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CyclopsSummers
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20 Jun 2012, 12:01 pm

Wandering Stranger speaks aright. Although a speech delay is not a guarantee that one has HFA and not Asperger's, and vice versa. I have been diagnosed with 'autistic disorder', yet I experienced no speech delay, which is why I assumed for the longest time that I had Asperger's. But no, other factors come into play concerning how I socialise and relate to other people, and how I handle routines and special interests, that have led the experts to decide I'm HFA.

Now, I agree with Verdandi that calling Asperger's a 'mild' form of autism is misleading and can carry implications that anyone with Asperger's should consider themselves relatively lucky, when there are people with Asperger's out there who are walking nervous wrecks due to the nature of their AS.


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20 Jun 2012, 12:05 pm

Did Asperger's and autism used to be two different things?

I ask this because back when I was first diagnosed, I was told they were two different things. Autism was more than AS. I can remember asking my parents at age 15 if I was autistic and they said no. I then asked them why does it pop up when I look up Asperger's on the internet and they said it was just a form of it so that is why. For years I just thought form of something meant they share some similar traits but it's not full blown autism so they are not autistic. Even as of 2009, I heard my mother talking to someone we have known most of my life and she was saying how autism and AS are totally different even though they are both a spectrum.

Then at age 15, I started to see aspies claim online they have AS and then say they are autistic and it would confuse me. You couldn't be both, you either have autism or Asperger's. It used to drive me crazy when people would say they have autism and then I find out they actually have AS or people claiming to be aspies and then saying they are autistic. I felt mislead.

It seemed like starting in high school, they both became autism.


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Mummy_of_Peanut
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20 Jun 2012, 12:43 pm

I had a conversation with someone a few days ago who said that a child she knew was diagnosed with autism and Aspergers. I think she was a little confused. I explained that Aspergers is a type of autism, just that they were two ways of describing the same thing, one being more specific than the other.

With regards to the speech delay: you don't need to have a speech delay to be diagnosed with HFA/classic autism (I'm referring to non-Aspergers forms of autism). But, to get a diagnosis of Aspergers, there really shouldn't have been a speech delay. However, some people say they were diagnosed with Aspergers and didn't speak until much later than their peers. So who knows? It probably depends on who's doing the assessment, more than anything else.


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Last edited by Mummy_of_Peanut on 21 Jun 2012, 3:54 am, edited 1 time in total.

lostgirl1986
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20 Jun 2012, 12:49 pm

It's said to be on the same spectrum, a milder form of autism. I don't think anybody knows for sure though.



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20 Jun 2012, 2:19 pm

Mummy_of_Peanut wrote:
I had a conversation with someone a few days ago who said that a child she knew was diagnosed with autism and Aspergers. I think she was a little confused. I explained that Aspergers is a type of autism, just that they were two ways of describing the same thing, one being more specific than the other.

With regards to the speech delay: you don't need to have a speech delay to be diagnosed with HFA/classic autism (I'm referring to non-Aspergers forms of autism). But, to get a diagnosis of Aspergers, there really shouldn't have been a speech delay. However, some people say they were diagnosed with Aspergers and didn't speak until much later than their peers. So who knows? It probably depends on who's doing the assessment, more than anything else.



Maybe things in the environment that would cause a speech delay?

I talked late because I had hearing loss when I was a baby and then when I had tubes put in, I had to have speech therapy and I had problems with sounds and hearing so I always said words wrong by leaving off the beginnings or the ends because that is what they sounded like to my ears. I guess they dropped that from the aspie criteria for me for no speech delay. It also effected my communication too. But speech problems run in my family anyway and aspie traits. Things with me could have just been a coincidence as doctors say. But no one is ever absolutely sure. We would need a DeLorean for that. :wink:


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20 Jun 2012, 2:41 pm

I've heard about how the controversy surrounding this question can cause discussions to get quite heated. I've seen the thread based on the woman who put up an angry video on YouTube trying to get Aspies to stop calling themselves autistic, when she considers autism to only be the severe kind of thing her son is experiencing. I wonder what her son thinks of this. Most of us are kind in these forums, but, even here, I think some people do get quite irate.

It's also been pointed out how, as with fibromyalgia, you can get similar symptoms from different causes and similar causes can result in different symptoms. So, the diagnosis is about symptoms whenever the cause is unknown. That makes it an issue which symptoms can be seen.

As for severity, I'd never tell someone who never wore a brace that they didn't have scoliosis, nor would I want to be told I didn't have it by someone with a severe enough case to have needed surgery. I also think it would be ridiculous to go around counting curves. (I have three.)


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20 Jun 2012, 4:45 pm

horsegurl4190 wrote:
I actually feel more comfortable just simply saying I have autism rather than Asperger's syndrome. I kind of hope AS does just end up being rolled into autism in the DSM-V.


