Autism Diagnostic Assessment

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Autism Services have finally made contact with my husband in regard to further assessment of his Aspergers. He has already been diagnosed by a clinical psychologist, but he requires confirmation in order to access services. There is a lot of questions on the form about his childhood, but unfortunately I can only comment on the last 12 years. My husbands family are overseas and he refuses to discuss this diagnosis with them.
i am hoping that my husband does not "slip through the system" because he cannot clearly identify any problems he had as a child. He claims a fairly normal childhood from a social perspective, although he cannot remember much in the way of specific details.
I remember from the outset I thought my husband's family were odd. Very routine oriented, structured home environment, nobody talked about anything of substance. Not a lot of emotional displays. I suppose I would describe them as a clinical family. Doing what they had to do but not really wanting to or feeling it. I put this statement in bold because this is a really good way of describing my husband.

It seems to me that his symptoms have worsened as an adult. (does that happen?)
I remember arguments and discussions we had from the early days of our relationship which were odd and/or confusing. Years of therapy did nothing to help. And there is absolutely no doubt that he struggles with social communication (he is very talkative on repetitive topics and cannot pick up on social cues). He is really struggling in the employment arena because of his "executive functioning" issues. Employers expect so much these day and my husband has loads of difficulty with comprehension. So any help he can get from Autism Services would really help.

I wonder what others experiences are of the diagnostic criteria? I have heard it is quite strict. (We are in Australia).

This can be a tough situation. In order to get proper diagnosis--and it looks like that is what he is needing--then he must have information from his early childhood development. I was diagnosed improperly with Aspergers. I say it was improper because, although the clinic does have qualifications to diagnose ASDs, I was not given the standardized tests and interviews, and was asked very little about my early childhood development. When I need paper work, I had to pay someone else to have it redone. The second psychologist absolutely refused to see without a parent (or someone who could speak about my early childhood development). I could not even ask the information and then bring it in. She said obviously some people do have parents or whatever, so psychs can give a likelihood of the presence of an ASD, but not a full, proper diagnosis. I was even "threatening" to go elsewhere, hoping I could weasel out of the parent interview, so they definitely were not telling me things for the money as they still would not see me without a parent.

Anyway, what the psych said is that it matters most what the person was like as a toddler and child, far moreso than what they are like as adults. ASDs are something that are always present. While regression can technically happen anytime, autism does not just appear out of nowhere. It is something a person is born with. If your husband did not have signs of it as a child, then chances of him having autism are slim. If he did have signs of it as an autism, then he like is somewhere on the spectrum but will not be able to go through the interview properly alone.

There are a lot of other conditions that can manifest itself with some ASD-like symptoms later in life, even when a person does not have autism. SOME symptoms are not unique to autism (just the culmination of most or all of the symptoms are). If his first diagnosis based on what he is like now rather than what he was like when he was a kid, included no interview with a parent (etc), and your husband cannot even remember any problems as a child, then it is a possibility he doesn't even have autism, but rather one of those conditions that can produce ASD-like sometimes in some people. Perhaps this is something to explore with the psychologist as well (I am not saying he definitely is not on the spectrum, just saying that due to the info you gave there COULD be another explanation, so you might not want to rule everything else out.)

Thanks. I will have a look into this. Personally, I think that his lack of insight into his own symptoms as a child is due to his parents playing a major role in keeping everything "just so". Until my husband was actually asked direct questions about his ways of thinking, social issues etc, I had no idea that he thought like that. After 12 years of being with him i felt like i never really knew him and completely misunderstood him.

Apart from my observations of his family being unusually structured, the only other information i have is that my husband had a short attention span. his interests were limited to his main interest which he still adheres to today. he was a very unsettled baby/toddler at night times. comprehension was always a problem.
When I met my husband his parents had helped set him up in a flat. i remember finding a little notebook that his mother had given him at the age of 30 to use for maintaining his budget. the flat was very much "unlived" in. eg: his clothes were still hanging on a dry cleaning rack rather than put in the wardrobe. everything was pristine. my husband had no interest in improving or decorating his environment. his father would come over occasionally to do maintenance work.
i know they were very against my husband giving up his job after 16 years to move to Australia. I often wonder if they knew things about his coping abilities that they never talked about.