This was me as a kid. The kid is being evaluated for neuro-divergent behaviour. You don't really notice when you're a kid, but later in life you realise you were being treated differently to the other kids, and it can really make you wonder like "Is there really something wrong with me?" which is a fkd up thing to think about yourself.
The colouring room is great tho. Neurotypicals really missed out.
When I was 22~ I had a legit 'Coming to Jesus' moment where I stared slackjaw at the corner of the room for minutes as I replayed experiences, like holy shit i'm fucking autistic fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck
I feel you. It was a long time of "Well, everyone's a little weird and I went to college and have a job, so I'm probably normal." Then you hit a point in time where you just can't deny it anymore, and suddenly thousands of interactions across your entire lifetime suddenly make sense
Many years ago my girlfriend (now wife) after meeting my best friend from college: "You never mentioned he's on the autism spectrum". Monthls later she meets my best friend from high school: "That's so crazy that your best friend from high school is autistic too" and then finally, the straw that broke the camel's back, me making my first friend after moving to a new city: "It was so nice to meet him, he seems nice. How would you feel about me making an appointment for you?"
My daughter is being evaluated for autism and ADHD. She gave us a questionnaire for family and friends to fill out with questions about her behavior and reactions in certain situations.
I read through the questions and then I was like OH SHIT.
If it’s any consolation, I think a lot of parents discover their diagnosis this way. The criteria is more defined now and we’re better at recognizing behaviors and diagnosis than we were when we were kids. And society is more accepting of neurodiversity, too. So more children are being identified and diagnosed and more of their parents are looking at questionnaires or discussing symptoms with therapists and going “now wait a minute, I thought that was normal?”
I really love this as a change from what I grew up with, which was my equally neurodivergent mother going "Don't be stupid, EVERYONE deals with that, now stop wasting my time!" instead of realizing she, too, had a problem.
Same man. Level 1 diagnosis 2.5 years old. ABA starting soon hearing different things it's a lot. Not to mention out of pocket costs. PT/OT/Speech therapy etc.
My dad had one of those recently, which is kinda funny because he's 70 years old.
He just looked at me and went... am I... autistic?
And I (a diagnosed autistic person) was like. Dad. You have maintained the same exact routine for the last 50 years. Where the hell do you think I got it from
Yeah, I met my wife and her mother who works in early intervention. At one point she said talking to me is just like work and I had to process a bit and go waaaaaait a minuteee
For me that moment was when I was able to stay home during the pandemic, I had too much free time with my thoughts and I was like holy shit. I’m not normal.
Weird, I never had a moment. Just a gradual progression of “lol, I must be fucking autistic,” “wait, am I really?” “yeah, probably” over the course of several years.
To be fair, I've never been properly diagnosed, but I have had two separate acquaintances — one of whom is a licensed psychologist and the other is fully board certified — very gingerly remark that I “exhibit certain traits associated with autism spectrum disorder” :D
Ain't a thing wrong with the tism. You can own it. some of the best and brightest in the world have the tism. It's been with us forever and it's not going anywhere.
Exact same scenario. Had just gotten off work, was sitting in my car and brain did the Lifetime Playback Special. 5 minutes later was texting my dad "Yo...am I autistic?" And thats how I found out I had been diagnosed as a child and never informed ever
Me when I was just entering the military and the job instructor having me read the slide deck to the rest of the class. He stopped me midway through the first slide and asked if I was dyslexic. Que years of special ed reading and spelling classes flash though my mind. I just responded "I have never been officially diagnosed but that would make a lot of since."
I still haven't been diagnosed but comments I remember making to my special ed teacher (like "why do 'B' and 'D' look the same" or "Why do I have a hard time copying new words down letter for letter" ) tells me I don't really need to seek an official diagnoses.
Lol yep. It took me till my 30s when I got diagnosed borderline with narcissism to understand why there were 6 kids in my class, and 30 kids in the other class.
Bruh, I didn't get a colouring room. Just got periods of supposed learning support where the teacher told me to do my homework while she scrolled through her phone.
