I was the last to know (intro)

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Hi everyone, I just got my diagnosis last week, so I figured it's time to introduce myself.

I am a mid-30's woman married to an older man who has 2 sons from his first marriage. One of them is definitely on the spectrum (even he admits this) but refuses to go for a diagnosis or help. It impacts his life a lot, and I've seen him really depressed and suffering over the 10 years I've known him. So while I was aware of "Asperger's", I never related to it because that was what my step-son has, and I'm nothing like him.

I also have a 3 year old son just diagnosed in January with PDD-NOS. This boy is my mini-me, we look alike and have a lot of the same traits. While going through the sensory checklist for his evaluation, it started to hit me like a ton of bricks... "yeah, I have that sensory stuff".

Then in January, intervention-style, my mother and my husband both sat down with me one night and told me they think I have AS too. Boy was I blindsided. So I put aside all the preconceived ideas about it and really looked at what it is. It didn't take long for me to completely agree. So I set up an appointment, had my testing/eval with a Neuropsychologist, and voila, got my diagnosis last week.

I'm in that stage now where I'm seeing everything in my life with new eyes. So many things make sense now. It's overwhelming dealing with my own revelations and now with my son, terrified that he'll be going through the social nightmare I did when growing up. We've just started him in a special integrated school, I'm still not sure if it's the right thing, but everyone is saying "early intervention". Hey, maybe if I had gotten it, I wouldn't have to feel like the only way I fit into this culture is by really good acting skills.

Anyway, I've been reading the board here since February, and I just thought it was time to say hello.

L2K

Hello, Last2Know! Welcome!

Hi there! Welcome to the forum. It has really helped me a lot to feel like there are others like me out there and that I can always read about similar stories on WrongPlanet. I am sure you will find that it is very theraputic to chat with others that are on the spectrum.

My wife forwarded me an email link to an article on AS saying "This sounds like you" Turned out her youngest daughter had sent it to her remarking that I might have it. As I learned about the disorder, it felt like someone had been reading my diary.

The disconcerting part is the growing realization that people around me have known for years there was something clinically wrong with me, while I just thought I was mildly eccentric and avant-garde.

Hi L2K,

Do not confront him about his AS. Treat him like he is an NT. I was at an asperger's center and it is inappropriate to ask a person whether they has a diagnosis, think they have it, or are a volunteer.

-L2S

Hi! Nice to meet you. Your story could be mine. I was just diagnosed a few months ago. I am 50. I was sure the rest of my family (parents, siblings, etc.) had AS and was shocked to see that they are NT and I am the one. Like you said, it makes you reevaluate events in your life and see them through another filter.

Both of my boys and my husband are on the spectrum, too.

Huh. I wouldn't mind if somebody asked me. I guess, if once they asked and I said I was autistic, they treated me differently, I might be a little miffed. Well, unless treating me differently meant stopping with the random hugs or telling me when they were annoyed with me. That might be a refreshing change.

So hey, nice to have you here, Last2Know. You're one of a very interesting group of people--autistic parents of autistic kids! There are quite a few of them out there and I think it makes for a fascinating family dynamic. (Not worse, not better--but definitely fascinating.) Sometimes I think that despite interpersonal challenges, an autistic person will have much less difficulty connecting with their autistic child than an NT might. Maybe it's not the cognitive style of autism that makes for communication problems, but the difference between an autistic brain and a typical one. Not that parenting isn't tough. My mom's autistic (she's undiagnosed but she has the same traits I do, and some others I don't), and I think I drove her pretty crazy as a kid!

Welcome to WP.

But just a small comment on your last statement.

With "early intervention", it's still technically acting. It's just that the child is told much earlier on by adults that they need to act to fit into NT culture.

I definitely feel a deep connection with my PDD-diagnosed son, and an understanding that I feel is a gift for both of us, but at the same time, at times he is like a mirror to me and it drives me nuts, plus, he is LOUD right now so I am pretty beaten down by the end of the day by him.




Wow, this is a very interesting thought. I feel like I must have been training him already without realizing it, just passing on what I have learned like "when the cashier tries to make small talk you do XYZ" without realizing it.

There is a trend that I'm hearing a LOT of about Early Intervention "re-wiring the brain". As if it's easy (or even possible?).

They talk as though 're-wiring the brain' were something unusual that takes extraordinary effort. No... it really isn't. We re-wire our brains every time we learn, every time we form a permanent memory or develop a new skill.

Autism is there when you're very young, and in all cases but the very mildest, barely-diagnosable ones, it can't be changed to the point that you could truly say they weren't autistic. Autism is simply too big to change; it's probably all over your brain structure, making your thinking very specialized and detail-oriented, changing your sensory processing, and changing the way you create language and solve problems.. Trying to change the autism itself doesn't make much sense when you could be using your re-wiring to learn useful skills that make you more capable, rather than more NT.

However, "early intervention" does have one thing going for it. We re-wire faster when we're very young. That means we learn faster. It mightn't seem like it, but consider--we're born unable to so much as control our own movements; and within four short years, we're doing things like telling stories, playing sports, and making friends--while learning an entire language in less time and in a more thorough way than an adult ever could. That's staggeringly rapid progress.

Early intervention takes advantage of that early, rapid capacity for learning. During those years, we're pruning connections that we don't use, creating new ones, and generally changing faster than we ever will during our entire lives. Teaching a child something very early means he will be better at it later on.

One caution, though: Some children are not developmentally ready to learn things that early. Teaching a two-year-old to tie his shoes is doomed to fail until he has developed the fine-motor skills he needs--probably at age five to seven. Instead of teaching him to tie his shoes, you offer plenty of toys that exercise the fine-motor skills. Autism changes when you're ready to learn different skills; so a clumsy Aspie may not be ready to learn to tie shoes until he is ten years old or even older. It would be wasting time to assume he learns like a typical child and keep on trying to make him learn when he is five. It can even make some skills dramatically easier to learn than others--for example, he may learn to read at age four, be able to write an essay at five, but be unable to write a fictional story until he is twelve (that was me as a kid, actually). Assuming that an autistic child should follow the typical developmental schedule--or even should learn lower-level skills before the higher ones (many of us "walk before we crawl", literally and figuratively) is an incorrect belief that could prevent learning from taking place.

Biggest, most important thing: Kids during the "early intervention" phase learn by playing. This is not some strictly regimented therapy. It needs to be relaxed, fun, and friendly if it's going to do much good.