Age and How you Identify with the 'Conditions'

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Hi Garyww,

I'm not sure what to make of the age gap phenomenon, but I can say I'm somewhere in between in terms of life experience. I'm 23 now, born smack in the middle of the eighties when autism was virtually unheard of and most parents were filled with fear their child would be "slow" ,"disruptive", and even "emotional disturbed".Few professionals has heard of it and had just began to trickle down to the general populace.

Although, I was diagnosed(1994) when I was twelve--and perhaps that made a difference. In short, I have a piece of both worlds. Of dealing with people who had no understanding of autism and (a larger portion than not) of people who did...or at least were willing to try,even if they didn't understand. So yes, there are different experiences closely related to the times we in which we all grew up.

But our differences don't have to stop us from understanding each other...or working together to change the world for the better.

Hello Gary

Since I grew up knowing that age and sex gaps didn't really exist, yet being enthralled in understanding every facet of the makeup of all humans: therefore, I cataloged all aspects of every person up till now. What are you really asking for? Details of a certain particular action or reaction?

Sincerely,

Alissa

As an even older fogie than garyww, I do see somewhat of an age gap here, but it doesn't seem to affect how people respond to each other. My perspective is very different from anyone else's because when I was young enough to have been diagnosed, Asperger's barely existed as an identified condition. I learned about it a few years ago, and had to dig deep into my memories to be sure that it was an accurate self-diagnosis.

When you've grown up without knowing that your traits are disabilities and have labels, you just adapt and learn as best you can. I try to picture what my childhood would have been like with today's interventions, counseling, etc., and I'm grateful to have been left in ignorance. But I know that's not necessarily true for everyone. Taking the attitude that it's all about the money to be made is very cynical and ignores that some people do need help of some kind. My only objection to some of the current versions of help is that they seem to foster helplessness and continued dependence into adulthood, rather than working toward self-sufficiency.

It is better now than when the money was in electroshock, Thorazine, and ice water baths. The real Medical Profession says there are no Autism drugs, but that does not stop the Psychos from playing doctor. Helplessness and dependency produce billable hours. Their view is, working toward self-sufficiency is for the Social Workers, after they get their ret*d money.

I also think that many will speak for autism, for $20,000,000 a year, others want to be King of the Rainmen, bringing them into the Neurodivirsity Movement, where the leadership jobs are spoken for.

The only person that has done as you sugggest, giving broad and free help is Alex Plank.

I think it has done wonders, we can define what we are not.

The larger problem before us is for us alone, "What are we?"

I do not see myself as different, I see everyone as different.

I see no possibility of cure, or even reasonable treatment, for the Human Condition.

There is nothing about me that should change to satisify the whim of some vauge them.

My thought and perception may not be common, but it is not exceptional, at the Patent Office.

There I am a very ordinary person, subject to the same testing as anyone else.

That I should lose my particular interest and way of thinking and seeing, and become a highly socially dependant person, would not benefit me, or the world.

That I should take up the Disability Rights banner, would claim two things I do not believe.

I am not disabled, and the only right I know is self.

Being born on this planet entitles you to very little, and a lot.

Some people like me have done great things, others have wasted their lives.

At 62 I study much harder than I ever did in school, and have for all my life.

It will not take greatness and fame to please me, only knowing I did what I could with my time.

Wealth and power are small compared to knowing the names of the birds and their songs, the name of the tree they rest in, and the life of the insects they eat.

I live in the great teacher, the one who gives knowlege that none knows, in a constant stream.

Many students have written the books, learned the ways, built the machines, in an ever upward learning. Some gather knowledge through observing, some record it, some apply it, some spread it.

Hans Asperger defined a type, a person with strong interests, and little social concern. His expressed view was they were not mentally ill, disabled, defective, just a type of person with normal to above intelligence, who preferred knowledge of things over current social fads.

Though we will see many of the same traits, imagine replacing Asperger's with painters, writers, teachers, scientists, those with a subject directed life. What treatment or cure would be in order?

They are not ordinary people, they are rare, and they support the growth of art and knowledge. Few will become rich and famous.

Can we judge them by normal people, those who have not read a book since school, and then faked it, got by with a C-, and have overfilled the world? Just because they are the vast majority does that make them right? If so, I stand against Democracy.

My largest gap is with the partly educated, who see it as a weapon. They are educated, and so armed for battle.

It is no surprise to me that many of the clearest thinking comes from closest to the spring, and if I cannot explain what I mean to clear water, I most likely do not know what I am saying. Truth is not mine, it is what can be freely exchanged.

