Growing Up Autistic without a Diagnosis
Please don’t dismiss children because they’re children. They’re not a one-size-fits-all personality. They’re a human person, an individual and need to be treated as such. This means not simply dismissing “bad” behaviour as bratty or spoilt.
Example: I’ve known a child that I met during a party of family friends. Within knowing this child a few hours, I could spot it a mile off. When the father was talking with me about his son and his tendencies, I asked him if the child had been checked for autism (not in those words precisely.) I didn’t mean in a nasty way, I’m autistic myself, but that did not go down well. He was horrified and insulted, and I was later yelled at for suggesting it (which in itself was deeply insulting to me.) Year or so later, everybody is starting to see it in him, too.
I can’t stress this enough:
Autism is nothing to be ashamed of, undiagnosed or otherwise.
Every once in a while, when I can remember my life (long story), it amazes me how nobody picked up on my autism until I was nineteen. I don’t even mean that in a vindictive or bitter way, it just strikes me that nobody noticed what was essentially a flashing neon sign over my head.
“Bratty” behaviour in kids needs to be studied a little more carefully. I believe there’s a difference in children screaming because they weren’t allowed a toy vs seemingly innocent things like food, clothes, or physical contact can result in consistent freak outs.
Girls/afab exhibit exhibit differently to boys/abaf. Typically, girls are more isolated and withdrawn while boys are more ‘stereotypical,’ loud and troublesome. I can’t go into semantics and definitions because I can only tell my story.
Severe meltdowns over food and clothing textures
By the time I was six or seven, I’d learned every possible anorexic trick that adults know. It had nothing to do with my weight but I would literally rather have starved than face certain textures. I would bury food in the backyard like a dog or keep it in my mouth then go to the bathroom then spit it out. “You’re not leaving the table until you eat it,” and I would be sitting there until I was falling asleep or throwing up involuntarily.
Food was my worst tripping point, and would result in what looked like epic bratty tantrums but I didn’t have the words to explain why food made me so sick. I would get routine stomach pains before every meal from anxiety.
Specific fabrics would reduce me to tears in seconds, particularly wool or inseams touching my stomach.
Freaking out with touching
Older kids at school seemed to think I was cute and they used to pick me up without asking. This would freak most people out but for me it resulted in aggressive thrashing and screaming to the point of bruising the other kids. It wasn’t funny or cute and my whole brain went into meltdown mode.
I didn’t like hugs or handshakes or people touching me at all (I remember a librarian once was trying to be nice. She touched my shoulder and I practically jumped backwards.)
Little to no idea about socialising
I remember my year 6 teacher telling me I didn’t need to say ‘hello’ every time I talked to someone, as in multiple times a day
No understanding about restraint re info dumping (”Nobody cares!”)
Jokes consistently going over my head and being called immature or stupid
Little understanding of sarcasm and jokes - often at my expense, often a tool used by bullies to gage friendship then do something bad.
Showing OCD tendencies - my room was chaos but things like books and information were stored and sorted compulsively
Just because I’m excelling with an SI (special interest) does not mean I am lazy or stupid in other respects
By the time I was 8 I had read every dog book in the primary library, could tell you almost any breed, where they came from, how and why
I could read five times faster than other students - reading as a class was agonising because it was so slow and every sentence the teacher would stop to explain a word or concept that was so obvious to me I thought she was patronising me. In other subjects such as maths or science I was painfully slow. I learn differently to most people, which I had to learn myself as an adult.
There are a lot of other issues that tripping this but I was a very high strung, short tempered child. A LOT of this came from intense bullying and frustration over being different with no idea why. Again, a lot of this was deemed me being a brat - and some of it was, I won’t lie - but most of it came from sheer mental exhaustion.
Sleep deprivation/nightmares/insomnia
Apparently I wanted to sleep in my mum’s bed until I was about six. I don’t remember that but I remember brutal nightmares even as a child.
With all of these things combined plus a bad immune system (I was always sick,) you can how they played off each other. Stress made me sick, being sick made me stressed.
There’s a lot more to it but that’s the important stuff. Guys, I don’t believe children are inherently bad. If a child is displaying meltdowns over innocuous things, there’s a reason behind it. Please listen to children, watch out for them. They don’t have the vocabulary or experience yet to tell you the problem, you need to help.
titsay
theartofmadeline
jbbartram-illu
turnnoffyourmind
