ADHD vs AS Traits, Similarities & Differences

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Yes. I think that I have both, or else I'm seriously confused.

In 1975 I was misdiagnosed with ADHD and put into special education. In 2010 at age 40 I was diagnosed with having Asperger's Syndrome and the doctor found no signs of learning disabilities so for 10 years I was given a substandard education for nothing. Everyday from first grade to tenth grade I was torment in some way or fashion for being in special education classes.

I think it's quite possible to have both... and from what I've seen, there are quite a few people who do. I don't know the actual statistics, but it seems to be pretty common.

Sorry to hear that your education failed you a bit. I get the feeling that your story isn't an uncommon one, especially since AS wasn't really a common diagnosis at that time. Maybe I should add that "Some people with AS are misdiagnosed with ADHD, while others with ADHD are misdiagnosed with AS. There are also some people who have both ADHD and AS, but never receive a diagnosis for either." The unfortunate thing, I think, is that a lot of people get misdiagnosed, while a lot of people don't get diagnosed at all.

I was on the other side of the fence. Mainly, I got evaluated for ADHD when I was younger and showed that pattern. Unfortunately, no one bothered to tell me or get me in for any treatment. I ended up making it all the way to college before it finally started becoming a real issue. Before that, I was able to compensate by intelligence mostly. I barely studied, procrastinated like mad, and frequently forgot to bring my materials. So I often didn't credit even when I DID manage to get the assignment done properly. Very frustrating, indeed, and I thought it was all due to personal failings. I remember one my 6th grade science teachers was convinced I was just lazy.

Did I absolutely need special services and medication? No. I was functioning enough without it. That said, I would've appreciated knowing that some of my troubles were due to something other than just "not trying hard enough".

In your case, I think you might've benefited from receiving some services, but not by being forced to attend special ed classes. I can only imagine that it must've been another level of torture added to the already horrific middle school and high school years. Well, a little personal bias is showing through on my part. I wasn't too happy around that time. Haha. I'm glad that things improved once I got to college.

I think I have both AS traits and ADHD traits. They showed up in my childhood equally. I have the impulsiveness, the inattentiveness, I'm basically disorganized, like to procrastinate, but also like to stick to routines when it comes to work and I like to break them sometimes, although I have totally non-functional routines too, and I like sameness in general.

(Thank You, Syrella)

I tend to agree with you, and I identify with the other part of your post, too.

Dr. Russell Barkley comes to clarify that people with ADHD don't "hyperfocus", a persistent myth among ADHD advocates, they have the seriously disabling trait known as "perseveration". 'Hyperfocusing goes with autism, Perseveration goes with ADHD' were his infallible words.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yfkg0VWx3rM&feature=related[/youtube]

Last edited by swbluto on 02 Dec 2011, 5:57 pm, edited 2 times in total.

Well I wasn't hyperactive as a child. Well, I was to a certain extent, but all children are. But I mean I wasn't enough to meet the ADHD criteria. If I had a ball when out in the street, I used to bounce it carefully, trying my best to avoid it bouncing onto the road. But my friend (who had ADHD) used to lose control of the ball and ''forget'' that there is a road right next to him, and is used to happen again and again. I just thought that was one example of hyperactivity in a child, but I could be wrong, since all kids are different. But I suppose if I did have ADHD, I probably would've kept losing control of the ball and bouncing it like there's no tomorrow.

Otherwise, I seem to have more points on the ADHD list than I do the Autism list.

I've been reading about giftedness too. It seems it can be hard to tell if someone is gifted/NT or has Aspergers or ADHD or is both gifted and has one or other of them. I'm trying to get my head round the whole thing. It seems that I come into the category of giftedness (I went to school a year early as I was identified as gifted), but I suspect either ADHD or Aspergers too. ADHD sounds closer to me, but I definitely do hyperfocus. However, giftedness can also present like these as well, so maybe it's only that. Gifted people can have the sensory issues too, so I've read, so it really isn't easy to distinguish the 3. I'm going round in circles thinking about this.

