First Post

Page 1 of 1 [ 8 posts ]

Joined: 29 May 2009
Age: 36
Gender: Male
Posts: 26

30 May 2009, 11:25 pm

Hey everyone, I'm a college freshman in the U.S. doing some combination of piano, math, computer science, and music composition. This year, I'm thankful that I haven't yet had to distinguish between my studies and my interests, excluding my college's lack of a Ninjutsu department . Yes, I have AS, and I want to spend more time in the autism community because I'm tired of not being able to relate to the people I know.

The way that I found out why I was different was kind of horrible, though probably not unusual. There were lots of hints along the way, none of which I thought much of (early interest in fans instead of other kids, the eye contact thing, social issues, my precise speech, ect), since nearly everyone else would shrug off my quirks as well. I say "nearly" because my dad is a developmental pediatrician who works with and diagnoses neurologically diverse children every day. Though he caught on pretty much right away, my mom never accepted the idea of me having AS and thus made sure that I was kept in the dark.

As I found out later on, she was convinced that intelligence and autism were mutually exclusive. So, my parents allowed me to stumble socially through public school, homeschool, public again, then private, and finally public once more until something unexpected happened at age 14: I saw a parenting guide to ADHD on my dad's reading pile (turned out to be for his work). Now ADHD was something that I knew about from what my dad had shared, and I saw some overlap between my behavior and ADHD behavior. Distressed, I confronted my mom with book in hand, which went as follows:

"Why didn't you tell me that I had ADHD?"
"You don't. We think that you have something else."
"WHAT?!?"

Our conversation definitely went downhill from there :roll: , but at least I finally got a straight answer about it all. Some reading revealed that AS is actually more awesome than not. Looking back on it all, I kind of wish that I would have been given some direction on what exactly I should have done... my parents tried to help by letting my high school teachers know that I had (as yet undiagnosed) AS, resulting in relentless bias from their lack of knowledge on the subject. In other words, I was left to deal with it all on my own. Actually, how common is this?

College is better. I really love all of the independence that comes with it, and I've been careful to let no one but two people on campus know.

Anyway, hi.