Published on 12, July, 2020
I had my assessment yesterday and im really struggling to understand it. I went in totally blind without reading any info about how the assessment may be.
They already had a 2 hr conversation with my mother over the phone abiut a year before my assessment. I had loads of questionnaires to fill out to take to my actual assessment too.
When i went in there it lasted 30 mins. She told me before we started that i would have this assessment today and have another app in 6 weeks. I asked her what the other app was and she said it was a app for the diagnosis.
I think my assessment went bad. She talked alot about useless stuff, asked me to discribe emotions, asked about bullying, friends, colleagues. She gave me 4 tasks. A task with a pattern i had to make and then asked what it looked like. A task showing her how to brush my teeth, a picture book task and i got given 5 objects to create a story with. She also gave me like a oldstyle radio and toys to play with whilst she caught up on her notes which i didnt touch.
I couldnt do the last task and she seemed to get very ticked off by it. I have no imagination anyway but when im nervous my mind goes totally blank and i just couldnt come up with some story about 5 unrelated random objects.
Im wondering if what im describing is normal? I went in hoping they would ask more about my experiences and my childhood and why i do certain things. I came out feeling like id been treated like a child and wasted 30 mins of my time. I feel deflated that i waited four years for a 30 min talk and im unsure how i can be diagnosed when theyve only spoke to me for 30 mins.
I know it is 4 years later, but what was the outcome?
I found it quite irritating and false too. Looking through all of this, I'm wondering about the accuracy of the test.
I too lacked the desire to communicate when I didn't think it related to the test. However, the assessor came up with a strange "me too" story that just didn't ring true and seemed extremely unlikely. Also it seemed rather private and of course, the other assessor was there too. If the same thing had been revealed by, say, a colleague or acquaintance, I'd have engaged and asked questions and shared more thoughts on the subject. So it feels as though this was just testing how I responded within an entirely artificial situation.
The jigsaw test bothered me too. I was asked repeatedly whether I wanted some more pieces and I refused on the basis that I still wouldn't be able to make anything meaningful from it. Plus, if it was supposed to be a rocket, it was already good enough in my eyes.
I wonder how the NT response would have looked.
It's a 30 minute charade. She wasn't really annoyed with you, don't worry, it was to see how you would react and the chitchat was to see if you would do a back and forth conversation with her. But I do understand why you are upset about it, I felt the same way after mine. I came away with the feeling .. used, manipulated and annoyed at the falseness of it all.
Wow. Messed up.
Thanks for that. I guess my short but sweet answers to her questions was because I was still pondering the previous test she had given me. I guess this is why I was asked a lot of questions in between each test??
Anyway, I hope that in a couple of weeks I will know the outcome
Good luck for Tuesday.
'Because they must like each other' haha. I think I said something similar, after thinking about it for a while. I thought the assessors story was stupid as well, she was using objects pretending they were other things and I just thought it was dumb.
I'm glad they've moved on. When people make comments like where were all the autistic children a few decades ago?? We all coped years ago! Well no, you coped, but many people didn't. And have suffered low self esteem since and other various problems, that all sit just under the radar. It's sad how nasty your school report is.
I too found it odd :) the shape thing was easy, then was asked what it looked like - I said it's just a shape! . The Psychologist said that young people think it looked like a sword or dagger - I said I guess so. The pretend tooth brushing I did a bit half baked and gave a running commentary. The story book made no sense and I came to grinding halt on that one. I was shown a picture of an Italian family eating outdoors. I say Italian because I said the trees looked those of Tuscany (the physchologist said she thought the same and I was the first to remark on it. I didn't make any comments on the family in the foreground, making cooments about small details in the background. I was asked some questions like "why do people get married" to which I answered because they must like each other. The story with 5 items was very short and the Physchologist's story had quite a few issues, like a shark swimming in a lake. I was thinking the lake would probably be fresh water and how would a shark get in the lake in the first place. But I kept a polite silence :)
My final assessment is on Tuesday, so hopefully I'll get my diagnosis confirmed. Although if they say I don't have Aspergers when a Physiatrist said I did is going to leave me in a right crisis!
Why does it make you so annoyed? I was diagnosed 30 minutes into the assessment, I hadn't completed the tasks yet, they hadn't read the questionnaires and they hadn't had a two-hour chat with someone who knew me. As such, it sounds like your diagnosis will be based on a lot more information.
From your post so far the following things seem clear in relation to the diagnostic criteria:
You struggle with social imagination e.g completing the jigsaw tasks in a way you someone else wanted you to rather than how you thought it should be
You have impairments in social communication and social relationships. Firstly, you lacked the desire to communicate when you didn't think the conversation directly related to the assessment e.g the assessor trying to have a general chat with you. Secondly, you seem unaware of the different ways people interact as the general chit chat, or in this case your lack of wanting to take part, would have told her a lot about you.
This is what worries me. Yours took 3 hrs and mine took 30 mins. She mentioned the pigs fly thing at the end but didnt ask me if i understood that expression. I have no imagination so i couldnt come up with a story but instead of just saying i had no imagination i told her i couldnt do that and when she got pissy i just kept telling her i couldnt.
She withheld pieces from me too and i just told her i couldnt finish it because pieces were missing. She did keep trying to have general chat with me, mainly about herself, which i found a bit unprofessional. But im guessing it was maybe another task.
I just cant believe that they can try diagnose me on a 30 min assessment and a couple of questionnaires.
Schools and the educational system were very different then. Now it's all ECHP and SEND.
Then there was nothing. When I was nine I ended up in special school for emotionally damaged children in a hospital.
Wow!!! Can you imagine a teacher saying that now?? His written work is a disgrace?! Did they offer any kind of help or support ever during school years?
I had severe problems as a child. Here is a surviving copy of my earliest school report. When I was eight years old.
That’s quite old to start talking. I think I’d liked the assessor at the age and felt relaxed I would have engaged a little, but on a bad day or someone I didn’t like instantly I’d wouldn’t have engaged in any at all either. Did they ask you parents about when you were a baby/toddler and using gestures to ask for things and smiling back at the etc?
She smiled and went onto the next test. Which I think was the child's picture book about flying frogs.
In my childhood I was much much worse. I was selectively mute until around the age of 8 or 9. Then I started to talk slowly.
In fact as a five or six year old I wouldn't have been able to engage at all or attempt any of these tests.
What did she say? It’s weird because they say you can’t control a meltdown. As a kid i only had to have a few episodes of screaming and what looks like a tantrum I guess and a proper smack across the back of the legs meant I wasn’t doing it again. Maybe that’s why I got so good over the years at internalising stuff, and completely shutting down in situations instead. People have said to me in the past things like‘didn’t that annoy you!’ ‘Why didn’t you say or do this?’ When what’s happened is I’ve completed shut down and gone mute.
A five year old autistic child would probably have had a meltdown and thrown a tantrum.
I told her to her face that I refuse to have a meltdown because you refuse to give me the pieces to complete the jigsaw.
thats sounds strange! I’m glad I didn’t have that in mine, I’m not sure how I would have reacted. I struggle to ask for things so I probably would have just sat there in silence.
Thats nice you enjoyed doing the story section
There is a logic behind these tests. Like the jigsaw!
They gave me identical large rubber diamond shaped pieces and asked me to place them on a regular template.
Then I ran out pieces necessary to complete the template. The assessor insisted I complete the jigsaw. I asked for the other pieces. She refused, said no, and insisted I complete the jigsaw.
I believe the test was to see if I would have a meltdown or throw some kind of tantrum.