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Ok, Here it goes...

Last June my DS ate a pack of Nicorettes while I was in the bathroom and we took him to the hospital for poison control. While we were waiting in the hospital the Dr on call in the pediatrics section was a pediatric neurologist. He talked to my husband and I about my son and asked us to get a referral to him ASAP.

Kind of funny as we were describing our son to him, he asked us if we thought he was strange and my husband and I both started laughing. He asked us why we were laughing and we said of course our son is strange... he's our son! More on this later.

Describing our son - 3 this month - very smart, reads a bit, spells about 50 words, tip toe walks a lot, arm flaps when very excited. Cheerful pretty happy guy.

So anyways after the pediatric neurologist asked us to come in for our appointment, I started doing some research about the things he had mentioned, more focused on his stethoscope than him, toe walking etc. Then I thought well he probably thinks he's autistic.

Before that I was very concerned about my son because he was obviously very gifted. Then I started thinking about my own school years and how horrible it was and I did not want what happened to me to happen to my happy son.

So then the short story about me and my schooling, I spent most of my time in the hall because I was disruptive, my grade three teacher thought I was ret*d so I was tested for hearing and IQ. My mom said to them that there is no way I was ret*d because I was reading and writing long before I went to school. My tested IQ at that time was 156.

In spite of that I spent most of my time in the hall for all kinds of offences, some nice teachers sent me to the library instead.

Even then I spent lots of time reading, I often stayed up super late with my books.

Then... there was the thumbsucking, I have not really heard this mentioned as a stim? but it was constant and I finally quit when I was 18 although I stopped sucking my thumb in school in grade 6. I quit school in grade 9 went back as an adult took the test and passed my GED except for Grade 12 english (I was attending French School before) excelled in college.

I like people and do sales but I don't understand groups very well and work politics completely eludes me. I am always pissing people off although I have no idea why.

So now my husband... also very smart guy, nerd all his life. Doesn't like to be touched very much, sensitive to sounds (when we were dating he told me to change my smoke alarm batteries because he heard it over the phone) sensitive to humidity, temperature, currently suffering from severe anxiety disorder and depression.

So anyways the final question is.. is it even possible for my husband and I to both be undiagnosed Asperger's or something? We are 37 and 40?

Discuss ?

Entirely possible. To pretty much all of the above.

Many of us realize after our kids are diagnosed that we may be AS, as well, or at least have some of the genes involved. A few go on to confirm that through diagnosis; most of us seem content to reach a semi-conclusion and leave it at that. There are on-line tests you can take, but I really don't know how accurate they are. For me and my husband, I figure it doesn't really matter; whatever difficulties my husband and I had were compensated for or accepted long ago, and we just are who we are. Which, we seem to have decided, is AS for him, and a little yes and a little no for me.

What we also notice is that things are different for our kids in both good and bad ways. The bad is that some of the deficits seem so much deeper than what we, the parents, ever had to deal with. Whether that is from getting double genes, or environmental factors, is all up to speculation, but I do feel my son faces challenges neither my husband or I had to. The good is that in many ways the world is much more ready to accept and accommodate those challenges that it was when I was a child. But, then again, the basic structure of daily living has also changed in ways that make things more difficult for him ... Still, our son has an awareness of his condition and who he is, and why he is, that really helps him stay centered and happy. So ... mixed bag.

Wherever this journey takes you, just remember to enjoy your child and your family.

Welcome, hope to see you around, and

Good luck!

Very possible. My father is 56 year old. I believe he had late-onset Autism. He did not speak until he was 5 years old and has had all the other symptoms associated with classic late-onset Autism. Of course, everyone blamed his delays on his mother. Luckily, even though his parents did not work with him, the school did. He was in speech therapy until he was in 7th grade. He is severely socially impaired to this day. Unfortunately, he chose to use alcohol to help him cope and is now a recovering alcoholic. I sincerely believe my father has Autism (and not another ASD), although he has no diagnosis.

BTW - it was the ER that also referred us for a neuro evaluation to test for Autism disorders. They got it spot on where 2 doctors treating him for a year never once mentioned it.

I took one of the online tests: while I don't think they are any more accurate than any Cosmo or Facebook quiz, I found it to be helpful in this way: many of the questions were about behaviors/feelings it wouldn't have occurred to me might be important (I came out as being more on the spectrum than not.) I'd say they offer a good frame to collect your thoughts around; Wired magazine has one online if you're looking (again, can't speak to its accuracy, but the questions were helpful to me.)

We (my husband and I) are realizing that many of our personal struggles with our social life may well be related to being on the spectrum. The next question is what do we do with that information? There's a lot about what we can do for our son that we are learning eagerly, but most of it doesn't apply to adults.

I took the wired quiz and came up with a score of 27, 30 is officially autistic, 15 is NT If I remember properly, my hubby had a score of 22.

Just dealing with my son and stuff made me remember a lot of stuff, like I remember my mom one time, bringing me to a shrink when I was about 9 and asking them.

I kept telling they didn't understand me... I had no idea how right I was lol

Yeah I love my son, he'll be fine, if we have to homeschool him that's what we'll do. There's no way I'll allow anyone to treat him the way I was treated in school. The entire thing was so wrong, who thought that putting a kid in the hall day after day, centering them out, was a good plan. It's abuse. Then I would go home and get it from my mom for misbehaving. So really no relief.

I turned out ok, I'm a kind person. Work as much as I can. I would be much better off if people had tried to stop making act like the normal kids

what you said about thumbsucking rings a bell!! i did that til around age 14. thinking about it, yes it could have been a sort of stimming, all i know is when i did that i totally phased out ...i have a picture of myself doing that, on an armchair at age 9, with my knees supporting my elbow and a piece of fabric that i used to wipe my thumb on to make it wet, then smell , because it smelled stronger when wet. my eyes are totally somewhere else in that pic.....This is not at all embarassing....

It is. But, a lot has changed. It totally depends on luck, if you will get a school that actually understands your child, but it does happen, and you will want to check things out before making any assumptions. My son had a really, really good elementary school experience; middle school is more mixed, but still nothing at all like what you went through. We've had IEP teams very willing to work with us and listen to him; all that is a good thing, and a large part of why he is such a happy, centered child. I still get amazed to be able to type that, lol - there were times I was really worried for him, and I know there are still rough spots in the road ahead, but he really is comfortable in his own skin and happy with his life and prospects, even if there are large pieces of it he'd like to turn upside down and change