Hi,
My adult daughter recently had a diagnosis of Autism. She lives across the country and I'm here to investigate how best I can support her and her partner.
I'm also investigating my own feelings around it, and the guilt I feel for not knowing.
That's me for now, hope everyone is as well as you are able.
Welcome to the forum.
Like your daughter, I was already living many miles away from my Mum by the time I received my diagnosis - with not the slightest inkling myself that I might be autistic until only a few months before I was referred for assessment. It's very easy, of course, for me to sit here at my computer and say "don't feel guilty!", and I've had several discussion with my Mum over the last few years about her feelings around having not noticed the signs, or even of having contributed to some of the mental health problems which eventually led to my referral. I have never felt for a moment that she has anything to reproach herself for - quite the opposite; an unidentified autistic kid couldn't have wished for better.
There are plenty of reasons why early signs might not be noticed, even by professionals (several counsellors didn't raise any flags in my case). Even the official diagnostic manuals now make clear that autism doesn't always show on the outside until a change in circumstances tips the balance and the innate ways of coping that we've learned since infancy aren't quite enough to hide our traits any more. Like me, many of us have spent years with only a vague sense of being a bit "different" that we couldn't quite put our fingers on; and autism is great at mimicking other things which explain this away (shyness, introversion, absent-mindedness, etc.)
As children, we do our best to behave as we see the people around us do, just like any other kid does. We can't see inside other people's heads, and they can't see into ours, so no-one has any idea that the way we're going about understanding the world might be completely different than other people. Autism has a strong genetic component too, so while other family members might not be diagnosable as autistic, some traits may just be accepted as pretty normal within the family (it turns out I have a few relatives who are likely on the spectrum themselves, just not as noticeably as me). And naturally, one has to know exactly what to look for; which is made much harder by the definition of what autism is having changed so much over the last couple of decades - I would likely have been diagnosed in my school years if things were as they are now, but I was just seen as a very quiet "swotty" kid at the time (this is often particularly true of girls, who often feel more under pressure to hide their traits due to gender stereotypes about being "chatty" and "emotional").
And as said above, it's great that you're here, and your honesty about your feelings is surely a good thing, even if the feelings themselves are a little bit uncomfortable at the moment.
Best wishes.
Welcome to the forum.
Like your daughter, I was already living many miles away from my Mum by the time I received my diagnosis - with not the slightest inkling myself that I might be autistic until only a few months before I was referred for assessment. It's very easy, of course, for me to sit here at my computer and say "don't feel guilty!", and I've had several discussion with my Mum over the last few years about her feelings around having not noticed the signs, or even of having contributed to some of the mental health problems which eventually led to my referral. I have never felt for a moment that she has anything to reproach herself for - quite the opposite; an unidentified autistic kid couldn't have wished for better.
There are plenty of reasons why early signs might not be noticed, even by professionals (several counsellors didn't raise any flags in my case). Even the official diagnostic manuals now make clear that autism doesn't always show on the outside until a change in circumstances tips the balance and the innate ways of coping that we've learned since infancy aren't quite enough to hide our traits any more. Like me, many of us have spent years with only a vague sense of being a bit "different" that we couldn't quite put our fingers on; and autism is great at mimicking other things which explain this away (shyness, introversion, absent-mindedness, etc.)
As children, we do our best to behave as we see the people around us do, just like any other kid does. We can't see inside other people's heads, and they can't see into ours, so no-one has any idea that the way we're going about understanding the world might be completely different than other people. Autism has a strong genetic component too, so while other family members might not be diagnosable as autistic, some traits may just be accepted as pretty normal within the family (it turns out I have a few relatives who are likely on the spectrum themselves, just not as noticeably as me). And naturally, one has to know exactly what to look for; which is made much harder by the definition of what autism is having changed so much over the last couple of decades - I would likely have been diagnosed in my school years if things were as they are now, but I was just seen as a very quiet "swotty" kid at the time (this is often particularly true of girls, who often feel more under pressure to hide their traits due to gender stereotypes about being "chatty" and "emotional").
And as said above, it's great that you're here, and your honesty about your feelings is surely a good thing, even if the feelings themselves are a little bit uncomfortable at the moment.
Best wishes.
