Is it possible to regress/become lower functioning?

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Last time I checked autism and ADHD were not mutually exclusive. If she has both, if it was seen all through her childhood, I see no reason to let someone say that officially it is no longer there and then find out in the future that messed a lot of things up for her.

And the reason I question the Asperger's diagnosis is that I had several medical professionals say when she was 7 years old that she could never, ever have that diagnosis because of the early language delays. They all agreed that her current symptoms fit Asperger's to a T, but the exclusion clause regarding language development during the first three years of life meant no Asperger's diagnosis ever (no matter how much of a textbook example she was), that she would either stay in the PDD-NOS category or possibly get shifted over to classic autism if the social problems got worse. And the social problems did get worse at some point and she was officially shifted to high functioning autism.

PDD-NOS is not used as a diagnosis anymore for disability in adults. It used to be used as a place holder for kids 2-6 so they could get services in the school system. It was so people would not saddle their kids with a heavy duty official diagnosis, and could be dropped away if services weren't needed.

PDD-NOS ------------>to the non verbal person living in a group home is ALL consider autism now. There is no low functioning, high functioning, Aspergers...it's all Level 1, 2 or 3. I use Aspie for handiness sake. My husband is on level 1. You can still be level one and barely function. Where I live PDD-NOS=autism. Just like Aspergers=autism.

Either your daughter is autistic or she isn't. There aren't anymore *just a slight hint of autism*

My point of the ADHD being sort of not relevant for getting accommodations, is it's like have cancer and finding a secondary tumor. It isn't a game changer for treatment. I know people who have both ADHD and ASD. The ONLY thing the ADHD brings to the party, is their psychiatrist can write for Ritalin (CII drug), and insurance will pick up the bill. Everything thing else school/work/therapy it's really a minor player. For a child, it might be a bigger deal to have both listed. Is your daughter on stimulates might now for the ADHD? What accommodations besides extended test time and prompts did she get in school? Some professionals don't even believe the whole alphabet soup of my kid has ASD + whatever else. They feel impulsivity and scatterness is due to the underlying anxiety and lack of social skills because of the autism. That's how they are in my area. I don't know if the person who tests you is in that camp or not.

I'm actually shocked your kid will be getting any services, especially since she is 23. My state sucks, because once you hit 18 or get the equivalent of a high school diploma, services stop. Now you are in the adult camp. If you can do activities of daily living and can tell the difference between an apple and an orange, you are on your own. The only time the state makes any effort is if the person gets disability SSI.

Adult mental health/Voc Rehab is an entirely different beast from what kids get.

She's never had a "slight hint of autism". I don't know where you are getting that from at all. She had a PDD-NOS label because her social skills were completely in the severe end of Asperger's Syndrome but not enough autism qualifiers. Her communication skills were in the severe end of autism and Asperger's Syndrome didn't have such severe deficits. PDD-NOS was not a "tee hee hee, you have a few symptoms", it was "we can't neatly put you in either group even though you are very severely impaired". She didn't talk until she was nearly 5. She wasn't potty trained until she was 5. Even though she is smart, her ability to express that intelligence was so severely impaired she was functioning as though she had moderate mental retardation when she was younger.



A secondary tumor may need to be taken care of too and need a totally different treatment than the primary tumor. It is always better to find out all that is wrong, not just focus on one and hope the rest resolve themselves. Different symptoms, different causes, different treatments. Everything needs to be identified and taken care of.


Every state has some equivalent to a Department of Rehabilitative Services. What is better for the state and federal budget? Pay nothing in work support and end up with a bunch of people on SSI? Or pay a little for work support and be getting the taxes for the jobs that are worked? So yeah, there are services out there even after a diploma is earned.

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This reads as an interesting situation.

I recall doing very well in the school environment. It was structured, focused on learning, submitting work on time and so forth.

I struggled a little bit at university in that I had to organise myself more, but winged it fairly successfully.

Work I winged in one respect in that I was able to find work in an area which had been a string interest, but,
it was at this stage I tripped up many times on the social stuff
The carrying out seemingly basic organisation stuff, procedures for paperwork, ordering for work etc, that tended to trip me up. Occasions I had to make the first contact with a supplier, raise an order for a project.

