Age and How you Identify with the 'Conditions'

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One of the people who posted to one of my comments made the very valid observation that there is some ‘age’ related disconnect between my perception of the world and how younger people here may perceive it. I think they were trying to be polite in saying that I am an old fogy.

There is a lot to be said about this in many respects. One is that when I was a youngster the school officials, teachers and even most psychologists did not have much of a grasp on what was called ‘Kanner’s Autism’. Most kids who were like myself were considered to be mentally ret*d.

I distinctly remember hearing words like slow, withdrawn, disruptive, disinterested, slow-learner, speech problems, math problems, shyness, introvert, lack of self esteem, lack of self confidence, immature and even emotionally disturbed being exchanged during parent teacher meetings from the first grade onward.

I don’t recall hearing words like bright, talented, under challenged, intelligent, interested or excels in such and such ever mentioned.

This all began to change in the late seventies and early eighties when more data about autism begin to get filtered down into society so I did grow up in an entirely different social world than many of the younger people here who post at the site.

My early experiences in life of course influence the way I approach the subject of autism and if this has offended anybody here I apologize.

I realize that people who have grown up since the eighties have a completely different outlook on life than some of us older folks who had to grow up in the shadows so to speak. I know that it's much more touchly-feely now than it used to be and that one has to be politically correct and all of that. In some cases it's almost like a fad or a trend to have Asperger's for some reason since it's kind of hip and doesn't have all of the 'bad' stuff that full blown autism has.

I consider myself to be a militant Autistic. I am not passive about my so-called condition. I'm happy to have it and resent it when I hear people talking about cures and treatments. I understand that everybody will have an opinon and I don't intentionally mean to step on peoples toes about all of this stuff.

Just wondering what other opinions lay out there about the 'age-gap' thing.

Another oldy here, it was better in the old days, back when demonic posession kept them living in fear, yet thinking they might just need a friend in the afterlife.

Now these kids take lessons from NT teachers, the Hanibal Lector School of Autism.

A Gerbil giving Wolf lessons?

A differance in thought, perception, and thinking, is personal, and different for each of us.

No scripts needed.

I wish to offend the clones who learned Asperger's from Wiki.

To others I say, your therapist is a lier, just in it for the money.

I know social skills when I see them.

In it for the money, eh? I live in Canada and I was diagnosed for free. The person who diagnosed me was paid by someone, but they would have been paid no matter what they'd said.

I wish I did.

I completely forgot about the demonic posession thing but it'll probably come back again full cycle and become another fad someday as these things usually do.

The demonic possession thing has not entirely gone away, in the last couple of years a couple of people have been killed in my country during the course of 'exorcisms'.

I know that it's not a joke entirely. It happens even here to autistics. I can give you a link to statistics if you want.

I doubt Janet Moses is laughing.

Well, I think each of our outlooks is influenced by all sorts of things, not just by our autism. So of course age and generation come into it, as does nationality and culture, and social class, and family background, and all kinds of things. I'm neither old nor young. No one had heard of Aspergers when I was growing up - I was seen as a naughty child who had learning difficulties and should be sent to a special school. I was sent to a psychologist who said I was highly intelligent, so then the teachers didn't know what to do with me, because my high intelligence wasn't evident to them as I refused to write anything in class because I thought the exercises were pointless. Because I didn't grow up with a diagnosis, I never saw myself as having a disability, and I really don't now either. I learnt to adapt and survive as best I could. Now a diagnosis is useful for self-understanding and meeting others like myself, but I don't wear it as an identity badge. So, for me, I guess this outlook has been shaped by my generation and my own experiences.

I said that it wasn't altogether a joke. Very few people know the number of autistic and other unusual people who are killed every year. Often they are killed in clincs and hospitals and institutions and sometimes by well meaning friends.

Police write a quota of tickets, and someone running a Dx Machine had better come up with numbers that match the official numbers, just like back in school.

Hans was a Doctor, he came up with a story about Little Proffessors who would build Wunderwaffen, and he did not get sent to the Russian front. It worked.

