Apparently I'm autistic?
My son shares a lot of my traits, including being Gifted. He's in kindergarten now, and we were looking into getting him a IEP (individual education plan) because he's Gifted.
In doing so though, someone brought up that it might result in an ASD diagnosis essentially - and they were right. Haven't had the formal test yet, but a lot of what I considered "idiosyncrises" in my son are also found in autistic individuals. Some of which I share. I have little doubt in the ultimate conclusion, which is that he's 2e (twice exceptional).
And it seems quite likely I am as well. It's gonna be a niche audience, but anyone in a similar boat? It feels weird looking back and (at 34) retroactively realizing why I do certain things the way I do.
Edit: I should add - it didn't really 'matter' to my development because I was Gifted. I can learn whatever, pretty darn fast. So I just taught myself social stuff, on purpose, when I was in high school and college. It takes a lot of effort on my part, but I can be "charasmatic". I ascribed the effort to my general tendency toward introversion, but it may have been, essentially, the mental cost of masking.
Edit2: oh man I even went out of my way to try and alter my personality towards more extroversion in college because it seemed more normal.
Edit3: and I taught myself to understand body language in high school, particularly to understand and help with reading girls I liked, and how they were reacting to various levels of flirtation.
Edit4:
My spatial sense is god level. My wife doesn't bother remembering where the car is, because I just know.
My audition is similarly unrivaled, I hear things others don't, and my phonological loop is amazing - I can hold audio in my head for a time if I'm truly concentrating on something else.
My imagination is virtually non-existent, I'm nearly a complete aphantasia case - the best I can ever manage is a pulse of a 2d image, kinda.
I'm incredibly good at math, computer science, etc. I know more about science than... anyone else I've met.
I've never really felt like I didn't belong, though. I just learned how to be an effective communicator from books and videos. I almost feel like I have weaponized ASD.
I think a lot of people are a little autistic without realizing it ever. My older brother recently got a diagnosis after 35 years and we always just thought he was a bit silly/odd, but a real smart guy and hard worker. That being said, its really easy for some people to self-diagnose based on some behaviors and feelings, that's just how it is, the human brain is a weird place and being "neurotypical" doesn't really exist.
I am speaking as someone that has known about my diagnosis for over two decades, and have been treated with both medicines and therapy for about the same time, and have been an active participant in my local organisation for these diagnosis when I say this (but not as a professional, just to make that clear):yo
Neurotypical most definitely exists. It is the majority of society.
Don't think that just because most people around you in your daily life/private life is like you/us, that means the majority of society is like that too. They're not.
This isn't a moral judgement on anyone. There is nothing good or bad about that. It just is.
These conditions are highly hereditary. Families will often have most family members showing traits that correlate with autism or adhd, even if the individuals haven't wanted or needed particular help through assessments or diagnoses.
They also mean that we have a slightly different way of vibing to the majority of people. This means that while there is only a small minority in society at large with autism, ADHD, and similar conditions, we find each other like magnets in a non-magnetic pile of fluff.
As adults, there tends to be a quite obvious lumping together of neurodivergent people of our particular kind. We get along best with others like us, so where you find one of us, you will very likely find partners, friends, family with the same.
From each our own perspective, that makes it seem like it is very prevalent since everyone around us is a lot like us. However, there is actually not that many of us.
I don't think I've had a close friend that doesn't have either ADHD or autism, or could easily get the diagnosis should they pursue assessment, since leaving high school. I've had some work colleagues that might have been more average, but even then I've favoured sharing a luch chat with those more like me.
It took a good few years to realise this, and when I did it was actually a grieving process I had to go through. I just wanted to be normal, average, not stand out unless I deliberately chose to do so. And I felt there was something about me that repelled "normals".
t took a few years, but today I am fully comfortable with it being more the fact that I choose to spend my tiime and energy with people I vibe with - and that means others that show signs of autism and/or ADHD. And that is okay!
It blew my mind when I read a description of what it's like to be neurotypical. To quote a few items:
It had not occurred to me that one could exist and interface with the world with much less thinking about how to exist and interface with the world.