Self care could go through periods of being a bit hit and miss, earning me one or two reprimands.
Indeed the appraisal I had from the firm after the early years included the feedback of "Social Skills Generally Lacking"

What I noticed is that various setbacks or mistakes took a little toll on overall confidence, and with that damaged confidence I would probably have done less well on any tests in subjects such as maths than I would have done in school. Not least because the day to day mathematical requirements of the job did not make a great deal of use of the more advanced mathematical tools covered in the final two years in school and the university course.

Looking back I would observe that in school and to a similar extent in university, the energy and skills I have were focussed tightly on the work. In work many more claims needed to be made on that pool of skills : the social side to work in terms of building confident working relationships, building a social side outside work - feeling very isolatoed was not a whole load of fun, manage the balance of the subjects outside work which were my passions and the needs of the day job, manage a dwelling, bills, etc.

I pick up the hints chatting to my mum many years later that at times my dad and she went through periods of feeling a degree of concern.

Your bit about social skills is a useful piece of information. I suspect in this area what is seen as progress or lessinging of autism is the effort at doing "Explicitly" what others can do intuitively. The defeicit, the blind spots are still there But we have learned or been shown ways to work round it so that the deficits are not noticable, but at the cost of energy expenditure.

Up to the point of leaving home, leaving education and similar structured settings, people in the part of the autism spectrum where I sit, and it may be a similar place to the young lady, have winged it with accademic skills, Those skills have opened the doors. We get tested by written exams and submission of coursework. We may have had a slight advantage if we haven't done the social side full tilt as we have not had energy diverted from the academic and study stuff.

Once we are out in the world, doing the first jobs, the first attempts at living outside the parental home or university residences or whatever, it is the social side which gets called on Far more than the Academic side. The qualifications may have opened the door into a job, but day to day it is the social stuff and the "Executive Function" stuff which keeps us successful there, for example doing all the administrative procedures around a job, spending time with other workers with our conversation not just focussed on the job in front of us. Plenty of traps for the unwary person on the spectrum.

It did get to me a little. Thinking "I should be doing a lot better at this simple stuff. I have this qualification for f sake..." phases like that certainly went rhough my head.

I recall feeling quite a bit of shame reading the words "Social Skills generally lacking" in the appraisal, even though it had started with good feedback - "First Class Engineer", "deductive skills invaluable in the test room..."

I'm yet to get my first job, I'm not particularly good in interviews, I'm only 16 at the moment though.

Anyway, as far as independent living goes, slowly build it up. I myself need to learn more independent living skills too, so I can sympathise with that situation greatly.

If someone asked me to "clean the house" I'd undoubtedly try, and I'd probably get some spots done brilliantly, but some bits just wouldn't occur to me even though they may seem obvious.

Honestly, "clean the house" is quite a vague phrase, the most realistic meaning one could derive would be "make the average cleanliness of the house greater than it currently is", unless one truly means "remove all dirt from the house and completely sterilise it".
Why not show her how to clean the house. Make it so "cleaning the house" becomes a short-hand for listing a long checklist (alternatively, make some checklists on the computer which she can print out before each task). Independent living just means being able to live without the support of others at that time. How you get there, and the steps involved in each task, can differ wildly. She may never become truly independent, but that doesn't mean she'll never be able to learn how to live mostly independent. The younger two of my older brothers comes round regularly so my mum can help him budget, he's not diagnosed (I'm the only one in my family diagnosed, however we suspect he has autism too). He stayed at home for a while, but for the past few years he's been living in a flat, with just one friend of his who he rents a room out too. He has a fair job now, and does well in it. How he hasn't had an accident at home is slightly baffling, in the past he could end up burning his arm or gashing his leg open and not feel it, but he gets along fine.

Really I guess the case with us high-functioning autistics is that we can learn things better than other people, but we don't have most of the knowledge other people have to begin with, we actually have to learn it. That could be knowledge in social skills, or this silly term 'common sense' (of which, I think most NT's lack quite a bit of).