Autism Vs eccentric personality

[BlooDeBloop]

Context: A health care worker suggested my 12yo DS may have asd. He is socially extremely awkward at school but copes in his way and brushes off taunts etc. There are some anxiety issues we deal with. He is certainly quirky. Many of the males on my side of the family can fairly be described as eccentric or oddball (...actually this is a good description of me too 😆).

Question: what is this autism spectrum that potentially includes my DS at one end and on the other includes non verbal or highly violent people needing full time, respite care into teens and beyond? Or even the more common presentation we see on TV, the rocking, meltdown prone, OCD type of person. I just don't see the connection. Depression presents on a scale but one end looks like the other end just more extreme. ASD is highly variable. Indeed, this is reflected by the commonly quoted 'if you've met one person with autism, you've met one person with autism' i.e. no two cases are the same. If none are the same how can we be sure we're dealing with the same thing when we diagnose and talk about autism?

Can anyone explain?

@DinosaurOfFire this is really helpful to me in relation to my dc, so thank you for posting despite your reservations!

Winter- yes imagination is an interesting one. I couldn't play in the way others did "making up stories" for their barbies or whatever as I just didn't see the point. So i didnt "play" typically which would be seen as lack of imagination. But I could write an imaginative story for English. I can't "visualise " so I can't describe to you what someone this morning I saw was wearing or even looked like. And I can't "imagine" my lounge in a different colour etc or imagine clothes on. But in co trast to some "theory of mind" ideas I can quite well.imagine what it would be like for someone who had suffered.a bereavement or been through something tricky (I think avid reading builds up stories and parrallels) so haven't had a problem with empathy at all.

A friends son who presents in quite a sterotypic autistic fashion could make up no end of stories if it relates to minecraft/dragons with full detail as to exactly which ones/how they'd be killed etc.

So imagination is an interesting one.

There is no such thing as 'mild autism' unless you're claiming that I'm an example in spite of the fact that I'm medicated, have trauma reactions, depression and am often suicidal. I can drive, look after myself and have raised two children though, but yeah, mild, that's what people tell themselves 🙄

It's a spectrum not a continuum.

Again the descriptions are not helpful

At what point does "I prefer to take the exact same route everyday " turn from just a normal preference into an autistic symptom?

People get very defensive and jumpy over this topic OP, as you may notice.

I'm long since diagnosed autistic myself but am beginning to wonder about cptsd instead after a lot of research recently.

I'd personally bet good money that fifty years from now we won't use any of these labels the same way; so far it's all effectively guesswork based on the best evidence that a diagnostician can pick up. None of it's set in stone and I think it'll be interesting to see how it shapes up.

It's not knocking you
It's wanting to understand how and why eg you are autistic and someone else isn't

Cancer - the tumour can be seen
Stage 1 to 4 are relatively well defined in layman's terms

I'm reading through the thread carefully and got to this. I have to respond before catching up fully. I used highly violent to describe EXACTLY what happens in a care home my family member works in. A carer had hair ripped from her scalp. One lad is so dangerous only a few highly trained male carers can enter his rooms (he's so violent he has a whole floor to himself). This is not an exaggeration. I could go on a lot more.

This is helpful and certainly reflects DS and me. We are 'MY sandwich' type people 😆. He'll have a ham and cheese sandwich every lunch forever and be very happy. Mind you, so does his paternal grandfather (he had a ham sandwich, KitKat and banana every day of his working life) and who has no signs of ASD. To a non expert this confusing

Rigidity can be rigidity of plans and routines but can also be rigidity of thought- so black and white thinking or fixed ideas/difficulty changing plans.

kelsa — and? I don't understand your point.

Anyway , in ASD the commonality is that all people with an ASD diagnosis meet the specific diagnostic criteria for ASD. It's an identifiable cluster of traits, features and symptoms that very frequently seem to happen together, and also often come with other features, traits, and comorbid conditions. We don't yet understand the mechanisms as well as we understand those in diabetes and MS. Until we have a better understanding, that identified cluster of co-occurring traits is what we have to go on, and (assuming there are actually several different types of thing going on within the current ASD category) drawing arbitrary lines without enough information to go on will result in people with the same thing being put in different categories, and people with different types of thing being put in the same category, and all with an illusory glow of fake precision about the whole thing. Right now, I don't see the point in pretending we know enough to divide ASD into genuine separate diagnoses. In future, when we know more, it may be split back up into entirely separate diagnoses, but it's unlikely the lines will be drawn in the same places as they were before the combined ASD diagnosis was created.

Obviously we also need language to describe how individuals present, same as we need language to describe individuals within any other broad, overarching category.

