Did I have AS as a child and learned coping mechanisms????

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As I am still severely messed-up by my son's recent AS dx, I keep trying to figure out what "went wrong".
While getting informed about AS, it dawned on me that I myself had many of the traits that AS individuals are said to have in childhood; but it never occurred to me that I may have been "disordered", though I often DID feel different from the VAST majority of my age peers.

Yet, the last thing I want to do now is to go investigate whether or not I had AS (would just be a waste of time in my case).
On paper at least, I ended up the poster child for "conventional success": grad school, secure job, house in the burbs with great schools, married to a very nice man, two children, attractive appearance by conventional standards (which I did not have until my late 20's)- the jazz.
In adulthood I developed a very high ability to navigate social situations despite the fact that I started out socially unsuccessful and weird and that even now, I dislike large groups and don't feel comfortable speaking in department meetings (I get a bit self-conscious and seem to have bad timing for opening up my mouth - someone seems to cut me off and take over the conversation at that very moment).

After reading about AS I realized my childhood was characterized by many of the AS-like stories. I should mention that I was born and raised in Eastern Europe and left the country at the age of 24. I would appreciate any opinion along the lines of yay/nay in my case - as I am really starting to feel like I am losing my mind. Could those traits have been AS?
Could I have just learned to cope that well?....

- I started speaking early and, according to my mother I was perfectly fluent, with an adult-like pronounciation by the age of 2.

- I never had more than one close friend at a time because I have always felt uncomfortable in large groups.
I did not know how to make my way in, how to say the right things at the right time, how to shine, to make myself heard. I felt ridiculous and awkward when having to say something in the middle of a group of children/teenagers and I often felt exhausted after a party/gathering with many kids trying to out-wit each other (a major sport in my home-country). When entering a large group - as in more than 3 kids, even 3 felt one too many at times - I always felt I had to make an effort. Large groups felt noisy, exhausting too fast and too superficial in exchanges. I also hated sarcasm (some of which I did understand but could not "pull off" myself).
I also sucked at "talking cool" or saying "cool" things to the point where I actively avoided situations where I would have to say anything in a large group. I was never able to be witty and keep up with the fast social exchanges between my age peers.
When I would try to say something, I would realize one second later that I had started at the wrong moment as no one was paying attention to me and someone was already talking to someone else.

- As a small child I had two boy playmates (ages of 3-8). One close friend between 1st grade - 8th grade (a girl who later acquired some slightly goth tendencies; I remember spending time together imagining deep and sad scenarios).
Another close friend in high school , for four years. No other friends.

- I started very early on to think that I had some "invisible guardians" (some fairy-like creatures) who would stand by me, guide me, soothe me and make things work for me when I was reprimanded and felt that the world was against me.
(Today I hear my son mention that his "invisible friend" or "conscience", as he calls it, is telling him to do a,b,c).

- My mother used to tell me I had "two left hands" and I remember often receiving reprimands about being "clumsy".
I was never athletic.

- At the age of 14 I developed an intense obsession with an American pop icon which lasted for a full decade, well beyond my 20's. At about the same time I started to pile on weight and became self-conscious about it, often wishing that I had been born in anyone else's shoes but mine. I felt VERY unattractive throughout my adolescence and early adulthood and made it into a self-fulfilling prophecy as pictures can testify it. I WAS unattractive mostly because of the self-conscious, uncomfortable look.

- I NEVER dated in high-school OR in college - as I was up to my eye-balls in my obsession with the said pop icon.
I just had one best-friend and I know we both came across as...if not geek-ish than just plain bland, blah and uninteresting.
I never really had bullying problems because in grades 1-8 I was the first to second best kid in class, academically speaking, and always a favorite of the teachers. So I just don't think kids would have dared to bully me. Besides, we didn't have that many bullying problems in that country, at that time. I don't remember any case, on anybody, as the environment was not as aggressive and competitive as what we see today. However, I was NEVER part of any group or any "action".

