Who suspected you were autistic?

Post Reply New Topic

Everyone who came into contact with me knew right away I was different animal. Adults were especially impressed by my vocabulary and intelligence, also by how big of a fit I could throw when I had a meltdown.

But this was the early 1980's and autism was something that was on nobody's radar, and since I was verbal, no one gave it a thought.

As I got older and I was seen by psychologists and psychiatrists, all their reports had language that screamed autism, but again, because I was normal cognitively, no one ever made the connection.

When I was in college, I had professor who's own child was autistic pick up on me right away. He asked me one day after a class if I was autistic. We ended up having a long conversation about it. He ended up being the best professor I had because he knew how our brains worked and could make a lecture that fit those parameters.

Fast forward to last year when my cousins son was diagnosed, I spent a lot of time with my cousin growing up and he remembered how I was and saw it in his own kid.

At work I'm sure people have noticed, no one has yet to ask, and my own personal rule is not to tell unless a person has a need to know

I was diagnosed a gifted child with some emotional immaturity issues when I was 5-6 years old. (I am French, Asperger and HFA were virtually unknown here at the time).

I only got a diagnosis two years ago, at 29, when I myself suspected I may be autistic. Nobody in my family expected it (and some of them are still sort of in denial). My friends I shared my diagnosis with, on the other hand, were globally unsurprised but still hadn't anticipated it (except one of them who told me he thought I had been tested years ago because it was so obvious I could be autistic ^^).

Both of the two therapists I've been to, the 1st about 4 years ago and the other a couple of months ago, suspected I was autistic but I didn't give further thought to it when the 1st brought it up because it seemed to me she suspected this because my brother had been diagnosed with Aspergers several years ago and I thought my main problems at that time were social anxiety and depression and didn't really care if I was autistic. I didn't know exactly what autism was or at least not how inhomogeneous it was. Sure there were some similarities between me and my brother but the symptoms, I knew were signs of autism, were much more severe in him and I realized them less in myself, also because my social anxiety alone seemed to be a sufficient cause for most of my problems. I finally was diagnosed about 1/2 year ago.

I'm not sure if my parents ever suspected it and it seems to me they are still not aware of the full range of symptoms. They once mentioned they assumed my brother might be autistic before he was in kindergarten. If they ever figured out that the same was true for me, they never told me.
I'm also pretty sure they never realized I had problems until after I finished school. I never had any friends but since they also had had only few friends when they were at school they didn't worry about it. Only, they didn't realize that having few friends is not exactly the same as having 0 friends. I was unable to speak at school more often than not but because my grades were al right they weren't fully aware of this.
Maybe they didn't realize there was anything wrong with me because they too have some autistic tendencies and my mother might actually be autistic.

No one else ever told me they suspected I was autistic or ask me if I was although most people I met who are not family can't have taken long to realize there is something wrong with me. Lately my executive functioning problems have given me more trouble than my anxiety - because the anxiety no longer makes me mute that often but the executive functioning has gotten worse - but until 4 years ago the anxiety was bad enough that the rest of my symptoms weren't that obvious (although part of the anxiety could have been caused by other symptoms I wasn't even aware of)

my teachers, i was put in a special class that was clearly for it in high school (thats like middle school for you Americans) where we were taught social constructs, body language (which ive completely forgotten....oops) and metaphors, it was no coincidence that everyone in that class was suspected or diagnosed with Asperger's syndrome. oh and one of my tutors at college (thats like high school for you Americans) pulled me and another student over to talk about it, i said i didn't have it so he let me go with the excuse of "oh, i must have read the wrong file or something", which is a really poor excuse because that other guys is the only one on the course that was actually diagnosed so unless he's an idiot and read the same file twice, i think this was just a cover. but then again most of my tutors sort of treated me like a child a bit and made exceptions for me but not others (by this point the other guy had been kicked from the course as he didn't really do any work and "skived" 90% of the lessons, which he apparently did in high school as well so i have no idea how he got on this course).

to be honest my parents were mostly oblivious to it, they did look for it because my half brother has it BUT they were looking for classic autism, not aspergers, and they only looked out for it till i was about 1 or 2 years old....well done parents. although it apparently explains why ive always been so blunt all my life, and almost completely oblivious to social conversations and did everything they told me to do, but completely literally so they would get mad at me and call me lazy because they told me to do it, i did it, but that was apparently only half the job. had so little amount of friends (one) because i was "not trying hard enough" and was being bullied by my entire class all the way through....yay thanks parents.