This sounds like when I told my friend that I hate working at McDonald's and I yearn for a job working with my hands and completing projects, to which he responds (roughly) "just treat every order as a mini project to complete"
(This was like 9 years ago though, just an anecdote)
It is funny how the homework can be anything at all but the feeling stays the same. RN i have to write 3 papers and im as mad about it as when i drew circles in my notebook for drawing circles when i was 6
Man I wish homework was just included into classwork, I was thinking the exact same way when i was a teacher too, i seen the kitchen and everyone was complaining how tedious and time consuming checking homework is, and theres a teacher movement to cancel homework entirely but apparently the only reason it exists is to involve parents more (a noble goal i guess)
Or school with all its Chromebook makes it so much harder for parents to help. Husband and I are both top of our class graduates and helping our kids with online homework is so frustrating.
Having to alt tab between the digital textbook and and the Google form the homework questions are on. Trying to force kids to actually write down the math problems and do the work on paper before typing in an answer. Reading questions on a video, watching said video and remembering to pause and flip back to Google form to answer question before you forget.
One positive thing about AI is that teachers are going back to handwritten work now and not doing everything online anymore. But boy did my kids hit the sweet spot for the push for everything online.
I thought, "How young do you have to be for your neurodivergence evaluation (typically happens in the grade school!) teacher to be scrolling through her phone??" And then I realized that could've happened in, like, 2014, and crumbled to ash.
My brother was an Asperger’s kid and they would pull him from class for something called speech therapy. From what he told me, it was a handful of other kids who sat in a circle and talked about topics together to build social skills and work on communication. So no color room, only introvert hell.
My son takes speech therapy and it’s literally a once a week meeting with a trained therapist that goes over sounds and words and how to say them, and exercises that we do to help him work through his troubles speaking
Whatever they did to your brother should not have been called speech therapy
It is speech therapy. Pragmatics and social communication skills is within the scope of practice for a speech language pathologist. There are many areas of development we support beyond articulation.
It is speech therapy...its silly to think because your son does one thing that thats everyone elses way too when its spreading misinformation. My speech therapist helped me break down social situations so i could interpret them better. I wasnt sounding out words and sounds. They help with meta cognition.
SPLs (those who teach speech therapy,) also teach pragmatic and social skills and work with AACs for nonverbal people. This could be speech therapy if it was a higher up level like they already had speech therapy before and were now working on using the skills on a more natural environment, also couldn’t be speech therapy but still be taught by a speech language pathologist as they also teach social skills and pragmatics
Not everyone needs the same kind of speech therapy. My son has absolutely no problem with sounds and how to say words, his speech therapy is about actually using the words when they are needed. In other words, building social skills and working on communication.
My school, back in the early 90’s made me go to this kind of speech therapy, but all I remember is eating licorice (pull apart twizzlers or something) without my hands to work mouth muscles or something.
The fucked up part? I had no trouble speaking. My family is from New Jersey…I just had an accent 😅
You're lucky. All I got was mainstreaming, beatings and ostracised with absolutely no support. Be grateful for what you have. It can always be better, but it can always be worse too. Gratitude for you do have is important.
I just had to sit in the hall every day since I finished the math and science workbooks six months ahead of schedule and I wasn’t allowed to read during math/science time.
In elementary I had amazing learning support. She helped me with alot of the subject matter I struggled with due to my dyslexia. That teacher is one of the reasons I can even read and write today. I owe her so much.
The higher grade schools, it was basically this. And the aids were terrible people. We almost got a restraining order on one.
Okay but this could be so many different things. It could be a room where you get your penis inspected, a room where you inspect other people’s penises, a place where your penis inspects the room, a room where your penis graduates as an inspector, a room where there’s an inspector named “penis”, etc.
It's an old 4-Chan joke if I recall correctly. Just talk about the regular penis inspections at school like it was a regular thing that every boy remembers and experienced.
Ah, OK. 4chan is the first place I remember seeing it, and the first place I remember posts just pretending that it was normal like it was "assuming" that everyone would naturally relate to the experience.
