It's a miracle I got in

........and probably will hardly manage to again, as I may have forgotten my password ready. After a zillion things going wrong.....including the fact that all my brilliant ideas for a handle were already taken. Great minds. 

I have not been diagnosed and won't be, I don't live in the UK and no doubt more ties to my lovely home country will be cut still further in the next year. 

It was just seen as craziness when I was a kid, in the 1960's. It could be a spectrum thing but it could be something else. The red flags for the A word for me are that I regressed at 18 months and no longer spoke using grammatically correct sentences. Tantrums and obsessions during childhood, being scapegoated at high school and repeatedly being criticised from student years onwards for not engaging in enough eye contact. 

But it is on the other side of the boot too as I teach at a high school for children who wish to specialise in the arts, and many are now getting diagnoses of dyspraxia, dyslexia as well as the odd autism I do feel the need to know how to work with these kids. 

I would love to hear from older people who are only now recognising the hidden thing after all these years. Or from other teachers also confronting similar things.

The most important thing is my art incidentally.

Parents
  • I have just been diagnosed as being on the autistic spectrum, at the age of fifty one, two years ago I was diagnosed with Coeliac disease and more or less have handled both on my own.  I would love to meet up with autistic people in Leicester, but have had no response from the 'Monday Club', they are facing cuts due to austerity measures.  Anyway the good thing about being diagnosed is that I can come off anti-depressants after being on them for eighteen years for anxiety and stress, my liver was beginning to complain.  Now I am learning to handle being autistic ally aware, having coped with it unaware since birth.

Reply
  • I have just been diagnosed as being on the autistic spectrum, at the age of fifty one, two years ago I was diagnosed with Coeliac disease and more or less have handled both on my own.  I would love to meet up with autistic people in Leicester, but have had no response from the 'Monday Club', they are facing cuts due to austerity measures.  Anyway the good thing about being diagnosed is that I can come off anti-depressants after being on them for eighteen years for anxiety and stress, my liver was beginning to complain.  Now I am learning to handle being autistic ally aware, having coped with it unaware since birth.

Children
  • I would love to meet up with autistic people in Leicester, but have had no response from the 'Monday Club', they are facing cuts due to austerity measures. 

    I don't know if you are aware of the Translate ASD Support Group in Loughborough? Not too far from Leicester if you have transport. They meet once a month on a Monday eve and its free. I've been the once but its a bit of a jaunt for me as I'm not local.

    www.translate-asc.org.uk/home.html

  • I had IBS, that was one of the things that helped my GP get a diagnosis set up. Apparently Coeliacs and IBS is a common thing in ASD people. My GP was very competent in noticing the things that led to my diagnosis.

    "Autistic ally aware"  I like that! It's a state of mind I'm gonna explore!

  • Hi Bardic Poet

    Just saw your post and responded. Leicester is not a million miles from one town I used to live in. We had an art group though only one of us got really noticed at the time and he was asked to design CD covers for a doom metal band. Another good friend went to teach abroad like me and he now self publishes SF on Amazon.