Neurodiversity support thread: Women with suspected/self-diagnosed/diagnosed ASC & ADHD

[EauRouge]

No sign of our own forum yet, so for now here's a new support thread for women on the autistic spectrum and/or with ADHD. Newbies more than welcome!

The old thread is here.

Here are some helpful links for newbies:

List of female AS traits by Tania Marshall.

List of female traits by Everyday Aspergers

Musings of an Aspie- Cynthia Kim's blog (one of the few sources I have found about being a parent with Aspergers)

Autistic Women's Collective

Recognising ADHD in women from ADDitude Magazine

Resources for women with ADHD from ADDitude Magazine

Adult ADHD support (coming soon by the looks of things)

Books

Aspergirls by Rudy Simone

You Mean I'm Not Lazy, Stupid or Crazy?!: The Classic Self-help Book for Adults with Attention Deficit Disorder by Kate Kelly (I haven't read this one but I have heard it recommended many times- apologies if it's no good!)

I took off Tony Attwood because it was about people with autism rather than for people with autism. Anyone else got any book recommendations?

Online tests

(Online tests are not 100% certain but can give you a very good idea and a starting point for talking to your GP if you're seeking diagnosis)

RDOS Aspergers quiz (the best one IMO)

AQ test

ADHD test

ADHD questionnaire for women

If any of those don't work, it's because I'm cooking the DDs' dinner and I'm shit at multitasking. What's that burning smell?

I'm feeling super overwhelmed today. In a flash of brilliance, I've decided to overhaul the garden and get some fun garden-y activities for DS. This impulsivity of new ideas is so me. Just the other day, I decided to make some sort of sensory wall for DS using stuff I've squirreled away in that kitchen drawer. Always full of good intentions. The bits of cardboard are now sat in a corner, gathering dust. I have a problem with follow-through! So now I'm doing a bit of online shopping to find the best deals for gazebo's and fence panels etc and THERE IS SO MUCH CHOICE omg. One of my earliest childhood memories is going to get new shoes from Clarks and collapsing, in tears, into my father's arms because I just couldn't decide what pair of shoes I wanted - there were too many and I couldn't choose! I'm so crap at making decisions anyway. Add to that sooo much choice and variety, I find shopping the most daunting and overwhelming experience ever! Gah!

Anyway. Gumblebee thank you so much for sharing your experience with me! :) I feel exactly the same as you, just without a diagnosis. I'm scared of what it will mean. I've always been soo critical of myself, but now I'm analysing myself in new ways. I even asked my parents about me as a child from their point of view and it was rather enlightening. Though my mum still puts my crying for no reason all the time and feeling depressed down to typical teenage hormones! I hope you find some peace with your diagnosis and embrace yourself! You are still you! :) You're right, this is a new chapter of your life.

PolterGoose Thanks for sharing those cards! I'm going to get some for DH for when he travels to London for work.

Thanks mj I guess I'm always going to be me and you're always going to be you and we'd best work out why that makes us awesome

I so empathise with the enthusiastically-starting-projects thing. My house is heaving with moribund enthusiasms. My childhood shoe shopping experiences differ, though - they always involved an hour of me declaring every shoe in the shop to be too tight and pinchy, and ending up with exactly the same fugly HH width Start-Rite as last year, but a size bigger. My dad said I seemed not to want my shoes to touch anywhere, and he was right

My mum like yours didn't think "autism" and was surprised when I got a diagnosis, saying that she hasn't thought the answers she'd given indicated autism. But after that she said she thinks she might be on the spectrum too.

Really, mum?! Never! (there was very little stuff in her answers about how I played with others as a kid because my mum didn't have friends whose kids I could play with. Ahem. Of course to her, my going to playgroup at 3 and sitting in the big chair to read storybooks to the other children was a sign of my lack of developmental issues. Just like her, see )

Is having your parents' and partners' input common with an adult assessment? I kind of hope so as DH seems to know me better than myself sometimes. I'm semi-estranged from my family now - building tentative bridges with my mum - and the distance has meant I've been able to analyse her behaviour. I am a quiet observer of human behaviour. I'm seeing so much in a different light. It's so strange. I'm quite the opposite to you in that I am one of 12 children with a large extended family and was raised in a church that was very family oriented, so I've always had people around and plenty of children to play with. But always felt lonely and like I didn't fit in or belong. And I've wanted to get away and be on my own. When I am absorbed in my own world, doing my own thing, I am much happier. I am realising now just how hard I found growing up in such a busy house! It's taken me to now to realise those outbursts of frustration and anger I had, were meltdowns. I even struggle sharing a room with DH sometimes, despite having always shared a room with someone!!! I have turned the pantry into my little nook with paper and art supplies and my laptop and memo's and to-do lists. My happy place! :D

Oh, and PolterGoose. I am 23. But seem to be able to remember people and teachers from schools going right back to infant school! :') When I was a kid and played teachers, I would write out everyone in my class' first and last names for the register and whether they were school dinners or packed lunches! lol :D I can still remember my favourite teacher in Infants' who wasn't even my teacher but we were allowed to go to her classroom to show a particular good piece of work because she would draw a cool smiley face with afro hair! She also had a limp in her left leg.

