AS can stop you...

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Yesterday I asked my girlfriend if she would be able to do the AQ test, due to both me and Worsedale being diagnosed with AS mildly I joked it was contagious (me and Worsedale have been good friends for a number of years, so abit of a coincidence).
She managed to achieve the score of thirty-eight.
I always just though she was just pathologically shy and I still mantain this notion.
Do you think it's possible to display traits similar to those a person with aspergers does, but as a result of the individuals socialisation not genetic make-up?
In her case she is an only child whose parents (primarily her mother) frequently spend time working away for extended periods of time and she is left on her own. She also happens to go to a public school which only has girls as pupils.
I put her social shyness and indecision all down to her socialisation, is this possible?

I do not agree with that at all! People like that are normal! All their diagnosis means is that they have an inability to understand how to interact with people socially. They have a lot of potential.

I was literally speechless when I read the subject of this post.

I personally agree 100%. While my son is dx AS (and is clearly so) and my husband, while lacking a formal dx is also clearly AS, I am the NT one in the family, along with our daughter.

I was raised an only child, in an era when children spoke only when spoken to. While I attribute my vast vocabulary and voracious reading habit to that life, it also left me quite socially stilted. I am terribly uncomfortable at parties or in gatherings, even if I know most people there. I believe in my own mind that people wonder why in the world I was invited, and what purpose I am serving by being there. While I do a little better one on one, my work history doesn't match my education and IQ nor my abilities because I don't get the smaller social nuances and don't often realize I'm being stabbed in the back until I find I'm standing in a pool of my own blood. Usually at the unemployment office.

I also have odd little habits that weren't really noticed by anyone else until I married. It drives my husband crazy that I eat my meat first, without touching the carbs or veggies, veggies next, carbs last. And the foods don't touch or mingle. Not in my mouth and not on the plate. I even get strange looks from my AS son who will pile his peas on top of his mashed potatoes and set it all asail in a sea of gravy. Ugh.

None of this is genetics (which is an interesting theory, especially given that it turns out that I'm adopted, my bmother had 8 children of which I'm the only one she gave up for adoption. Good thing I have decent self esteem!) or is it a reaction to vaccinations. It is simply a result of some social isolation coupled with being raised by parents who thought if they acted like it was the 1940's again (which I'm not so sure what was so hot about that decade) it could be the 40's again so I stood out a tad. For years after moving out of my parents' home I couldn't shop for anything without hearing "tapes" of my mother's voice in my head - you don't want that it's too big, too garish, too small, fill in the blank. It took therapy to shut that tape off.

I have always felt terms like "the norm" "return to normalcy" and "normal" were always rather artificial. Normal as far as I'm concerned is a sliding scale, and there are so many variables that go into deciding what constitutes where you are on that scale that those variables are named - AS, BP, ADD, OCD, etc.

Just my HO.

I do not.

Larsen, I don't understand your response. "People like that are normal"? People like what (or whom)? Ramsamsam's girlfriend? Going on ramsamsam's post, she has not been diagnosed with AS, so it makes no sense to speak of her diagnosis.

And it doesn't make much sense to speak of the diagnoses of people like her either, unless you mean shy people, and you're saying that shyness is normal, and that the only thing that makes people with an AS diagnosis different is they have "an inability to understand how to interact with people socially"? In which case, you seem to be in agreement with ramsamsam.

I don't understand what there is to be "speechless" about.

And by the way, I don't think having AS makes me normal. But that doesn't necessarily imply I think that people with AS don't have potential.

I was referring to people like us, with AS and I was also re-iterating Alex's definition of Asperger's Syndrome.

That is an excellent defvinition! Alex couldn't have come up with a better definition himself.

Well, but she doesn't really have obssesive interests even though she is socially awkward- and really amazing at maths (which I'm not so good about, even though I rember pointless dates.)

Sometimes I think aspie girls could be overlooked through their social ineptitude and instead misdiagnosed and 'shy' and having 'low self esteem'.


Now for the song of this topic's title;

AS is cool
and AS can stop you
From doing all the things you like to do
AS is cool
AS can stop you
From doing all the things you need to do
So ask me ask me ask me ask me ask me ask me

(For anyone who doesn't know, that is a semi-parody of Morrissey (The Smiths)' 'Ask'

It is rather befitting here.