Can't someone just be odd?

[lesley33]

I read on this forum and hear other mums, assuming that if someone is a bit different they must have SN or MH problems. Sometimes people are just a bit odd or eccentric. So AIBU to think that some people can be odd or eccentric and not have SN or MH issues?

'But she has the lowest need for friends/social interaction of anyone I have ever known. She is happy and in fact wants to spend most of her leisure time alone.'

But how would you know that about her if she was a very casual acquaintance? Or even a complete stranger?

That's what I meant by noticeable btw.

I can't see that being unsociable if it's not causing any issues is in need of labelling at all.

I've never seen anyone suggest an SN for something that's not causing an issue, you get children who aren't massively keen on other children - I don't think that in itself is a problem and I would never suggest that it has any cause, it's if that was combined with other things or if it was an issue for the child that you might start thinking, hmm, wonder if there's something going on there that needs support.

I've met lots of odd children, in fact most of them are in one way or another, lol - it's when it's causing a problem that it gets looked at as something more.

Well I can't answer for a specifric thread obv. but technically it is more likely with adults no? Gioven that AS wasn't even picked up until the 1990's: quite a few adults about barely holding down jobs (or high flying ofc ourse) with undiagnosed AS. Oldest person I know of officially to have been picked up was in seventies and causing inappropriate hell in a nursing home; but pretty certain my Grandad falls into the group too aged 92. TBH if someone ahd the misfortune to encounter him I;d far rather they satrted a thread asking if he could ahve had Sn than just about an odd man who walked into their shop, spouted racist crap then claimed the council / single woman up teh street / AN other was after him.

Asbolutely Tab

The issue with most (not all, individuals etc) kdis with AS in aprticular isn;t that they want to be alone, it's that tehy want to be social but can't for whatever reason. That is the root of much loneliness.

Like you Tabulahrasa I don't like making some phone calls, and I suffer from "foot in mouth". I cringe every time I remember this exchange:-

Mother of young teenage boy "please excuse my son, he's autistic"

Me "ooh, lucky bugger, I've never been able to draw... Oh, sorry, you must think I'm horrible"

Her (chuckling somewhat) "not at all, sometimes I wish people would react like that instead of giving me sympathy".

I am even now, and it happened about 15 years ago.

You know what headless she probably laughs about it now. You neitehr said youw ere sorry or that she must be special to have been granted Sn kids; on to a winner there

I know what you mean op. Was just wondering if the Doc Martin character would be labelled. He does seem to be a loner, happy with his own company and cares not a jot for the social graces.

I'm the odd one too amongst my family/friends, have no special needs, just no need for the full embrace of society. If I can keep society at bay we get on fine.

YANBU.

I have been diagnosed with ADD. More than once. :)

But it's just the way my mind works, and I like it. I've learned to control it (mainly with the acronym FOCUS: Follow One Course Until Success, lots of sleep, etc) a bit but I will never be well organized. However, I am very good at my job because it requires constant re-thinking, and I am a rock in a crisis because I think quickly and in a million different directions at once.

Disorder, or just me? Who knows? I just know that I'm happy and my life doesn't require medication. :)

Tab - But as a child now she probably would have been picked up as maybe SN. Do you really think a DC with practically no friends who spent virtually all her leisure time alone would not have some people questioning nowdays whether she had SN - rather than the fact that it is just part of her personality.

I agree with the OP's post and would like to add my experiences of being "odd" (ugh) and having a label.

I have bipolar - but I also a human being. That means I have off days, days when I'm happy about something so I smile and laugh, I have my own interests that don't fit in with the majority of people. What I hate is when every remark, cough, sniff, FART is attributed to my illness. I once read a post on a forum by a psychiatrist who also has bipolar. She called it "mental illness robs you of the right to be a weirdo". She was talking about a patient who likes to flirt because - shock horror - he is a flirt, as well as being whatever his label says. I identified with this immediately.

I hate feeling under scrutiny all the time. I have been in remission for eight years and feel like having a teeshirt made saying I'm in remission, stupid.

One example quite recently was my (very nice) boss whose background is in psychiatric nursing querying my wearing red lipstick, because she thought it might mean I was going high. Er - no. I wore it to match my red coat. If I didn't have the label, my lipstick choice would have been unremarkable.

I won't wear red lipstick again in a hurry.