I like this way of putting it. And the magnetic and non-magnetic piles may even repel each other - there's a theory, or maybe rather an area of research, about how non-autistic people struggle to understand autistic people just as autistic people struggle to understand non-autistic people: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_empathy_problem
I think another possible analogy could be hydrophilic and lipophilic substances. It's not so much that they repel each other, they simply don't really mix together.
There are also those very rare individuals that manage to integrate people from the other group into their own. God bless those rare social emulsifiers!
Huh, that's probably why I've always struggled with other people being inefficient or stupid in public, just in terms of maximizing the outcome for anyone interacting.
Thanks for that. Because of my own ignorance, I think I had a flawed interpretation of the word 'neurotypical' as meaning someone who has a normal brain that is compatible with society. For example, a person suffering from severe depression, a debilitating phobia, addicts, etc wouldn't have occurred to me as "neurotypical" before reading your comment.
But after your post and a few casual searches, it looks as though "neurotypical" is primarily used in the context of specifically neurodevelopmental conditions. Mainly Autism and ADHD. I hadn't realized that it was that narrow of a definition.
Maybe OBLIVIATER was thinking something similar?
It makes sense that someone saying that everyone is a little autistic and no one is neurotypical would then seem dismissive. It's as if they are diminishing the significant (but minority) of people with neurodevelopmental conditions who struggle to survive in a society that usually doesn't make room for them. Neurodivergent people are surely an issue we need to put resources towards, into immediate help for individuals who need it and into long-term projects to understand and reshape society to make room for neurodivergent people. Since they have as much tangible, practical, value as anyone else. We're losing out in ways it's hard to even anticipate with every human that gets left out of society.
I've liked these words (Neurodivergent/Neurotypical) ever since I first heard them, even if they didn't mean exactly what I thought. It feels to me like an elegant way of saying different without making a judgment on whether something is a disability or not. It also seems to be a very practical word when looking at how the world works in specific ways. For example, the ambient noise of a room may strongly affect a minority of people who are sensitive to that versus the majority of "Neurotypical" people who generally find ambient noise levels fall within their comfort range because society is designed for them. Even with my previous wider definition, I would have understood the meaning and usefulness of Neurotypical to mean the majority of people in the context of ambient noise experience.
Please forgive any ignorance or offense, and educate me if there is a flaw I'm not considering. Would it be reasonable to advocate for using these words to apply to more contexts? Neurotypical could be a theoretical construct of how most brains work in a certain context of society. It seems like it would be in the same spirit of both removing judgment and helping address the needs of people who struggle to fit into a society that doesn't have room for them because of the way their brain works. If the definition of Neurotypical was a human individual who can move through every aspect of society with ease because their brain is the most typical one in every respect and context, then I don't think there would be any truly neurotypical people.
Even an individual's sexuality in some contexts could break that definition. I think every human experiences feelings of isolation and disconnection from the "norms" in some aspect of their behavior, if only in fleeting moments or rare types of interactions with society, Some people have a lucky enough dice roll that they can mask it, or find workarounds easily enough to get by alright or even hide their differences. For others, I think that's impossible and some people need more help just to be able to survive in our current society. Working to expand society to fit brains of all kinds can help both those groups.
I can see how there is value in differentiating between hereditary issues and issues that are from trauma or other external sources, like nature vs nurture. But my understanding was there was strong statistical evidence that autism is hereditary but the mechanics/genes aren't well understood. My science may be way behind on that. but I also thought the same was true in general for alcohol abuse as well. How well do we understand the brain at this point and what behaviors are genetic vs experiential? I thought it was still just a confusing mix of both, interacting in ways we don't quite understand yet.
I can also see a value in specifying "developmental" neurodivergence. Is that why Autism/ADHD/Dyslexia are considered Neurodivergent before these other conditions would be? Because they are conditions that affect how our brains learn? That does seem significant, but I'm not sure I see a clear dividing line there. I'll have to think about it and this comment is long enough.
Thanks for inspiring an interesting tangent for me tonight! [6]
I love your musings. Not always aligning with my opinions, but enlightening and I see where you're coming from!
I will say though that neurotypical means "typical and average neurofunctionin" - don't let the overprevalence of ADHD and autistic people online using this as a buzzword convince you otherwise.