Me too. I know it's not popular with many AS folks, but I don't like saying I have Asperger's because other people don't know what it means. And if anyone ever calls me an Aspie, I'll hurl something large and heavy at them! I just can't seem to hear it as anything other than the sort of description you'd give to young teenage girls who draw little heart symbols instead of dotting the Is in their names and put kisses in their Hotmail addresses. I really apologise if I offend people by saying that, I'm honestly not trying to be unpleasant about it – I'm just being truthful about how it sounds and feels whenever I hear it. :oops: I wish I didn't have that response, actually, but I can't help it.



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20 Jun 2012, 5:27 pm

CyclopsSummers wrote:
Now, I agree with Verdandi that calling Asperger's a 'mild' form of autism is misleading and can carry implications that anyone with Asperger's should consider themselves relatively lucky, when there are people with Asperger's out there who are walking nervous wrecks due to the nature of their AS.


Agreed. My understanding of AS has always been that they're high functioning; but that doesn't mean they don't have problems.

My brother has AS. I remember when he was younger, he would have a meltdown if he had to walk past somewhere with a cranefly nearby or something and I remember him having behaviour problems. (He's calmed down a lot now) I still think he doesn't like them; but he doesn't have meltdowns any more.



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20 Jun 2012, 8:40 pm

Verdandi wrote:
miss-understood wrote:
Callista wrote:
The only real difference is that if somebody can't talk at all, ever, or use any sort of language, they are probably going to be considered more severe than someone who has AS, simply because the person with AS can communicate at least simple ideas at least some of the time. But even that isn't much of a difference.


I think that is a HUGE difference


In terms of impairment, never talking is a big difference socially, but if you read what autistic people all over the spectrum say, you can find a lot of similarities among various autistic people, whether verbal or non-verbal, considered high or low functioning.

However, sometimes having speech doesn't do much good when you can't communicate effectively. As I have recently learned, I can sit in an office for two hours having a conversation with one person and manage to communicate nothing relevant no matter how hard I try. Considering how much of my future was riding on that conversation it's actually kind of a sore point for me now.

But that's not like being unable to speak or speaking very little because there are situations in which I can verbally convey information. Unfortunately, even when I do there's often a drift in content received as compared to the content I intended to deliver.

What I think Callista is saying, and what I am trying to say, is that while there may be a huge gap between having typical speech and not being able to speak, having impaired verbal and nonverbal communication abilities is not nearly as wide a gap from completely nonverbal.
Yes, exactly. You can be able to talk, but not know that you need to be saying something, that there's something to communicate in the first place, that somebody else would listen, etc., etc....

For example, me at eight years old: Able to talk. Able to answer direct questions. Can read at adult level in two languages. Got a stepfather who constantly yells at me, hits me, and generally behaves like a total bastard to me. I can't ask for help, because I don't know that his behavior is inappropriate, because I don't know how to find someone who will listen, because I don't know how to express the problem. If somebody asked me directly whether he was hurting me, I wouldn't have known what they meant by "hurting". They would have had to ask extremely specific questions, like, "Does your stepfather hit you hard in the face with his hand?" Only at that point could I have figured out how to express it. I was what they considered highly verbal and rather intelligent--and I still couldn't communicate that any better than if I'd been totally non-verbal. I could recite a half hour's worth of information about cats or meteorology, but I couldn't hold a conversation. I could tell the difference between a monarch and a viceroy butterfly, but I couldn't tell the difference between sharing a joke and being the butt of one. Being able to speak, and being able to communicate whatever you need to, whenever you want, are two totally different things.


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Juliana
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20 Jun 2012, 9:05 pm

I'm pretty new to AS and ASD. I know that AS is part of ASD, but I've also noticed that there are some people out there who get quite upset when someone with AS calls themselves autistic. I'm not sure what to think of that. Are a lot of people offended by that?



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20 Jun 2012, 9:15 pm

A few. Less now than there used to be. I think it comes from the old view of autism as "always severe and obvious"--which Asperger's often is not. If you don't have a lot of information about AS/autism, you might not want to be known as "autistic" because of that stereotype, because people will assume that if you're autistic you can't possibly be able to talk, take care of yourself, have friends, etc.

That's a hurtful stereotype for an Aspie who prides himself on independence. But here's the thing--it's a hurtful stereotype for a classic autistic person too, even if they do have problems with talking or self-care. So rather than reject the label "autistic", I think the better approach is to try to educate people about how the autism spectrum is very diverse, and includes people who are very independent and articulate as well as people who are more disabled; that even those who seem at first glance to match that stereotype are real, living, breathing human beings with lots more to them than the stereotype. I mean, we don't assume that a black person is nothing but a walking black stereotype, right? So why assume that about autistics?

Best approach is probably just to use whatever word that person uses for themselves; and if somebody gets annoyed at you for referring to AS as a part of the autism spectrum, explain that you know very well that the autism stereotype is bunk, and doesn't apply to anybody, let alone Aspies.


