People say that ASD is not a DD, but a neurological differen

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I've never been able to relate my ASD to the concept of developmental delay, perhaps because up to the age of about 9 years old I was ahead of the pack academically.

But I've heard the idea before that ASD isn't a disability but merely a difference. I think that's both right and wrong. ASD is in some respects a disability, but society judges differences from the norm rather harshly, and so over-labels us as disabled, inferior, etc. If you can get in with people who don't judge so much, then you won't feel so disabled.

What makes Autism disabling is how society treats us.

What defines it as a developmental disability or a developmental disorder is not how you do academically. Some Autistic people have an intellectual disability, or what used to be called mental retardation, but that is not required in Autism and there are more Autistic people who do not have an intellectual delay than there are Autistic people who do. So many of us are or were ahead of the pack academically.

Where you see the delays in Autism are socially and emotionally. You can't get an Autism diagnosis if you don't have significant impairment in those areas. If you are self aware, you might notice that you are significantly younger than your chronological age emotionally and you probably have a younger social functioning age as well. You might also be delayed and impaired in certain cognitive areas like executive functioning. You cannot be diagnosed as Autistic without these kinds of impairments. I am sure that people like Elon Musk and Albert Einstein and Mozart and John Elder Robison were also ahead of their peers academically.

In fact, being ahead academically as a young child, yet struggling socially and emotionally is one of the biggest ways that Autistic kids are noticed as Autistic.

I guess social "impairments" tend to be more relative to how the other people feel about the situation, which depends on who those people are, so if the group is very narrow-minded and intolerant of harmless differences, they'll create a disability problem that needn't exist.

The more practical impairments tend to be rather absolute - e.g. short-term memory problems. It's hard to argue that such a thing could be anything other than a disability, though we could often wonder why society insists that some "skills" are so important. If for example a child didn't get the concept of competing against their classmates, and instead kept trying to work with them to solve the problems collectively, to my mind that's an advanced state of being, but the teachers might have a different view.

My good academic performance depended on the fact that the teaching was done very clearly, so later on when they expected me to make sense of their meaning from the context or whatever, I couldn't follow what they were saying any more.

I've heard it suggested that Einstein would fail an IQ test because he'd see too many different possible answers that the testers had never thought of, and he wouldn't be able to decide which answer they wanted. Some of the tests that society uses are too reductionist to capture the truth.

That makes sense.

Again autism is just an umbrella term for multiple neurological conditions that all have overlapping symptoms but haven’t been properly isolated independently.

In around 30% of autistic people there is an identifiable genetic cause of up to 100 genes effected. Some have 1 others have more genes effected.

In 70% of cases the causes are unknown.

So it’s obvious there are multiple autism’s involved.

So you can’t generalize disability/ not disability as it depends what autism they have and how it effects you.

30% of us are ID another 30% have epilepsy that’s quite disabling. Where others particularly celebs have hardly any visible problems at all.

Don't assume that Autistic celebs have no visual problems. You don't see their day to day lives. Many people think I have no visual problems at all until they actually get to know me.

A very similar situation to mine . I was doing better up to the age of 9 than boys who later went on to take scholarships to get into public school. That happened after getting mumps.

When you had mumps, did you get encephalitis?

Well some have careers, friends & families which is more than most autistic people, not saying they don`t have some issues but nothing in comparison to some of us.

But anyway autism is not one condition that deserves one single answer in so far as disability / difference & its wrong to speak of it as such

A lot of Autistic people have careers and families and even friends.

I hate us vs them mentality! Autism Spectrum Disorder are groups of neurodevelopmental disorders that effects communication and interaction. Being developmentally delayed is more than just an R word or Severe Learning Disorder. It's not like everyone with developmental delay is stupid. This comparison is an abomination!

No.Just plain mumps.

Back when we were kids in the 1960s, kids used to routinely get the Mumps. The vaccine for Mumps wasn't developed until I was 6 years old. I'm lucky I never got the Mumps.

One possible (rare) complication was "mumps encephalitis."

I guess I was an exception to that rule. My academic performance went south a few months after turning 9. I found out many decades later that my pre teen IQ was around the 150 mark. Tests created and/or normed by a psychometrician, that I've done since 2020, back that up to some extent. I say 'to some extent' because that is based on averaging of results which is not the most accurate way of measuring.your IQ.

I. have been described by some as a 'gifted underachiever'. I did struggle significantly, emotionally and socially. Was subjected to a lot of verbal bullying.

That makes sense.