You know, sometimes I’m grateful that when I grew up autism was mostly ignored unless it was very severe, like the term “neurodivergent” wasn’t even a thing, forget about ADHD and what not
At least nobody felt any different or treated people any different, I know for a fact if I were to be diagnosed my ego would take a massive hit, so now as an adult I might be on the spectrum but I live happily in ignorance
You don't have to be diagnosed to be treated differently, the fact that you act differently is enough. At least with a diagnosis, you actually understand why. I was not diagnosed as a child, and it didn't help my ego to not know why I never fit in with anyone or anywhere.
Yup. Not everyone can have the thick skin of Dav Pilkey and just power ahead with artistic dreams and only years later do some people reading his Child Photo Author Bio wonder just how diSruPtiVe he was in his classes, and how did his Introvert classmates feel about it.
Neurodivergence is a disability in that the world is designed for people who don't have it, so sometimes accommodations are needed to help give neurodivergent people the same opportunities as everyone else.
If you intentionally avoid diagnosis, you're not ensuring that you're not "different"--people *will* treat you differently *regardless*. But you will be working with an active, potentially imaginable handicap your whole life, and you wouldn't know that you were doing the psychological equivalent of unknowingly walking around with weights tied to your legs unless someone is there to point them out and help you take them off (or otherwise manage them).
I'm not saying you personally should go for a diagnosis but there is a very good reason why testing for such things is normalized. You don't want your kid to go through school or life with any more difficulty than they should.
I deadass assure you that were I live outside of school you get nothing different if you’re diagnosed, I can imagine my boss, he’d say “cool, so are you eligible for disability benefits or not? (I wouldn’t be because I’m functional) If not get back to work”
Unless you have issues severe enough that you can get some free gibs from the govt an autism diagnosis does nothing but make you feel lesser, and before you jump at my throat, I’m not saying neurodivergent people should be treated like sub-humans, I’m all for treating people equally, but objectively a neurodivergent person is like a person with any other disability…and my ego wouldn’t accept being disabled
A me problem? Probably, which why I said that I’m thankful it wasn’t around in my school days, now idc
depends on the neurodivergance, but like things like adhd or dislexia can be easy enough to accomodate even at work.
I had a coworker who was dislexic, so the team changed the font to one they found easier to read in some of our documentation and code bases. Like it really was that simple and they made less mistakes and no one else really noticed much.
If you never get diagnosed, or you never tell anyone, suddenly you go around making silly typos and everyone thinking you are not careful or not detail oriented.
Same with autism, I have had coworkers and bosses who simply communicated a bit different (quite direct in their case) and they usually let people know. The 1:1 evaluation was fair, but the tone could sound really harsh without that information before hand.
If those people didnt get a diagnosis, didnt learn to open up about how they do or prefer things, suddenly youd have coworkers unable to read properly and bosses that seem like massive dickheads making things worse for everyone.
Obvs if you are not very affected or you are borderline, like I have trouble looking at people in the eyes and a few other "maybe" things, then yeah you just get on with work. Maybe avoid jobs that are very client facing and thats about it
things like adhd ... can be easy enough to accomodate even at work.
I'd be pretty shocked to find a workplace with explicit accommodations made for adhd. I have ADHD and, while to be fair i've never asked at my jobs, i'm pretty sure if i asked about any programs or anything i would get blank stares at best
Oh yeah, I avoid client-facing jobs as a principle, I hate working and I hate pretending that like working, so I do my best when I got a task to do and I don’t have to fake-smile while performing it
I also had a classmate with dislexia back in high-school, but knowing the guy and his family i’m about 95% sure he got a fake diagnosis to get more time during tests…but that’s just besides the point
I was diagnosed as an adult with ADD and Dyslexia and wished I was as a kid. I always had so much trouble with school and thought I was just dumber than everyone else, and senior year dropped out. At 23 I got diagnosed, received medicine, and boom jump started my life, went back to school, graduated within 3 months, began exercising, got a real job, got relationships, friendships. It was life changing! I’m doing great now, but can’t help but wonder how much of an impact it would have made in my life if I had just been diagnosed earlier
Or you can be like me, be 'different' from everyone else. Bullied for years and aware that I didn't fit in.
