HFA or AS?

Post Reply New Topic

I never really understood the difference between high-functioning autism and asperger's syndrome, since they are both forms of "light" autism, but it seems almost certain that I have an ASD on the high end of the spectrum.

When I was a young child, I displayed some traits of Kanner's Syndrome: I didn't necessarily have delay in language as a whole, but my speech and my vocabulary was unintelligible and I required speech therapy. Over time, it improved, but occassionally people still couldn't understand what I was saying. And here's another obvious trait; hand-flapping. I did this a lot whilst at the same time jumping up and down, and people use to make fun of it. I still "hand-flap" to this day from time to time (in fact I did it just now while typing this message). I also got attracted to certain objects; a smelly sheet that I had since I was a toddler. I would carry it around with me everywhere and sniff and fiddle with it, playing with the edges (I still have one to this day. Not grown out of this one either!). I often also rocked back and forth in chairs and was fidgety.

School was a nightmare. I was very quiet, and would often spend the whole day sat in a corner daydreaming endlessly and not do anything else, and I would wonder around the playground alone trapped in my own little world or being fascinated by weird things. I didn't make many friends, and I didn't get on very well with teachers. My academic performance was below average. I often had to put up with constant bullying and teasing, mostly verbal abuse such as "weirdo" or "freak".

I was never interested in anything all the other kids were interested in. Instead, I became very obsessed with one particular thing, and often very odd things, such as bees, wasps, tarantulas, buses, hills and so on. I don't know any other kid who was like me; I was a one off.

A few years ago, I was assessed for dyslexia and it was confirmed that I had attributes dyslexic in nature, in particularly processing verbal information, but it was also written on my report that "there appears to be also a language based difficulty that may require further investigation." Maybe there was language delay after all!

And the list goes on. I know you can't confirm whether or not whether a kid is autistic or not just by reading a few paragraphs, but I just wanted to know your opinions. Is it almost certain I have AS/HFA or am I just a freak?

I don't like to label people but I would go see a specialist. I think it is most likely you are on the spectrum but I'm not a doctor.

It sounds like it could definitely be HFA. The speech delay doesn't fit with Asperger's.

I had a speech delay but diagnosed with AS but I had hearing loss.

I'm going to try to get a doctor's appointment as soon as possible and see if I can get referred to a specialist and find out once and for all.

Does it matter?

I needed a lot of one to one training with my speech at primary/elemenary school up until the age of 8 but my numeracy skills were up to scratch with the rest of the kids. I was diagnosed with autism or Kanner's syndrome for ritualized behaviour and a profound affective contact with others when I was 8. Also considered was a total lack of human content in my drawings. Like plenty of drawings of inamimate objects like trees, houses and trains etc but no drawings of people like mommy, daddy and family etc. Aspergers was not heard of in my country way back then. I guess if a label had to be put on it these days it would be HFA.

AS is SUPPOSED to have a floor that many seem set on destroying. If it is destroyed, it loses all meaning, and they might as well declare that people that are AS are HFA! Until then, calling HFA people AS will deny them some help they may need. So it DOES kind of matter. ALSO, HFA ALREADY has a bit of a stigma. It seemed like AS didn't, but does now.

Same applies 2 me.