More Than Just 'Quirky'

I am 16 years old, with an interest in writing, philosophy and performing, composing music.
This is my 2nd day with the knowledge that I have Asperger's.
I match over 15 symptoms, as well as many traits of NLD.

All through my life up until 7th grade, I was a complete nerd, tight ponytail and glasses.
But I starved to be normal socially, so much that it became an obsession that took place over academics.
I got contacts, and started obsessing over my new hairstyle and clothes so much that I may as well been body-dysmorphic. I tried to hard to make friends and get out there, that even if I was careful about being reserved in my manner and appearance, some kids whispered that I was a slut.

I journaled scrupulously about my social trials and errors.
Over the years, I made many friendly acquaintances and became seemingly "self-actualized," but in the end can only count on one hand the number of ppl I can truly call best friends.

I have told my parents multiple times that I felt so different from normal people in social interaction, but they only scoffed and told me I was crazy for believing this. But I wasn't convinced. So in the wee hours of the morning yesterday, I snuck downstairs and started researching. I was blown away when I saw that my personality echoed Asperger's and NLD to a T.

I think I differ from most Aspies in that I have strengths in emotionally-driven subjects like literature, philosophy, and foreign languages, over the maths and sciences.
I live in an extremly rigid household, so my Asperger's is likely ENVIRONMENTALLY INDUCED.
I wish my parents would have believed me instead of going along with the traditional Asian belief that anything can be overcome through grit and stamina.

It simply can't.
I haven't told them, and don't plan to. On my own, I have handled my life up til now even without knowing I have Asperger's. I simply thought I was socially stupid, and idiot savant. So I self-improved. After 4 miserable years at the height of awkwardness I think I can get along better now, as normally as I can possibly. Asperger's doesn't have a cure, but self-efforts do work. I have never undergone a single session of psychotherapy, and don't plan to. I DON'T NEED IT. I have been my own psycologist.

I have an 11 year old daughter. I have taken her to doctors and she participated in early intervention. Now i am doing research to try to help what i can go back to the doctors with and try to actually find out what is wrong with her. As a small child her speech was slow and at one point not talking at all, i was told she was just a little slower, so she went threw the speech therapy and has been in special education since she started school They diaganosed her with mmd ( mildy mental disable). As a smaller child she use to obsess over horse which i thought was just b/c she loved animals. She use to let other children pick on her and take things from her and would not react to it, as if she didn't understand what was going on. Thank goodness she had a wonderful teacher that cared about her and wouldn't let the other children do so and tried to help her stick up for herself. Flash foward to the present and she now thinks everyone is always mean to her and picking on her, which yes she is the only girl in class and has been since she started so she knows the kids since the beginning, i do believe that she gets picked on, but at times even at home she doesn't understand of someone playing with her or thinking we are teasing her. When she gets upset she will cry for a very long time... at times it can last for over an hour or longer. The therapist and school say she does suffer from depression, and yes i can see that also, but nothing has been done for her to help that. She has gained about 30 lbs in about a year, her i.q. though was diaganosed below average that is why they said mmd. At school they have the problems of getting her to calm down when she does cry, i also have that problem though. She has always been the type to fall asleep at a decent hour, but would wake up wee hours of the moning and stay up without taking a nap during the day. I want to help her so bad, but i don't want to be turned away without having maybe some direction to tell the doctors when i go back. If anyone could please help me and think that it does sound like she needs to be tested for Aspergers Syndrome or maybe something else please respond back to this. Thank you, a deperate parent .

