Seniors and Aspergers?

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You've all noticed that the population of (diagnosed) Aspies seems to get higher every year...in contrast with way back in the middle of the last century...when it wasn't recognized let alone heard of. As an Aspie born in the '70s, I didn't get my diagnosis till 2001.

But I am compelled to wonder if anyone knows of any seniors have been diagnosed with AS (or IS a senior themselves).

This is not intended to mock AS (since I am an Aspie myself), but I think that people would tend to be more lenient with golden-aged Aspies b/c of the parallels between Aspie symptoms and those of a stroke, senility, etc (for example, stilted speech, rigid posture, social absentmindedness...)

And for those seniors who are not Aspies, I wonder if they tend to have an enlightened viewpoint towards the growing tide of Aspies in younger generations. Certainly for those who are grandparents of Aspie kids (demographically, these would tend to be people born in the 1940s with Gen-X children who have had Aspie kids). But for those who were born in the Depression, I can just picture the stereotypical response: "Pah!! Kids these days, and their silly diagnosis excuses for bad behaviour. In my day, if a kid wasn't behaving properly, they'd just get a good smack upside the head, and that would solve their 'social problems'. But now if you do that, you can go to jail, the kid gets put on pills and goes through all this counseling and a few years later they shoot up a school. That never happened, in my day."

Yes, in Henry or Herbert's time, nobody knew what an Aspie was, or that there was a scientific reason for their being labelled as "a weirdo with some sort of problem". The very few Aspies that did exist then, after all, were either clustered into NASA labs or hopped from one city to another looking for janitor jobs, so of course Henry or Herbert didn't have much contact with one.

I do feel for those younger generations of Aspies who had to endure such comments...but even more so for those 70 and 80-somethings with AS who had to endure disproportionate abuse and alienation compared to Gen-Xers like me. I can hardly imagine their reaction when/if they finally got diagnosed with AS well after their formative years.

There was a lady in her late 80's who lived across from me who most would agree was a bit strange but I don't think it was due to her age or any type of dementia.

She came across as a bit "goofy" but when she died and her daughter came to clear out her apartment, we found that this lady had collection of vintage items which took up most of her apartment...not items she had bought during their time and amassed over the years, as her daughter didn't remember any of them growing up, but things she had collected intentionally. She also turned out to be an avid reader of art books, historical books and other reference books such as Atlas' and biographies.

I think she very likely was on the spectrum.

When my parents describe their childhoods, they would be considered AS poster children today. They both grew up in the 50's.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fWnReAsg ... M&index=14

I know there are a few seniors here on WP, but I don't know details about anyone. I was not diagnosed until I was 46. I wish it could have been a lot earlier, but it saved me from spending the rest of my lifetime thinking I was crazy... and I'll take that!

Well, does 66 count as Senior? Generally, I consider myself one. Yes, I am definitely an ASPIE, but never knew that there was a name for my condition, other than strange, or weird, until about five years ago. I am not as seriously effected by AS as others here are, but I am far, far away from the NT's. My early school life was hell on wheels and things only improved late in college and in my career as an engineer. That career put me in the company with a lot of others like me, so the work environment was not an issue. Now that I am retired though, I find that I am more likely to be yielding to my AS tendency of avoiding social environments. In fact I actively avoid social contact. (Yea, yea I know what "they" say about us seniors needing social contact.) The other difference I note is a greater willingness to speak my mind openly and not care about others responses. This is a common old fart trait in general though and not necessarily related to AS. Otherwise, I am more or less the same at this age as I was when I was younger, just much less patience with ignorance and stupidity.

As for my attitudes re the kids today, I am vehemently opposed to the practice of drugging kids (adults too, but that's another long rant of mine for another time and place). Much of what I have seen in terms of behavior problems relate to poor diet, lack of exercise and an acute lack of discipline, both at home and in the schools. (That's one reason I will not teach, even though I would very much like to.) Does this mean all kids? No, of course not. There are some who really do need the counseling and drug help, but I'll wager that that number is very small.
In today's world I would have been diagnosed by 7-8 at the latest and probably sent to counseling and perhaps drugged, if not sent to a "special home". (Hey, making bombs and blowing things up was great fun! I never did any serious damage to anyone's property though and I still have 10 fingers.) Too, there would have probably been comments made about my reading habits, which were decades ahead of my classmates and covered literally anything and everything I could get my hands on, including books that would have raised a few eyebrows. (I leave those details to your imagination!)

I strongly suspect my dad is an Aspie. It just took me a long time to realize it, even after doing years of research. It didn't dawn on me until about a year ago. He knows only because I told him. Dad's 83 years old though, so a DX wouldn't really do much for him. He has a lot of quirks & odd behaviors. I've always observed that he was horrible at eye contact 100% of the time, no matter who he was speaking to in person. This includes my mom & me. He doesn't have a lot of special interests like many here on WP. He developed a fascination with antiques as a boy, & it's still his main SI to this day. I think that's a bit unusual for an Aspie to have a lifelong obsession like that, but it's possible that there are others like him out there. He would have terrible meltdowns when he'd get lost while driving to some destination he didn't know. He swear & get verbally abusive to my mom & me. Usually after he's done being abusive, he turns around & goes home without trying to find his destination. Those were his worst meltdowns but there may have been others. The only stimming I've noticed is when he's driving & is tired. He hits himself repeatedly to keep himself awake. He completely lacks empathy & always has. He prefers animals to spending time with people. He gets very attached to them. He has acquaintances but no close friends. He's not even close to family. Our conversations are one-sided. He does all the talking, if I try to interject, he ignores me. What's really ironic is he's not even my biological dad. He & my mom adopted me when I was a baby.