Some 1 in 4 people will experience a period of depression throughout their lives, for example. I would classify that as within the neurotypical experience. Note the term "period of" being different from chronic. Losing a loved one for example, often causes a period of deep depression and grief. This is normal and typical.
It is important to be aware of how us with ADHD and/or autism is extremely overrepresented online, and also in the current entertainment industry (content makers) as we often have a way about us that grabs people's attention, and/or cater to very specific interests with a great deal of intensity.
That doesn't mean everything we take on as buzzwords is actually seen that way by most people outside of online areas.
"Neurotypical" absolutely does exist, and autism is genetic: if a blood relative is autistic, there's an extremely high likelihood more/all of the family is as well. Y'all thought it was "just a little quirky" because quirks like that are common in your family not the world at large.
(The whole "everyone's a little autistic" thing is not only false, it's really dismissive. Just FYI.)
I have an uncle who was a very successful scientist and also quite Wierd as a person. He was generous and a reliable supporter of some specific local charities but he was clearly not responding to the same motivations as most people. He was also quite funny if he took the time to talk to you.
I believe he was autistic. In the past, people were categorized as eccentric or odd but they were left to sink or swim. If you could succeed, without disrupting social norms, you were accepted.
I figured it out about myself in my 30s too. (Though I found out afterwards that I apparently almost got diagnosed as a child too... my parents had me assessed, but as a young girl with comorbid ADHD, the diagnostic criteria of the 90s were so stacked against me that I had no chance. But the diagnostician still told my parents "okay so your daughter doesn't technically have Aspergers, but you should really read this book about parenting a child with Aspergers anyway, because really a lot of it applies...")
Anyway, if your journey is anything like mine, prepare for a whole lot more of those "oh man wait this explains X too" moments like your 2nd and 3rd edits. Don't feel bad for not realizing sooner, though - when you don't have obviously high external support needs and masking has been baked in from such a young age, it becomes really hard to disentangle.
I recommend the book Unmasking Autism by Devon Price for anyone going through the first stages of this kind of journey, including people who aren't sure yet whether or not they might be autistic. It has a lot of relatable stories and good advice alongside them, and really made me feel both much more seen and much more confident in myself.
I know some people are in the camp of "autism is just a word, you're still you both before and after the diagnosis so why does it matter" -- but for me, there were two huge changes. One was being so much more able to give myself grace in certain difficult situations: X isn't extra hard for me because I'm just a deeply flawed individual who should be ashamed of that, it's just extra hard because I'm autistic, and that's okay. The other was how much easier it becomes to find support resources that are actually helpful. One anecdote that immediately comes to mind is when I finally got home after an extremely draining day, was super frazzled and pretty near at the end of my rope, had the thought that listening to music might help calm me down a bit, but had no brainspace left for decision making and didn't know what kind of music would help. Then I went, wait, this is almost certainly a solved problem, opened Spotify and searched for "autistic sensory overload", and found a perfect playlist in like 5 seconds that turned out to be exactly what I needed to hear.
Best of luck to you in your and your son's journies! If there's any questions I can answer for you that might be helpful, don't hesitate to ask.
"This is a solved problem" is exactly why I'm so thrilled about my (adult) dx. Things I literally didn't even realize were problems suddenly had answers that were shockingly simple and wildly effective- like ear plugs. It's definitely totally normal to have a shrieking meltdown when your car's alarm goes off while you're trying to get in, right? Yup, nothing to see here.
My entire life is so much easier and more comfortable now that I know I have auditory processing issues and can plan accordingly. Earplugs in a bar that filter out ambient sound so I can hear my friends better, and suddenly not only am I not horribly drained after, but I can hang out longer and actually enjoy it lol. And that's just one of so many examples!
Hahahah oh man.
I've been sleeping with earbuds in for roughly 14 years now. I always just thought I was good at hearing stuff, and preferred not to when sleeping. I also use them when I'm out in public alone...
Welcome to the fold.
I think you will find that in online communities like these there is a much higher than average occurance of people with "alphabet diagnoses" - that is, diagnoses that are often shortened to a few letters. This is because computers in general, computer games and TV games, and online style communities tend to be extremely favoured by us.
