Why nothing for us!!!!

It was totally missed for me at school, first I was regarded as a bit of a slow learner, then possibly dyslexic, then odd and sometimes shy, that was countered by things like I my verbal vocabulary being nearly five years ahead of my age by the time I left primary school even though my spelling and writing was a couple of years below, that I was fine if engaged in a subject I knew about, but didn’t really know how to “play”, I would just rerun the same play scenarios. I failed the eleven plus by one point, I actually think I’d have done better at grammar school being that I was a “bit of a swot and a geek”, I was let down by the language sections, same as Mensa IQ tests, I’ve passed and could join if I wanted, by reasoning skills put me in the top 1%, but some components of the original tests let me down.

The problem in secondary school was that they weren’t really interested in helping, I was bright enough that even whilst failing socially and struggling with some components I was still top of the class or in the top five in the year in maths, physics, chemistry, biology, geography, history, resistant materials, art (I wasn’t creative, but I was able to copy and adapt others ideas and technically I had enough skills), IT, I even managed to scrape the Bs in English language and literature because I could rote learn and critically analyse the text, even if I couldn’t analyse people’s motivation in the story and my spelling was far from great. When there were kids in the year who were going to struggle to get three GCSEs of any kind I just wasn’t a priority. It’s fairly obvious now looking back, to any teacher with training and the time to pay attention that I was on the spectrum, those who had the time didn’t have the training and those with the training didn’t have the inclination to look, they were too busy dealing with the thick kids. Statistically speaking I was going to be fine (10 A*-C grades at GCSE, five of those A* or A, I didn’t matter, on paper I met the requirement for a good pupil, it didn’t matter I didn’t have any friends, I was doing fine on the stats for the league tables so I was left to my own devices.

I think I went through a phase of being resentful, now I’m just disappointed, it wasn’t until a few years ago in my late twenties that I really figured it all out, started learning proper coping mechanisms, got formally (although privately) diagnosed. I think if it’s a shame I lost that decade because I could have understood it and learnt the coping mechanisms ten years earlier and not wasted that decade, but also I’ve turned it around now and I am who I am, time to make the best of the life I’ve got left to live!

It was totally missed for me at school, first I was regarded as a bit of a slow learner, then possibly dyslexic, then odd and sometimes shy, that was countered by things like I my verbal vocabulary being nearly five years ahead of my age by the time I left primary school even though my spelling and writing was a couple of years below, that I was fine if engaged in a subject I knew about, but didn’t really know how to “play”, I would just rerun the same play scenarios. I failed the eleven plus by one point, I actually think I’d have done better at grammar school being that I was a “bit of a swot and a geek”, I was let down by the language sections, same as Mensa IQ tests, I’ve passed and could join if I wanted, by reasoning skills put me in the top 1%, but some components of the original tests let me down.

The problem in secondary school was that they weren’t really interested in helping, I was bright enough that even whilst failing socially and struggling with some components I was still top of the class or in the top five in the year in maths, physics, chemistry, biology, geography, history, resistant materials, art (I wasn’t creative, but I was able to copy and adapt others ideas and technically I had enough skills), IT, I even managed to scrape the Bs in English language and literature because I could rote learn and critically analyse the text, even if I couldn’t analyse people’s motivation in the story and my spelling was far from great. When there were kids in the year who were going to struggle to get three GCSEs of any kind I just wasn’t a priority. It’s fairly obvious now looking back, to any teacher with training and the time to pay attention that I was on the spectrum, those who had the time didn’t have the training and those with the training didn’t have the inclination to look, they were too busy dealing with the thick kids. Statistically speaking I was going to be fine (10 A*-C grades at GCSE, five of those A* or A, I didn’t matter, on paper I met the requirement for a good pupil, it didn’t matter I didn’t have any friends, I was doing fine on the stats for the league tables so I was left to my own devices.

I think I went through a phase of being resentful, now I’m just disappointed, it wasn’t until a few years ago in my late twenties that I really figured it all out, started learning proper coping mechanisms, got formally (although privately) diagnosed. I think if it’s a shame I lost that decade because I could have understood it and learnt the coping mechanisms ten years earlier and not wasted that decade, but also I’ve turned it around now and I am who I am, time to make the best of the life I’ve got left to live!