In the past I have also been judged and mocked for not having a television, for liking jazz and for reading books. Called a nutter, barking mad etc. etc. The one who mocked me about jazz has a hobby, canoeing. At the time of his comments I was making about £200 per week out of my nutty jazz habit. And he was making zilch out of paddling about.

It seems to me that in the eyes of some people, if I have a label, that's all I can ever be and things about me that I hold dear are mere symptoms. That's stigma. I have met many amateur diagnosticians in my time. They have all been crap.

Me! I'm 'odd' - deffo spectrum ASD. Either that or short of patience with the world at large!

Wouldn't bother me one iota if everyother living soul fell off the planet so long as I had hot water, an endless supply of books and well, cheese.

rufus my idea of bliss is for television to be outlawed.

trois - yep. I'd be able to watch my arty French and German films (with my shades on)* and gorge myself on gorgonzola and brie. Similar for you, I'd imagine.

*Watching arty French films with my shades on" is a quote from a great song called "I'm Hep", which tells of a wannabe who's more hip than the musicians (he thinks).

'It seems to me that in the eyes of some people, if I have a label, that's all I can ever be

isn't it that needing changing though, rather than the availability of them to people who need them or people just trying to inform others about potential risks?

Are you sure you'd get ASD? it's far more than that, social is just one aspect. Besides I am a loner not because I like it, but because I do not have the skills to remedy it- it makes me lonely and sad.

ASD requires social difference / difficulty, behavioural difficulties (eg obsesions, flapping), and verbal or non verbasl language impairment (eye conact, lietral speech etc)- also increasingly it is seen as a quad with sensory being the final aspect.

Loner will not cut it. ASD is far more than that.

YANBU at all.

'Do you really think a DC with practically no friends who spent virtually all her leisure time alone would not have some people questioning nowdays whether she had SN - rather than the fact that it is just part of her personality.'

Some people may, nobody relevant though - if she worked fine with others in school and her parents knew she played alone through choice, who would be raising it as an issue?

Some people seem to think (I'm not saying you do, I wouldn't know) that getting a diagnosis of an SN is easy, it's really really not... Nobody gets a diagnosis just because they're not sociable, nobody gets one for being a bit odd.

My DS was 7 when he was first assessed, we came out having being told that yep they strongly believed that AS was a possibility and that they'd see him again in 6 months and they assessed him again then, and 6 months later, then by a different team 6 months later, then back to the original doctor, then a clinical psychologist and so on until he was finally diagnosed at 13 - and all that time he had SALT and OT involvement.

None of them, or me, or his school had any doubt after that initial referral that he would be diagnosed with something and the older he got the more obvious it became that he wasn't a typical child, the problem was that he also didn't quite have a typical presentation for AS, so they don't diagnose if there's any doubt.

All the time he was undiagnosed, his school were receiving less funding for him than they would have been if he was diagnosed, he didn't qualify for any autistic only provision and he didn't qualify for anything outside of school either.

On leaving primary school, he'd never been on a school trip that involved staying overnight because both me and the school agreed that he wouldn't cope, he'd had no friends for years and was so unhappy about it that he'd stated several times that he wanted to kill himself, he had a reading age of 2 years above his actual age, but a spelling age of 5.5, he couldn't write well enough to read it nor tie his shoelaces or fasten most buttons. On top of that he has a speech disorder, which affects how sounds are made, making him hard to understand.

He was not a bit odd, or different, he had fairly major problems and very obvious ones and yet he had a diagnosis or 'label' of absolutely nothing - because he didn't quite fit the diagnostic criteria.

I've done a few years of voluntary work and I've worked in schools, he is not a one off, I've met many others in a similar position, it often takes years with higher functioning children like my DS to get a diagnosis.

So no, I don't think anybody with any authority would have seriously questioned whether your friend had an SN just because she prefers to be alone.

Typically anyway parents fight to get their child's needs picked up. DS3 at 4 was non verbal and incontinent and I still had to fight for him to be assessed. They were much happier to attach a label of naughty thick child to ds1 until he was seen by a charity who broke his presentation down and proved that not only did he have AS, he had a verbal age of 16 - 21 (aged 5) and an IQ of around 125 so in no way thick. Just- special needs. By that time we'd been through parents having petitions against him, the lot (fab teacher dealt with THAT sharply!). Now it's obvious he has AS at age 11 and he attends a Base for kids with AS / HFA but it's been a horrid and hard road involving me being shouted at, threatened, injured (by ds1), having parents who 'know there's no such thing as Autism' banging down my door- bad times. Bad times now over, thankfully!

