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red_doghubb
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03 Jul 2019, 9:42 am

kraftiekortie wrote:
If there is a history of "classic" autistic behavior, which consists of one seeming oblivious to others when they are, say, preschool age, then the person is usually diagnosed with autism retrospectively, if some autistic-type symptoms remain.

"Present presentation" is important. But "past presentation" could be just as important.


I was hugely "ASD"ish as a child, up through my teenage years, but it's modified/been muffled in my later yrs which is why I've been doubting an ASD diagnosis if I ever get off the eval wait list



kraftiekortie
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03 Jul 2019, 9:47 am

How were you, say, as a three-year-old child?

Did you have speech delay? Did you get "early intervention?"



red_doghubb
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03 Jul 2019, 9:51 am

kraftiekortie wrote:
How were you, say, as a three-year-old child?


played alone, no interest in other kids, little interest in toys, already reading, fusssy/tempermental/stubborn, escaped/wandered off a lot (etc., to encompass seemingly classic traits)

no delays. No intervention in the 70s, but at around 7 I was sent off to the school shrink once/week for a few yrs



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03 Jul 2019, 9:53 am

Were there specific interventions?



red_doghubb
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03 Jul 2019, 9:55 am

kraftiekortie wrote:
Were there specific interventions?


not unless you count the shrink. This was the late 70's, in a rural/backward town.



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03 Jul 2019, 9:57 am

It's possible that "past presentation," combined with some indication of an ASD in the present, COULD lead to an ASD diagnosis. I believe it would depend upon the clinician.



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03 Jul 2019, 10:24 am

red_doghubb wrote:
rdos wrote:
red_doghubb wrote:
rdos wrote:
red_doghubb wrote:
rdos wrote:
[

Makes no sense. A huge amount of NDs only want a romantic partner and has no interests in friends. Many of the NDs that do pursue friendships do so only to find a romantic partner. Now you are telling the NDs that only want a partner that they must pursue friendships before they can get a romantic partner (which is certainly a faulty assumption since there are plenty of NDs in only relationships). I'd say what you are doing is to make even more NDs involuntarily single for life.



Can you link to studies that verify this? Not that I can't relate to or necessarily disbelieve this, but I'm still skeptical, esp as almost everything I read- including WP posts- is that ND's want friends.


I'm basing it on a large survey with several thousand participants in Aspie Quiz. The paper is still not written, mostly because I don't know how to best present & interpret the results. Still, the empirical evidence of NDs having fewer friendships and the link to romantic relationships for NDs only is clearly there.



ok, I've taken that quiz (as suspected ASD). Who was counted -only ppl who identified as diagnosed Aspie, or did the results include self identified?


The other way around. Aspie Quiz defined neurodiversity and the research was done with that definition. Thus, all participants were used. Those diagnosed with ASD fit the pattern, but cannot be used as a reference given that ASD is not defined based on friendship traits.


I think I get it but am also confused now- it's called Aspie quiz but includes anyone diagnosed or suspected ND?


It's for historical reasons. The quiz originally was aimed as an ASD test using preferences, but when I discovered that it could be scored based on factor analysis alone (which was an objective method) with only minor worse relevance for ASD diagnosis, I decided to use that method instead,which resulted in a broader definition.



kraftiekortie
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03 Jul 2019, 10:28 am

You're about 10 years younger than me. I thought you were in your 30's----so that "early intervention" would have been possible.

There were IEP's in the mid-to-late 70s if you are in the US. Did you have an IEP?



rdos
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03 Jul 2019, 10:29 am

kraftiekortie wrote:
It's possible that "past presentation," combined with some indication of an ASD in the present, COULD lead to an ASD diagnosis. I believe it would depend upon the clinician.


The major problem with using ASD diagnosis (or any other psychiatric diagnosis) in neurodiversity research is that you must have problems with your preferences, something that will bias results in unacceptable ways.



red_doghubb
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03 Jul 2019, 10:38 am

kraftiekortie wrote:
You're about 10 years younger than me. I thought you were in your 30's----so that "early intervention" would have been possible.

There were IEP's in the mid-to-late 70s if you are in the US. Did you have an IEP?


