Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Twice Exceptional Asperger's - "20% grow out of it"

Okay, I'll do this and ask her preschool teacher about it. She can certainly dominate, but she does back and forth with me.

Last night, New Year's Eve, we let her stay up and she fell asleep in the LR at 9 pm. Later on, around 2:30 am, after a fitful sleep, she had a screaming, thrashing melt down. I think it was because she didn't go through her normal, rigid night time routine. I had to redo the entire bed time routine, including saying her prayers exactly the same way every night, to get her to sleep.

The extremely rigid routine bit is distressing, but I'm learning to work with it.

At least in three and four year old preschool classrooms a lot of kids don't do a ton of back and forth. A lot of verbal kids who don't have AS tend to go on about their own topic. They don't expect a lot of back and forth because many kids at that age haven't mastered it. The key for me would be can she understand why there should be a back and forth exchange. If she can do it one on one I see that as more telling at this age than if she can do it in a group.

Speaking as someone who should have been diagnosed as a child with Aspeger's and/or ADHD...as a child and well into my teenage years, I don't think it goes away, it does get hidden or worked through. I could not read negative emotion well and internalized my own anxiety and anger. I could not hold a conversation that flowed normally, I was always following my mind to wherever it was going even when speaking with other people. I hated small talk.

At some point (the reason for which I brought up in another post), I decided I needed to be able to act normal. I started catching all these little things and ways that I behaved and working actively to fix them. I can honestly say that I didn't fully succeed, but it's close enough that most people can't tell. I have to prompt myself to follow the smooth flow of a conversation, or about which greeting is correct for what. But most people knowing me would not peg me as having AS or ADHD.

Thanks, Artana, for posting.

Maybe "grow out of it" was a feeble way of saying, "compensated by developing coping skills." We are going to work on our parenting skills to help DD with her skills at age 4. Her uncle and aunt with AS were not identified until they were in their 50s.

Artana, it's amazing and impressive that you were able to "bootstrap" yourself into social skills.

How much energy does social interaction take for you now? Is it exhausting to spend all those extra cycles prompting yourself, or have the skills become sort of habit for you?

DeeDee

Seablue, I think by "grow out of it" they mean "no longer be diagnosable because outside observers can't see symptoms clearly in the person's behavior." Or, learning to "pass."

What that doesn't account for is how hard it is to maintain from the inside... one autistic author (I forget the name) writes that she loves family and friends, but she is working at it every minute when she is with other people, including her husband and kids. It sounds taxing... hence my question to Artana.

DeeDee

I agree - while compensating can yield benefits, it must take an awful lot of energy to maintain. Hence, the person hasn't really grown out of it. Instead, they've learned how to work around.

It is. Oddly, I am a fairly social , and I hope, nice person, but it's really really tiring sometimes. Especially when I'm in one of those conversations where I know that any other person would be sure what to say (comforting or whatever) and I am stuck trying to find some non-lame way to answer. I prefer being around people who don't like to small talk, because that's hard as well.

It is not, however, as hard as it was in the beginning. Some things do become habit, and I can deal with certain parts of a conversation without thinking. I suppose it's like practicing anything; it's muscle memory. There are moments when I wonder if I really should have spent so much of my mental energy on trying to fit in and maybe I should have just let myself be quirky and spent that effort on something productive.:P


I am, in part, a trainer, and I actually do really well at training, because it isn't conversational. The questions are always direct about a topic we're covering, so they're easy to answer. I do really well in intellectually stimulating discussions and arguments. I'm still drained after an 8-hour bout of training, but it's not as hard as 8-hours of emotionally laden conversation would be.

"Learning to pass" is it, exactly.
After my daughter (now a young teen) acquired her label, my sisters and I began discussing things that we had just assumed were normal, or individual weirdness. For example, my sister didn't know she was faceblind until she was fifty, she just assumed it was a personal failing. None of us were diagnosed as children back in the Dark Ages, neither was my husband diagnosed as ADHD, which he most assuredly IS. But we've all learned to cope, to pass; we've all gone on to be reasonably functional adults with an appalling amount of higher education between us. Even at my daughter's age, she looks considerably less "autistic" than she did at four or six or nine. She's got friends. She goes to sleepovers-- after which she hides in her room, overstimulated, the rest of the weekend, but being a teenaged girl, the hiding is not out of the realm of normal.
And she's at the age when some of the "gifts" of her Asperger's are actually more prominent in her life than the shortcomings. What kid in advanced classes wouldn't kill for an eidetic memory and an ear for dialog?

Yes, you said it so much better - it was what I was trying to say.