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Mummy_of_Peanut
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21 Jun 2012, 3:59 am

League_Girl wrote:
Mummy_of_Peanut wrote:
I had a conversation with someone a few days ago who said that a child she knew was diagnosed with autism and Aspergers. I think she was a little confused. I explained that Aspergers is a type of autism, just that they were two ways of describing the same thing, one being more specific than the other.

With regards to the speech delay: you don't need to have a speech delay to be diagnosed with HFA/classic autism (I'm referring to non-Aspergers forms of autism). But, to get a diagnosis of Aspergers, there really shouldn't have been a speech delay. However, some people say they were diagnosed with Aspergers and didn't speak until much later than their peers. So who knows? It probably depends on who's doing the assessment, more than anything else.



Maybe things in the environment that would cause a speech delay?

I talked late because I had hearing loss when I was a baby and then when I had tubes put in, I had to have speech therapy and I had problems with sounds and hearing so I always said words wrong by leaving off the beginnings or the ends because that is what they sounded like to my ears. I guess they dropped that from the aspie criteria for me for no speech delay. It also effected my communication too. But speech problems run in my family anyway and aspie traits. Things with me could have just been a coincidence as doctors say. But no one is ever absolutely sure. We would need a DeLorean for that. :wink:
Yes, that could be a reason for the exceptions. It sounds like your speech delay was unrelated to your ASD. (Unless the hearing loss was related to mucus/ caused by a reaction to dairy or gluten, which is thought by some to be a factor in ASDs. But, that's another thread and I don't like opening cans of worms. :lol: )


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Last edited by Mummy_of_Peanut on 21 Jun 2012, 4:35 am, edited 1 time in total.

Wandering_Stranger
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21 Jun 2012, 4:22 am

CyclopsSummers wrote:
Wandering Stranger speaks aright.


:? Most people don't understand me. This is despite not having a thick accent.



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21 Jun 2012, 12:40 pm

Mummy_of_Peanut wrote:
League_Girl wrote:
Mummy_of_Peanut wrote:
I had a conversation with someone a few days ago who said that a child she knew was diagnosed with autism and Aspergers. I think she was a little confused. I explained that Aspergers is a type of autism, just that they were two ways of describing the same thing, one being more specific than the other.

With regards to the speech delay: you don't need to have a speech delay to be diagnosed with HFA/classic autism (I'm referring to non-Aspergers forms of autism). But, to get a diagnosis of Aspergers, there really shouldn't have been a speech delay. However, some people say they were diagnosed with Aspergers and didn't speak until much later than their peers. So who knows? It probably depends on who's doing the assessment, more than anything else.



Maybe things in the environment that would cause a speech delay?

I talked late because I had hearing loss when I was a baby and then when I had tubes put in, I had to have speech therapy and I had problems with sounds and hearing so I always said words wrong by leaving off the beginnings or the ends because that is what they sounded like to my ears. I guess they dropped that from the aspie criteria for me for no speech delay. It also effected my communication too. But speech problems run in my family anyway and aspie traits. Things with me could have just been a coincidence as doctors say. But no one is ever absolutely sure. We would need a DeLorean for that. :wink:
Yes, that could be a reason for the exceptions. It sounds like your speech delay was unrelated to your ASD. (Unless the hearing loss was related to mucus/ caused by a reaction to dairy or gluten, which is thought by some to be a factor in ASDs. But, that's another thread and I don't like opening cans of worms. :lol: )



I think it was. Mine was caused by having ear infections and then I had fluid trapped in my ears so it made me deaf and I had a speech delay. I also have an aspie friend and he was born with hearing loss so he was also delayed too and speech delayed but he also has cerebral palsy so his developmental delays are like unrelated to his ASD and so is his speech. Now he isn't sure anymore if his CP diagnoses is correct because it's not supposed to be getting worse. He hates going to doctors so he won't try and figure out what the problem is.


Sometimes I think what my psychiatrist did was he took all these problems I have; language problems, auditory problems, anxiety, OCD, dyspraxia, social issues, sensory processing disorder, and how I process things and learn, and decided "Ugh let's just make this all autism since it's all these components she has that is part of it."


But when I say I had a speech delay, people think "oh you are autistic then, not Asperger's" and I tell them I was deaf and they still don't listen. Though I did hear that ear infections is common in people on the spectrum but most kids have ear infections. My brothers did too but not as much as I did and my son has never had any. My mother thinks me having them put me on the spectrum. She thinks the environment sometimes causes autism.


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21 Jun 2012, 2:00 pm

League_Girl wrote:
I tell them I was deaf and they still don't listen

I have a tendency to focus on details of a conversation instead of the theme, so I spotted this little nice sequence of words, and laughed. :D


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21 Jun 2012, 2:52 pm

Callista, I enjoyed your very well put post.

Speaking of labels the way you do, I've just posted this Wrong Planet discussion link in another thread, but it seems relevant here, too:

I am just an individual like you...


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