AS for autism spectrum (or Asperger's Syndrome which high functioning individuals were often diagnosed with earlier)
ADHD
OCD (extremely common co-occurance with autism, and almost as prevalent with ADHD)
TS (Tourette's Syndrome, not to be confused with just having a tic or two, the syndrome involves more over time, random emotional outbursts - particularly angry ones - can also be a part of it. It can also be thoughts and movements, and can often have a bit of a blurred line between tics and OCD)
Sleep disorders are also common for these conditions. Particularly delayed sleep phase, where the body doesn't produce enough melatonin to keep its own circadian rythm going and/or it happens much slower so we don't have the natural slowing down then going to sleep in the evening response that most have. If you've ever found yourself tending towards falling asleep late at night and waking "late", but an appropriate number of hours later during vacation time etc, that might be it. Other sleep disorders are also common.
It is extremely hereditary, so chances are that you will see lots of traits in those around you too, now that you are aware of it. It may not be enough to turn into a diagnose worthy condition, but family members here and there might still exhibit signs that make more sense once "you know".
This also means that some people struggle with getting acceptance for their or their childrens' conditions, due to family members claiming that everyone is like that. Because to them, that is exactly what it looks like.
Birds of a feather flock together, and despite being a small minority in society, people that are neurodivergent in the autistic or adhd way often end up as friends and partners. Thus, as adults, we often tend to have "only others like this" around us to some degree.
Be wary of tiktok and such sites for extremely bite sized info - it breeds echo chambers made from the passion of young people that feel they've discovered something new and shiny, but often ends up being more misleading than anything else.
Despite autism and ADHD shaping our world view, and in turn our personalities to a degree, there is still a whole lot of stuff that is completely normal and not due to a diagnosis.
The first two or so years after learning about diagnoses like these tend to be filled with a lot of introspection, looking back and reassessing and reexamining one's life, drinking up information and research like a dry sponge, and that is okay.
Oh shit, doesn't everyone do this?
Most people don't have to do this manually: that's the key difference in these particular examples. Everyone can learn body language, or force themselves to be more extroverted, but if you're consciously analyzing the people around you as a metric of normal that you then actively and intentionally try to mimic, yeah, that's not normal. That's autism.
Diagnosis of Autism
I appreciate that you're pointing out that ASD has a lot in common with a number of other disorders, and when actually diagnosing autism obviously a differential diagnosis is necessary for that reason. But I don't think the paragraph you quote is particularly useful here. A number of the other conditions that present similarly to ASD do so because they mimic other symptoms of ASD, not the behavior/cognition that's being discussed above.
And ofc no one's diagnosing anyone here. People are discussing what's normal among neurotypicals and what isn't. Whether consciously analyzing people's body language and intentionally mimicking it is unique to autism or also present with other disorders, it's certainly not common for healthy neurotypicals.
This thread of comments has discussed social interaction, body language, and intentional observation to inform (assumed masking) behavior.
I suggested no revisions to “yeah, that’s not normal” because generally speaking, it isn’t.
I suggested revisions to “That’s autism.”
Because it could be, but it could be any number of things including social pragmatic communication disorder:
I appreciate that no one intends to diagnose anyone, but blanket statements like “that’s autism” are objectively inaccurate and potentially misleading to readers that aren’t relatively well informed on these topics.
"This then leads to an excessive preference for routine and "sameness""
"They often develop eccentric interests"
"conversational responses that are socially inappropriate, tangential and stereotyped"
But it's totally not autism, trust me bro.
The only parts of that article that don't scream autism are the places it says "but it's not autism." People just really don't want to be associated with high-support needs individuals, so let's come up with other labels that have less stigma attached. Ableism, pure and simple.
It’s possible some important historical context may have been missed.
SPCD defines a diagnosis for individuals who in the past may not have gotten one
or may have gotten a diagnosis of PDD-NOS
I will refrain from providing the partial quotes from the comment to which this is a reply in their full context (or as complete sentences) since the link to the Wikipedia page is available already.
I often feel like my social behavior is somewhat brute forced. I’ve built many systems to try and be sociable in different ways and when it fails I now realize it’s because the system isn’t derived from anything intrinsic. But now that I’m older I can often feel natural and everything works out.
