Which of the following assumptions annoys you more?

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1 for sure, if anyone think I don't have AS I'd take it as a compliment.

I'm not formally diagnosed, so I different views on it and a list of annoying assumptions. There were the assumptions before my sister had a diagnosed son... She kept telling me I should have known things I didn't know. Now she picks my brain for insights into his behavior as if I know why the little goofball does what he does, because she's gone and diagnosed me based on my childhood behavior. I don't have a problem with being AS if there are measurable criteria to help make the conclusion, but what I have is my mom and sister thinking I have it because one grew up with me getting her goat all the time and because my mom really didn't contribute much to my upbringing and I didn't pick much of anything good up on my own and I believe she feels better thinking I had an obscure syndrome to soothe her guilt and for her to use when she apologizes for me (who asked her to?).`

The first one. I get my mum telling me what my level of empathy is. How the hell does she know? She can't read my mind and so should not make assumptions, I have plenty of empathy just because it's not obviously displayed it doesn't meant there's not a lot there, because there is.

My mum tells me a lot about my own abilities and stuff too, and I agree with you.

Number 1 annoys me the most. Not that anybody has said either of those things to me so far - I don't tell many people about it, and I can argue the hind legs off a donkey so they'd best beware if they come out with anything so glib.

So I based my preference on how I feel about those sentences when I myself think them. When I was first diagnosed I tended to feel 1. a lot, and it stopped me trying to do a lot of stuff. But I got over it and am now regularly pushing at the boundaries to find out for myself what I can and can't do. So now I occasionally think "what if I didn't have it as strongly as the tests said?" That's a pleasant thought to me and it keeps me from falling into defeatism. It made my day when I disclosed my DX to a couple of friends and one of them said "bloody hell, you sure keep that covered up well!" I can't imagine anybody who liked me just wading in and invalidating my belief with "no you don't have it." And anybody who doesn't like me can push off.

Indeed, or a guarantee to fail at everything and being unable to do anything whatsoever because you're simply too insane to do it successfully.

''You CANNOT attend college. Imagine the panic attack you'll have once you enter the full canteen during lunch break.''

The thing that's annoying about #2 is more along the lines of "If you can do so well at this thing, then why can't you do this other thing? Is it because you're not really 'disabled' but just lazy?" At least that's what I assume their thought process goes like.

People have this insulting notion that "disabled" = "inferior" = "can't do anything". They also have this stupid logic that "above average intelligence" = "above average success" => "above average intelligence" + "struggling with life" = "lazy" + "not trying hard enough". The concept of relative strengths and weaknesses goes right over their head. They can't seem to get it through their thick skulls. They also think people who are truly mentally 'disabled' should be patronized and treated like idiots.

1.

A couple of years back, a teacher told me I couldn't sign up to go on a school trip to Spain because he believed Aspies can't travel. We ended up having a massive argument in front of my entire year. There are people who need to realise that people with Aspergers/Autism are not automatically idiots who should be talked down to.

Very important for us parents to remember.

Question: if I phrase something as "you will need to learn how to make up for X, because that is something you have trouble with" how do you hear it? Are you hearing that you can't do something, or are you motivated to figure out the work-around? Obviously, I would hope for the later but one can never know what the other really hears.

How totally un-Aspie of you

Ok, that is a joke. I'm like you in that, if someone tells me there is something I can't do I take it as a challenge. But my AS son, father and husband have not been like that. I don't know if that comes from a more NT gene or a more AS gene, but I totally have it, whatever it is (I have no idea if I'm AS or NT; certainly a mix, maybe leaning more to the NT side - online tests say NT EXPECT the eyes one).

How misinformed of her. Read enough forums like this one and you learn that many AS love to travel. My son certainly does.

I would say 2 has bothered me most so far, as I'm newly diagnosed and still telling people (a very select few) who are going through the denial phase. However, the moment someone hits me with #1, I'll be far more than annoyed, I'll be angry. After all, the reason I went 30 years without a diagnosis is that I can do lots of things that aspies supposedly can't.

Most annoying assumption: that I give a damn about how you feel about my ability do X, Y or even Z. Hello, let's talk different world views here? How about my views on your unsufferable inability to catalog 257 different types of pencil lead?

Number one annoys me more. I have never suffered from AS. My real issues, the ones that jeopardize my ability to have a good life, are the psychological fallout of low expectations people had for me because I had a lable. I was a good kid, a rule-follower, like many Aspies. When I was advised not to take risks or try anything that might challenge me, I complied. It took dumping me into a crazy, public school with more asbestos than oxygen in the air, giving me a forty-pound instrument, and telling me to defend it with my life, learn to repair it, and play it without any instruction in most of those areas to convince me that I might be a capable person. The second one bothers me less because I do not care what anyone thinks of me.

Seems to me they are both "people with Aspergers can't do X, Y, and Z". They only differ in whether Asperger's is taken as the given, or X, Y, and Z. If one it true, the other can't be.

that is exactly the same with me!
whenever someone said I can't do something, I always want to prove them wrong!! !

my bf said to me: you won't make a single friend in uni...

and I proved him wrong by making two friends. not like very close friend tho. but good enough