Tomboy

Well, one theory I can offer why there are so very few seniors who are known to have an AS diagnosis, is because the age of the parents of the senior when he/she was born. In the first half of the last century, people tended to have kids at a much younger age than they do today. In the 50s, 60s, and 70s, people still mostly had kids in their 20s, then the average age was 30, and it wasn't until recently when the average age crossed into the early 30s. The evidence has been strong linking age of the father to cases of ASD. This is true for grandfathers as well, since both my grandfathers were 39 when they gave birth to my parents in 1945. Blame the circumstances on World War II (and for the fact that Dr. Asperger's 1943 work went into obscurity. But I digress.)

This, I believe, could also account for why you don't hear of many redneck or trailer-park families having ASD kids, and for that matter why you don't hear of rampant ASD cases in very poor countries. Causality chain being that ASD is linked to parent age, and parent age is linked to education level.

Interesting theory, Jayo. You offer up a good explanation for my dad's issues. My grandparents were both college educated (well-to-do), & married later in life then the average couples did back in the early part of the 20th century. I think they were in their late 20s or early 30s when they wed. Thanks for the info, it's just another piece of the puzzle for why my dad is the way he is.

Also, many odd older people were just considered eccentric, & that was the end of that. Howard Hughes comes to mind being that he had very odd behaviors, especially as he got older. I can remember when he was still alive, & some of the news reports about him. They often brought up the fact that he lived alone in his last years, & some of his quirky mannerisms. Even though the news would talk about his odd ways, they just passed it off that he was an eccentric multi-millionaire. It was as though his money had a lot to do with making him strange. You could be as weird as you wanted if you had plenty of money.

Tomboy

In the past, the lower exposure to pollutants, bad foods, drugs, vaccines and such, meant that AS issues were lessened by being healthier overall

But then we commonly had health camps for skinny undernourished kids

What I want to know is why did everyone have sticky outy ears in old photos???

They seemed to have gotten smaller now

That is an entirely baseless claim, and exposure to pollutants wasn't necessarily lower due to lack of environmental regulations. My mother's side of the family has many individuals who most certainly were on the spectrum. Their quirks and behaviors were just accepted as part of how they were. How other people responded to that varied.

My grandmother was probably on the autistic spectrum and she was born in 1927. I think she would take issue with lots of things about me, but my AS wouldn't be one of them. She had a hard life and everyone though she was very eccentric, and she was. My granddad (not on the spectrum), born in 1932, doted on me with all my weirdness, compared to my NT cousins. I find people born during the depression actually quite open-minded in some ways. The Beats came from this generation.

You notice how seniors are stereotyped as speaking what's on their mind w/o fear of social disapproval...well...that strikes me as one more reason why autism-spectrum behaviours would go unnoticed in old age, or more accepted, because of the tendency of those on the spectrum to be more blunt about things they find negative. I have certainly noticed that once people enter their 70s, they will tell you if they don't like something or if they find something negative, they don't mask their true sentiments or opinions as much social graces be damned!

I've known a bunch of people who have done that long before they reached old age. Most of them were relatives, but I know of at least one other person who's very vocal about stuff that doesn't please her. She's blunt, to the point, & I have long suspected is on the spectrum. It's even more funny since she'll talk about other people having Aspergers, even though she seems blissfully unaware she has her own quirks too. She has several grand kids on the spectrum. I'm sure it runs in her family.

I know two undiagnosed AS types in my family who are 70+. They had very different lives. One managed it, the other was managed by it.

Well, yeah, ol' Howard Hughes certainly let some marbles drop, and I could NEVER see myself, or any of the Aspies I know, doing some of the behaviours he did (like watching movies in private in the nude). I was born right when he died so I just know from TV and what I've read. Can't say that was really due to senility though. I think of that Jack Nicholson character in "As Good as it Gets" and maybe it was inspired by Hughes' case (then again, Hughes wasn't such a horrible bigot, at least not that we know of...) but here are some gems of Hughes behaviour that I pulled from Wikipedia:

As early as the 1930s, Hughes displayed signs of mental illness, primarily obsessive-compulsive disorder. Close friends reported that he was obsessed with the size of peas, one of his favorite foods, and used a special fork to sort them by size.

Another time, he became obsessed with the 1968 film Ice Station Zebra and had it running on a continuous loop in his home. According to his aides, he watched it 150 times.

Hughes insisted on using tissues to pick up objects, so that he could insulate himself from germs. He would also notice dust, stains or other imperfections on people's clothes and demand that they take care of it.

I think Howard Hughes really just had a case of severe OCD at a time when no treatment for it existed. In fact it used to be called "The untreatable disorder"

A small number of people with OCD have such severe, treatment resistant symptoms that they end up institutionalized.Many of these individuals develop fears about their urine contaminating something or harming someone, or such severe germ phobia they will not use the restroom without a fight, and have suffered kidney damage from it.

Concerning sorting the peas, sorting is usually one of the more fringe OCD symptoms and is usually not representative of true OCD but with OCD of such extreme severity that Howard Hughes has, I would expect to see fringe symptoms. It may have been he could only eat certain sized peas.

Another thing about peas is, the pea industry has a frog problem. There are tiny frogs which, when they role up, are about the size and color of peas and likes to live amongst peas and the industry employs various techniques to make sure your can of peas does not contain this unexpected bit of protein.