This is not typical though of people who have severe autism and/or are non-verbal. Posts like this are at risk of demonising and othering them and their loved ones. Let's not forget too that the vast, vast majority of highly violent people in our society do not have autism.

Thank you for reading and understanding. DS was being assessed for dyspraxia (he is it turns out, no surprises) by the OT. She suggested the ASD and wasn't dismissive just realistic. I think I might not even be accepted because entry criteria require that he be in some way significantly impaired or suffering severe difficulties in life simply due to the overload in the system. She implied I should go private if I was interested in finding out.

To add, many children, young adults and adults with severe autism live at home with their families.

You see your DS 'at the other end of the spectrum' - it's not a continuum, btw - and I'd like you to consider that perhaps you should be using less sensationalist and more sensitive language when describing others, if you need to describe them at all.

in a care home my family member works in. A carer
Your family member should not be describing care plans and events concerning vulnerable residents at her place of employment. It is a breach of confidentiality.

@BlooDeBloop

You’re welcome. DS1 was assessed and diagnosed at 7; ADHD at 8. He’s autism level 1 but it doesn’t really ‘fit’, ADHD is a better match tbh. He’s super clever, but was struggling to focus/engage/manage emotions, so he now takes medication. Interestingly, when I read the depression and anxiety questionnaire for his ADHD assessment, it was like reading my childhood reflected back at me, I couldn’t stop crying, I felt seen.

But the descriptions I have heard just seem arbitrary

What does it mean to find it hard to communicate with others for example ? Or to find some situations overwhelming? ( taken from nhs website as indicators )

Surely everyone has a level of stimulation at which they will be overwhelmed?
Everyone needs to learn how to communicate and learning is hard for most people ? We don't label people who find maths hard to learn as having a condition?
I would guess half the population will feel some anxiety at an unfamiliar situation or social event ? The other half might get a thrill

There tends to be a strong genetic element, so the chances are you’re coming at it with a skewed view to start with.

Having the exact same thing for lunch every day is... out of the norm, so while not a huge deal if you think that’s normal you’re unlikely to notice it and the same is true of other things.

I am not suggesting at all btw that liking one exact lunch is definitely an autistic trait, that’s not how any of them work really, but, it could be a sign that there’s rigid thinking there... what happens if it’s not available?

What else that you’re just used to is untypical?

and then there’s the things you don’t see because they’re different with you, I’ve literally sat in an assessment for autism telling them my DS’s eye contact is fine, till they pointed out he was only giving eye contact to me and not any of them...

There is also btw, a massive overlap between dyspraxia and autism.

@kelsaycobbles You can only get a diagnosis of autism if you have these impairments to a degree that it affects your functioning. If someone struggled with maths to the degree it affected their day to day functioning they might be diagnosed with dyscalculia for example.

“We don't label people who find maths hard to learn as having a condition? “

Dyscalculia

There's some anxiety and being so anxious that your parents know it's pointless asking if you'd like to go somewhere because they know you'd only last 5 minutes before walking out because you can't cope with the amount of noise / people every single time.

present since early childhood, to the extent that these “limit and impair everyday functioning”.

I think this is the male pattern though. Girls tend to fly under the radar. I had no idea my dd was ASD until she was about 9. She was diagnosed at 16.

With girls the first indication is often anxiety. And not in early childhood.

Hard to communicate can be: being non-verbal; being situationally mute; often misunderstood; too loud/quiet; often says the wrong thing...

Everyone at some point can find situations overwhelming but not usually most situations for their entire life. Anxiety usually comes and goes with most people based on their current mental health, this sort of anxiety can be cured with therapy, with autism it has always been present and cannot be cured.

Everyone does learn to communicate. This usually happens as a baby and comes easily, it is not usually hard to learn.

We do not label people autistic if they have one of these difficulties, they need to have the triad and have always had the triad.

Yep our area won't accept girls fir referral unless seen as an issue at school.

When it's known so many girls mask and present as rule followers... this is tricky.

@tabulahrasa Agree about the genetic component. One of the reasons people don’t tend to suspect autism in their own family is because their behaviour is ‘normal’ to them. ‘Grandad had the same thing for lunch every day of his working life’ is a strong autism indicator (repetitive behaviours, limited diet, sensory issues, dislike of change, cognitive inflexibility).

@ArseInTheCoOpWindow I think with autistic women (as a likely autistic woman), it impairs our functioning in the sense that masking has a negative effect on mental health which ends up causing issues. So it still is an impairment of functioning, just potentially more internal so less outwardly noticeable?