My daughter is even more of an enigma. She's not obviously academically gifted like I was, but I know for sure that she's extremely bright, as does any adult she speaks to. She won a prize at school today for her art work too (very proud Mum here). She has behaviour problems, which make her stand out much more than I did at her age. We had been thinking that this was down to Aspergers, as this is what the diagnosis is looking like, even though I know Aspergers does not always come with the challenging behaviour that she presents with. But, I'm wondering if the giftedness is impacting much more on her behaviour than we could have imagined, and the Aspergers isn't quite so pronounced. Until about a year ago, I thought she had a mild form of ADHD.

I've ordered 'When the Labels Don't Fit' and hope to get some answers from there.

I've known a lot of gifted NTs, and in my experience, they are not much like people with AS. They may appear socially awkward or distant to mainstream NTs, but they appear very socially adept to me and interact very well with each other. Gifted NTs are just as alien to me as mainstream NTs. Some gifted NTs have a few autistic traits with low severity, e.g. interests that they pursue as hobbies or careers but not to the intensity of ASD special interests, but they still understand the social stuff intuitively, even if they don't care to apply what they know, because it bores or annoys them.

So I'm not the only who feels completely disoriented by these three things right now.

The book "different minds" differentiates between Aspergers and ADHD among gifted individuals, and provides really good examples of "regular giftedness", "ADHD giftedness" and "Autistic giftedness" and pretty thoroughly compares between the types.

I know many gifted NT's and one thing that sticks out for me is they like to be social and are very capable of it. My niece says she has some friends with no social skills whatsoever but I think it's an exaggeration. I've met most of her friends and if they can party all night then they have some social skills. And they don't always drink alcohol.

One of them tried to tell me what was 'couch etiquette' which I held off explaining to her that I don't follow social rules. Not ones that ridiculous. I'm on the couch more than them so I will act whatever way I choose to. They feel kind of sorry for me because I'm always on my own, but I really don't care to be around them because to me they are just NT as the rest. Oversocialised and uninteresting.

Note: I'm generalising, I know. I going through a bit of stress to do with NT's, denial of diagnostic labels and damn organic good or Earth friendly products that cost a fortune. So, I have some issues.

And I'll just add Russell Barkley will never say anything positive about ADHD. He wants to dispel the whole 'gifted' perception and wants people to see ADHD as a real disability. Quite right to.

"Frontal injury"

Ah, bummer.

But seriously.........

Deep down one can sense it though. I used to enter into deep imaginative states ( before Dx), to discover or delineate my cognition against a standard. Ya know something is off.

I used to think if I got an MRI for something else, incidentally the Doc would've found a "lesion" somewhere..... my spidey sense was spot on.

I've read that a lot of gifted kids have been misdiagnosed as having Aspergers (not that I'm one as I don't have any diagnosis). I'm beginning to think I'm a mix of gifted/ADHD (ADD these days) coupled with 25yrs of shyness. Why I was picked on and treated with such disrespect, I don't know, but that's what knocked the confidence out of me. I went through all the usual trauma at school that someone with Aspergers would typically experience, do not socialise normally and I only have 2 real friends, no friends from my childhood or youth. I have an avoidant personality and only managed to overcome it due to determination after my daughter was born. It's something I'm going to have to bear in mind when my daughter's assessment process starts properly. I have sensory issues - can they be ADHD related? (I've really not read that much about ADHD so far.)

Are you being sarcastic? Because he's saying that primarily because of his thrust that ADHD is always negative and never positive, ever, ever, ever. "Perseveration" is perceived as much more negative than "hyperfocus," which sounds like a superpower.

Since hyperfocus is simply a label people who have ADHD use to describe a particular state of mind that frequently happens with them, it's rather pointless to argue it should be called something else just for the sake of making it sound worse. Also, given that there seems to be little or no research into hyperfocus, I doubt anyone can make authoritative and credible "scientific" statements as to what it's supposed to be.

I do think that perseveration often happens in tandem with hyperfocus, but I don't think that hyperfocus is necessarily always perseveration, nor is it always doing something other than what you need to do (as I've hyperfocused on paying work before...which was also part of my special interest).

You were being sarcastic, right?