The entire subject was dropped for twenty years till some English girl started it up again. Not much came of that, till there was an over production of psychos in the 1990s.

A decade later, an epidemic of new income.

In the 50s and 60s it was classy to have a shrink, then in the 70s they got busted for pushing speed and downers, lost their upscale accounts, who went on to coke, when the psych could not come up with the stuff.

Hard up for income they turned to children, it was not bad teachers, and six spoons of tropic white, sugar, for breakfast, it was a mental problem, but only children had it.

Now the funding says only people up to college age, an epidemic, that ends at 21, when funding ends.

It is a National Crisis, so blame it on the children and the taxpayer, just like always.

Unfortunately you are a keen observer and a vast amount of almost everything revolves around what I call 'organized' money.
Even some of the most popular so-called autistic advocacy groups look at all of us as a herd or cash cows ready to be taken to market.

21 local to you? That's interesting, it's 18 where I live. Obviously neither number is an evidenced based cut-off.

Yep, I'm with you. Your story is similar enough to mine.

Frankly, on this website, I feel less of an "age-gap" than I do in RL. I am able to converse with people of any age and generally be understood. It's a very good feeling.

That being said, there are a few age-related things I've noticed:

1. I am flat-out amazed at the wisdom of some of the teenagers on this website. It's not just that they know things. It's that they understand things about how to be happy, how to accept themselves, that I'm just learning now. Having a diagnosis available seems to have helped people work with their differences and become very wise before their time.

2. When I got my dx at 50, I was celebrating, and was very vocal about it here. It seemed that a few of the younger folks couldn't understand why. Celebrate having Asperger's? Am I senile? Of course, they don't have my experience of growing up always feeling vaguely "odd" or 'wrong" or "fake" all the time, without a structure for understanding it, without a name to give it except "F***ed up neshama." All I've done most of my life was to try dozens of different avenues to get it figured out, and they all failed miserably. All I could feel was ashamed that I never fulfilled the promise of my gifts. Being dxed at 50 was a big relief. I found my box to fit in. For some of the younger folks, that box with AS on it feels restrictive, unfair, a source of victimization, and I can understand that, but it's different from my experience. I'm so pleased to be an Aspie that I've framed the letter I got with the diagnosis. I'm feeling more and more proud of it with every passing day.

3. I notice a fair bit of anger and depression on the part of some of the younger folks. I remember feeling exactly like that as an adolescent. The tone, the content, everything sounds so familiar that if I looked at my journals from 30-35 years ago, I'd see a lot that's virtually identical. And yet, I'm not that person anymore. I don't feel angry at the world or victimized. I feel like I've been given some big life challenges (childhood abuse, aspie out-of-it dad, crazy nasty mom, undiagnosed AS and SID), and I've tried to deal with them spiritually, in order to make good come out of them. But that's 25 years of therapy later. So I can relate to where people are, because I've been there, and yet, it seems so very long ago.

But I don't want to put people into any kind of us-them thing here. By far, the majority of the cross-generational talk has been astonishingly easy, and I've felt very supported and understood.

Hi Garyww,

I relate to much of what you said. And by the way don't consider yourself an old fogy because you are totally with it and have a lot to offer. I'm curious is that you in your avatar? If so you look like a cross between Einstein and Mark Twain which I think is very admirable.

I feel similar I think about the age disconnect. I'll be 40 in a few months and do not relate to the mindset of the youngsters on here much of the time. Many are brilliant and express themselves so well for someone of their age regardless if they have ASD or not. Its amazing how much more advanced youngsters are these days compared to us when we were their age. I guess its because of the media and technology. However I see a negative attitude against everything in life from a number of them which bothers me. Some say the Aspie youngsters of today have it better, but I kinda think maybe we had it better before there was an official diagnosis for those of us that were the weirdo, freak, nerd kids of yesteryear. I think early diagnosis gives one a stigmata. Labeling someone for life isn't always the best.