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I’m an adult suspecting autism

NAS87661

I have been going through a journey of self discovery and possible self diagnosis. I am trying to remember aspects of my childhood but the details are hazy. I would like advice on questions I might ask my parents which may elicit information on autisic traits I may have had as a child. I have found sample interviews for parents of young children, but they seems very specific and I worry they are too specific for my parents to remember. Any advise is much appreciated. Thanks!

  • Here is a list of typical autistic traits that you can use to phrase your questions:

    lack of empathy
    naive, inappropriate, one-sided interaction
    little or no ability to form friendships
    pedantic, repetitive speech
    poor non-verbal communications
    intense absorption in specialised subjects
    clumsy and ill-co-ordinated movements and postures
    unusual prosody, accents, voice control
    insistence on sameness - obsessive routines
    absence of an innate "theory ofmind" i.e. a theory ofhow other minds work.

    Consider framing your requests around these, but if your parents are elderly then their recall is likely to be less effective than your own, so you may need to dig for specific situations yourself.

    The sorts of questions that are most useful are not normally about specific situations but about your general perception, behaviour and responses, all of which you are best placed to answer.

    I think you may be better off taking the test yourself - you can do this online for free:

    https://www.thevividmind.org/blog/test/autism-test-online/

    This way you don't need to trouble your parents as in some cases the parent ends up feeling they have failed you which is probably not what you want to achieve

  • I was diagnosed in childhood so I can't help you directly, but if you bump this post in the morning and the middle of the day tomorrow I suspect one or more who were diagnosed in adulthood will see the post and be able to answer.