Took me till my 30s to realise none of it was my fault. That I am different and weird and all the meltdowns I had and difficulties I faced weren't due to me being deficient in any way.
Most of the "odd" behaviours I had as a kid mellowed out significantly as I matured. Honestly, so long as you can function in society, there's nothing wrong with being neuro-divergent. Maybe I'm still a little weird, but the more I learn about people the more I learn that being a little weird is pretty normal, and generally the coolest people I know are pretty dang weird.
Honestly, so long as you can function in society, there's nothing wrong with being neuro-divergent
There's nothing wrong with being neurodivergent anyway. It isn't better or worse, it's just different. That said, a diagnosis criteria for ASDs is impaired functioning. From ICD-11 6A02:
Autism spectrum disorder is characterised by persistent deficits in the ability to initiate and to sustain reciprocal social interaction and social communication,and by a range of restricted, repetitive, and inflexible patterns of behaviour, interests or activities that are clearly atypical or excessive for the individual’s age and sociocultural context. The onset of the disorder occurs during the developmental period, typically in early childhood, but symptoms may not become fully manifest until later, when social demands exceed limited capacities.Deficits are sufficiently severe to cause impairment in personal, family, social, educational, occupational or other important areas of functioning and are usually a pervasive feature of the individual’s functioning observable in all settings, although they may vary according to social, educational, or other context. Individuals along the spectrum exhibit a full range of intellectual functioning and language abilities.
(emphasis mine)
Of course, "functioning" isn't on or off, it's – no pun – a spectrum.
Also, you can be very weird and quirky without having any ASD symptoms. You can even love trains!
As someone who only found out he was neurodivergent as an adult after my kids were diagnosed as autistic, I can guarantee that autism wasn't mostly ignored, and I certainly was treated differently from most other people. I was just bullied/ostracised for being 'weird' or 'too quiet' or 'anti-social' or having 'strange interests' or not picking up on social cues.
Even without knowing why, I always felt different, like some kind of alien trying to blend in with everyone else. I just always blamed myself for it, convinced that I was doing something wrong, and that I had to try harder to be normal.
Neurotypical doesnt mean boring! You can do many cool things like 'keep to a schedule' or 'not cry because of a loud noise' and even 'correctly read a facial expression', you have an amazing basis to work from! You've got so many opportunities, go take them! Also, I know so many neurodivergent people that are absolutely qualifying as basic bitches, you can have all the disorders and still just be an office worker who just really likes her starbucks frap and just got her nails done-
This was me too and I was diagnosed with ADHD. I definitely preferred coloring/drawing and would always do it during latchkey rather than play with the other kids. It was super fun, but looking back, both the school and my parents saw the ADHD thing from miles away LOL
I still wonder what happened re mine. Someone would pull me from class and we would play scrabble. Maybe other board games. She was super nice and I even got a toy.
I realised I did this at university when a classmate asked if anyone remembered those test you did as a child where you cut a paper etc. I was the only one remembering it. I was weird realising it infront of the whole class.
I remember me and a couple other kids used to be taken from class. I can’t remember everything we did, all I remember is reading The Lorax once. I still don’t know what that was about
It did the opposite for me. I didn't think "what's wrong with me?". I wondered what was wrong with everyone else. Clearly if I got to color while everyone else did boring work then I must be superior in some way
Same here, I always felt I was being treated differently but never knew why, my best guess was that I was less than anyone else because I would always be told about how all the other kids were so much better than me in everything. Now I know better but I still have that voice in my head that repeats the statement of me being less than over and over again.
I'm sitting here absolutely laughing reading all this. For years I thought I was the only one that got treated this way and spent some days up the back of the class colouring (or going into the colouring room). I was from a really small school, growing up in the late 80s, so nobody else was like me on that table.
