I wonder...

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I was just browsing through the Parents post section, and while reading some of the posts I got to wondering if I really would have wanted to have been diagnosed in childhood, rather than finding out at age 22. My parents never worried about how to approach certain subjects or raise a child who was "different", since they didn't even know. They just raised me like a "normal" kid. Of course it made some things more difficult, for example I was always being punished for things that they didn't realize I really couldn't help, and since nobody could tell my teachers that I wasn't NT, they just thought I was lazy and choosing not to live up to my potential. It sucked, but I think I prefer it to the alternative. I may have some social difficulties and strange habits/thoughts/etc., but in general I think I'm pretty normal. I can pretend I am pretty well; people just think I'm quiet or unfriendly unless they get to know me well. And I'm certainly not slow or "special ed". But if I had been diagnosed as a child, would they have put me in special ed? Would I have been forever labelled as a "special needs" child? Would I have had a childhood full of support groups, special classes, and nervous parents wondering how to best deal with their Special child? Books about Asperger's, so I could understand my condition?

I think that would have been torture.

I mean, it's great that parents of Aspie kids want to make their kids' lives easier and understand how best to deal with them. I'm just afraid that with all this new awareness going on, we are going to lose our identity as smart geeks, and gain an identity as developmentally delayed. They're going to confuse us with other parts of the autism spectrum and assume that if we're really smart, we must be savants. We'll be raised as People With Asperger's, not people with Asperger's. We'll be thrown in special ed. People will immediately lower their expectations of us. An so on and so forth.

It almost makes me wish that only people with Asperger's were told about it. Like a secret club. The idea of having our own country is sounding better and better.

I've thought about this too. (I didn't find out until I was 26). While I wouldn't want to feel like too much of an alien, I think that honesty is the best policy. I mean, you're going to feel like a freak whether you're dx'ed or not... you might as well know that there's an explanation for your state and that there are other people like you.

Having said that, it's important to accept yourself, but still try to make the most of your life. This may not happen if your parents/teachers treat you differently. So the approach is important.

There's a song that says "I would never undo the past that made me". If I had known I was an Aspie, I probably wouldn't have worked as hard as I did to try and be independent and to fit in. On the other hand, I would have been happier overall.