Did You Get Treatment / Intervention?

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No, Thank Garlic. That would have been hell. I did have one doctor suggest that I go to some special class to change my eating problems. I was like, "hell no." (this was a couple years ago.)

No, just some speech to attempt to correct my lisp.

That failed, and it is now probably worse than ever.

Speech therapy; it helped me immensely.

(She was a really nice lady too--I didn't mind going at all.)

I did it all on my own, pretty much. No special benefits, just help from my parents, my own efforts, a few realizations, and some acquired learning.

It didn't exist, but did speech therapy when in first grade. I was just labeled as an under achiever. The first real inkling of something else came in the Army. I think I was 21 at that time.

The real key we found, especially with our oldest son was identifying the co-morbid disorders and treating them correctly. Nothing the boys take or have done other than that one early intervention project related directly to Asperger's. The numbers seem to indicate 50% or more of us will be subject to a mood disorder. Depression is (relatively) easy to deal with if properly recognized and treated. The problem is most seem to have a bi-polar or cycling condition. Antidepressants can really set that off. Mood stabilizers are key. OCD and Tourette's are also common. With luck, the OCD won't be too bad, Tourette's... as long as they don't have coprolalia (and only a small percentage do) it's just annoying and sometimes embarrassing. It's a lot easier to get people to understand why your six year old wants to cluck like a chicken than it is to explain why he's spewing out something that sounds like a Jerry Springer soundtrack... or a rap album, I guess.

Maybe that's the thing that gets me, yes we need to treat the mood swings and the tics, but autism?? KNOWLEDGE it the only treatment I needed there. Knowledge that "YES" I am different and "YES" there is a reason and here it is. KNOWING that I have to consciously learn body language/facial cues etc is the only tool needed.

Oh, and we're often offensive.... usually without meaning to be.

I didn't receive any treatment apart from medication that only made things worse. I wasn't diagnosed AS until I was 15...before then, another psychiatrist thought that I had some kind of psychotic disorder and all she did was prescribe medication and as I said, it didn't work.
Oh...I did do a life skills class last year...can't say that I learn't much from it...but I did enjoy it atleast.

I did speech therapy for a year or so, and it did help a bit.

The only treatment I ever got was Adderall XR, and I don't even take that anymore. Bear in mind that I was diagnosed when I was about eleven years old, back in 2002.

Sorry, double post. My internet connection went down as I was posting this.

Did I get treatment? Oh, yes, I got treatment!! ! I was given medications, I was put in special classes, dragged to doctors and psychiatrists. This was back in the Sixties when Skinner was all the rage. They called it Behavior Modification. I learned later in college that Skinner wasn't interested in motivation, he was only interested in results. Boy howdy were they ever interested in results! They wanted a nice quiet docile child who would give no trouble and do what she was told. I was frequently put in a cubicle sized box for acting out. I remember well the first time I ever saw such a thing. I was walking with a teacher, and I ever so innocently asked, what was it for? She said, "You'll find out." And I did later on that very afternoon, for an infraction I still don't understand.

That interaction was very typical of the type of "intervention" I received. Yes, I found out. I found out a lot of things. I also found out that my experience was/is not unusual, that kids who wind up at the mercy of the system can expect very little mercy. And that cruelty is not defined by the victims, who have no voice anyway, but by those in power. It's for your own good. It was necessary. Look how well you've turned out. I guess they are right, but I wonder what has been lost in the process.

No treatment, every shrink I went to was a quack. I was smarter than all of them. The best help I received was, actually reading the symptoms and other info on AS. It made me feel like I had a place in this world. Now medicated, I am much better off than before.

AspieDave: I agree with you about treating the comorbids. But, I feel that in most cases (especially ours) the comorbids define the Autism. I have yet to meet any other kid with our kid's range and quantity of comorbids that were not Autistics. You just don't find it. It doesn't exist. When you see kids acting that way, you know they're Autistic. Many of the comorbids are listed as Autism qualifiers when doing diagnosis.

Brittany/Post: Nobody has prescribed meds to us, but I'm okay with others using them. Ritalin is pretty useful among our friends for their kids.

ClosetAspy: People can be so cruel. I think 30-40 years ago, a kid like ours (before intervention) would have been institutionalized and left to the mercy of who knows what. Intervention has come a long way. Now, you have a group of people of your own chosing to much degree. But, years past, even some of the best out there like Lovaas had some questionable methods at one point. I've read that he finally saw the light.

No one bothered to diagnose me past just calling me that weird freaky kid until I was an adult . . . so no, I didn't get any treatment.

I had neurofeedback done and it helped a little. Before I would be too afraid to ask a teacher a question, or to borrow something from a student, even if I liked them. But after I recieved treatment it helped with that and I can ask people are sorts of things. It's little things like that that neurofeedback helped with.