- Academically, I did very well in school grades 1-8 and OK in high school, where competition was very high because that was the no 1 school in my home-country. I remember being externally motivated. My parents were the kind who expected a huge academic output for social show-off purposes, but with zero input; the only thing they ever told me upon school start was "do not dare come back at home with a grade below 9" - grading scale 1-10. I wanted badly to please them as I had never felt "cute" or "adorable" in their eyes. I also had subjects were I was internally motivated (mainly verbal ones) combined with the fact that I had a deep need to please adults (parents, teachers) and be seen as a good, hard-working girl, if nothing else.

- I LOVED spending one-on-one time with adults, especially older ones. My grandmother had a neighbor (an old lady) whom I used to visit often and we would spend hours just talking. She probably accommodated me a lot.

- In time, after I turned 20, I became really interested in understanding people, various social scenes and why I never seemed to fit in with the "regular world"; why I was never "cool" or just plain "regular".
For basically 10 years I lived in the Fan world of the pop icon in question without any real connection to the "regular" world. Just with a few local like-minded fans, and a few others in other countries, via panpal-ship, who were obsessing over the icon in question as severely as I was.
The need to read tons of biographies about that pop icon led me to learn English very well, on my own, although I did not know this language until the age of 16 or so, when I started to pump hard with the reading, dictionaries, grammar books and fan correspondence.

- I often had fantasies about being gorgeous, popular and fitting in.

I don't know what happened eventually...something clicked in hard...mostly from the need to understand and figure out people so I can navigate their social traps and deal with the social pressure of living up to normal standards.
The fact that I was yet to have a date at the age of 23 was pressing really hard on me. After finishing college, I realized I could not continue to live with my grandparents. I had moved in with them as it was too stifling at home, where my parents had problems with my brother and obviously pi**sed off that I had grown into an obviously "abnormal" woman - due to lack of dating. I got my first job out of college as a secretary in a diplomatic environment because of my very good English (which I had learned due to the pop star obsession). A few months into that employment I felt that I was not going to be able to hold down that job because one employee, a step above me, was bullying me at work. I hated her with a passion. One day I saw an ad in a local newspaper for a few scholarships at a university in England (Ivy League level) for one year of post-graduate studies. To this day I have no idea what possessed me to believe that I could even dream of applying for something like that. Long story short - it worked. They had 7 scholarships for the entire country and I came in the 7th.

- This is how I left the country, spent one year in the UK in a rarified environment, and then applied in the US for a PhD program. It is during this transition from my country (East) to the US (west) that I started to change, to feel more free to just be myself, but at the same time became motivated to acquire signs of conventional success so I can show folks at home the "ugly duckling" syndrome. In my country, one with a highly collectivistic culture, the social pressures to conform (as in date, get married, have kids, have job, have friends and just look all around "fulfilled" - all by a certain deadline) can be overwhelming.

In the US I felt like I was finally able to breathe and do everything at my own pace, in my own way.

It worked. I finished the PhD in a social science discipline motivated by the desire to figure out people's actions in groups ...so I made a profession of it. I finally understood what the world wanted from me and I began to give it to them, though not necessarily in natural ways but after endless pages of academic reading, self-help books, etc.
To this day I dislike being in large groups but now I can hold my own very well and even act poised, funny and engaged. I still seem to be a little "off" when I decide to intervene and talk in a meeting. I seem to find my words right before someone is about to cut me off.
I only had 5 job interviews in my entire life and every time, I was offered the job despite not having the snappiest CV of all the finalists (though the one year post grad study at the Ivy League institution in England never hurt either) .
After reading a lot in grad school, I think I learned to teach myself how to come across as "awesome" in job interviews and tell interviewers things they want to hear, in the tone they want to hear it (relaxed, poised, self-composed, aware ...which I used to be anything but).