From the first time I remember I always thought me and my brother both had autism, it also kind of magnified it, Most of My intermediate family is either Autistic like, or Autistic. Though, I always knew I was different like all those times in preschool also the fact that I remember those times in preschool where I'd be waiting what felt like forever for the other children to wake up. I even remember the windows ME I think, computer that had solitaire, on It and me playing, it. I remember A lot, I even remember my Nursery Teacher She had us call her Misses Sunshine or something like that. Ah, The memories. My Mom had quite a hard time yet never ever ever agreed with the doctors though that might be because she always scheduled the appointments on my fathers weekend.. I caused quite a lot of trouble for my pre-school teachers though . I'd either be hitting on of them, or something like that, Pretty Obviously autistic things. I always knew I was different. I also knew that my brother was to.. Though my sister, always looked after us, Probably her being the only Allistic one. She thought she needed to look after us. Though it might also be our mom, never being well a stereotypical mother figure.. Though I might split this up or maybe not. I remember a good deal of information about it, though I think the reason I don't remember much about before then was because, my Parents got divorced when I was 1 and my Mom, was 'Magican'.. And Played Magic tricks. I'm talking about crazy s**t like, having signs like eat your vegetables or something crazy like that even though none of us could read, or where hyperlexic though I did develop hyperlexic traits later on.. I think that about half the time I was at my mom's house. Most of my large Special interests. (Nemo and Piplup) Revolved around the sea and my dad. Though, Almost all of them revolved around water. My Nemo one lasted from when I was either 2-3 till 4-6.. It's hard to remember because I think I never stopped liking nemo, I kinda got separated. I talk like this when I'm in a trance like state of remembrance. It happens when I think hard to remember things. It's starting to fade though. To End this, I've suspected this for ~5 Years, before anyone said anything, about autism.

My wife. She also (correctly) identified traits in our son very early.

Meanwhile, the docs had struck out on me with diagnoses of ADD, then bi-polar (I'm sure many of you went through the same hoops), They were finally stuck on medication-resistant depression "with OCD-type behaviors" when my wife finally convinced the psychiatrist to make a final referral to "rule out" autism. Needless to say there was no ruling it out!

My Mum suspected that I had Autism when I was very young, she read about it and said it sounded like me, but the doctor at the time dismissed it and said I didn't have all the traits (No one knew about Aspergers then)
So I was never diagnosed for it and didn't get the help I needed.
The Doctor I have now says she thinks I have it though.

Everyone, just that no one acknowledged it or did anything about it, because in those days "autism" = "ret*d," and I am not intellectually disabled. But everyone knew from teachers / schools to family, even before diagnosis.

Everyone and no one. Everyone I ever known or lived with has been in denial about me and being autistic. Before I was officially diagnosised I lived with self diagnosisers and would use pointless xanga/Facebook quizzes to try to say what I am.

They each had an idea of what was wrong with me but in public nothing was wrong with me and I was fine and needed to man it up between themselves they would talk about my problems.

To my face they would call me a failure.

When I went to get help and they found out that I was officially seeking help all of a sudden it was a clear there is nothing wrong with me. The guy everyone yelled at for not being able to keep a job was now a success and didn't to suck it up when I got diagnosised it pissed everyone off

A psycho-sexual health therapist, who just so happened to be a fully certified assessor of the condition, ASD.

Actually, no one in family did. However, my preschool teacher did because I was indifferent to the other children in the class. I was in the morning class and there was an autistic boy in the afternoon class.

I believe it was my kindergarten teacher, since I was diagnosed when I was in kindergarten, and my teacher would always comment on how I'd always make patterns in the sand by the tree rather than play games with the other kids, and I'd always make snorting sounds in class, which was my main stim back then. At the time, I didn't notice nor care if I was different from the other kids. They didn't interest me.

Everybody I bet, but my parents and no one ever made me aware of it until I got older and found out because they wanted me to lead a "normal life". Uhhhhh, I don't think anyone can pray away the autism.

My grandparents (both sides), my aunty and uncle and my reception teacher. Still didn't get a diagnosis until 23 years old. I had a friend that said he thinks I have Asperger syndrome and my GP said that too.

My husband actually was the one who suspected that I was autistic.