I see much good in them learning early, most of the time. Their helpers I have strong doubts about.

I would change nothing about my life, but I strongly advise against that path. There are better ways for us to get through life, and keep it enjoyable.

Look around, just being human is a problem. Being us is worse, in some ways, better in others, and we are better at focusing on the good. Like every other creature, we find what feeds us, we find shelter.

Wrong Planet has given me several things, more people than I have ever understood before. People with very different lives, yet we join well at the edges, and people that we totally disagree on everything. The last are great and some have turned into long term letter writing. We are good friends, and still in total disagreement. Our difference is less than our sameness.

I have met some serious thinkers, a quarter to a third my age. The thought would be just as stong if they had white beards to the waist, but the girls would look silly.

It is said in Science you dream in your teens, and produce in your twenties. They are the fountainhead. They teach the best way possible, by living the truth.

What us oldies can add is it does not change, but we get better at it, and the majority are something of late bloomers to our ways. Doing what you love is the best life. I also see a pattern of our interests keeping us young, and starting new when others are retiring.

That we will be opposed, that not all of us make it, the young already know. They will get through better than we did. Great sorrow brings forth determination. We will make it better.

We are no longer alone.

I was born in 1980, which is also the year autism entered the DSM. It's important to note that while this is when autism became most officially diagnosable, that almost no autistic people actually meet the 1980 criteria (some might appear to if you don't know what you're looking at, but almost none (if any) actually do). The 1987 criteria were the first criteria that would actually fit most autistic people. And it takes these things time to propagate, so it's actually within the past ten years or so that people have begun to accept even the 1987 criteria (let alone later ones) with any real frequency (this is one reason that autism diagnoses have risen so far and so fast). The early to mid-1990s is when diagnoses actually started picking up (I was first diagnosed during this period, in 1995), and the late 1990s and early 2000s is when it actually became reasonably common.

So I would make the boundary both later, and fuzzier, than you make it. (Later because it takes longer for these things to propagate than it takes to write them down in the DSM, and fuzzier because there's so much variation in how and where they propagate. After all, there are still some outliers who believe in the refrigerator mother theory of autism.)

Yup. And don't get me started on the "Asperger's is just disguised giftedness" and "Asperger's is a fake diagnosis for problem kids", "Asperger's doesn't cause problems", and "Aspies are losers who just need to get a life" theories. There are professionals who believe them, too.

I think Asperger's is getting all this stuff now because of the steep rise in diagnosis and the newness of the label. Maybe in ten or twenty years, people will accept its legitimacy like they now do with autism.

Okay, age and its influence upon how the world is perceived.

Within the aspie and possibly autie differences, I think the role of age and perception is different than that of individual who are wired standardly.

With us, it seems, intelligence is amazing as young as it is as older, so does apply to the same principals: cognitive reasoning, perception, creative influences as that will apply to us when younger, apply when older. So most of what applies in life, will be the same when we are younger, counter and including the same when we are older.

Except! Experiences. That is right. You can be the smartest person on the planet and understand naught! As long as you know not romance, you will continue to dig your hole of misunderstanding, deeper and deeper, out of the natural flow of I must understand. As soon as romance rears its head, that facet of perceptions in that area of experience can then begin to move forward. One of many aspects applies to the I've been held back by myself scenario. Not just romance, it was an example.

There is a 17 year old kid on here. This person is very intelligent and highest in most forms of functioning, therefore this person believes themself to be a genious indeed. Most watching this person would assume the same thing. If you watch closely enough though, you would see that all of their perceived info lacks enough experience to be purely complete.

Couldn't tell this kid these things, they would rail and rebel, leaving themselves far more entrenched in their beliefs of intellectual power. Therefore, cutting off a greater chance that which might become available, if no intervention occurred. This person has to come to the understandings upon their own accord, or have a question answered, even if they were not ready to the answer, or the question.

It may take 10 years, or the knowledge may be integrated wholly in a matter of weeks. One never knows *Winks*

Just try so hard and remember to stick to that which matters most in the highest for truth and all respect. We can all get everything we need, if we want it enough, And our intentions are impeccable.

Each of our brains are wired minutely differently. Think of the rewiring, and what it directly associates with by proxy of actual touch, in the brain. Those are the areas one must work to learn, to make it to the outside world.

So hard to explain, maybe if someone asks the right question, it will be easier. Okay, later.