Divide between old and young aspies

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I constantly see around me a clear picture of the younger Aspies, who have lived for longer and perhaps most of their life with a diagnosis and therefore more self awareness, being lucky enough to lead more happy, healthy normal lives compared to some of the older Aspies, who obviously wouldn't have had this self awareness most of their lives.

Being gifted I was always "different"--I just didn't know how different! Fortunately I was very good at taking tests--I got a number of record or highest scores! So I got into good schools which led to a pretty good job...

I am not so sure it is generation. Yes, I and other Neanderthals pretty much neverr got diagnosed and just went through life being / feeling / labelled weird / ret*d / uppity / nuts.

But - well, looking at young posts and old posts here, I see old types who knew thet were weird and ran with it - like me - and old types who tried not to be weirds and felt lousy. And young types who know what they are and cry vive la difference and young types who wish they could medicate out of hell.

Same reality, wheher yiou are labelled by peers or by someone in a white coat. And you have to make what you can of it, now as then

As someone born in the 70s, I have experienced the difference that being aware of my ASD and having access to the Internet have made. These two developments have made a big difference to my life.

The awareness of my ASD has made me aware of myself to a degree that would not have been possible otherwise.

The Internet has been a lifeline for me: it has enabled me to access information about autism, about self-awareness, to find a therapist who was doing email-based therapy, to study on an Internet-based course, and probably other things that I'm forgetting...

There was definitely a pre- and a post- era. Without awareness of autism spectrum disorders, and without Internet access, I would not have been able to manage my life so well, and I might even have become homeless or ended up in a psychiatric ward.

I wasn't diagnosed until I was in my late forties. I functioned without this diagnoses, and often wonder what, if anything, would have been different, with an earlier discovery of AS. Sure, I had to go through life being called weird, stuck-up. schizophrenic, and just out there. As for technology, I have a love hate relationship with it. As others have said on here, just when you get the hang of the latest stuff, along comes a whole slew of new things to learn. Yet, I love my internet. Being disabled, I can shop from home, pay bills, keep up with family, and play games that were unheard of when I was growing up.

I was born in 1953 and my whole family's diagnosis was "she will never amount to anything."

I was head of the girls team for playground wars. I could beat up even the biggest boys (I was pretty tiny - picky eater). I recently wondered if the boy/girl wars were supposed to be a form of flirting and I was the only one fighting the war - I didn't pay much attention to others. In fact I probably missed lots of things, but ignorance was bliss.

I flunked 3rd grade (my mom told me the teacher actually told my mother that maybe I would have done better if she hadn't yelled at me so much - which I though was wierd because I never noticed her yelling at me. I probably assumed it was someone else. I had my hyperlexia to attend to and couldn't be bothered with boring classroom stuff).

The schools didn't flunk me again but my mom - who was the school secrtary and could look these things up - said it was because I had a high IQ and the school couldn't understand why I did so poorly. They used to keep things like IQ hidden, not like today. I don't really have a high IQ, I just read books hidden in my texts all day, every day, to tune out the boring school.

I was also the only one of about 70 kids to be excluded from the 3rd-grade choir.

I grew up in an all-aspie family and the educational system had cracks one could hunker into - and I hunkered.

but the bottom line is that dispite my checkered history and current dx, I basically grew up without a handicap. I don't think of myself as handicapped.

"I wasn't diagnosed until I was in my late forties. I functioned without this diagnoses, and often wonder what, if anything, would have been different, with an earlier discovery of AS. "

Me, I KNOW. I saw what happened with my sister and to a lesser extent my brother [both NT but seriously problematic in very different ways.

My mother [who did to me whatever Dr Spock said to do] was a great believer in get a diagnosis and follow the doctor. I know she knew SOMERHING was up with me - but thank God she got no diagnosis out of it so I did not get "treated" - my sibs who got "treated" for their stuff were seriously injured.

I'm not sure i understand the point of iphones and computers as a cause of the generation gap. Aspies didn't just sit around flapping at trees until the computer came along.

i think it has more to with the development of a diagnoses.

in my opinion i think the dx helps NTs cope with *us* more than ASers understand ourselves. I kind of cringe when i see videos of children explain their AS *disorder*. It puts them in a box. they learn who they are by a DSM sheet. And others are quick to label them/us. It's way too easy to dismiss a particular behavior as "oh that's just a AS symptom." People get to be individuals. Aspies get to be aspies. Auties get to be Auties. A person labeled with ADHD will always be viewed thru the lens of ADHD. I think it's a cruel thing to do to a child.

