Something about older autistic adults (>60), for a change

Hi Autonomistic 

Many thanks for getting back to me so promptly.

As you are aware, not everyone who has  Autism in their old age, can afford the expense of the courses that the NAS has to offer. 

I do not wish to start a discussion ,for  I feel  that I am at a disadvantage because you have prospered in that you have had the NAS to help you, whereas I have had to get on with life on my own.

Many thanks for your invitation for a discussion ,but I wish to decline it.

Me and my father were understandably very similar. He died 24/09/2001 aged 60 and I was 50 years old recently, so I'll see how this/that all goes.

Welcome to the community.

As Debbie suggested, you're likely to get more responses from likeminded people by starting your own discussion. 

Go to https://community.autism.org.uk/f/introduce-yourself and click on the blue 'start a discussion' link.

Many of us on here are in our 50s, 60s and 70s and completely unaware of being autistic until later in life. Hopefully you will be able to identify with some common experiences.

Hi Debbie

The reason why it is relevant to me, is so that I can be with likeminded people, in order to have something in common with. 

I fully accept that it is not relevant to you ,and, as a fellow Autistic person,  I completely respect your Opinions and Beliefs, but I am also entitled to my opinions and beliefs.

Each to their own.

Many thanks for replying so promptly.

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NAS88984 said:

I would be grateful if you could help me to discover information on Autism and the Older Person, I would also be interested in information on Older autistic people who do not have children?

Hi.

I think you are addressing your request to Jenny B but she isn't a frequent poster here nowadays and this is an old thread.

I can't direct you to any information without doing a Google search, but this forum has members over 60 (including myself) and we comment on the various threads.

I haven't had children although I'm not sure what the relevance is?

Anyway, welcome, and I'd suggest starting a thread or 2 with anything you would like to discuss.

I  am an older woman who has got  Autism, and am increasingly getting tired of younger people telling me ,that their experiences of life e similar to mine. NAS ,was not around  when I was younger ,and, when it was in Yorkshire and Lancashire, it was unheard of  in  the far North West of England.  

if you have a long piece of string and a short piece of string, and you put them side by side ,are they they the same length, are they the same size? The answer of course, is, no they are not!  

Therefore, a little bit of Common Sense , would not go amiss.

I would be grateful if you could help me to discover information on Autism and the Older Person, I would also be interested in information on Older autistic people who do not have children?

Many thanks

These days there seems to be more opportunities for self-employment or "portfolio" working. The downside is the unpredictability and having to manage your own diary, keep records. do tax returns, etc.  The upside is being able to choose work that interests you.

I am not too happy with heat, so today I have taken a few hours off and will do my paperwork this evening when it is cooler. My clients may get emails which I sent at 2.00 am - so what? They can reply when they are ready.

I agree it's not easy. If you require help from the State due to disability it's an extremely flawed system.Despite being someone with at the time several decades of SMI I was only successful with my 3rd claim for DLA(I had help with the 3rd claim) , Meanwhile I knew from an online ng there were those who'd only had health problems starting in their 50s who were getting it. These people planned their claims like a military campaign. Successful or failure shouldn't be about  how well you can present your claim, but about the things you struggle with. If you don't have a system that does you have a flawed and to some extent dishonest system.

That's something I'd have aspired to myself but given the level of activity and interaction with others required, not to mention managing conflict, it's far better I just stay in the background and pay my subs.  Not sure whether I could exactly say that I was unwell (debatable in some ways, although a couple of colleagues did approach me and ask whether I was bipolar) but a role like this would certainly have made me so.  

Yes, it's very likely you do share some traits and presumably your dad can see this too?  It's also likely that some of those helped him in his career but it sounds as though he enjoyed so much success in conventional terms (like the other two you mention above) that it would feel demoralising for most of us to use them as a benchmark against which to rate ourselves.  

