Early Diagnosis Detrimental?

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When I said I was condemned to living the rest of my life with my parents, it did not mean I wanted to keeping living with them. I'm exactly like you, I have no social life and I do want to have friends and maybe a partner, like many Aspies I haven't got the ability to do so, I can sympathize with your situation believe me!. I have wanted to leave on many occasions, the fact is that it is nearly impossible for me to get some other type of accommodation due to various circumstances. Well even though I get on o.k with my parents, I still have a strong desire to move away from this place and knowing that I can't do that has caused me strong feelings of anxiety and depression.

Take Care,
Gavin

I'm 17, live with my parents and, if mum would let me, would continue to do so for the rest of my life. Mum thinks I need to get to know the rest of the world, that that would help me. I'm afraid to leave home because I get absorbed in stuff and forget to eat, sleep or do anything until I'm done. I once spent a couple of days in front of my computer without stopping!! !! !!

Going to University terrifies me, but mum compromised enough to let me take an extra year of high school. I'm hoping that I can find someone I already know to live with when I go to school.

Hi, Gavin. Don't give up. I didn't know I had AS until I was 40 and had been married 12 years. I have very much the same problems as you have, but I didn't stop to think about them. Sometimes diagnosis is good, but you've concluded correctly that it's no reason to not try to live in the society you are in.
My parents got divorced when I was 16 and it suddenly dawned on me then that I was going to have to take matters into my own hands, no matter how clumsy or scared I was. I helped mom sell the house and moved us to a cheaper one in town. Dad had gone hundreds of miles away and had secretly sent for my two younger brothers, whom he preferred to me. HE WOULDN'T EVEN HELP ME GET A DRIVER'S LICENSE!! He basically dumped me and my mother with absolutely no help. The alimony checks bounced, and in the US at that time once you turned 18 the divorcing parent was no longer responsible for alimony. So, I got a minimum-wage job at a restaurant and feebly eked us along with her job as a waitress at a different restaurant. Surprisingly, we did OK until I got my draft notice (it was during Viet Nam) and I had to take my life in my hands and sign on the dotted line. I chose Navy because I was terrified of the water and was determined to get over that fear. Later, after I got out of the military -- I finally got my driver's license. I was 23 before I drove my own car, and I had no choice to be afraid to drive because I had to drive to and from college 30 minutes away from where I was living. I was living near Washington, DC -- one of the WORST places to drive in America. Seems like every big problem I had with life, I was forced to DO IT UP BIG!!

I could go on for hours. It boils down to this: You'd be amazed at what you can do, Gavin. Take small steps, an issue at a time until you feel confident with your progress. I still have a lot of trouble with AS, but I found a woman who really loves me and has stuck by me now for 22 years this weekend. She IS out there, Gavin. She's waiting for you.

First off.... When I was about 6, I was diagnosed (and I didn't know it previously), but my parents thought that it didn't really matter. But later, they really cared about AS, and they told me about it a few months ago, so since then, I've been "researching" it a bit, and seeing what I can do to try to prevent the effects of it. Therefore, yeah, knowing about being diagnosed with it is helping me.

I don't think of most of the way I behave as inappropriate — possibly quite odd, though...

I think what I would have worried about more had I been diagnosed earlier (I was diagnosed with autism in my early teens), would have been that people would have done all kinds of awful things to me in the name of "therapy" from an earlier age than when they started in on me. If you look at autistic kids diagnosed early these days, "permissive" isn't exactly the word to describe what happens to a lot of them. On the other hand, it may have saved me trouble in some other ways. On balance, I'd probably rather have been diagnosed earlier, but it may not have been pleasant at all in some ways.

These days, my diagnosis gets me services which have probably saved my life, and connects me to information about the kind of person I am. Those things are useful to me and I find them much more useful than the explanations I came up with and the "services" I got prior to diagnosis. However, an autism diagnosis in no way guarantees good services; many autism services are abysmal and worse than nothing.

I agree, AS isn't anything to be ashamed of. While I don't think that inappropriate behaviors should be tolerated just because of a dx, I also don't think it's fair to expect kids with AS to automatically sink-or-swim in the social world of the classroom. I wonder, if NT peers could not only be aware, but also educated, they could bear more responsibility for interpreting conversation, gesture, signals. There are jerks everywhere, but given a chance, I think there's a lot to be gained on both sides.

I guess I'm fortunate to be in an environment where I've seen this happen, and I've been on both ends. (I teach kids with AS, and think I may reside somewhere on the spectrum myself.)

Even if I was diagnosed as having Aspergers I was able to habilitate myself through endless hours of trial and error. I don't let other people know my dx let alone how would it help me now? They need to use the dx for school services. In college I can compensate by taking online courses,using the computer etc.

I agree with Lulu, it has helped me and my family help my son , nicco.
Before the dx I knew something was different about him, I thought that he may be deaf, but as I looked for answers I knew that he was on the spectrum,
at 27 months he had the dx; he already had almost a year of speech and ot( for sensory intergration)....
the dx let me understand how to help him. I might add that he has done remarkably well....
in the beginning I thought that he would never talk (functionnally)... he had speech therapy almost 2 years before he even said one word.... I constantly brought him out of "his world" and slowly taught him what behaviors were ok and what behaviors were not.
Ex. I would not allow him to line things up for hours- instead he could do it but there was a limit.
michele

I personnaly don't give a stuff about "labels" (which may be a cultural thing; we don't generally concern ourselves with such psychobabble in Europe...) but do know my childhood was consistently miserable because I didn't know what the hell was going on, a time of total frustration, to the extent I didn't even know which questions to ask (so don't assume your child is having a happy life, just because they don't talk about their daily misfortunes; home was my safe haven, where the last thing I wanted to do was rehash the tribulations of the day!). It would have been so much easier if only someone had taken the trouble to explain body-language to me, and it's importance(?) to most peoples' communication methods!

There's much prattle about preserving a childs "innocence" but, as far as I can see, it's only parents who benefit from this; ignorance may be bliss for them but an "innocent" child is a potential victim, and ignorance just leads to unecessary confusion and a denial of the opportunity to learn and adapt.

Any parents faced with this dilemm should set aside their emotional fantasies and consider it from a child's practical requirements; knowledge is power, teach your child all you can as soon as you can!

I think an early diagnosis is helpful but at what age? That depends on the ability of the child/kid/young adult to handle the diagnosis, in my opinion. I mean it's a big issue to deal with! If the child is getting accommodations in school and so forth, the teachers know and the other kids are likely to find out too, so the cat is out of the bag. By the start of high school (around 15) the kid ought to know why he/she is having such a hard time socially, in some learning situations, and playing sports.