discovery criteria-Tony Attwood /Carol Gray

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for those interested - you can download the entire paper that was written about "discovery of aspie criteria", and many other papers by Tony Attwood from his website

http://www.tonyattwood.com.au/publications2.html

Thank you Linder1980-
It's worth reading-some time ago I printed a copy and gave it to my son's school

Thanks, I printed it out too but have only skim read it at this stage.

It has some great information for parents/teachers on how to give praise to an aspie child, now it makes sense to me that I never felt appreciated when I was a kid, because my teachers/parents wouldn't have known that I needed a different sort of encouragement. I've printed out a copy to give to my friend who's daughter may be Aspie

One thing I wonder about the discovery criteria: How many NTs would meet the criteria too? These things could be true of the vast majority of Aspies and a smallish minority of NTs, while still making it so that a significant number of people who meet the criteria are NT.

That's the thing, Cassia, it is not that difficult to meet this criteria in the general population. It's not unusual. You can find it in abundance in Universities and on internet forums. If someone meets this criteria and is popular you call that person an "NT" although I don't like to use this language because, to me, it causes thought chaos. Person with normal access to theory of mind, friendships, and intimate relationships can STILL have the same criteria Atwood lists. It is not exclusive to AS.
This, however, IS:



I, personally, fulfill every single one of those but you don't have to. Only two are needed to meet the DSM standard. IMO, this is what makes Asperger's "Asperger's"

Asperger's, to me, means:

not being popular
being despised
not having friends
not wanting friends
not knowing how to effectively resolve conflicts with others
panicking when talking to others, blanking out, not knowing what to "say next"
talking to others about one thing (ranting, tirading) when they don't want to hear it (going on and on)
not having patience for what other people are saying
not wanting to hear other people all the time
being exclusive and selective about information, regardless of source (hearing what I want to hear, reading only what I want to read, seeing what I want to see, paying attention only when I feel like doing so. It's inconsistency)
being difficult to get along with
not being in a good mood a lot of the time
others describe it as havinfg a "bad attitude", comes off as negativity
stubborn

this is a short list, but you get the picture.
It's not an easy disorder to have.

I suspect that 90% (or more) of the people who meet these "discovery criteria" are non-ASD - if we use the MBTI categories, I suspect the majority of "Introvert Intuitives", "Introvert Thinkers" and/or "Intuitive Thinkers" will meet the criteria.

I'm seriously going to kill the person who made up these stupid terms.

Otherwise, I fit most of the things listed, I guess.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think the point of the "discovery criteria" was for it to actually be used for diagnostic criteria. I think the point of it is that there are many positive traits that can come out of being neuro-atypical.

Those are the same traits you can find in the general population. They aren't that special. That's the thing about it.
You shouldn't be misled by this stuff. You can be what people call "NT" (although I dislike the dichotomy NT/AS because of the black/white confused thinking it generates) and have these traits.

Good point!

i also agree wholeheartedly with this.

The other issue I am in touch with in myself is that my greatest joy and peace comes wehn I do not have to constantly attempt to traverse some sort of autistic world-matrial world divide. I am best when I can find a deep level of self-acceptance in the stark fact that I AM DIFFERENT and I have a very different mindset and way of being and experiencing the world than most of the people I know. I do not "fit" with them. And i never have. I get some "material world cred" by virtue of the fact my special interest just happens to be "groovy' as perceived by the world at large. I find this in itself to be mere luck of the draw. And it also irks me because it is sympbolic of the kind of shallowness that makes little sense to my autistic way of being and thinking and seeing and experiencing. My HFA nephew currently has special interests that are trains and windmills and Beatles songs. (he is 4.) How will he fair? I do not know. But he does have a fantastic mother who is there every step of the way, and who, very luckily, lives in a country where she receives a fair bit of funding for him so he can get SOME help whilst retaining and treasuring and learning to love that autistic essence that fits in with no-one except fits in with his own skin.

Somehow, i do believe peace comes if we can accept we are exceedingly different and stop trying to rail against a world that has no place for us. In saying that, I am 50 in 3 years, and I am ONLY NOW - ONLY JUST getting a small measure of this in my life.

My hope is that younger people who are correctly diagnosed early, and who have an ASD, can find peace and self-acceptance and find rest, much earlier than me. It is a hard condition to live with. And it is also fantastic, if we can find pleasure and joy in special interests. I also think a great deal of the battle for me is overcoming cynicism in myself, and a kind of jaded malaise about my own plight and the plight of others with ASD's. For most of us, there is no place. That is awful.

Which leads me to beg the next, obvious, solutions-based question....

If there is no place for me, how can i carve out some kind of life where there is a place for me...some kind of place in my own skin and in my own world and with my own self, that is mine and that makes sense and that can fill me with some kind of peace?


That is all i really want to strive for, and all i want to encourage others to strive for in life.

I'm lucky that my parents never treated me like they thought I needed to be fixed into some kind of NT ideal. They weren't that themselves and actually held such ideals in contempt. The idea of equating your self worth with the amount of money you made was incomprehensible to them. They wanted life to be easier for me but they never wanted me to be anything other than who I was. They couldn't have cared less if we were on the team or the most popular kids in school. My father always had a bunch of projects going, whether it be trying to learn Mandarin or making dandelion wine. My oldest brother was obsessed with Greek and Roman mythology and could read hierglyphics. My parents read to us and took us fossil hunting. We always camped and saw much of the US that way. Most of my problems came from 1. my father's temper and 2. the rest of the world.