Yet, I can't remember what I did last week. But remember instances from Infant school SO clearly. Amazing how memory works!

Just re-reading your post Gumblebee and chuckling all over again! lol I can just picture you at 3 sat in that big chair! :') Do you think your mum might go for assessment now?!

Apparently it was super adorable; I started picking up reading before I was 2 so by the time I was 3 I could read most stuff pretty well, which was incongruously amusing

12! I'm impressed you survived. I do have an older brother, but to be honest he's much like me and my mum in many ways. We didn't exactly play nicely together.

I think they find it helpful to get impressions from someone who knows you well now, and to get information on your early development, but presumably there are different ways to get information?

I think my mum knows she has certain traits already and maybe finds it interesting that our quirks can be conceptualised in this way but I also suspect she's happy with the life and level of socialising she has built and there wouldn't be any benefit from diagnosis. Also there's no NHS adult diagnostic service where she lives

I could've done with you around, Polter!. I didn't learn to tie my shoelaces or brush or tie back my hair or brush my teeth or wash myself or tell the time until way, waaaay later than the other kids.

Mj, I have a similar memory, I can remember things like I'm there again, a bit like the pensive in Harry Potter, but can barely remember what I did this morning

Had what I think may have been a meltdown of sorts this afternoon. Ds1 and 2 are gearing up for a center parcs break this weekend, neither do change. Ds1 has been obnoxious and downright nasty all day, pushing buttons left right and centre, I ended up not being able to breathe I was so stressed, couldn't hear properly and kept shouting until I locked myself in the car for a few minutes to get away and calm down.
Took a while to get over and feel ok again.
What doesn't kill you makes you stronger - if I get through these holidays in one piece I'll be a bloody Superhero!

I had my twin around to do everything for me when I was little. I recall not talking for ages at school, and pretending to be my sister's monkey and talking through her.

Ingenious, Chien.

DS is not quite as prodigous as you, Gumble, but the fact he can read before starting school in Germany is treated with absolute reverence! He also gets to sit in a big chair and read stories to all of the other children in Kindergarten.

That's so cute, Bertie! Is he a bilingual reader?

Yep! :) I carried on Phonics stuff with him because he had started it in nursery just before we came and I think phonics are the best thing ever for English spelling, which is tricky otherwise, I didn't intend to teach him to read in German but he put his phonics knowledge and his German knowledge together and it just clicked. German is much more phoenetic than English so it's v. easy to decode.

He starts learning French in the first year of school, which begins in September. Will be interested to see how he does with that. His kindergarten teacher says he has an ear for languages. He's picked up around 20 words in Russian as well from his best friend. But I don't think his friend is going to that school, so they might not see as much of each other as they had done.

From what I've read about early readers it can be a sign of/form of autism, or it can be a bright kid who just reads early.

I read at four. Early but not amazingly so - I just have a summer birthday. DS learned at five and a half so around average for UK, just early for Germany.

DS picked up learning to read very easily.

I don't remember how I was. My later primary school reports say my reading age was 2 years ahead even though I refused to read fiction.

Ah, I only know because a few years ago my mum brought round a load of my old school reports. :) Funnily enough they say the exact thing that they say ADHD girls' reports often say - Bertie is very able but often daydreams. Bertie would do so much better if she stopped chattering. Bertie participates well in class but her homework is often haphazard. :o

Argh, just going to have a little sort of whinge...

Dh saw a school-mum friend of mine earlier who said "if beyond is bored, tell her she can pop around if she wants". The trouble is a) i feel weird going over without a direct, explicit invitation but b) if i dont go, i'll worry that i'm offending her by not going. I kind of expect extra pre-emptative understanding from her as she has an autistic ds, though i'm probably being unfair with that?

Its sorted :) i went with "when are you free, dh's company (the kids are away) is making me climb the walls"

Thought some if you might be interested in a recent women's hour about adult diagnosis of women with ASD. It is from 14 mins in www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0639kzz

That was interesting quad, thanks for linking (and thanks for finding the start time too )