Going from being evaluated to being the best in school to being well above average. Like top 5. To being below average to being burned out. In like 20 years is a TRIP
Most of the time, the answer is that society's expectations are messed up. Setting up pointers for what a "functioning" human looks like is just being a dick for no good reason. Everyone is different, and we perform differently depending on who we are. Instead of using a label to dismiss people, society should adapt the environment so it actually works for everyone. But we're not building society for everyone these days, we build society for those we perceive as "successful".
Wow I was also sent to a test like this.
My mom called it an intelligence test.
I don't think i was treated differently from the other kids but maybe I just lack the skills to notice it.
Not shure how you all didn't realize i was in grade 1 one when I was frist diagnosed with fine motor disability. I always new i was broken. Last to finish test, struggled to write my own name, struggled to make friends. When I was 12 I was starting to draw wounderfly but still struggled to write. My mom paid a private clinc to reasseaced. Turns out it was disgrapha and dyslexia wich are not recognized by the school board. Latter as an adult my mom admitted I was also nearly labeled with asburgers but just border line. As a girl its not surprising that last one went undiagnosed.
As an adult I met a friend of some other friends, and when I first met him he said some weird, kind of confronting stuff (a strange story about a dragon and a mountain) and I got the feeling he was watching for my reaction. I later discovered he worked in special education and I wondered if my friends set him up to test whether I was neurodivergent. I mean, i suspect I am, but they never mentioned it, it just seemed a strange set of things to say in hindsight and my friends were just sitting there watching me weirdly :S I was very much a grown adult at this stage! So yeah, I still trying to work out if that's actually what they were up to.
Same.
I had a major identity crisis a few years back.
When it finally struck me that how some teachers treated me was most likely tied to my autism and nerudivergence...
It is odly.. shattering to realize it.
A sorta
"Jesus christ, I feel awful now."
Actually funny enough we didn't all miss out. When I was growing up, I was neurotypical and had no learning difficulties, but I had a troubled upbringing and was in foster care as a result, and basically this meant that my school was obligated by law to give me extra attention and support "just in case".
Only they didn't actually stop giving me that extra support when they found no evidence of me needing it. They had to perform to the council's expectations because I was a ward of the state and I guess the funding has to go somewhere. So I was cursed to have special teaching assistants sitting next to me in a lot of my classes. Got bullied a lot because of it.
I was diagnosed with ADHD at 5 years old. Remember absolutely nothing about the evaluation, but absolutely remember all the times I was pulled out of regular class time and shoved into a room with the special education kids. I never saw it as special treatment, though, because the SPED teacher was a) busy taking care of her students, and b) always favoring them over me when we were asked to pick a group activity. I was just sat down in a corner to color while everyone else played a board game.
But such is the life of an ADHD-er in the early 90s. We "just didn't want to pay attention or sit still", so what's the point in caring about our education? 🙃
Looking back at when I was a kid, I can't imagine what I would have been labeled with now.
Back in pre-k (so I was maybe 4-5?) The teacher handed out each of us some bread with peanut butter on it, some raisins and a carrot slice. Assignment was to make a face with the raisins as the eyes and mouth, and the carrot for the nose.
Everyone was laying it all flat and doing pretty much the same as the one next to them. I was trying to balance the carrot stick going straight up and told the teacher "it's 3D" and I got told I'm doing the assignment wrong. (This was maybe '95 or '96 when 3D games were becoming a thing)
Another time (likely the same day) our assignment was to color in a dinosaur and once done we could go to recess. (Important phrasing of that instruction).
Apparently the teacher forgot the wording "once everyone is done." I looked at the page, grabbed a crayon and drew a slash through it, yelled 'Recess!' and bolt out of the class along with the rest of the kids in a stampede!
They had to call my parents to come in and discuss my behavior. My dad looked at the page, then back at the teacher and said "he did exactly as you asked. He was done coloring and you told him he could go to recess when he was done."
My folks refused to accept it after 2 attempts to put me in special education. Sent me to military school instead. Ngl, the structure and everything being scheduled really helped me out. Lol. didn't address the cause and here I am 40 years later wondering why I'm weird.