Peachy, I'm not denying that people who need help and receive it will be given a diagnosis/label, nor would I want to deny a child or adult with ASD or any disorder the right to be diagnosed and treated. The OP I believe was making the point that sometimes there is no underlying condition and that seeking a diagnosis should not necessarily be the first option, and a diagnosis, once made should not be turned into a stick to beat someone with.

My point was that for some of us, stigma is a reality we live with every day, and it's hurtful. I fought long and hard to get into remission (it's not enough to keep swallowing the pills), and now that I'm here I want to live something approaching a life. People sometimes stigmatise me and deny me the right to be fully human.

Both my problem and yours are real, and I think education and awareness are the keys to resolving them.

Peachy - I didn't see your later posts. It must have been dreadful to have to struggle for every bit of help and for a correct diagnosis, and I feel for you and your DC. In my case, correct diagnosis took nine years, during which time I lost my career, my house and my car (couldn't drive for a while so sold it as so skint). I would hate you to think I am minimising the ordeal you and your DC have been through. I think we both have valid points, and I hope we can agree.

Re my last post - the same goes for any poster who's had to struggle to get the right treatment and support for their DCs. I wish you and your DCs well.

Of course, and i think it's hugely important that people see beyond the label. It should be a guide when needed not a stigma

All i think a few of us are saying is that when we see a parent whose child flags a few things for us it's valid to point them in direction of the triad etc. I am lucky that I have the knowledge I have under my belt and if it's irrelevant the aprent can just ignore and move on. RTrying to help people in an informed manner though does not warrant the horrid point and laugh game espoused by people like worraliberty, because that WAS hurtful and ended up with me mailing MNHQ to check if they had a problem with how I conduct myself on here.

PS we also lost our house when DH was ill, shit isn't it? Hope you are OK now?

Peachy - thanks for that, and I see your point about using your experience to help others. Sorry you lost your house too, and I hope you are happily settled now.

I am still in remission, but hugely lacking in energy and motivation. It hurts me every day that I lost my career but I know how lucky I am to have a job and decent people to work with and for. I should be pressing on with a recording demo but can't seem to summon up the energy (and the musicians aren't exactly being co-operative). I'd be happier if I had gigs to do every week - haven't given up on this idea! At present though, all I do is work, eat and sleep but I'm hanging in there.

of course,unfortunately some folks are v illiberal though
some people want a homogenised and sanitised life to be lived by all

and fwiw even if one has a mh diagnosis, so what?
with adequate treatment,support and medication most people live,work and get by. unfortunately stigma prejudice etc makes lives a bit harder

'All i think a few of us are saying is that when we see a parent whose child flags a few things for us it's valid to point them in direction of the triad etc.'

That's the thing, what's wrong with saying - have you ever seen this and some information...even if it's for a parent to go, nope it's definitely not that.

If it was a skin condition, nobody cares if people go - I have experience of this, it sounds like it may be a possibility, why don't you find out about and and see if it fits? If it's not, no harm done and if it is well then you know what you're dealing with.

yep that was the best analogy I could come up with, lol, and it's a rubbish one.

The problem is that when it's anything diagnosed by behaviours, there is a stigma there, it's not measurable enough, it's not exact enough for people and couple that with the fact that people do stigmatise it...:(

Thought that the model of disability that we are all meant to be using nowadays is the social model, which I gather is that you only have a disability if you consider yourself to have one, which is why on application forms/ equality questionairs the question is always 'do you consider yourself to have a disability'.
So I guess the answer to your question would be that if the individual considers themselves to have mental health issues or special needs then they do.

Yes, that's a good point tabulah - I bang on about hearing tests all the time, because it's what I have experience of and I know it's not always the first thing people think of if, when it's not a totally obvious case.

I have said that I am not talking about people who have SN or going through diagnostic of this. I am talking about ordinary people who see oddness in people as a SN or MH issue when it is not.

And I agree that people can have SN or MH and have unusual/different aspects of their personality that are nothing to do with their SN or MH. But also agree that some ordinary people don't seem to recognise this.

Its not great for anyone if you struggle with life, struggle to make friends, etc. But I think as long as this doesn't apply, then being confident enough to be yourself including oddness or unusual aspects of personality, is a good thing.