Published on 12, July, 2020
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.
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.
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.