I married a man who is sweet, caring, incredibly reliable, incredibly moral, very smart in a math/logics kind of way...but not much of a communicator, and slightly socially naive. He has a few members in his family who would SURELY have been dx-ed with AS had they been children today, especially his brother. The biggest problem in our marriage seems to be that I love to communicate a lot, one-on-one, and he doesn't. He makes efforts in that direction, to please me, but I know he is not driven towards one-on-one conversation. I am. He prefers watching TV.

All these being said... do you think I had AS and just learned to cope and adapt to the point where I pass as a NT today?
Can an AS learn to cope/adapt that well?

Or did I just have an "ugly duckling" syndrome and it was all a matter of maturity (which happened very late, in fact).
Unlike my son though, I did not have the ADHD he clearly has; but then again, I was a docile girl raised in a highly authoritarian parenting environment ... and my son is a boy, hardly docile, raised in the comparatively permissive US culture (though I myself have never been permissive with him; his father can be).

Thank you so much for any opinion, whatever that is.

Last edited by goodolddays on 03 Jul 2011, 11:20 am, edited 1 time in total.

Maybe... can't really say more, but even if you don't, congrats for overcoming your difficulties. Make sure you pass on the coping skills to your son!

That's what I say too. I could never tell for the life of me.
Can someone be on the spectrum right at the point where NT-ness blends in with the ASD?
I heard someone saying that NT-ness and the Autism Spectrum themselves are on a continuum. As in...

NT............Aspergers........ Autism(high functioning)...........Autism(low functioning), etc.

The fact that I love so much to reach out and converse in one-on-one situations makes me think I don't have it.

The fact that I used to suck so badly in social groups (and still dislike them) makes me think I might have it.

The psychologist who saw my son did not seem to think I had it.

Perhaps I was the classic introvert and my son just got this from my husband's side of the family.

I know it doesn't matter...but I am desperately trying to figure out what my son's capabilities are in terms of eventually "catching on" about what the world wants from him.
If what I had was NOT AS, then my son may never muster the abilities to "catch on" in the way I did.
I feel so hopeless when I see him starting a meltdown and so incapable of self-regulating or hearing me reaching out to him. Right now he seems a complete slave to his emotions (in meltdowns) or self-drive (in social situations).

I never did have these things; but then again, I also knew my parents would have exterminated me had I dared to "pull off" whatever today is called an AS meltdown. My father was an extremely overbearing man, with anger management issues, but never physically violent; just emotionally violent. So I don't think I would have ever dared to keep going, AS or not.


I will probably never know...

I don't mean to sound rude but not a lot of people are going to be willing to read such a long post, can you sum up?

After reading your post, a lot of what you says sounds very similar to my life. On the surface, I have a successful life - I look quite attractive (I think), have a degree, a good marriage, own a nice home, had a decent job until my daughter was born and don't need to work as my husband has a good job.

But, I've always felt very different: socially awkward and uncomfortable; unable to maintain friendships; unfeminine; easily stressed out by minor irritations; unable to concentrate; overly sensitive to loads of triggers; I hide my real feelings, no-one knows the real me, except my closest family; a target for bullies.

I got my degree, in microbiology, without being able to or needing to study. But I left before the senior honours year, as I couldn't face the social aspects, not for academic reasons. So, I did a college course, with a work placement. I was kept on at the end of the work placement and spent the next 11 years with the same organisation, in an admin role. I was only happy when I was working on designing databases and left alone, but that didn't happen very often. I don't feel I'll ever be able to return to a work environment like that. I look at job ads and feel inadequate for everything, e.g. I can't do that because of a social skill requirement. It's quite sad really as I was a supervisor and I know I was liked very much and respected by my team, but I couldn't deal with any 'issues' that arose and my boss liked to tell me so.

It's only now, as my daughter is being assessed for probable Aspergers, that I've come to realise where she gets most of her traits from. The main difference between her and myself is that I was an extremely well behaved child and my daughter seldom does a thing she's told. Also, I was hyperactive, but I never put myself in danger, whereas she panics me all the time. I'm not seeking a diagnosis, but if it comes about as my daughter's assessment progresses, so be it. I joined this website as a parent, looking for advice. But, I feel very comfortable here, for reasons relating to myself as well.