Yes, this is not uncommon. A lot comes down to framing - is it altering your personality or just making the choice to go out when sometimes you don't feel like it?
(But it's not weird at all to try to understand girls better.)
I think no? I'm far from an expert in the in this field though, maybe other people put in more conscious effort and work than I think.
Nah, NTs don't have to think about it. They're automatic transmissions, we're manual, if you want a quick and dirty analogy.
The understanding body language part could represent significant difference from the experience of most people. It's tough to tell from the comment.
I’ve done a number of self-assessments, trying to be as measured as possible, and always end up more than marginally over the threshold for being autistic. I’ve known people diagnosed with autism and I’ve always felt like I can relate to them in ways that most people can’t. But I’m also never as different as them.
I’m another log on that confusing, uncertain pile.
I see my students with autism and go “hey, that was me!” because they remind me so much of what I was like as a child. I also have some longstanding sensory issues that I didn’t know were called “sensory issues” until relatively recently. I stimmed long before I knew what stimming was.
In college, my friend’s mom confided in me that she was so grateful for our social group because it was the first time in her daughter’s life that she had ever fit in and felt like part of a community. She talked about how different her daughter felt because of her Asperger’s and how everyone always focused on that and never gave her a chance as an individual. The entire time she was saying this, I was mystified because, internally, I was like “she’s different? I genuinely had no idea.” She fit right in with us.
Coming right out and saying that I think I do have autism, however, feels wrong to me — not only because I don’t have a diagnosis, but because I can see all the ways in which I might not have it either.
I definitely relate a bit. Over the past year I met a lot of people who have been diagnosed with ADHD as young adults in university and I tend to relate to a lot of their experiences. While I've never been tested, it's still something I'll think about every now and then. Similar to you, it never really mattered if I was formally diagnosed with ADHD or autism as a kid because I was gifted and could just power through school. I relate a lot to forcing myself to get out of my introversion comfort zone and forcing myself to be more social. I still do it now when I think about hanging out with friends. It's also amazing looking back and analyzing various struggles I had as a kid which could be attributed to ADHD or autism. Times where I physically could not focus on things I was doing or where I would over-obsess about something and then quickly lose interest. Even now, I struggle with paying attention at work (working from home is both a blessing and a curse in this situation) and I recently obsessed over mechanical keyboards and have spent like $800 on them haha. However, I'm also a software engineer and I've heard that SWEs tend to display a lot of the same characteristics as people diagnosed with autism so I'm not sure how much that affects how I function as a person.
I think it would be equally right to say that people with autistic traits often favour careers in coding, engineering and the likes.
I remember one of my ADHD books pointing out that a lot of techniques for keeping ADHD workers productive and on-track are popular in software engineering, and they theorized that this was because aoftware engineering draws in a larger proportion of ADHD people than many fields. I reckon it's equally or more the case for autism as well.
Or is it because techniques that promote executive function, thereby keeping workers productive and on-track, are effective - assuming they’re popular because they’re effective - for workers with and without ADHD?
And what autistic or ADHD traits would presumably predispose people to be SWEs?
Every time I see this sort of reasoning it seems just as silly as the “OMG hyper focus is a superpower” or “bro, adhd was hella valuable back when we were hunter gathers” crowd.
For what it’s worth, of the 6 people I know of with ADHD, 4 are attorneys, 1 is a doctor, and one is a consultant.
Edit: Forgot about a 7th, who is a psychologist. And an 8th, who is an electrician.
I dislike the insinuation that my saying "there are a lot of people with autism and ADHD in software engineering and there are certain methods used to keep workers on track in that industry that work particularly well for those people" is the same as the whole "hyperfocus is a superpower" bs. I'm not claiming there's some magical ADHD or autistic propensity to be better at software engineering.
ADHD and autism being rather common among software engineers is just an observation, it doesn't mean I'm saying every person with these disorders works in software engineering. My ADHD books also observe that many ADHD people are drawn to work in high stress jobs like as EMTs or emergency doctors bc of the ADHD tendency to do well under pressure. That doesn't mean they're saying every ADHD person would do remotely well at that career (I don't think I would!)
