The NTs. The ASD, and THE THIRD KIND
Hello,
I am supossedly NT although I have never felt that way. I think there is a third group that is not NT and not exactly ASD either. My husband seems to be part of it too, and my best friend too. We all have children with autism, interestingly enough. When we were children, we felt more comfortable with books and music than with people. The other children perceived me as different. I'd rather be with my peers parents than with my peers. Extended family gatherings like Thanksgiving and Easter where hard on me. I loved my family but I rather stay in my grandma's bedroom watching TV. It was just too much for me. I still have to take breaks from people during gatherings!! Now, I am a lawyer and do great with people's relations but it always feels fake, like something that I've learned to do, not something that comes natural. I can read people's facial expresions well and understand social cues fine but don't realize sometimes that my own facial expressions seem "exagerated" to others. I look at people when I talk to them but it does not feel natural and I make an effort to do it. I could go on and on. My point being that the world to me is not just a group of two people, there are shades in between and I am there. I have always felt so different. And it wasn't until in my late 30's now I realized why--I am the "third kind."
I think I know exactly what you are talking about. I believe I could have been classified as having an ASD as a child, using the diagnostic criteria they use today. But, it was the 70s/80s, and I was not. So....people thought I was strange, but I thrived academically, especially in my areas of interest, and eventually (in high school/college) learned social skills...of a sort - by gravitating toward the counterculture and constructing the way I talk to people to be as acceptable as I know how. I did okay. But it is amazing how much I am finding in common with everyone on this site. Down to physical features, sensory issues and style of play as a child.
Now my little boy has - what I'm guessing - we're still in the process of getting a DX - is HFA/PDD-NOS/AS (I think it's AS but probably too early to tell). I recently found out that on my father's side of the family, my "crazy aunt" Teresa that I'd never met in person had a son who was a "genius" at least in terms of memorizing baseball stats (in the 70s) but she couldn't handle him and wanted to give him to my parents. Also, another odd thing is that one of my only long-term friends has a little boy who was just DX'ed PDD-NOS.
If autism is truly a spectrum, then there would be those on the borders of the spectrum. People who adapt fairly well to NT society but display the same tendencies and traits. I guess that's us.
Also - as introverts - just being around people for extended periods of time would deplete our energy. It takes effort for an introvert to socialize. I think that may explain some of the "hiding in the bedroom watching TV" phenomenon (I did it too, still do). Interesting to see how closely related it may be to certain traits of autism. Don't know of any research about actual neruological differences between "introvert"-types and "extrovert"-types, but I'd be curious to know if any chemical/structural/processing differences are found.
Anyway, yes. I know exactly what you mean.
BAP maybe?
People and relatives of autistic people who do not warrant for diagnosis themselves either because they do not display all traits that are necessary or are not significantly clinically impaired by their autistic traits but show some of the traits may display/have what is currently understood as broader autism phenotype.
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Autism + ADHD
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The trouble with having an open mind, of course, is that people will insist on coming along and trying to put things in it. Terry Pratchett
Hi ASDMOM, Welcome to WP. I think 'Broader Autistic Phenotype' (BAP) is the answer. The majority of autistics have 1st degree BAPpy relatives. Have a root around at Cambridge University's www.autismresearchcentre.com There's several papers that deal with the BAP.
In the 90's I had a complete evaluation done at the university's psych department (as a volunteer) and the only thing they said was that my intellectual ability was much higher than my ability to perform but since my ability to perform was anyhow above average, they did not make an issue of it. I did great academically. During childhood and teen years I was very shy. Then my older sister showed me some tricks how to interact with people. I am a good learner. I learned so well, in college I was labeled "the life of the party" and was SUPER popular. Went from not dating and never being invited to a party to having more invitations and dates than I had time for. But it was great acting on my part. I had fun but I was playing a role, it did not come natual to me. You know what I mean?
I had never heard of BAP before, but it makes sense. I am going to check it out! Thanks!
It could explain a lot about my family, LOL. My father for instance was kind of a "genius" and so was his father but very poor social skills, could not stand any noise around the house, could not understand our feelings and had an obsessive need for everything being on schedule and done in the same fashion. He went to both Medical and Law School but chose to practice medicine, taught at medical school and wrote for a local newspaper while helping a friend lawyer with some medical malpractice litigation. He sang opera in languages he did not even speak and recited tons of poetry. His own father was even more accomplished than him, imagine that!
ASD MOM
Last edited by ASDMOM on 31 Aug 2008, 8:10 am, edited 1 time in total.
ASDMOM,
Maybe you and/or your husband have AS and don't know it! Heck, most of my symptoms have just been accepted, hidden, aren't triggered, etc....
NOT OFTEN TRIGGERED/SHOWN until recently
sound sensitivity
cold insensitivity
ACCEPTED/HIDDEN
Social ineptness
Different learning ability
Different interests
HIDDEN
Apparent arrogance (It costs my customers a lot of money, but sometimes I just sit back and watch, rather than correct, and blurt out the answer.)
resistance to saying "white lies" (Sometimes you have to lie to keep the peace. 8-()
Lack of ball sport's ability
Shyness
Vocabulary
Obsessions
AS really doesn't have to be that obvious. Of course, some NTs just seem to know SOMETHING is different but, obviously, you seem to think YOU are different.
Hi all,
I'm brand new here, and glad I found it.
