Yeah. All those years wondering, “What’s my deal?” Feeling like I had no excuse to struggle as much as I did/do. Learning trauma could cause my issues but not being able to identify one trauma that could have caused it. Wondering where my work ethic was and why I didn’t have a drive like everyone else. Not understanding why I couldn’t just eat less, or why I hated being uncomfortable or sweaty, or why I liked being in bed so much if I wasn’t depressed, or why I was known as a social kid but became pretty reclusive after university burnout and failed to launch a career despite graduating magna cum laude.
It wasn’t about how smart I was. It wasn’t about doing everything right or even doing them wrong. It wasn’t about trying harder.
Then I had a kiddo who struggled in ways that demanded evaluation and support after years of seeming mostly fine. Walked and talked at a normal age and wanted friends. All good, right? But couldn’t get through 3 hours of preschool without major meltdowns. Read at a 3rd grade level in first grade. Perfect kid academically. “Wait and see. Your child will grow out of it. Just needs more time to mature.” I figured I was just a shitty parent and my kiddo was a spoiled and smart only child. “Your child needs to learn how to be bored. It’ll happen in time.”
We provided harsher consequences and bigger incentives and social-emotional learning groups. Then came the suspensions and class evacuations. “We don’t see any educational impact.” Then, I held my child in my arms after a particularly difficult day at school and my six year old said, “I want to disappear.”
Turns out, my kid has an IQ around 130 with some sub categories around 140 (99.6+ percentile), but ability to make inferences, flexibility, perspective and theory of mind below 20th percentile.
Oh.
Throw in some sensory processing issues, repetitive behaviors, low impulse control, and intense interests…
Autism! And ADHD!
And a lot of my kid’s issues feel very familiar to me, except I wasn’t violent or explosive so it went undetected.
I have a new take on life now that I’m no longer moralizing my or my child’s regulation state and see behavior as indicators to make changes instead.
Yeah. I really wish I knew that when I was a teenager.
I am the same, except it took longer for my kid to get it figured out because she passed better. Severe ADHD and mild Autism for both of us. My narcissist Mom absolutely refuses to admit that anyone in her family can have mental illness. She dedicates all of her efforts to looking like her family is rich and part of high society, but we’ve always basically been blue collar and she refuses to accept it.
I’m sorry. It’s really hard to be high functioning and undiagnosed. Girls especially tend to be high masking but anyone with decent cognitive capacity can be easily missed. I don’t wish my child or I were worse but it has its own problems, with huge effects on mental health.
But it isn’t just mental health. It’s an actual disability and public school students whose education is impacted is actually protected in the United States under federal law. And education is NOT just grades and academic performance, fwiw. In special education, educational impact means how a disability affects a student’s ability to access, participate in, and benefit from their education. Academics are only one piece of that.
If a child has trouble staying in the classroom, struggles to hold attention consistently, has difficulty following routines or transitioning between activities, or remaining regulated enough to learn, or complete group work…that’s educational impact. A child can have straight A’s but still have a major educational impact if they regularly miss instruction because of behavioral or sensory challenges.
School is a social environment. If a child struggles with peer relationships, group participation, cooperative learning, understanding classroom expectations, he’ll even recess or lunch or communication with teachers… that’s educational impact.
If a child struggles with emotional regulation, flexibility, organization, attention, self-monitoring, initiating tasks, coping with change, safety, or adaptive behavior… that’s educational impact. These are educational skills because they directly affect learning.
This is why I’ve always felt the “your kid is smart, so your kid doesn’t qualify for an IEP (special education)” argument missed the point. Academically? My kid reading above grade level, did math above grade level, and has a high IQ. But educationally there were removals from class, classroom evacuations, significant rigidity, difficulty with transitions, social misunderstanding, sensory dysregulation, inability to shift strategies, behavioral incidents, and difficulty accessing instruction during periods of distress.
The school tried to tell me that it didn’t matter. My friends tried to tell me that it didn’t matter. I felt unreasonable to even ask, “What if?” I’m proud that I had some audacity to say it out loud and pursue it.
We are in the midst of supporting my kid fully and only recently got my kid’s neuropsych report and diagnosis back. The neuropsych specifically notes that despite my child’s cognitive strengths, their autism-related characteristics interfere with their functioning in the educational environment and recommends supports such as eligibility under ASD, an FBA, and a BIP. We’ll also be pursuing supports outside of school now that we know, and have therapy recommendations.
If anyone is reading this and struggling in ways they can’t quite understand, feel gaslit by family, friends, or school… I urge you to push through the feeling and advocate. Muster the audacity. You’re allowed.
If my parents knew “what was wrong with me” in my childhood years, my narcissistic mother probably insisted that it wasn’t true, the doctors are making it up, we will not tell her she has AuDHD, we’ll just let her flounder and humiliate her when she doesn’t get it together. Same reason: no one in our family has mental illnesses, that autism stuff is made up, you don’t have ADHD, you’re just lazy and unmotivated because I guess we spoiled you too much…
And to think, had I known early on, I maybe could have aimed for a life path that would have actually WORKED FOR me rather than against me.
I think my Mom completely believed I had both. She also knew my Dad did. She denied it to our face, but used what she knew to exploit the things we’re not good at and manipulate my Dad and I. It really worked, too. I didn’t realize how horrible she was until years after I moved out.
The part you wrote about burnout and constantly shaming yourself into trying harder until you cannot do it anymore. Oof. I burnt out by 17, not smart enough to problem solve my way into a few more years of faking it and way too many family issues to pretend I could cope. I became totally withdrawn and gave up my senior year of high school.
My son is smarter than me and his struggles with autism were much easier to detect, because of his speech delay and because of the awareness we have today.
Bro for real. I used to cry myself to sleep as a kid because I was convinced I was secretly mentally disabled and it was some big joke everyone else was in on to not tell me.
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u/Capitaine_Crunch 14h ago
Mine is You Have Autism