Geez, Ed, I don't know how you dealt with that. And, frankly, I don't blame you at all for your response to your parent's death.

Kris

My mom thought that special schooling would of stunted me further than just taking me to a perochial school were everyone had to learn at the same rate. And i believe that this was the right idea, and i would treat my kids with the same respect. I think that if you treat someone different, they will believe they are different, and that is discouraging to the cause.

AS was not a known diagnosis when I was growing up. I actually feel glad that I grew in a time without special accommodations, other than being in a special class to learn English when I was in first grade. I excelled academically, although I was not the most social person. I was given Ritalin briefly, but it was promptly stopped because it turned me into a zombie.

I was glad to be challenged academically. The only thing I regret is not learning to drive at the normal age.

Ed,

What a horrible experience. I could completely understand your feelings.

My mom was all for me getting treated.
My dad feared me getting labled and shut away from mainstream life my whole life.
In such a situation i would never get a normal job/life or education in my inteligence level.
I would live on welfare my whole life and do work for free.
This is unfortunately the standard procedure for someone with autism.
Also living on a group home is pretty much the standard thing for someone with autism.

I did get pushed into that category for a while, until i managed to break out through my own power of will.
I did get talked into living at a group home for a while.
But i couldn't handle living with uninteligent childish people that you couldn't discuss anything with.
I was used to solving problems myself and doing things myself.
But there you had to have meetings with group leaders to discuss things.
But that was understandable as it was below theyr mental level to solve things by themselves for these people.
So i left verry shortly after because i couldn't stand living with "adult children".

I also worked an unpaid job for 1.5 year because it was standard procedure for someone who got treated for autism.
I got really sick of working amongs people with 40+ iq points below me.
Who had no education, no ambition, and never took work seriously.
This held me back for a while as being dedicated to the job was seen as something extremely odd.
This is why these people could never hope to hold a real job.

Fortunately i managed to prove myself and leave this "scene" wich almost noone ever leaves.
I now have a fulltime job, wich altough waaay below my inteligence level gets me to work amongst inteligent people.
Mostly students with ambition with whom you can talk about normal things.
Due to my sleeping issues i never managed to finnish my education, and work well below my ability.
But i plan on getting properly educated soon.

So in short for me it was a win/lose situation.
The good thing was that being treated got me out of my bad period in life.
The bad thing is i've now got a lable wich i'm stuck with.
And always get help wich i don't want forced on me wich i can't stand.
Plus not to forget, always getting underestimated because i was on disability welfare for 6 years.

In a way both my parents had good reasoning behind theyr opinions.

What i wish is that they made special schools for inteligent people just with asperger.
At the center for people with authism you got put together with Aspies(high iq) pddnos (usually below average iq).
And others of age 18+ what spoke and acted like 7 year olds (ret*ds i think ?).
Wich is why all the classes were pretty much at a kids level.

I had to take a bunch of boring classes in subjects i hated wich was terrible.
Things such as handworks(drawing, making candles, making sculptures).
Working with wood and building things.
Working with plans and stuff.
Learning to make clothes.
All these things would be ok if they were your interests.
But when not it was horrible torture to have to take them.

I don't think I'll ever know the answer to this question because my parents never told me about it. I think my mom wanted to believe that I was normal, and kept reassuring me that I was, and if I did something wrong that seemed "normal" to me, they would try their best to correct it, never realizing that I might possibly have AS. They probably expected me to be an NT, so when I asked them something NT's would know that Aspies didn't, they thought it was a stupid question. They've grown to accept me for who I am now though.

When I was DX'ed with HFA asringers did not exist, and so neather did treatment to try and help these kids succeed in life. As a result all they could do is put me in special education. However unlike the kids in these classes, i even stuck out because dispite occasional odd behavior I was quite intelligent and even got special treatement in special ed as a result . I was mainstreamed in 5th grade and did fine in school from their on.

I feel if I did not have such behavior problems I coulda done just fine in mainstream class, they must have feared (my parents, the school) that I would not learn anything in these classes, or make learning more difficult for the other kids.

I did fine in school, even excelled in some classes (to the point where studying was pointless, I would no matter what be top of the class) so I got to go to collage where every semester, hardly trying, I made deans list. It was this time that I was introduced to the term in phycology class 'aspringer'. I looked into that farther and concluded that had this DX been around when I was a child I woulda gotton that label instead of HFA simply because my speech was good and around the age of normal development + I often found myself to be one of the smarter people in the room, always the one doing the building of the go carts or forts as a kid, the one in charge of the science projects, the one not needing to study for history tests ect... Collage was easyer then elementary school if you ask me.

SOrry for the off topic rant towards the end heheh