Last edited by Mummy_of_Peanut on 03 Jul 2011, 2:21 pm, edited 1 time in total.

You're right.
But there are so many ridiculous details that go into this AS profile that I thought each part might be relevant and give the readers a cue to whether this was AS or not. It probably wasn't.

I often think I might have just been the classic introvert on un unfavorable family backgound (emotionally speaking) which might have resulted into AS-like symptoms. Deep down I don't think I had it but now, wth my son's dx, I am starting to feel like I am losing grip on reality and what is within the range of "normal" or "abnormal".

Unfortunately, my son has AS + ADHD and I don't think he will be blessed with the coping abilities to develop from "social ugly duckling" to very highly functional, even for a NT - a journey I had the luck to finish.

Quite possibly.

I think you should assume the answer is "yes". Then you can realize that your son is a perfectly good person, just like you, even if he doesn't conform to the currently accepted ideas of what children "should" be like.

If you can come to grips with the fact that you actually are successful - not just on the surface - you are in a perfect position to help him adapt to being an aspie in a neurotypical world.

I lived in a cocoon where the thought I had AS never occurred to me, not even once. After my daughter was Dx with HFA I peeled away the layers like an onion and it revealed to me the fairly obvious fact that I had AS. For simplicity I'll list the stages I went through;

1. Daughter's DX
2. Checked my family history - I suspected my father and brother had autism as they both had speech delays. Although both are fairly nuerotypical as adults, they are remarkably geeky and introverted preferring their own company.
3. I did some online AS tests and scored low on NT and high on AS
4. I looked back on my childhood and realized that my weirdness and introverted nature tied in with my score on the AS test.
5. I dwell on individual events and realized how autistic I really was.

For instance my mother has a home video of me when I was 6 yrs old where I am jumping up and down on the spot flapping my hands. I asked why I did that she explained I apparently derived pleasure out of it. Kids at school thought I was weird in primary school because I used to lie down horizontonally and drag myself around on the ground. My recollection was the activity was stimulating.

It's really weird that as an adult I never thought my behaviour (and my brother's) wasn't a diagnosable disorder. My parents thought process at the time is a mystery - perhaps they didn';t want to open that can of worms.

I guess that would be my line of wishful thinking right now. "If I could do it, he can do it too"! !!.
I would be thrilled to have an expert confirm that I DID (or do) have AS and that this is what AS feels like.
I would be beyond thrilled because I would conclude that this is NOTHING a decent-to-good IQ cannot overcome and I would have much better hope for my son this way.

But I am not at all convinced that what I had is AS. I also know I didn't have ADHD - which my son does have (being a boy does not exactly help with the risk of having this condition too!).

I never took a serious IQ test, beginning to end, so I don't have an official evaluation of my "smart-ness".
I just remember scoring very high (99 percentile) on the verbal section of the GRE test (in English, which is not my primary language), average on the quantitative part, and below average on the analytical part.
I do feel quite intelligent in some ways and hardly so in other ways. For example, I feel really good at understanding nuances and depth when reading books of all sorts (especially non-fiction, academic, self-improvement, etc).
Graduate school has taught me how to look at the big picture in any situation and how to think critically...so I always draw connections to make sense of the larger system; but I also feel that these abilities were taught and that I did not have them instinctively.

At the same time, I am still incapable of cracking up a spontaneous joke or throwing in some cool sarcasm, so I feel kind of dumb in this respect. If anything, I can put together some cynical, self-deprecating or just plain-deprecating kind of humor, but not the classic cool, spontaneous joking. I do appreciate and understand all kinds of humor and people who are so spontaneous and cool. I have also become a master at understanding human motives, social interaction, people's feelings in various situations, etc - but again, this is mainly because I studied these aspects for so many years.