ASDMOM, I'm in my early '50's and am still learning social cues! I'm not formally diagnosed as aspie, but I'm positive that's who I am. I was "the little professor" in grade school, but had very view friends. I had one best friend thru gradeschool. I hated parties, and had next to no social skills. And talk about clumsy! Thank the Goddess for mono. It got me out of 6 weeks of PE in my senior year of High School. I did make some friends back in HS. I hung out with the wierder of the drama/art bunch. I found that the stranger I was, the more I was either left alone or respected. I was left alone by the school admin, since my grades were always good. I was in advanced science/math classes. OMG, I've got typing diarrhea! OK, enough. Thanks for being here! As I said, I'm so glad to have you all. I could go on and on about feeling like a fake, learning to throw my shoulders back, forcing myself to make eye contact (now I have to be careful that I don't cause staredowns, lol).
Uh oh, there I went again. Sorry!
It can be a well-hidden or very well-adapted-to-society form of being autistic, or it can be what some people call an 'autistic cousin', having traits but not enough to be labeled autistic by current criteria. (Although some people don't like that the 'cousin' thing centers all neurological unusualness around autism. But I think it's okay as long as you realize that it's a very autism-centric social definition.)
People don't always realize how arbitrary the line is, and often want to draw a hard and fast line where one may not exist.
Many non-autistic people in my family have traits similar to autistic people, and have other neurological oddities such as (stuff that is currently classified as these things, whether the people specifically agree with the classification or not) dyslexia and other learning disabilities, Tourette's and other tic-related conditions, bipolar, and intellectual disabilities. We're really I guess a neurodiverse family rather than just an autistic-specific family, although there are many autistic family members.
So there's not really NT, autistic, and a third kind. It's more like, there's a whole variety of neurological setups, some of which are considered more out of the ordinary than others in different places and times. Autism is not the only way not to be neurologically typical, there are many others.
And there may or may not be a firm dividing line between autistic or non-autistic. And if there is, there still might be people on the autistic side of the line who pass as non-autistic and do as well in the world as non-autistic people while doing everything in an autistic way, because there's a chance autism is a neurological setup that does allow some people with it, for some reason, to adapt really well to a non-autistic society and do most things required in that society, just do them differently. While other autistic people (not necessarily "more autistic" since we don't know what autism is well enough to measure it) have a lot more trouble with some things people find essential. (Whether or not we have trouble with things other people don't find essential, is a whole different matter.)
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"In my world it's a place of patterns and feel. In my world it's a haven for what is real. It's my world, nobody can steal it, but people like me, we live in the shadows." -Donna Williams
I feel like I'd fit in here... I was diagnosed with AS as a kid, but have since taught myself a number of skills to help me get by around NT's. Sometimes it can be difficult, like I was at a wedding yesterday and got really overwhelmed (I had to take numerous breaks from all the noise and get away), but for the most part I can communicate all right. Of course, there are always screw-ups, but I'm learning to work through them, and I have a feeling I will continue to improve throughout the span of my life.
I still need plenty of breaks from real life, and I suffer from pretty bad Anxiety - this is the worst of my problems, I think. I'm hoping to go into a career that happens to be very high-stress, so I'm looking into ways to work through it.
Also, on the AS test I believe I got a 28 or a 29... sound about right?
Electric_Kite
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Joined: 20 Aug 2008
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People and relatives of autistic people who do not warrant for diagnosis themselves either because they do not display all traits that are necessary or are not significantly clinically impaired by their autistic traits but show some of the traits may display/have what is currently understood as broader autism phenotype.
BAP. Thanks. This concept fits.
Though puzzling in its own right. I have all these traits in common with AS people. In university, this did not impair me, I was a top performer. My most recent job, I was very seriously impaired by 'autistic' traits (or, in my opinion, people's utter refusal to comply with simple requests like "Please don't yell, speak to me one person at a time," "Please don't touch me. Please use your authority to offer me social support in getting clients to stop touching me without offending them," "Please allow me to organize my own multitasking, I will get it all done," and "Please don't give me verbal instructions for complex tasks, either write it down or walk me through it hands-on. No, hands-on really, as in, let me touch the damn machine.") and had to quit because I was going completely around the twist and and was losing normal non-workplace functions and having daily private "meltdowns" (In my own parlance, "uncontrollable crying jags.")
Does this mean that at that job, I had AS, but under other circumstances, I've a BAP?
I am pretty sure I am not diagnosable now, but since I started reading here I've wondered how things would have gone if my childhood circumstances had been different.
When I was born, I didn't like to be held and wouldn't quiet down unless set in a crib. The doctors told my mother that I was allergic to her breast milk and the food-allergy was making my skin sensitive. Not many women breast-fed those days. She ignored them and just held me lots and I more or less got over it. My early childhood weirdnesses were either regarded proudly as genius (reading at three, reading the journal "Nature" at five) or went unnoticed (bouncing for hours on end on a spring horse when most pre-school kids can't do anything for a full hour, much less five) and by the time I went to school and other people noticed my withdrawl and focus, my parents had divorced. "Broken homes" were the child-development boogyman of the decade and everything off about me was blamed on this 'trauma.' I was in fact indifferent to it, the only worry I had about the divorce was the fear that my non-custodial parent would take the dog. But the intense encounters with the school therapists would cause me to burst into tears, which was enough to confirm their hypothesis for them. And I knew from my brother's upset at divorce that my indifference was a 'wrong' reaction, so I didn't out with it. I spent all my childhood in the school programs for the 'gifted' and the ones for the mentally and emotionally disabled, and it was all supposed to be because I was messed up by divorce-trauma and the miseries of living in an impovershed single-parent household. I've always been pretty skeptical about that. Now more so.