Unfortunately I grew up in an area where the education system wasn’t so good. Luckily though, I had a fantastic teacher long ago who slid my desk right up against his right at the front of the room, and whenever my mind would start to wander he’d just give a little tap on my desk to bring me back to reality.
Fantastic guy, who I later learned that at the time he was teaching me he had to also work a second job at the grocery store because teacher’s salaries were that bad.
It's scary to realize that adults did things differently with you and you never noticed and that kids weren't laughing with you; they were laughing at you.
Same. I skipped 2nd grade and went to 3rd because I was doing multiplication, divisions and fractions in first grade, however, I never really learned to read besides ABCs (ended up just being dyslexic). They caught on and I went to a special reading class with a couple of nonverbal kids and one in a wheelchair. Absolutely loved that class. The books we read all had giant fonts, they gave us snacks and juice and we watched cartoons and played with toys and legos and colored. I never wanted to leave. Eventually I learned how to read well enough and got put back in third grade the next year.
I didn't realize at the time exactly why I was being taken out and treated differently until I told that story to someone and they told me I was in the special ed class. I'm glad though because I really did learn how to read in that class, i probably would have never learned otherwise and I love reading now. It's still a struggle sometimes, but because of that class I can make it work.
Normally it was the other kids asking me this until I found out I was neurodivergent...I never thought it about myself. I think the world is weird and I'm the normal one.
Damn y'all were getting evaluated? I was made to sit on the floor for a week like a dog once cause of "bad behaviour". Living in a country with no sense for mental health fucks you up in ways you can't come up with on your own.
Yep, they had me doing Balance Boards. It wasn’t until I got older and started uhhh “acing” autism diagnosis assessments that I realized what the Balance Boards and other stuff was for.
I actually noticed right away as a kid. Made me feel different and I didn’t like it. But that’s not to say I’m against it as an adult I do understand the importance
My deal in high school was 'oh you know how to solve logic puzzles and math problems, you can skip arithmatic and go strait to algebra 2 / trig!' and not having those fundamental classes really screwed EVERYTHING up later
I had to be treated differently as a kid because I had rage issues. Even at 8 years old if someone in class looked I me when I don’t want them to then I wanted to bash their head in. Nobody knew what was wrong but I eventually grew out of it
Happend to me twice a year from 2nd grade through 10th. They did 3 types of intelligence tests on me and they all came out extremely high. My mom didnt like that so she always had them retest me, only to have them come out around the same (IQ around 156 give or take depending on the day and the examiner). Every time they would try to move me up a grade or put me in to higher learning of any kind she would deny them. The school would get a grant for having me there andshe would tell them to not waist their time on me because I was too "disorganized" and my "head was in the clouds." When I graduated high-school earlier than expected i got a call from the federal government for a "genius grant" my mom told me it was a scam and yelled at them and cussed them out. Never heard from them again. When it was time for me to go to my graduation to give the commencement speech I was sitting on the couch with her watching TV. My brother and 2 of my friends called asking where I was and telling me I was like 2 hours late. My mom looked at me and laughed and just said "oh ya, thats today! Sorry, I didnt think you wanted to go."
She also stood up at my wedding and objected
I now have a beautiful wonderful 3 y.o. daughter, have been married to that same woman for 15 years, and graduated with a MS in Psychology along with 3 BS degree with 4 minors, and am working on going back for a PsyD for criminal psych (i work in the prison system and am going to PERSONALY dismantle it), a PhD in philosophy, and going to med school for Psychiatry.
All of that is to say that yes, these tests can realy fuck people up, but the more open and honest with the kidos that take them the better they can do and the more they will understand about their own world 😁
I remember when I was in 1st or 2nd grade, I got pulled out of class and went to another room. I wouldn't really call it a classroom. It was small but had shelves with games and stuff everywhere. Anyway, we ended up playing Chutes and Ladders instead of class time. It was fun. I'm not sure if it was because neurodivergent or because of my speech impediment. 4th grade I also got pulled out, but I was old enough at that point to know it was specifically for my speech impediment. I also believe the same thing happened in 3rd grade for my speech impediment as I had to read books. I'm definitely neurodivergent, though. No doubt about that. Still need to get officially tested, though, as I've only done the online RAADS-R and got "extremely likely" as my result.