In any case, I don't think you're being quite charitable to my original comment. I have read that certain strategies that are particularly helpful for people with executive function issues are more common within software engineering than in many other fields and that it's potentially because of the relatively high proportion of ADHD devs. I personally find that programming work is something that works well for me -- it's the type of problems my ADHD brain loves to chew on. But I'm not claiming any sort of universal truths here.
Prologue
@sparksbet: I apologize for communicating imprecisely, incompletely, and in a manner that may seem mean spirited. You’re right that I was not quite charitable to your comment. I apologize for that as well. I appreciate your response to my abrasive comment. And with the additional context provided, I more fully understand what you intended to communicate in the original comment.
I took time both to process why your original comment - without additional context - struck me so and to gather my thoughts in the hopes that I might more fully communicate - in a thoughtful and precise way - what I failed to communicate originally.
Placement and Context
For context, the poorly written comment was not responsive to your comment alone. The comment was responsive to your comment, your comment’s parent, and your comment’s parent’s parent. That behavior appears to be based on my treatment of the branches of comments on this site as analogous to physical environments in which multiparty, multi-round conversations regularly occur such as at a table in a conference room or cafe.
My understanding of social conventions - from my cultural frames - is that the progression of conversations in such discoursive environments might be approximated thusly:
This process continues, with subsequent speakers behaving as Speaker Gamma does in Position 3, until the conversation concludes. Although communication should be directed primarily to the most recent speaker and portions of their communication may be specifically responsive to the most recent speaker, all subsequent speakers respond to the exponential moving average of prior communication in the conversation. It could probably be approximated with an ARIMA model, something similar to random walk with drift, but I haven’t thought quite that much about it.
The order and contents of my comment support the conclusion that I here applied my understanding of social conventions for the progression of conversation in “real” discoursive environments:
This does not excuse the abrasiveness of paragraph 3 of my response to your comment, but I hope the additional context - why it was posted as a response to your comment and that the content wasn’t responsive exclusively to your communication - might make it feel less targeted towards you.
Intermission
Before attempting to more precisely and politely communicate what I meant to communicate, I want acknowledge and applaud the quality of your response in content, context, and tone. I take no issues with the qualified statements in your response. @sparksbet, you are a valuable contributor to this community. I appreciate the conversations that we have so far engaged in and hope they will continue.
Paragraph 3: Revisited
Based on my analysis of the conversation and your response to my comment, I believe the most - perhaps only - problematic portion of my comment is paragraph 3.
I have concerns about unqualified statements and over generalizations. My primary concern is their potentially minimizing, marginalizing, and invalidating impact. This concern applies also - perhaps more so - to the TikTok-ification of developmental disabilities like ADHD and ASD. For ADHD, the “super power” and “evolutionary advantage” narratives minimize a very real disability and invalidate the lived experiences of many, which further marginalizes us as a community and reinforces barriers to treatment and accommodations.
You did not make this statement but it was part of the conversation and likely informed paragraph 3 of my abrasive, impolite response. Statements like this are concerning to me because I view them as minimizing, marginalizing, and invalidating. I see it as normalizing - unintentionally - the notion that neurodevelopment disabilities are nothing more than unspecified, presumably quirky, personality traits and poor social skills. When seen that way, it is damaging in the same way the “super power” and “evolutionary advantage” narratives are.
Epilogue
I take no issue with efforts to raise awareness or promote inclusion. I do have concerns about imprecise language and bad actors undermining the positive intentions of the neurodiversity movement and using it as a tool to further marginalize the community and minimize the debilitating impacts ADHD, ASD, etc. have on so many people.
I recognize there are very real barriers to diagnosis, treatment, and support for many people. I also would never invalidate the lived experience of another. Resultantly, I would never say self-diagnosis is categorically invalid.
Similarly, when community members are skeptical of or don’t acknowledge the validity of self-diagnosis, particularly when the individual’s presentation clearly does not match the diagnostic criteria and/or the individual has made no efforts to access diagnosis, treatment, or support, I respect and understand their perspective even if I cannot share it.
