Recently Diagnosed

This is an interesting question Flutterby. I think how far AS affects people is very individually specific, so some adults diagnosed with AS will have profound problems while  others will have mild difficulties, will be coping very well, but still feel different and need answers for their current or previous problems. So it is not the case that people with late diagnoses are necessarily 'mild', just that teachers and other professionals were not aware of AS as a possible cause behind the persons' difficulties. Even today many parents struggle to get their (even quite severely affected) children diagnosed and this is after autism has entered the public consciousness in a way that it had not  done in the 1990s or before. It is also the case that more children are being diagnosed who are quite 'mild' because it has become more acceptable to be diagnosed with various mental conditions.

I  have had a range of difficulties since I was a toddler. I was slow to pick up fine-motor skills such as building towers with plastic bricks; could not do the most basic  jig-saw puzzles due to a visual-spatial learning difficulty; did not know the alphabet until I was over 7 years; was very slow to learn basic numerical and geometric skills; could read fiction books really fast but did not understand the content etc. I was hyperactive; restless; walked on tiptoes; had prolonged tantrums if I was made to sit in my pushchair and still had tantrums well into adolescence (I still have them sometimes, but not so much now); was socially and emotionally immature; confused by loud, noisy and chaotic social situations, which made me retreat into myself and gave me the appearance of being very shy; and yet I was noisy and loud in the classroom whenever I got bored and thought I could get away with it; was only ever interested in one subject at a time to an extreme degree; was very anxious and phobic (I still am).

The school got me assessed when I was 10, and this was the schools' decision, and I got a statement and one-to-one support with things like comprehension and coordination. But no diagnosis was given and nothing was done to sort out my social difficulties, so I went through secondary school feeling increasingly isolated and simply relied on my academic abilities, and intense interest in the actress Kate Winslet,  to get me through this time. My OCD got worse and eventually I hardly left the house, which made my parents persuade me to seek help. I received CBT, but it did not help me, and I read about asperger's and realised that it was likely I had this condition (my parents agreed) and this insight led me to get a referral on the NHS to the Autism team, and I finally got diagnosed in March 2009. Since diagnosis I have received the support I need and I have made a lot of progress.

This is an interesting question Flutterby. I think how far AS affects people is very individually specific, so some adults diagnosed with AS will have profound problems while  others will have mild difficulties, will be coping very well, but still feel different and need answers for their current or previous problems. So it is not the case that people with late diagnoses are necessarily 'mild', just that teachers and other professionals were not aware of AS as a possible cause behind the persons' difficulties. Even today many parents struggle to get their (even quite severely affected) children diagnosed and this is after autism has entered the public consciousness in a way that it had not  done in the 1990s or before. It is also the case that more children are being diagnosed who are quite 'mild' because it has become more acceptable to be diagnosed with various mental conditions.

I  have had a range of difficulties since I was a toddler. I was slow to pick up fine-motor skills such as building towers with plastic bricks; could not do the most basic  jig-saw puzzles due to a visual-spatial learning difficulty; did not know the alphabet until I was over 7 years; was very slow to learn basic numerical and geometric skills; could read fiction books really fast but did not understand the content etc. I was hyperactive; restless; walked on tiptoes; had prolonged tantrums if I was made to sit in my pushchair and still had tantrums well into adolescence (I still have them sometimes, but not so much now); was socially and emotionally immature; confused by loud, noisy and chaotic social situations, which made me retreat into myself and gave me the appearance of being very shy; and yet I was noisy and loud in the classroom whenever I got bored and thought I could get away with it; was only ever interested in one subject at a time to an extreme degree; was very anxious and phobic (I still am).

The school got me assessed when I was 10, and this was the schools' decision, and I got a statement and one-to-one support with things like comprehension and coordination. But no diagnosis was given and nothing was done to sort out my social difficulties, so I went through secondary school feeling increasingly isolated and simply relied on my academic abilities, and intense interest in the actress Kate Winslet,  to get me through this time. My OCD got worse and eventually I hardly left the house, which made my parents persuade me to seek help. I received CBT, but it did not help me, and I read about asperger's and realised that it was likely I had this condition (my parents agreed) and this insight led me to get a referral on the NHS to the Autism team, and I finally got diagnosed in March 2009. Since diagnosis I have received the support I need and I have made a lot of progress.