I'd probably go by the quality of person someone becomes because so much external success can be down to luck or random chance as much as innate abilities.  Who's the person behind the "Who's who" entry and how would you compare people just as actual human beings, trying to get by in the world.  Some people get plaudits and titles, others are never so high profile - still worthy human beings but the meaning we give to the differences can be punishing.   

I'm not saying I don't still get drawn by such comparisons, but as I get older these external measures feel less and less significant.  They never were that significant anyway, but I think I got inculcated at school into a hyper-competitive way of looking at life, sadly to the detriment of life itself. 

Picture me at 40, still trying to get 10/10 in a wholly unsuitable role, failing badly, but redoubling my efforts in order to climb the greasy pole.  Not a part of my life that I consider well lived!  I can certainly compare notes about my employment experiences on these forums, but most of it is actually a very sorry tale.  

My dad has just turned 92. My s/daughter has said he and I  share quite a few traits. However he had a reasonably successful career working for the Foreign office. Successful enough to get a 'Who's who' entry.

The first one never came across as being particularly intelligent, but may  have been a late bloomer. The second one  always came across as being very intelligent. If I'd stayed well I I would've liked to have been a Labour MP.

Those guys see like high flyers. Such ratified heights (in NT terms) that it’s useless for anyone (autistic or otherwise)  to compare  against them. 

Yes, that question can seem to contain assumptions and values that jarr. And I can see how it could lock in to certain thoughts straight away.  Mind you, it sometimes seems automatic and akin to, "How are you?", so I maybe read too much into it if it's just a social nicety kind of thing. 

It reminds me of some of the more careless questions asked by various CPNs we've seen, who, while being very affable and well meaning, would ask what we were doing for the weekend or on holiday, or which pub we preferred, as if those things were a possibility for us (they quite obviously weren't and it felt a bit "normal-waving"  and presumptuous to me).  I felt a bit disappointed in them after some very open and difficult conversations as they'd always revert to things like that just as they were leaving, as if they'd just been pretending to listen and were now a bit like Mike Yarwood at the end of his show saying, "And now this is me" (what a great guy I am!).

Anyway, I'm probably overthinking it, but I feel aghast that someone can be left feeling "useless and worthless" by it when that's  really not the case.  It might be yet another of those ways in which the prevailing culture bears down on people and those who "belong" engage in a bit of social signalling.  

Contemporaries:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Tyrie  Same year. Same D.O.B. Different school house.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dieter_Helm Year above me.Same school house.

I have an equivalent to that (for some other time, and likely it’s own thread) so you are not alone in being triggered by the ‘No harm’ presumption of others in that way. I feel your pain. Just from another angle. And to some extents even from the same one is terms of my workplace ‘limitations’ (in NT terms) 

Jenny Butterfly said:

need to be born in mind.   

I also think that, generally speaking, there'll be a significant number who have never been in paid employment

One of the regular questions asked on all kind of forums is 'What job do you do?' People mean no harm by it,but it brings out a lot of self disapproval/self disgust in me. I tend to think I'm the only person who's like that .That I'm useless and worthless.

That's certainly true.  We're a self selecting group of people who like forums like this and have the wherewithal and motivation to access it.  Some of us will be more vociferous than others and some will be parents or carers.  We can't be representative of the whole autistic population and that does need to be born in mind.   

I also think that, generally speaking, there'll be a significant number who have never been in paid employment.  There are plenty in my own family who fall into that category (and they're not on here).  It's just that the real proportion seems to differ depending on which studies are referred to, and many of these studies are limited, out of date or skewed.     

I suppose I'm still trying to work out what the 'average' autistic person is, and am not at all sure I'm doing better  than whatever that is. Or by what objective standards (if there are any) 'better' should be defined. There's a trade-off across the board I think?  In some respects I feel very inadequate compared to some others on here in ways I don't have the emotional energy to go into right now. And how right or wrongheaded that kind of thinking of mine might be is something I'm having to navigate tentatively and carefully. I can say with certainty that I don't believe I'm struggling internally any less than many autistic people, so in that sense I feel very average indeed.