Come think of it, and looking back with objectivity, I know I was in a lot of emotional paid and weird-ness for many, many years in my life. But because I eventually managed to figure everything out, after so much academic reading and self-improvement, and because I have a happy-ending in my hands now ...I tend to minimalize how "bad" things used to be.
I do remember asking myself if I will ever get rid of the pop icon obsession and be able to join the ranks of the "normal" so I can prove to my family that I too can be a,b,c.

I also think that if my family had NOT exerted the pressure and expectations they did and if they had just been embracing my weirdness and coddled me for "'who I was" (as parents of AS kids seem to be advised to do today), I might have never broken out of those weird patterns. Yes, they were obnoxious with their critical attitudes and expectations that I "step up" so they won't be embarrassed with me - but those might have indirectly served me well.
I get along just fine with them today. Then again, I was a child desperate to please, to be accepted, praised and appreciated and I remember needing a lot of validation. My self-esteem was meager up until I left my country but the US has an amazing talent of fixing those kind of problems ...and sometimes I fear I have acquired just a tad too much here; my husband tends to think so at times.
But this need to be accepted might have been what motivated me to try to adopt those "'conventional" ways my parents held dear.

Another child with AS (especially a boy) might have reacted badly/violently to such pressures and the outcome might not have exactly been a "conventional happy ending".

Of course, even today, I don't have a life devoid of problems, but who does?
I just know for sure I have NO SOCIAL issues.

Unfortunately, I am also afraid that I am starting to project my parents' high expectations of me onto my own children. I find myself not even being able to conceive of the possibility that my kids would not finish graduate school (I tend to regard it like most people regard finishing high-school). My concerns are rather "is it going to be Ivy League or not?". I also tend to make a tragedy of the possibility that one of them might not find a partner/get married. My parents always wanted me to be the first in class academically (I was) and to get married and have kids (I did) ...and now I am finding myself secretly wishing the same things for my children. Not for "conventional show" but because I have become convinced that being academically successful and having a partner DO INDEED make life a whoooole lot better.
I have moments when I think this is a great thing (high expectations) and others when I think...not so much.
As of now, my son is significantly above grade level (he has not started K yet) but I am terrified that his attention problems will start affecting his performance as academics advance and they become more complex and pains-taking.

Well...I suppose whoever wrote those lines..."They F You Up your mom and dad, they may not know it, but they do"...was right.

Last edited by goodolddays on 04 Jul 2011, 9:26 am, edited 4 times in total.

The online AS tests I took placed me very far away from AS - with the way I am RIGHT NOW.

But I am not sure whether this could be because of the coping mechanisms I learned.
After all, they say there is NO CURE for AS; and today, with the way I have learned to be and act, I feel "cured" compared to how I used to be in the past.

Who knows...

And maybe all I had was just something else, and my son picked this from my husband's side of the family - from the uncle who is CLEARLY autistic. I would feel comfortable applying that dx myself without even asking a licensed clinician.
That man has it like he has blue eyes. My son would be the poster child for NT-ness compared to his uncle.

My daughters autism can be traced back to my grandfather, my wife often reminds me that this was all from my side of the family.

For many years, probably as long as I've known anything about Aspergers, I've thought my husband's brother definitely had it and very probably his Dad too, but he died a few years ago. Like with your son's uncle, it's really pretty obvious. I never saw myself like that at all. Then, when it became apparent that my daughter probably has it too, I read a lot about it, especially how it can manifest in girls. The book 'Aspergirls' describes me perfectly.

Dang it, looks like it's everywhere. Might as well cease sounding "weird"; as in "condition".

With the way cultural patterns are developing, I bet everyone is going to be an Aspie by the end of this century!

And THEN who's gonna be NT, huh???

Just trying to snatch myself out of this state I've been in for weeks now.
Since finding out about my son's dx I have been experiencing severe muscle pain all over my back, a knot in my chest, right above the stomach, and a huge loss of energy. It's probably spelled depression but I have no clue how to get out of it. And meds - will not take - that's for sure.

Last edited by goodolddays on 04 Jul 2011, 5:31 pm, edited 2 times in total.