Small town. Poor town/school. No idea how to deal with kids who acted out of the box.
I was not a special ed kid- my problem in essence (in the eyes of school authorities) was that I was academically years ahead of my peers, but didn't like them. I was actually made to repeat kindergarten because of this...and spent my time talking with the teachers.



Last edited by red_doghubb on 03 Jul 2019, 10:47 am, edited 1 time in total.

kraftiekortie
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03 Jul 2019, 10:43 am

If you had an IEP, and you have "autistic-type" behaviors in your record, it's more likely you would be diagnosed with ASD in retrospect.

There really was no "official" notion of an "autistic spectrum" until 1994, when the DSM-IV came out.

I was "fortunate" in the 1960s----in that my autistic behaviors were obvious and "classical."

Obviously, I've never met you in person---so I wouldn't be able to offer an impression of how you would be "diagnosed" now.

Depending upon the clinician, a combination of your representation of your behavior by yourself, your parents, and friends---plus your present presentation---plus your scores on various intelligence, academic accomplishment, and screening tests--could lead to an ASD diagnosis. Or it might not.

It's a "who knows?" kind of situation.



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04 Jul 2019, 11:13 am

red_doghubb wrote:
rdos wrote:
[

Makes no sense. A huge amount of NDs only want a romantic partner and has no interests in friends. Many of the NDs that do pursue friendships do so only to find a romantic partner. Now you are telling the NDs that only want a partner that they must pursue friendships before they can get a romantic partner (which is certainly a faulty assumption since there are plenty of NDs in only relationships). I'd say what you are doing is to make even more NDs involuntarily single for life.



Can you link to studies that verify this? Not that I can't relate to or necessarily disbelieve this, but I'm still skeptical, esp as almost everything I read- including WP posts- is that ND's want friends.
I relate to what rdos is talking about. I'm not gonna say I dislike having friends but having offline friends was never a priority for me. I've been pretty desperate for a serious offline relationship thou. I really wanted one person I could feel comfortable with & be myself around. Offline friends have always drained me but my girlfriend does not. Pretty much all the offline friends I've had were people I knew from skewl or work. I needed time to myself when I got home & I never really done much outside of skewl or work with them. We lost touch after I quit skewl & working. I only have one friend I knew offline(he was my former supervisor, I lost contact with everyone else) & I only see him 1ce a year since I moved across the country to be with my girlfriend.


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04 Jul 2019, 11:51 am

I don't have the slightest clue what to do to change my situation.
The older I get it's only going to get worse.


Hello samcharlton143,
You have said; 'I don't have the slightest clue what to do to change my situation.'
That is an easy one - all you have to do is change your mind set. It is not that difficult as you do it all the time without being aware of your doing it.
All people are able to change their mindset.
You have also said; 'The older I get it's only going to get worse.'
Well you hit the nail on the head there, you are 100% correct. If you truly believe that you/it will get worse with age, then you/it will.
Then again you might think; 'Hey I am only young so why don't I change my mindset.'



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04 Jul 2019, 3:14 pm

rdos wrote:
Mona Pereth wrote:
1) You need to focus on building up a network of FRIENDS (of BOTH sexes; it might be best to start with other men) before you can find a girlfriend. You should think of a romantic relationship as an advanced form of friendship. Trying to find a romantic relationship without first having friends is like trying to learn calculus without having had algebra.


I'm unsure why many NDs have this strange idea, but it's not optimal and it is definitely not a requirement for a relationship.

What are your criteria for deciding what is "optimal," beyond your own personal taste?

I would not want to have a romantic relationship with someone who is not also my friend.

Beyond personal taste, my criteria for "optimal" include:

1) Ability to form romantic relationships in a relatively non-awkward, non-stressful way.
2) Ability to form lasting romantic relationships.
3) Ability to break up on non-hostile terms, and if possible remain on friendly terms, if the romantic relationship isn't working.

rdos wrote:
When NDs are asked about friendships it turns out they are much less likely to have (and want) friends, but many of their actually friendships are not real friends but want-to-be romantic partners.

If indeed this is true of many autistic people, then I think the most likely reason is that they don't understand what friendship is or how to make friends in a way that actually results in a meaningful friendship. I would suspect this is a failure of social skills training. I don't know what kind of teaching autistic kids are receiving these days on how to make friends, but I would suspect that they are NOT being taught how to make friends in ways that actually work well for themselves, but instead are just being taught to try to imitate culturally mainstream NT ways of making friends.

