Meistersinger wrote:
Kyle Katarn wrote:
Got dx'ed at 15, was a disaster to find out I will never be socially normal.
Join the club! I was Dx'ed at 54. Growing up, my parents (mom, in particular) were strictly isolationist. Mom's idea of a house was a hole in the ground that was covered with a large rock, of which none of us would ever see the light of day again.
I was diagnosed just a few years ago. I'm 58 now. Had I been diagnosed at 15 (in 1972), my parents would likely have either locked me away or sent me away, because that's what was done to
what they called "ret*ds" back then.
Mainstreaming was practically unheard of. Back then, special needs students were given one separate classroom in each school building, where the teacher was more of a baby-sitter, and the students were not expected to keep up with their peers. They even had their own school buses (the "Little Bus") which picked them up and dropped them off on the far side of the school from the regular buses.
Back then, regular students who misbehaved were threatened with being sent to the "Special Ed" classroom
as punishment, and not as a corrective act.
My life would have likely turned out very different had I been diagnosed as a child.