Bandaids and lipstick

[Kupu2]

I am angry. Really angry. I am yet to be formally diagnosed and I am 99.9% sure both my sons (13 & 11) are on the ASD also. Help?! Where is it?

I went to a seminar on giftedness and autism tonight. Speaker was intelligent, presented well and plans to do professional development courses next year for teachers. My problem? I KNOW JUST AS MUCH AS SHE DOES! I keep seeking help to ease that existential angst my boys and I suffer. No one can help.

Things have got better over the years, in that I had no intervention or assistance at all, yet my sons have well meaning teachers. I reach out, in my own clumsy Aspie way, for help and I get treated like a child by these professionals. There is ample bandaid and lipstick token empathy for my boys, but no effective and concrete help for them. Whatever is suggested is what I'm already doing!!

As for me, NO ACCOMMODATIONS OR UNDERSTANDING AT ALL. I am treated as if I should have assimilated and joined the homogenous NT tribe.

Sorry; through my rage, I am hardly making sense. Just the hypocracy and BS... I just wish I could communicate better.

 

[Judge]

Sorry; through my rage, I am hardly making sense. Just the hypocracy and BS... I just wish I could communicate better.

This is the one audience you need not apologize to. Simply put, WE GET YOU.

I agonize over knowing I'm on the spectrum, yet also knowing that the medical community might argue the point, based on how the DSM-V structures the process of diagnosis. Plus that I'm at a point so late in life that it probably wouldn't be of great benefit to me. But seriously, who understands autism better than autistic people? This isn't a club you join, or status symbol one dons to look "cool".

And we're less than two percent of society. There's no incentive for the rest to make any overtures to us just on the numbers alone, with or without impassioned pleas for their understanding. Leaving so many of us with a life of frustration and alienation on a daily basis that never ends.

Anyway, from my perspective you communicate just fine.

 

[Kupu2]

YES, Judge! You said those words in a way that I could not say, but I feel. The injustice of a lot of our predicament vis-a-vis society is wrong; especially when human rights, gender equality, etc, are touted as indicative of a civilised society. All so empty in a pragmatic sense. It is still a utalitarian society we live in. I feel like I live with the emperor who has no clothes on.

 

[clg114]

I am a firm believer that Asperger's children should be counseled so that they can deal with their weaknesses and take better advantage of their strengths. You do not need a diagnosis to get this counseling. Unless you are seeking financial help, you do not need a diagnosis at all. This very thing is why it is so much harder to get a diagnosis with the DSM-5 than it was with the DSM-4. Counseling now and continued education is what Aspie kids need.

Unfortunately most of the ASD research and treatment is intended for children. Most of what you need to know you will get through you own research and it sounds like you have already done a lot of that. You will learn a lot here. Judge is right about society (and most other things), the vast majority of them do not understand and that dictates their attitudes about us.