I am a 38 year old white woman with Aspenger's. I didn't get the news that I had it until March of this year. Looking back at my life I see that it was enviormentally enduced autism because I didn't have the chances to properly socialize with other children my age. I was in Special Education classes but I would be the only female in them. I was bully prey as well from kindergarden to the 12th grade. I did have on paying job but was fired from it. I got it with the help of my state's vocational rehabilitation department. They got frustrated with me which usually happend with ANY professonal that came across my path throughout my life and told me to file for disablity. I am sick and tired of hearing in a condesending tone that it is for your own good as if I am a child and NOT a 38 year old adult. I am also tired of the statement that I cant read people. Maybe I read people differently than others. What really hurt was one pyscharists telling me point blank to my face I am incapable of love. I want to take chances and make mistakes on my own with out having to follow my parents around everywhere like a damned puppy but I am not allowed to. If I voice my frustration with it I get told that maybe we (my parents) are maybe tired of buyin you food or paying your doctor bills which in turn makes me back down. I just want a life on my own terms but no one will let me. I want to know what it is like for my spirit to soar like the bald eagles I love so much here. I am tired of feeling like a caged bird. My father gets angry at me for living like a hermit but they have fixed it so there is NOTHING I can do about the hermtiing without upsetting the whole house. My American dream is to marry, be employed and have children but I was talked out of it by a pyscharist and what was worse was that my own mother agreed with her. It took a WEEK for me to find the courage in myself to tell my own mother how much that hurt me. I have been through twenty five years of pyschotherapy and I am now at I point I cant stand shrinks anymore because they try to become like a third parent to me. I hunger for love and acceptance but I feed it with food. I have been food addictied since childhood. I cant state my true feelings or fear whatever I say will be turned around and made to make me like a bad person.

Thank you for the enlight article .I have a 7 year old boy with Asperger's and because of lack of training in schools and clinic it was hard for wife and i to get my son diagnosed.with the research we had done and great informative articles such as this my son was diagnosed at the age of 4.With early intervention one my son might lead the way for a better life of kids withASD.Phil , Proud Father! pjcjase@yahoo.com

Thank you Jeneen and Newsweek for bringing to light the possibility of girls being misdiagnosed, or in this case, not diagnosed at all. This is a well written and thought provoking article. In reading the article, I can say that I know many, and have met many autistic boys, but I do not know any autistic girls. Once you understand the condition, the diagnosis is actually easy to make when dealing with boys. The psychological and physical obsessions, the difficulty in social interactions, the awkward speech, avoiding eye contact and so on are obvious indicators. If the obsessions with girls are different, and if they do not lead to behaviors that we find odd, I can see how a girl could easily fly under the radar, resulting in no, or inappropriate treatment. If this article is accurate, the clear inference is that the autistic spectrum is much larger than we initially thought it was.

Richard Aaron,
Father of autistic child & author of Gauntlet
www.richardaaron.com

Thank you, NewsWeek and Jeneen, for such a sensitively written and enlightening article on this very difficult subject. I have a 17-year-old daughter who has struggled socially all of her life. When she finally broke down during her junior year with severe depression and panic disorder, we pulled her out of the large public school she attended, got her into intense counseling, and changed her medications. But it wasn't until she was assessed for learning disorders that we discovered she was on the high end of Asperger???s???at that moment, our own ???light bulb??? went off. Since then, she has gotten educational accommodations as well as cognitive behavioral therapy that is helping her to self-assess more realistically. She is a completely different person, having this diagnosis in hand, and we are so much better equipped to parent her properly. I think that this is truly a hidden epidemic, and I urge all parents who suspect something isn't quite right with their daughters to seek out psycho-educational testing. Once you know what you're dealing with, you can help your child achieve happiness.

Thank you, NewsWeek and Jeneen, for such a sensitively written and enlightening article on this very difficult subject. I have a 17-year-old daughter who has struggled socially all of her life. When she finally broke down during her junior year with severe depression and panic disorder, we pulled her out of the large public school she attended, got her into intense counseling, and changed her medications. But it wasn't until she was diagnosed with mild Asperger's this past summer as part of an educational workup that our "light bulb" went off. Since then, she has gotten educational accommodations as well as cognitive behavioral therapy that is helping her to self-assess more realistically. She is a completely different person, having that diagnosis, and we are so much better equipped to parent her in the way that helps her. I think that this is truly a hidden epidemic, and I urge all parents who suspect something isn't quite right with their daughters to seek out psycho-educational testing. Once you know what you're dealing with, you can help your child.

Girls with undiagnosed Asperger's can be perfect bullying targets: trying to navigate increasingly complex social networks, while beset by the savage pack mentalities of mean girls. I co-edit The Can I Sit With You? project, which shares real stories of school social experiences to help other children (and adults) better understand their peers. One of our most wrenching stories deals with just this topic: http://www.canisitwithyou.org/?p=127

I think the use of the term a person with Autism /asperger is recommendd by all experts because it recgonises that the person is first human. This is person first language. You are a person who hapen to have Autism and but you are not an autistic who happens to have human qualities.
Bawa kuyini, Australia