True friendship is one of those things that, once you've experienced it, you never want to be without it; but, if you haven't experienced it yet, then you might not be fully aware of what you're missing. It's not like sex, the desire for which involves specific, easily-identifiable bodily urges.

Additionally, I suspect that many autistic people may be turned of by various NT-world trappings of friendship (e.g., in my case, holiday gift exchanges). But these trappings are not the essence. True friendship is a highly individual, highly customizable thing that doesn't require any of these trappings, as long you've managed to find a friend who agrees with you.

You've said in other posts that ND people have, more so than NT's, a strong propensity for romantic crushes. From that, you conclude that crushes are the "natural" way for romantic relationships to develop among ND people. I, on the other hand, have always regarded crushes as extremely dangerous, because they are extremely unlikely to be reciprocated -- and, even if reciprocated, not a sound basis for a lasting relationship, because emotions inevitably fluctuate, although a crush-based relationship might be super-thrilling while it lasts.

If indeed autistic people have a greater propensity for crushes than NT people, I think that's most likely a symptom of being starved for friendship. It seems to me that if a person is starved for friendship but doesn't really know what friendship is, hence doesn't really know what they are missing except that they feel a mysterious inner void, then they are much more likely to be tempted to throw all their emotional eggs into one basket and expect a romantic relationship to satisfy all their emotional needs.


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Last edited by Mona Pereth on 04 Jul 2019, 4:46 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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04 Jul 2019, 3:59 pm

rdos wrote:
The worse assumption is that NDs lack nonverbal communication and thus need very clear verbal communication, something that is completely wrong. In real ND friendly relationships AND ND friendly communities, the natural nonverbal communication of NDs should be the norm, just as NT nonverbal communication is the norm in NT culture.

You're assuming here that there is a single (or at least majority) natural mode of nonverbal communication of ND's. Can you provide any evidence for this claim?

Problem is, ND's are very different from each other as well as from NT's. ND's differ from each other more than we differ from NT's, because we have such a wide variety of different ability profiles, sensory profiles, etc. For any given trait, ND's are often found at either extreme, whereas NT's, by definition, tend to be in the middle of the range on most things. So ND's as a category have little in common apart from just being freaky by NT standards.

Hence it is highly unlikely that ND's all have similar natural body language, much less a natural ability to read same.

But there may well be subsets among us in which all members of the particular subset have a particular natural body language specific to that subset, and that can be read by at least some, if not all, other members of that subset.

As the autistic community grows, hopefully any such subsets will gradually become aware of themselves as such, and hopefully they will eventually be recognized by others as well.

However, in the meantime, clear verbal communication is the only natural lingua franca amongst those members of all the subsets that are capable of verbal communication in the first place.

rdos wrote:
Although I have no idea how a verbal-only environment could be beneficial to low-functioning autistics that cannot speak, but still can use the ND nonverbal communication.

Indeed, we ultimately need a world in which nonverbal autistics are cared for autistic people who are "higher-functioning" but of sufficiently similar neurotype that they can readily understand the nonverbal person's body language.

Alas it's not going to be possible to attain this immediately. The community of verbal autistics need to become a lot better organized first, before we can have sufficient clout to improve conditions for nonverbal autistics too.

rdos wrote:
I have to say that I've completely stopped participating in autistic gatherings because of these issues. One on hand, these gatherings discriminate against low-functioning autistics, and on the other hand on high-functioning NDs that want to act naturally and not adopt a whole new culture that was built from NT prejudice.

What constitutes "acting naturally" for you is not necessarily the same thing that is natural for all or most other ND people.

What I think needs to happen is that the autistic community needs to grow and diversify to the point where a wide variety of different communication styles can be accommodated by different groups, with each group making clear what its preferred style is.

rdos wrote:
In fact, an autistic friendly community should be built in such way that it worked for the whole spectrum regardless of intelligence and functional level.

I don't think it's possible to attain that in any one group. What we need is a wide variety of groups.


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04 Jul 2019, 4:37 pm

rdos wrote:
Aspie Quiz defined neurodiversity and the research was done with that definition.

What is the definition of "neurodiversity" that is used by the Aspie Quiz?


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