Neither you or your son have Autism unless you or your son get a formal diagnosis. Self-diagnosis is incorrect; self-referral (believing you or your son may have Autism and therefore seeking a formal assessment to determine) is correct. Intelligence has a weak negative correlation with psychiatric disorders, therefore if your son is intelligent it is less likely that he has Autism. People with Asperger syndrome are commonly thought to have average or above average I.Q., but that is because it arbitrarily had an artificial minimum of 80 I.Q. to diagnose and therefore it was inflated.
It is also preferable to use intelligence, such as g or I.Q. rather than the term 'Gifted' due to the latter term being vague.
I have a formal diagnosis of High-Functioning Autism and I see many self-diagnosed people online who claim to have Autism yet their presentation does not match the diagnostic criteria. They often claim to have normal empathy or hyper-empathy which is empirically untrue. There is a large ideological movement to normalise Autism and present it as a 'neurodivergency' rather than as a disorder, pathologising legitimate research and condemning anyone who refers to it. This is why the claims of intact or hyper-empathy are so prevalent on the internet; to present a pleasant facade to make the concept of Autism socially palatable to the average person.
There are also absolutely people with formal diagnoses of autism with intact or hyper-empathy. Deficient empathy is not required according to the diagnostic criteria for ASD. The relevant diagnostic criterion is "persistent deficits in social communication and social interaction across multiple contexts, as manifested by the following, currently or by history", which consists of three traits: 1. "deficits in social-emotional reciprocity", 2. "deficits in nonverbal communicative behaviors used for social interaction", and 3. "deficits in developing, maintaining, and understanding relationships". Low empathy is certainly common among autistic people, and it would certainly cause many people to exhibit deficits #1 and/or #3. But it is not the only factor that can cause this. It is perfectly possible for a child or adult with intact or hyper-empathy to also exhibit deficits in social-emotional reciprocity and in developing, maintaining, and understanding relationships.
The CDC page I link refers to the examples of each of these deficits as "illustrative not exhaustive" for a reason -- they can manifest in a variety of ways. Insisting that every person with autism must have impaired empathy is no more empirically valid than saying that no one who can hold eye contact has autism. While it's based in a common presentation of autism symptoms, it's incorrectly limiting autism to one presentation of those symptoms rather than the more diverse presentations of symptoms seen clinically. This is outdated at best, and it does not reflect the diagnostic criteria or empirical observations by clinicians. This narrow conception of the disorder is harmful to autistic people, particularly those who are not upper/middle-class white boys who are underdiagnosed as a class due to stereotypes of autism and many therapists who aren't experts in ASD or autism diagnosis clinging to outdated, narrower definitions of the disorder.
As for the ideological movement for "neurodivergency" and opposition to research to "cure" autism and organizations like Autism Speaks, this is largely unrelated to self-diagnosis in my experience -- those who are active in these movements are more often than not formally diagnosed. This is a disability rights movement that is largely by and for autistic people. You're free to disagree with their beliefs about autism and their opposition to attempts to "cure" it, but that doesn't magically make them not actually autistic people describing their actual experiences.
Even if I agreed with your opposition to self-diagnosis (I don't, but I do understand why you hold that position), it seems to me that you are assuming those who claim to have certain experiences of autism must be self-diagnosed because they don't fit your understanding of what autism is. Your own assessment of whether they have autism is even less reliable than their self-diagnosis according to your own rationale -- you are not a professional, and you haven't even met them much less performed anything that would lead you to have sufficient information to diagnose them or rule out a diagnosis even if you were an expert. Unless someone specifically says they're not professionally diagnosed, you are not in a position to assume that they are when they say they're autistic.
As for "Gifted", it's deliberately vague. It's typically used to refer to certain educational programs for students who may be under-served by the normal course material. This can be for a variety of reasons, so the term was chosen to be deliberately vague. An actual IQ test is rarely administered (it's less useful than actually assessing the relevant child's behavior and performance in school), so it's more sensible for OP to refer to the actual educational category that their son was sorted into.