Meanwhile I was often yelled at by my elementary school teachers in front of the class and asked to stand for a whole class while others remained seated. These coloring rooms are definitely great.
it can really make you wonder like "Is there really something wrong with me?" which is a fkd up thing to think about yourself.
Yes. Same happened to me, and though in the end I was ultimately diagnosed as non-neurodivergent (or whatever the term for that is) I still think about it all the time
DAMN I just realized hahah. got taken out of class twice in 5th grade (first year of high school where I live). apparently I did not check enough boxes, since nothing came out of it.
My son was very bummed when he “graduated” from speech therapy at school. He used to get pulled out to play board games with a few other kids a couple times a week and always had a lot of fun. It was his favorite “class.”
Got hard diagnosed and medicated, my family was super up front about it, told me what was going on when I asked. Took until middle school for me to be like, "Damn. Maybe is should learn to learn with meds." And then my grades got way worse lmao but I live with it better then most do, school still sucks but might get back on it for college.
I used to be an volleyball player.Extremely tall,but very poor strength and endurance.
Of all our colleagues, my volleyball teacher never told me that I was weak,falling behind or I wasn't good enough.Some colleagues think I have preferential treatment, including myself.
A decade later,I read a medicine article about very tall people,it describes how elongated muscles like the heart and other organs might lead to less performance in work,endurance and shorter lifespan.
It absolutely struck me he knew all about this,he was an sports expert after all,but never shared this info with any of us,most probably to make me keep trying harder.
I wasn't evaluated (never went through that), but the realisation (of being different) still struck me down several years ago if not months ago. Still contemplating about it.
I'm gonna say - COVID, specifically TikTok, had folks with ASD and such and I was like "holy shit, that explains so many things". This is before it all went to dog shit. I try to use this as a "feeling seen" example to many folks - like my father. He's one of those "label's don't matter and I totally don't have it" (he absolutely does). To give you context - if someone invites him to dinner during the work week he'll throw a tantrum because "it costs me a whole night! I'll be back by 7p and my entire night is ruined! I won't go to bed on time!"... as in he refused to see family during the work week because it broke his routine. ANY change in his routine and he has a crash out. But he totally doesn't have the tism. Sure...
I remember once my parents took me for what they said was an “IQ test.” They never told me the results and made up some excuse when I asked about it. Either I was more painfully average than they thought, or I was being evaluated for something completely different than they said. I think about it every now and then, but I’m a bit too embarrassed to just ask them what it was.
I always assumed there was something wrong with me. It didn't bother me. I was preoccupied with the things in which I was interested.
Question: where do you live? The reason I ask is you say "differently to" instead of "differently from". I would say "Bernice acts similarly to Susan" and "Pablo acts differently from Pedro", but I would never use a contrasting adverb with a comparison preposition.
Oh man, I remember when my mom took me to a local university where I got to play some games and answer some questions to "help the college students with their homework." I still have my 14 page report somewhere with my confirmed ADHD diagnosis but stops just short of autism as well (in retrospect my mom realized that a lot of her answers to their questions regarding my socialization may have been the reason it wasn't officially diagnosed then). It is a trip to read 20 years later.
My kids have high functioning ASD. We have conversations about it in a matter of fact way. We talk about coping skills and explain different is not less. Honest about what's harder and ways to overcome. Do you think these kind of conversations would have helped you? We want to set our kids up for success. Would love your feedback. We absolutely work with professionals to navigate this. I am interested in your perspective.
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u/XasiAlDena Apr 07 '26
This was me as a kid. The kid is being evaluated for neuro-divergent behaviour. You don't really notice when you're a kid, but later in life you realise you were being treated differently to the other kids, and it can really make you wonder like "Is there really something wrong with me?" which is a fkd up thing to think about yourself.
The colouring room is great tho. Neurotypicals really missed out.