Published on 12, July, 2020
Yes, I was taught ITA as well. What a fiasco! When I went on to Junior School I came 130th out of 136 in spelling. The headmaster wrote, "Watch the spelling!" on my first year report. It was hardly my fault though.
One good thing came of it; when the teacher announced that what we had been learning was not used in the real world and we had to learn an entirely different spelling system, I felt so disgusted and betrayed that it gave me a life-long distrust of authority in all its forms.
Thank you for your reply, I seem to be blurting out a lot out tonight, it’s been very helpful. I took the AQ10 test today, I scored 9. I don’t know if that’s good or bad. I feel so much better for joining the site. I had got to the point in the past with thoughts of taking my own life as I felt worthless and could see the harm I was causing to all. I’m the same as you when I go I really can be angry, I tend to just shut down, non verbal is easy. I can remember one Christmas Day, my eldest son had a new train set and wanted help with it, I ranted at him and had to have earphones on and be left alone. These memories live with me, there were people outside the family invited to lunch!
I can remember infant school, I would sometimes kick others. The schools answer was to take your shoes away! Why weren’t we helped. Something that really held me back was that I was selected as an experiment. I was taken out of class and taught English in the cloakroom. I was taught to spell every word as it’s pronounced ie said was sed.When I went to primary school I was treated with disbelief as the project had been cancelled and kept quiet. I think it was called ITA English.
Thank you for your reply and will get help. It isn’t fair on my wife anymore, I’ve put her through hell along with my sons. I hope you assessment goes well for you.
I could have written a lot of what you said. The penny didn’t drop for me until late 2019, after several years of trying to get my daughter diagnosed. I’m 48, and have plucked up the courage to sort this out. My assessment process starts in mid December. Like you, I’m looking for some answers to help explain my life long difficulties.
I was diagnosed at 59, earlier this year. They only started diagnosing children with 'less overt autism' in the early 1990s, so people of our generation had no chance of being diagnosed as children. I was selectively mute at infant school, once for as long as 3 months continuously, and even that rang no bells. Once we become adult, and are seeming to cope reasonably well with life, the chance of outside agencies recognising our autism is almost zero, so it is usually down to the individual recognising what autistic traits are, and how we exhibit them personally.
Yes! I only started to work it out when I was 56. It happens to a lot of us. You're in good company. Basically, a lot of people who are a) very verbal - even with advanced language skills and b) are more inclined to be quiet (i.e. probably shutting down, rather than melting down) went totally and completely under the radar. Just because we can speak and aren't lashing out (well, I do under a few circumstances, but mostly freeze into shutdown), doesn't mean that there aren't big problems there which need support.
We're all different, but yes indeed, I'm recognising some of the above in common with you.
You've been really brave not only to post this, but to talk to your wife and mother. I'm so glad your wife seems to get it. Your mum, well she just probably doesn't understand. Good luck with the GP. It might help if before you go you make a comprehensive list of all the traits you think you notice and a list of the problems they are causing you. You could also do and print off and take some of the online quizzes from reputable psychology websites. The AQ10 is the one the NHS uses. These aren't a diagnosis but they are meant to indicate when an individual should be assesses.
advise = (verb) provide guidance
I hope you can advise me on what to do.
advice = (noun) guidance
I hope you can offer me some advice.
Sorry to begin with that but grammar, punctuation and spelling mistakes are like huge blaring sirens to me.
Anyway, yes. I have just turned 50. And have lived 49 years without even the hint of suspicion that I was autistic (Aspergic). I think many people with Aspergers, like myself, go undetected throughout our lives because most of us are able to get along with relatively little difficulty. We might be labelled as odd, eccentric or trouble-makers, but we are also very good at masking any traits that might be considered too odd to the average person.
I would say that people with more profound autism are identified much sooner as they require more support and are not as self-aware or susceptible to societal conditioning.
That said, us Aspies can still benefit from understanding our condition and making adjustments and adaptations in our lives to make us more comfortable.
As Soctates said, "The unexamined life is not worth living."
We can all benefit from questioning our own stagnant minds, identifying our entrenched habits and investigating our outdated beliefs about ourselves and the world regardless of our neurotype.
Sadly, it seems that neurodiverse folk are less likely to be aware of their own social programming than their neurotypical brothers and sisters. I expected the opposite to be true. Maybe our brains are less flexible, and so we can't break free from our learned behaviours and thinking patterns.
I went 48 years before finding out earlier this year that I’m autistic. (As yet undiagnosed but very little doubt in my mind.) And lot of what you’ve said about your experiences through life sound similar to mine.
This forum has been really helpful for me, even though I only joined quite recently - I hope it soon turns out to be the same for you.
There's lots of people on here who didn't discover until later on in life, mine was last year at 58 so it is possible to go through most of your life knowing you are different but not why.