Feel like the only one who was diagnosed in childhood

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Someone my cousin was friends with at school has just got diagnosed with autism, and I remember him from school and I knew back then that he seemed quite obviously autistic. Yet nobody recognised it until now? He's 34, so grew up in a time where autism and Asperger's was known about.

Also a girl I used to work with has recently been diagnosed with autism, according to Facebook. While she didn't seem autistic to me, she was quite erratic and I thought she had mental health problems like personality disorder or Bipolar. Her mother said she was a very difficult child to bring up and was glad there was an answer to it now. How did she go all through school without stupid social services interfering and forcing her parents to get her diagnosed with something? She's only 28, so she grew up in the 2000s, where autism and Asperger's were widely known about.

Why am I the only high-functioning Aspie with atypical ASD who got diagnosed so young? I was statemented all through school, which made me stand out and it ruined my social life. I just want to be like everyone else on the spectrum, just getting a diagnosis in adulthood and somehow slipping through the net all through childhood.

It just eats away at me, how everyone else my age and younger went undiagnosed unless they were severe (non-verbal and obvious). I was not ever non-verbal and I had no speech delays.

I just feel like the only one who's never had that "moment" where I think "oh hang on, I think I might be autistic" after becoming an adult. I mean, how? Why didn't my life go like that?

Note: I'm not talking about people born before the 90s, as autism wasn't as recognised back then.

I never felt the late diagnosis "revelation" either. I had figured by myself that I'm not a neurotypical before any label ever came up.

The reason why my diagnosis was delayed was because of finances...

I was very likely diagnosable by age 5 or so (that's around 2000s) if it weren't for the household constraints.
And I'm not a 'severe case' either; my daily living skills are up par to my age and I survived mainstream schooling and went through college without academic support.

Actually, sometimes I count myself as lucky. Because I don't trust anyone else of what might've been.

Tho...
I would've been mad too if the school spread the knowledge of my diagnosis.
While I don't mind standing out myself, I wanted agency who needs to know about it or not.

Kinda why I'm glad that I took the matters around the entirety of where my diagnosis should go as soon as I have it, instead of letting others choose who to trust or know or what to do with it.



But to be honest, I don't envy late diagnosed autistic's "ability to pass through the cracks" as much as I do not envy the "support and leniency" received by those who are diagnosed early.

The former would kill me (literally I won't survive that), the latter will trap me into the same mentality and resentment as you would.

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You were were born not long before people were just barely starting to realize autism wasn't just something boys could have, especially if you're high-masking. If my life hadn't gone downhill and led to my hospitalization I might have never been diagnosed at all. Maybe if I had been while still a child or even a teenager my life wouldn't have become a mess and I'd have the support I need. It would also have helped if I lived in a place where the mental health care is still stuck in the 1930s.

It makes me feel more severe than what I am.
I just wish I hadn't of lashed out on my first day of school. I was a normal toddler, developing typically and was naturally social, then all of a sudden I became weird on my first day of school at 4 years old. Apparently I was so frightened of school on my first week, that I tipped over chairs, hid under the desks, pulled the teacher's hair, kicked the other children, and wouldn't sit still. My parents weren't expecting me to be like that, as the preschool were confident that I was socially and emotionally ready to start school along with the rest, although I was the youngest in the class because of my birth date (children born between May and August stayed at preschool until the following February, but my birthday was at the end of April and so was the youngest in the school but like I said, my parents and the preschool staff were sure I was ready to start school). Maybe I wasn't ready yet. I also had undiagnosed glue ear and was deaf, which frustrated me because I couldn't hear properly.

At first then school and social services put my behaviour down to child abuse going on at home, and my parents were forced to prove I wasn't being abused by doing tests on me, which I found rather stressful. After it was clear that I wasn't being abused, I got statemented at school and for the next 4 years they scrutinized me like a bug under a microscope trying to find a label, rather than just leaving me be, being so I had settled down, apart from the odd screaming fit I had if I didn't want to do something. For example when I was 5 I was being a bit disruptive during play, so a member of staff came to remove me from the room and I remember kicking and screaming angrily because I didn't want to be removed from playing.