In any case, I find that railing against self-diagnosis on this type of post is unproductive. OP doesn't describe self-diagnosing their son as autistic, but merely that due to his educational situation they were informed he may be likely to get an ASD diagnosis (which is indeed common among those sorted into the Gifted category in educational institutions). OP clearly has begun to research autism as a result and noticed many of these traits fit them -- they are doing the first step in what you call "self-referral" -- believing they have autism. OP is describing how they notice things about their own behavior that they didn't notice before and how researching how certain traits tend to co-occur in autism strikes them in a certain way and allows them to reanalyze many of their life experiences through a different lens. This experience is valuable (and not harmful whatsoever to those formally diagnosed with autism) regardless of whether OP or their son goes on to get a formal diagnosis.
Academic, activist, or advocate? Angry, entangled, and emerging: A critical reflection on autism knowledge production offers the perspective of an autistic autism researcher on learning about and researching autism.
Below are quotes from the article that I found particularly interesting that relate broadly to the issues and ideas above. The entire article is worth reading for the perspective offered and to see the quotes in context. Bold face font indicates the section or subsection from which it is quoted.
This is a great resource! I'd also like to recommend the video TikTok Gave Me Autism: The Politics of Self-Diagnosis by Alexander Avila -- I was watching it earlier while I drafted up my comment and it goes into a lot of the same territory as the article you linked, reflecting both on self-diagnosis as a phenomenon (and whether it's actually as big a problem as many think it is) as well as how we conceptualize and treat the mentally ill more generally. Highly, highly recommend.
Thanks for sharing this perspective.
I think “gifted” is both vague and meaningless. Many children who test into “gifted” programs earlier in life wouldn’t test into them later and many children who don’t test into them earlier in life would test into them later. Additionally, like many other tests, it may be biased. Even if one doesn’t join Triple 9 - or Mensa - having a qualifying test score is neither vague nor meaningless, relative to “gifted.”
Is there a reason you capitalize every use of the word gifted? Genuinely curious.
It is a meaningful classification I'm trying to convey. Not just saying "I'm smart", more trying to convey I did the special testing, I was 99.9th percentile on all the standardized testing, I went to special classes, did special academic shit, etc. Shaped my life.
I'm in pretty much the same situation as you. My kids and my wife got ADHD and in some cases ASD diagnoses, and I recently realised some of that might have come from me. I got my own diagnosis very recently.
From a parenting perspective there is one thing that I've worked out above all else from this: Almost all parenting advice just doesn't apply in my case, you kind of have to look for more ND specific advice instead. Not just for kids but for you as well, because one person's difficult day can have a knock on effect on the entire household.
I'm not autistic, but my 4 yo nephew is. I have ADHD and when I got my DX, I told my brother and SIL to let them know it's a possibility. A year later, he was diagnosed with autism. It made a lot of sense, my brother has a lot of the same "quirks" nephew does, and my dad is very clearly autistic, even though he's never been diagnosed and likely never will be.
I am so glad that he was diagnosed at a young age and has all the early interventions that are available to him, and his parents are incredibly supportive. I love my nephew so much and am so incredibly grateful his parents took his diagnosis seriously and have made as many strides as they have to make sure he doesn't fall behind his peers. He's even in a matriculated TK class which is amazing.
As long as you're doing what you can for your kid, and even learning how to make changes to help yourself rather than just coping, you're doing the best thing you can, and I'm proud of you for it!
I have a couple of odd questions to ask:
When you think, do you have an inner voice that talks, you see pictures or do you see words, or something else?
Do you remember your dreams? If so, what kind of dreams do you have?
The first question is because many people on the higher end of the spectrum do not think in words, and this absolutely baffles me. My inner voice talks all day long, all through anything I want to articulate, plans how I'm doing things to the point where when I know something, it tells me the reason why I know in words.
The second was because I'm fascinated by how people dream.
Thanks.
I talk to myself consciously sometimes, but not all the time. When I'm concentrating on something complicated, the words kinda go away. I mostly think in... thoughts? Ideas? Concepts? Information? It is difficult to describe. It's almost like I have a crazy subconscious, I'm thinking without realizing it sometimes. I've always known my brain was weird (Gifted), but I guess it's even weirder than I thought.
I rarely remember almost any dreams.
Coming to this thread rather late but I'd highly recommend picking up the book unmasking autism and giving it a read. Even if you do not get a formal diagnosis, it may help you to understand yourself and your son better, or at the very least other autistic people and the struggles they go through.