But it does give the current young generation a group that us older ones never had. Us dino-aspies are far more diverse i believe. We all found ways to cope in wildly different directions. I'm an extremely quiet almost invisible autie-like one. Many are quite the opposite. Is this because of neuro-type or environment? Did i start out like my daughter who has pretty classic AS characteristics but was forced to adapt for survival reasons? Who knows.

I was hyperlexic and read at a second-grade level when I started kindergarten. I was called "gifted". My mother told me I was "eccentric" due to my genius. She said the other kids didn't like me because I was smarter and more mature than them.
It was true, from a certain point of view.....as Obi-Wan would say.

I think the only thing different with earlier awarness, is that I would not have done so many social things I was uncomfortable with (going to clubs, hanging out with friends, etc.) if I knew it was largely futile, anyways. A lot of misunderstandings would have been averted. Then again, I am grateful for some of those same experiences. Now, at least I have some connection with a "culture of people", both young and old. And we truly are a different culture, as our experiences in the outside world show us to be.

I'm not sure if kids getting treatment are actually helped or just better hammered into less of a "problem" now. My mom was, I'm sure, on the spectrum also, but she just thought other people were stupid. She volunteered at a mental hospital to make sure that she was on the "sane" side, and to learn how not to act. Her only advice was to keep moving on before people would get upset.
People wondered why my school marks kept going down even though I had a high IQ. Sent for psych evaluation, I would change personalities during the interview to avoid any diagnosis. The late sixties were good for me, because lots of people my age valued eccentricity and wanted to make a better world. I figured we were busy trying to change human nature in a hurry, to avoid nuclear war.
I was 33 before I realized that I'd met someone who cared for their kids, rather than just pretending out of duty. At 37, I found out that following the Golden Rule was not enough to keep me from being attacked, and I've been jumpy ever since, without the ability to concentrate I used to enjoy. I started going to self-help groups, mostly 12-steppers, but they were entirely focused on problems with development, not hard-wired differences.
I finally discovered AS 5 years ago, and now my life makes sense to me, but I don't know anyone else who can imagine my state of mind.
I used to write my own code, but now I'm mostly mystified by computers. I had a cell phone on loan once, but never figured out how to use it. I never watch TV, and so there are a lot of cultural references I just don't get. 'Net use has been shown to reduce the ability to concentrate on any one thing, so I'm surprised that any young people are actually able to do scientific research, but some do OK.

I was diagnosed with autism when I was between 2-4 - this was back in 1987-1989. My psychiatrist recommended that I should be institutionalized when I was to enter school. In 1989, when I officially became part of the indoctrination machine called public school I was in the severely handicapped class and I hated every moment of it. I remember pressing buttons on an Apple II back then. In 1991, I was mainstreamed and placed into RSP. Over the years, I had teachers question my ability to achieve and I somehow proved them wrong. One of them doubted I would be in college - this was back in middle school. I got my diagnosis "downgraded" to HFA/Asperger's in 2001.

10 years later, I'm in a university. I've come to become aware of my AS now. And about that computer experience, well 20 years later, I'm typing this message on a MacBook. Which is a far cry from the primitive machines Apple made but more tolerable than the PCs of yesterday and today.

Yeah, I see a big divide as an Aspie born in 1976. No one knew what AS was; everyone thought I was just stubborn and difficult. No internet around for me to read about my obsessions so I spent a lot of time at libraries in the nonfiction and encyclopedia section..

As for Aspies born after 1990 or so, this is my opinion: edspite the awareness of AS and the access to the internet, I still think teen Aspies have it hard cuz teen culture is so cliquish and I think cyberbullying is a major issue (which we never had to deal with).

I wrote a short story about what my life may have been like if I was born in 1996 instead of 1976; I imaged the elementary school years and the college years actually to be pretty good but middle school and high school are still nightmares filled with being emotionally bullied at school every day except for this part: instead of having notes passed around me (which happened to me in the late 1980s and early 1990s)- my tormentors/bullies are harassing me via facebook for the whole school to read (story is set today).

http://www.myaspergerslifestory.com/if_ ... _1996.html