When I was 6 I suddenly grew out of having tantrums at school and caught up with my peers socially and emotionally again. But the stupid social services wouldn't stop there and kept forcing me to attend assessments and appointments until they got the right label for me. Then when I was almost 9 I finally got diagnosed with Asperger's syndrome and HATED it from that moment onwards, because I felt so settled at school and had friends, and the label made me feel different.
Then when I was 10 my diagnosis was blabbed out to everyone in my class and that's when my classmates began treating me like I was different or stupid, and the teachers still scrutinized me, putting down every trivial detail in my report on what I did in the classroom. "She needs more confidence, as she waits too much for other children to get their paintings from the drying rack first", like it's a problem that needs to be fixed, rather than considering the fact that maybe I was just being polite and it's much better that I was doing that rather than pushing and shoving other children.

I just wanted to be left alone, I was tired of being "the kid with the label" or "the special needs kid". I hated it. It ruined everything. I felt like a normal child and I just wanted to be a normal child without all this Asperger's this Asperger's that being shoved down my throat every 5 minutes.

So I often wish what my life would have been like if I hadn't got a diagnosis until adulthood. I wasn't diagnosed with ADHD until adulthood, so I didn't even think about having ADHD when I was a kid (even though I had heard of it then), and I think the same would have happened if I hadn't been diagnosed with AS. I probably would have just got on with it and survived. And then I might have got diagnosed in adulthood like everyone else here and feel differently about it, like more accepting and happy with it. I'm accepting and happy of my ADHD diagnosis, but if I had of been diagnosed with ADHD at 8 years old I might have felt differently about it and hated it maybe.

But at least ADHD doesn't have a fancy misleading name like autism, or a fancy embarrassing nazi name like Asperger's.

I do hate being in the 1% of people on the spectrum who was diagnosed in childhood at my age, gender, and severity (which isn't severe). Am I some sort of miracle or something? I don't want to be though. I want to be like everyone else; either NT, or an Aspie diagnosed in adulthood.

I mean how does someone who was born in, say, 2005, started school in 2009, and left school in 2021, manage to get their autism missed all through school in an era where autism is more known about? How come their schools didn't threaten my parents to get them diagnosed with something?

Perhaps I was severely autistic then.

If I had been a boy I probably would have got diagnosed with ADHD in childhood. But in the 90s ADHD was still a "boy's thing", where as what ADHD really is is a complex neurological disorder, like autism.

I just wish I had started school like everyone else, rather than the inconsolable demon spawn that I was. Then I wouldn't have got this diagnosis.

If I was a teacher and a 4-year-old child with no history of any developmental delays joined my class on her first day and was pulling my hair and tipping chairs over, I don't think I would have immediately decided it was because the child had been abused. The first thing I would have thought of was a mixture of ADHD and some sort of school phobia linked to anxiety.

In the UK the first year of school ain't that different to preschool. It's toddler-friendly, has brightly-coloured themes, has toys, you're allowed to take a comfort item with you such as a teddy, and the first few weeks isn't of sitting at desks made to pay attention, instead it's mostly of fun storytelling and playtime, very gently and slowly settling young children into school life. Plus I knew most of the children in my class from preschool, including a few close friends I had made at preschool, so it wasn't exactly entirely strange.

I got statemented (don't know what the equivalent to that is in America, you'll have to look it up), and I don't know what they did to me but it made me scared to be in trouble, so from around 6 onwards I forced myself to sit still and be quiet in the classroom. So maybe ADHD was thought of at first, but when the assessor came to my class to stand in a corner and scrutinize me, he or she probably thought "no way could she have ADHD, she behaves herself in the classroom and is very shy."

I was shy, but only in front of the whole class. I found it easy to chat when sitting in a group around a table, but if I had to talk in front of the whole class then I became shy and just wanted to not be heard. It was more like social anxiety in front of too many children at once, which isn't unusual in children, especially in girls, as we're more socialised to be shy in a way. I remember practically all the girls at primary (elementary) school acted shy in class, while the boys were louder and messed about more.

So trying to mask ASD is probably easier for girls than it is trying to mask ADHD, but trying to mask ASD is probably harder for boys than it is trying to mask ADHD. I think this all changes once puberty hits though, as both ASD and ADHD can become challenging for both genders at school.
I found it hard to mask ADHD. Sitting still and being quiet in the classroom was exhausting for me, which was why I sometimes played my mother up on the walk home from school. I'd sometimes run rings around her and show off and embarrass her, or even hit her - NOT hard or violently or anything like that but enough to make it seem like I was an out of control child to passing strangers when really I was just "letting it all out" after having to sit still and be good all day. Although recess was easy to be myself because we had the play equipment and space to run around and play, which was what I loved doing best.

I was diagnosed early. I've hid it my whole life and still do (although I've realized that certain people figure it out anyway). Even though I've known about my autism my whole life, I'm still learning more about what autism is, and more about who I am.