Did your parents not tell you?

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Parents tell me? WHat?
THey didn't even KNOW what AS was when I was a kid. I am 47 and was only dx'ed last year. That makes for a lot of pain and suffering. Still I am grateful for my course in life and I am really happy to hear younger people can find out earlier and sooner and THEN make decisions about how they want to proceed. Information = Choice.

My parents tried to tell me but I didn't really understand the signifinace until I was a teen. I was just too much of an airhead as a child and too involved in my special intrests to care about anything else. If a conversation was not about Lion King or animals, I just did not have the ability to tune myself in and blocked it out. I wanted to pay attention and be a good little girl but I just couldn't.

My parents didn't know either. When I first started seeing psychiatrists they told me the doctor said I had attention deficit. I guess they'd have told me about Asperger's if I'd been properly diagnose.d

When I was in school, it was suggested twice that I be evaluated. My father refused both times, telling them that AS did not excuse. He told me he would not let his child have some "made up" label.

I did not find this out until I was diagnosed many years later. I feel like I missed a lot of chances to have some help at a younger age, and I might have dealt with less depression and SI. I feel resentment.

It is also ironic, because he was told he has severe AS, and he dismisses that too.

Aspergers was not in the vocabulary of the councilors and teachers who frequently lamented to my parents the difficulties I had as a student...neither, for that matter was ADD... More often than not, my parents were inclined to stick up for me and blame the school system for my troubles...It was likely there were things that were told during the "private conferences" teachers and councilors would have with my parents that they didn't tell me...But since they didn't tell me, there was no telling what it was...I was privy, of course to the general opinions that I had emotional problems and was severely disorganized and constantly distracted and had a very hard time following directions, doing classwork or homework, and had a strong inclination for doodling on small notebooks in class and sitting out and reading during recess...but had the highest standardized test scores in the whole school...There was mention that maybe there was some sort of terminology for the issue I had, but the councilor didn't know what it was...In 6th grade, I was placed in honors classes and given accommodations for my locker problems and spent a lot of time in the library and going to academic tournaments and stuff....but you know.....no lables.....

I didn't learn about what Aspergers was until about 6 months ago. A few weeks later I asked my mother about it and got a very sharp denial that Aspergers even existed. It was clear that she didn't want to talk about it so I didn't press the issue. It's clear that in my past I was assessed for some kinds of learning issues. I had teachers that recognized there was something different about me but, I was changed schools a few times possibly because of this. In the end it's clear to me that much effort was made to cover up and deny any problems I might have had or, perhaps they just weren't understood at the time.

By contrast my brother who is 10 years younger then me was put into special schools early on. Had much attention paid to his special needs. He went on to get a degree in Physics and is now working on his PHD.

everyone lies, i just pray to GOD that my parents aren't lying to me, i'd be pissed....it would feel like i lost my best friends

I found out I was autistic from looking at my medical records.

I would love to see my old school records, but i think they no longer exist

I was taken to Bradleys Children's Hospital in Rhode Island when I was in elementary school. I remember having issues with agression, learning, and memorization. Even when i asked what i was doing 'here' all i got was the cold shoulder.

The tests that i remember involved pin pricks and puzzles. Even in my thirties I can't get a straight answer from my parents. They wondedr why i don't care that much about family. Can't trust them. I think I may try to get those records now that I think of it. I am not dignosed an apsie, but know I at least have ADD. I still can't do arithmatic well, but can do calculus.

I think my childhood agression scared them. Maybe they thought i would be a crazy church tower sniper or something.

It is much better now. Peaceful, away from family.

None of my children were ASD, but let me apply something else that I experience to this, so maybe you can see this through a different perspective.

I am what some people call 'an Empath'. You can read all about it here http://healing.about.com/cs/empathic/a/ ... aits_2.htm if you care to. I experience much of what it says there, though not all of it. Sometimes when someone reads a post that I wrote, I feel them reading it, and sometimes I co-experience some of their response to what they are reading. With many people I feel the essence of the person when I read their words, and if the person whose words I am reading, or who I am talking to is also another empath, I can feel that in them too. I LOVE it when I find another person who is an empath, because they can feel when I am thinking of them, and this enables a kind of telepathic connection where we are able to boost one another's mood, and energy level. The interface of the connection is sort of a subconscious process, that kind of functions by itself, or can. Something else about this is when I feel a person's essence, my automatic response is to feel great love for that person.

Now it's not uncommon for me to encounter someone who has this gift, but doesn't know it. I didn't discover that I had it until I was 40something. Well here's the delima. Should I tell them? How should I tell them? Would they be receptive to this? Should I first connect with them and see if they feel it in themselves, or would they find that too uncomfortable? What if the person is very young like say 7? Or 13? Is that too early to tell them?

I remember when I was in 7'th grade. I would have loved to have discovered during all my frustration that I was actually gifted at something. I don't know what I would have done with that knowledge then. I don't know if I would have encountered another Empath in small town West Texas. I don't know. That was back before the internet was invented, and the idea of actually possessing a personal computer would have seemed preposterous, unless you were a millionaire, since everyone knew that computers required the space of a rather large room to house.

I can see parents thinking, "Maybe they're wrong." or "Lets wait and watch her and see if it's as bad as they say." Is she too young to be told? Maybe I can find a gentle way to break it to her. Maybe?

I understand, though I'm shocked at how few people never caught on to the more visible signs of my autism like my stimming, pacing, flapping, awkward walking, little-to-none eye contact. And people notice me a lot and they'll get on me for these things and it's like people never seem to put two and two together.

I've always been irritated by the fact that people insist that I was normal yet at the same time theyll get on me for not being normal. It's mentally messed me up. I knew something was wrong with me for a very long time (mentally and socially and emotionally) but nobody, not even my parents who had the signs waved in their face every freaking day, would believe me and would just insist that my behaviors were done willingly. So I both relieved and really frustrated when I diagnosed and learned that I was right all along. I'm likely to remain bitter towards people about this regardless of what was going through their heads at the time.

So tell them you think they're very perceptive about what other people are thinking. That's unlikely to frighten anyone; it'll be taken as a compliment. I honestly don't think it's anything more than being very perceptive about peoples' state of mind, in the first place--with the caveat that the human brain and its processing of other peoples' words, moods, and ideas is an amazing system which we still haven't completely figured out, and which can glean amazing amounts of insight from the tiniest cues. Anybody who has seen NTs practically telepath their ideas to each other with a few grunts and some indecipherable gestures knows that!

I found out i was on the spectrum in boot camp.

Well I wish you luck with that, though I suspect that in the long run, the person who will be wounded the most by that approach is you.

What my parent's didn't tell me until I was much older was that I puzzled my school teachers because all the aptitude tests showed that I should have been acing everything I attempted, but instead I was an extreme underachiever. I also puzzled my teachers because I acted like I didn't hear well, but on the hearing screening that they did then, I kept demonstrating well above average hearing acuity. I think they all concluded that I was just lazy, or that I didn't care to try so there was not much point in trying to work with me. My parents used to ground me for six weeks when I got a bad grade on a report card. Now that's effective incentive for you; grounding an introvert. I was grounded for most of high school. No one was looking for ADD or Autism, or any other cause for underachievment particularly back then, or at least not in my little neck of the woods. I remember in sixth grade reading about this new diagnosis that was just starting to become popular called "Learning Disability" and pondering to myself, wondering what it would be like to have one, never dreaming that I knew perfectly well what that was like.