(I apologize in advance for the long text, maybe you can skip the preamble)
I have been asking myself that question for about a year now. Of course I’m not in a position to diagnose him, but the problem is that I don’t know how to ask my 22-year old son that question. The reason that I bother asking him is that ever since he is attending university he is facing some problems. There are some problems that have to do with living by himself (it’s all in the simple things), other problems have to do with school.
But what’s more problematic is that I have the feeling that he is isolating himself from any human relationship. He is spends most of his time alone, I once brought this up in a conversation and he I had the feeling like he was about to cry, he than replied to me that he doesn’t made any friends at university (he has been attending it for 2-years). There are this people in his class that he makes music with and on some occasions goes out with to have a drink or attend a party. But that is actually a part of the problem, he told me that he can’t stand to attend a party, and that’s all that students want to do on a night out.
He never liked to go out for anything else than to have a drink. He has 3 good friends (including his brother) here in our hometown.
But they don’t see each other as much as they used to. And I feel like that is the root of his problem. He used to be with his older brother all the time, but his brother has a girlfriend now, they study in two separate cities, etc. He told me that he can’t make friends without the presence of his brother, said he can’t open up or feel comfortable enough to do so.
So my concern is that he might end up feeling lonely, and I have the feeling he doesn’t have someone whom he can talk to, whenever he is facing certain problems. He has always been dealing with his problems alone, I mean that in the sense that he won’t talk to anyone whenever he has a crush on someone, or whenever he is hurt or feeling down, you know those kind of ‘banal’ things.
About a year and a half ago I took an autism screening test, it just popped up somewhere and I decided to take it , just for fun. I scored low, my husband – who also wanted to join in on the ‘fun’- scored a bit higher. Then I asked my son who was around, if he wanted to take the test, he was a little bit annoyed when I asked him this, but he ended up taking the test, and he scored high (according to the test he had a score that was typical for people with high-functioning autism).
At the time I didn’t really think anything of it, but now I recently stumbled upon something while borrowing his laptop, that made me think about some of my son’s traits that I consider weird or special. I feel like a diagnosis might help him with his struggles he is facing at the moment. I would like to know if the following traits are typical for people on the autism spectrum.
Maybe start off with what I saw when I borrowed his laptop. I just needed it to look something up on the internet, when I saw a word-document opened up on his screen. What I saw was a 100 and something paged document, it looked like something out of a history book, on one page there was a description of some kind of city on the next where two maps, one of an island and one of that city – the one that was described on the previous page I guess - . So I asked him what class he was studying for, he saw that word-document and told me he that wasn’t studying anything, “this all comes from me”, he said. So it turns out he made up 4 fictional countries, each with its own history, maps, people, geography, etc. I know it might not be that abnormal, but I found it a bit strange that this is how a 22-year old student keeps himself busy. That’s when I started to look up on autism more, and I couldn’t help seeing my son in those lists of characteristics. Here are some of his other habits:
- He used to play football in our backyard, always on his own, he once joined a club, but he quit, said that a team sport was not for him. He kept playing football on our backyard though, I once caught him there talking to himself (again it looked like he was making up his own stories).
- About that, he kind of always has done this. Making comics when he was a kid, or act out stories with legos.
-He had one friend during his childhood, they always played with legos together. At one of his birthday parties we invited his class, a friend of ours made an effort designing a game for him and his friends to do during the party, goal was defeating some kind of evil spirit, so they had to do all these tasks in order to do so. Everyone was outside except for my son – the main hero in this game -, he was inside the house, playing with his legos.
- This is something that still happens a lot, he is very sensitive to sounds, touch and especially smells. He sometimes drives me nuts with that last one. Because of this he doesn’t like cheese, he doesn’t even need to smell the cheese, he won’t join us at the dinner table whenever cheese is in some way present. Even mentioning it can destroy his appetite. One time we came to pick him up from school, so that he didn’t have to walk home, but we bought some cheese on our way to get him, he entered the car, immediately smelled it, left the vehicle wanting to walk home.
- He always had these ‘quick’ obsessions, throughout his life he one time became obsessed with dinosaurs (the ankylosaurs in particular), Ancient Egypt, the Moon, tower cranes, WW2 planes (where he was fixated on the Japanese Zero plane), synthesizers, etc .
- He has always been obsessed with movies and music. That’s what he spends most of his time on, sealing himself in his room, listening to music or watching movies. He doesn’t like visiting concerts or festivals, but he is almost always in his room listening to music. He eventually learned himself to play a couple of instruments and now writes his own music.
- Something that doesn’t really bother me, but it is something that bothers a lot of other people. He is always fidgeting, if someone asks him to stop it he says it makes him feel good, than he continues. It comes in all sorts of forms and mostly combined. If we are in a restaurant he starts peeling labels of bottles or tearing up drink cards. He also seems to enjoy scratching the skin around his thumb nails, sometimes causing it to bleed or get infected.
- During his childhood he had some trouble getting potty-trained, also had a lot of nightmares and sleepwalked a lot.
- This is one that made me doubt about him having autism. He has a good sense of humor, even a sense of sarcasm. Though you need to know him a while before you can appreciate his humor. It mostly comes from his wits though, and sometimes he makes people laugh unintentionally. This is also is problematic in some way. Once being accused of being a racist after he gave a presentation on the USA in the 20’ies or something, where he referred to a picture of working Afro-Americans as ‘cheap labor forces’ instead of Afro-Americans.
- To end, another one that seems atypical for people with autism. When he was about 5 or 6 years old, a doctor from the psycho-medical-social centre did some tests on him and his fellow classmates. He told us that our son had an abnormally fast reaction speed.
I’m gonna stop here because it is long enough (though I could go on), my only questions are if these traits might be a good indication for autism? And how do I confront my son with the fact that I think he might have autism? I thank you for your time reading this, and I hope somebody will be able to enlighten me, as I obviously don't really know anything about autism.
22 Nov 2015, 8:42 am
