Well, my second attendance today at the semi-annual Communicating Success on the Autism Spectrum workshop at the University of Utah ( http://www.perfectfifthproject.org/ ) went well.
While the conference is aimed at adults who have ASD, I was pleasantly surprised (again) with the disproportionate number of adults who were near or beyond retirement age; some of them had been diagnosed within the last few years.
Speaking of diagnoses, a self-diagnosed man who is age 50 years presented an hour-long topic titled "Discovering you had ASD in your 50s." Among other ideas within his topic, he (and some audience members) wondered about how his and our lives might be different if he had been diagnosed at age 8 years. While he would have had the benefit of knowing throughout his life why he consistently did what he did (good and bad), he realized that he probably wouldn't have learned to adapt and overcome his obstacles.
A slightly larger pre-conference workshop ( http://medicine.utah.edu/imfar ) is planned for the day before the IMFAR International Meeting for Autism Research conference in May. Most of our state and local government and ASD groups will be featured at the pre-conference workshop.
Anyway, I have enjoyed the small community of Utahns with ASD in these conference workshops.
Does your community produce similar conference (by, of and for people with ASD)? If so, do you attend them?
11 Apr 2015, 3:20 pm
