Is There a Difference Between Older Aspies and Younger Ones?

Post Reply New Topic

What this even more confusing is that because we're on the spectrum, we could very well still have varying neurological dispositions towards our ability to socialize and/or work with others. Just because I can work as part of a productive team doesn't mean that everyone in my age group who are also on the spectrum have similar abilities.

I wonder if any studies have been done to assess nature vs. nurture in the social development of people with ADS.

Good luck BTW with your medical aspirations.

I wanted to be a doctor as well but one disadvantage of having been bounced around between different countries and different schools was that my high school education included a lot of social science but not very much math or any of the "hard" sciences.

Taking chemistry and calculus in college when I had never taken either class in high school was overwhelming. I didn't have the academic prerequisites to succeed. If I had to do it over again, I would have dropped out of the university and taken all of my premed classes in community college. As it was, I wound up becoming an education major.

If this isn't too intrusive, do you kiss your wife?

Is your wife an NT or she on the spectrum? I'm not judging. I don't have relationships, so I''m the last person to be judgemental.

When the Christmas holidays roll around, I always watch a bunch of Hallmark movies. I think I do this because I'm trying to understand friends, family, and love through the eyes of the camera. I suspect I will never be successful in my endeavors because Hallmark portrays an idealized and fanciful world that simply doesn't exist.

Sure I do. She's NT. She's not really knowledgeable about the Spectrum---has only a superficial knowledge.

OP, it seems that your upbringing empowered you to have a career but disabled you in the area of interpersonal relations. Most of us feel that both are necessary to have our preferred outcome in life.

Incidentally, why do you italicize some sentences? I tried to see what the theme was for what was italicized and what was not, but could not see any rhyme nor reason to it. Actually, I found it a little distracting.

I think there is a very stark difference between the older men here and a significant proportion of the men in their 20s.
The older group accepts that they are on the spectrum, generally, and don't seem to have the same sense of entitlement and inability to cope with any kind of setback that some of the twenties men do. I think this is a cohort difference, not an AS one, and though the experience and maturity of the older men also plays a part, I get the impression that they didn't have a pronounced sense of entitlement that seems to be more common in the current 20s cohort, and that the older men when in their twenties were not the same nor had the same expectations as the younger men (not all) in their 20s now. There are some young men in that cohort who do show some maturity beyond their years.

This difference is not present to any noticeable extent amongst the women members. Younger women members tend to post about and seek better ways of negotiating challenges, rather than constant complaining about how unfair things are. Some complain, though few are habitually inclined to.

It is possible that the 20s cohort may mature in the way that the older male members did, though personally I doubt it. There have been a lot of cultural influences that are affecting and perhaps infecting some of the 20s cohort that were not present when the older male members were growing up. Respect for others was a cultural norm half a century ago, and young people of both sexes were expected to act in accordance with that value and rebuked for lapses. The cohort differences are huge in many ways.

Love your new avatar ChefDave!! !

Yep...Chef Boyardee to an extreme!