From what I have read, it seems to me (just my opinion) that you were probably just a very introverted girl that finally came out of her shell. I don't think you really described any autistic traits (other than being obsessed with a pop icon, but I am NT, and I have been obsessed with rock stars before LOL! ) If you had AS as a child, I am sure your parents would have noticed some strange behaviors. When my son was being evaluated for AS, I was told that everyone has some autistic traits, it is just a matter of whether it is enough to be debilitating on your life.

It is probably the combination of your genes and your husband's that has caused your son's AS. My husband's family background sounds similar to yours. When autism runs in a family, there is no way to tell where it is going to show up in the family tree and to what degree.

My son also has ALOT of problems staying focused and staying on task. I know that neither myself nor my husband were like that when we were children. Part of it is being a boy, and part of it has to do with age. My son is getting better all the time with this. And he can focus for hours on things that interest him like drawing and listening to music. And I want to caution you to not think that it has anything to do with the parenting techniques. AS and ADHD has something to do with the wiring of the brain, and much of the behavior is not really something the child is trying to do to be bad or difficult. I was also told that it is quite common for children on the higher end of the spectrum to have ADHD like symptoms. For my son, alot of it is that he gets distracted by the things in his environment. For instance, if a type of car that he likes drives by, he is more interested in that than what I am trying to tell him. So don't blame yourself for the ADHD issues.

By the way, I just want to assure you that you are not going crazy, you are just trying to absorb all of this, and I went through the same thing of trying to figure out where this came from. It is okay to do that, but after awhile it will not really matter. Just learning more about your son and how to cope will be more important. Our doctor told us that it is okay to keep the question in the back of your mind (where this came from) but not to dwell on it too much. Your son is a unique person that has his own genetic makeup. The fact that you are aware of his difficulties and struggles will be a big help to him.

I wasn't surprised to see this thread here today after partially reading your thread about your son yesterday. The way you came across sounded a little Aspie to me, and please take that as a compliment, because that is how it is meant.

These are the same steps that I went through. In my case both of my sons have been diagnosed with Aspergers along with several co morbid conditions. I believe my maternal grandmother was autistic, and that I have several family members who are Aspies, and a younger sister who is now diagnosed autistic (co-morbid with William's syndrome). There are also many strongly autistic traits coming from my husband's side as well. Really we are a perfect storm of ASD genes, but I didn't have any inkling of this before. I hadn't even heard of Aspergers when my sons were first diagnosed, and my only familiarity with autism was Rain Man and those dreadful Autism Speaks commercials! I just thought we were (and this may sound conceited) a wee bit smarter, more introspective and thoughtful, more highly sensitive and more uniquely creative than average. And now I know better. Now I know that all that intelligence, creativity and originality is really just disorder and disease, a horrible soul crushing monster named Autism!! !!

(in case it isn't clear, that absolutely was sarcasm)

I have worked really hard over the years to overcome the social deficits that would hold me back, and help/will help my sons to do the same. I have also worked hard and will continue to work to address the sensory issues and anxiety that sometimes make my or my sons lives miserable. What remains after that are the unique ways that our brains work, which I wouldn't give up for anything. I like being passionate, driven and single-minded when it comes to my interests. I like ignoring pop culture, and not even noticing what "the Jones'" are up to, let alone trying to keep up with them. I like being introverted, and being content with a few good friendships, rather than many superficial, time consuming acquaintanceships. I like not being dependent on other people to entertain, console, educate or inspire me, which it seems most NT's are.

Anyhoo...in short, yes, you could very well be an Aspie, or not. If you are, that changes nothing about who you are, your capabilities, your potential or your value to society, just like the diagnosis changes nothing about your son, it just means that you and he may have to work a little harder along the way.

You wouldn't be the first parent to say... 'wait a minute...'

It's seems that many parents are making that very same connection when their child is diagnosed. I'm one of them. There are several others here.

Just take it as a sign that your son will, indeed, be just fine. He has a great role model...