I have official diagnose of Asperger, also with pretty notable speech delay so I lean abit to the "High Functioning" Autism side of things.
I do not find the therms "aspie", "autie", autist or autistic demeaning at all, well I don't like the cute clang of "autie" or "aspie", but demeaning? not at all.
Something that I however do find insulting, is when people INSIST to say "person with autism"/"person with asperger" rather than autistic person or autist, in the belief that autism and asperger is something bad, an illness, something the world is better of without.
But the thing that they forget or might not know is that, while Autism/AS may be more or less defining(mostly not very defining at all), it is still an important part of who the person is, and needs to be respected as such.
And in the practical sense, Autists, asperger or kanner, have alot to contribute to society. If we were all the same, the world would be a very boring and very primitive place.

We can think of autists as perfect human beings(blue-eyed and blond-haired while you're at it) who oh-so-tragically suffer from an illness.
But wouldn't it be better to accept that humans are not perfect, and work to celebrate diversity, accepting those who are different than the norm, and help people to live productive lives?

I hate this biased language that some people love to use, being pityed by others is not any better than pitying yourself. "frightening intensity"? "profound obssesion"???, when did "obssesions"(unbiased therm: deep interest, positive therm: passion) become bad?
Excuse me while I boast abit, I know an aspie whose passion is steam machines, he has build several hundreds(literally) of them, in perfect scale and detail, with a precision and beauty that make even the most skilled engineers drop their jaws, anyone with sligthest interest in constructing become a kid-in-a-candy-store when they visit his house.
And I'm supposed to think this is a "frightening" "profound obsession", then what *** planet are you on?

To the member who commented that the term "Aspie" seems demeaning, I would like to comment that I am reading an essay by Liane Willey. She explains in the essay that she is the one who came up with the term and that she never meant it to offend anyone.
Also, the schools think *most* of the kids with ASDs are manipulative. I can't wait for the day that teachers are trained to understand the social and communication issues that come from the disorder - especially special education teachers!

One of the main traits for a lot of Aspergers kids is obsessive organization..crayons by color, tidyness, organized bookshelves.
Noticeable in a little boy...but little girls are just seen as "very mature" for their age.

I remember therapists and doctors saying about my little girl "If she were a boy, I would say she has autism. But she is a girl and girls don't 'get' it." We finally have a definitive diagnosis and are receiving services but it was a long haul to get from there to here. I am glad to see research beginning on how autism spectrum is manifested with girls. flamel

Also in adult life, something I have noticed from AspiesForFreedom.com, a lot of Aspie women claim to have no romantic inclinations, while the Aspie men keep playing The Police "Message in a Bottle" over and over and over again, the stealth fighters of the male dating scene that ironically cannot attract feminine radar.

Shrek: www.aspiesforfreedom.com

Evangelical charlatans are emotionally fraudulent. They going to drug train conditioning force Aspergers to like the likes of Pez W and Sarah Palin with their big buoyant vibrant fake accents. Prez W left Connecticut for Texas in his 20s and Sarah Palin likewise weren't Great White North until her 20s. Drug train conditioning can trick smart people out of their wits. An average Aspbergers has an IQ 30% higher than Prez W or Sarah Palin.

America is overmedicated taking far more pills per capita than any other nation. America trails the industrialized world in life expectancy. Go figure, BIG PHARMA is Big Bucks.

I agree wth Arouetta but the article lacks an important point. Children with Asperger's generally had some motor skill and language skill development, while children with autism never had it to begin with. My younger son was diagnosed this summer with high-functioning autism; similar symptoms, similar dismissive doctors - not honestly all their fault. I think if the same doctor were to see the same child over a period of time, diagnosis or red flags might actually occur at a higher rate. In my son's case, his pediatric office has about ten different doctors, so each time we go in we see someone different, so easier to dismiss a potential problem. I finally asked to see the head practice doctor, who had treated special needs children in the past, and he then referred us to a developmental doctor, who then finally made the diagnosis.

Problem? Like Arouetta's case, it's late in the game (my son just turned 7 in Sept.), and though his school's interventions seem to be working, it really isn't enough, and according to his development doctor, not early enough. We, too, are angry that the doctor's office didn't really listen to our complaints about his lack of speech development, or that he had no friends in day care ("he'll grow out of it"; "it's just a phase", etc.), but it is good to have a name for the "quirky" behaviors. Now we know what we're up against and how best to help him.
- Lisa, Arizona