An incredibly talented people person. As far as I’m concerned.
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Seriously man. Asd and ahdh overlap a lot. His teacher could just as easily be adhd from your description.
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Btw, totally off topic, but I’m going to show up on your doorstep some day expecting a very good hug. So you probably should start practicing now. I know I have been.
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She’s also very blunt - he took a while to speak in class, so even though we told her that he could and he just needed some time, she made comments like, “you’re son isn’t particularly intelligent. He’ll get by in school, but he won’t be that successful.” When we were in England, his teacher asked if he could speak English (it’s his first language). When we asked him about it, he said that the teacher had told the children to be quiet in class (so he was completely quiet, even when the teacher asked him a question).
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Many of my favorite people have learned to love and appreciate autists. As I am one, and once I get comfortable, I can be my weird wonderful left field self.
It’s what works for me, as a kid whose first word was a sentence at two.
I didn’t get the spaces thing. Ilikethatdog and shutthatdoor are perfectly good words.
Still don’t. They’re perfectly good words.
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I’m unwilling to encourage your diagnosis. It sounds like there’s a lot of misunderstanding between you and the teacher anyway. Perhaps she’s aspie or something. Perhaps old-fashioned. Perhaps completely nt and taking you at your word.
That last thing about everyone being quiet sounds like your son misunderstood, unfortunately.
Not trying to be a dick, just telling you how I parse it.
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My son being quiet isn’t an indication in itself, but he does take a long time to adjust to a new environment and this was months into the school year when we were asked whether he could speak English at all (or told that he couldn’t speak German). There are quite a lot of other indications that we and other people have pointed out, since before we even started looking after him. Not people suggesting that he was autistic, just pointing out a number of quirks in his personality and behaviour that all seem to point in that direction.
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Have you ever asked him what experience he would like to have?
Man I wish someone had asked me that back when I was younger. It would have changed an important perspective for me.
It’s a question with nothing but right answers.
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I thought you were still talking about the teacher… I thought you said it was pretty much open and shut that your son was on the spectrum and that you were trying to diagnose the teacher.
Now I’m confused 
In anycase, the teacher was who I was talking about. I’m not going to diagnose a child with anything. Really I shouldn’t diagnose anyone with anything, outside my first aid training.
I can spot heat exhaustion from a mile away and know exactly how to remedy that.
I also know how to take care of a person who’s been starved, in order to prevent re-feeding syndrome from stopping their heart in its tracks.
I know how to care for a deep puncture wound. And how to manage a bad burn.
I don’t know the first thing about keeping anyone’s head on straight.
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No, I think that was me 
I think I’ll just pass on the test and ask whether she’s thought about it. Hopefully she’ll take it in the right way - suggesting that she may be autistic doesn’t mean that I think there’s something wrong with her.
As for keeping people’s head on straight, I really think that’s someone else’s department…
@Sansgrues He wants to be an artist, and probably support himself by working with computers. He’s a very thoughtful kid, and asks lots of interesting questions about life and other people. Honestly, I’m pretty excited for the reasons you said - like many people, I internalized a narrative about all the things that were wrong about me*, which increases the chances that you’ll fail. I think with something like chronic pain, other people may not understand or even believe that there’s something wrong, but you know. It seems to be relatively common for undiagnosed aspies to gaslight themselves, since it’s so pervasive but also undefinable, and it’s easy enough to dismiss the traits as character flaws (not that you shouldn’t work on improving yourself, but it’s important to do this on the basis of an accurate picture of yourself, including your strengths and learning styles - there are extra factors such as weak connections between parts of the brain that can make traditional teaching styles less successful):
Most students I have been called on to consult for have experienced much angst along the way. They know they are not like other kids. They may or may not know they have autism. One thing I find is that students who are able to communicate are very aware they are different from other kids and they have made up a narrative to explain their differences to themselves. I have been honored by a number of students sharing these stories about why they are different. I have yet to hear a positive story. They are typically stories about major character flaws, sometimes character traits they have heard others ascribe to them such as lazy, stubborn, willful, violent, refuses to share, refuses to co-operate, etc. As I begin working with new students I typically use a simple interactive schedule to show them “work” and “sensory break.” I ensure they are successful at following this schedule even if it means we work for a few seconds and engage in sensory regulating activities for a much longer time. I am visually instructing how schedules work while getting the student’s sensory system regulated and doing that in the context of forming a positive relationship. Most students I see have not experienced a lot of positive relationships. They have learned not to trust others around them. I am giving them an exact visual way our time works. They can count on it, become part of it and will always succeed. Over time strong relationships develop. Once a relationship is solid, we know what sensory activities are needed (along with how long and how often) and the student has mastered his interactive visual schedule I know he is now stabilized. Once stabilized we are ready for more formalized instruction.
(* I’ve never been overweight, but this seems to be similar to the way that some overweight people think - that this is a moral failure and a black mark on their character. I bet there’s a whole lot more ambient negativity for them to process too, since the average bystander probably didn’t notice anything odd about me).
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BRING IT
Also, free hugs for everyone! Or fist bumps, or trial by combat. I can go either way.
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I just have to say I am very happy you started this thread. As I mentioned above I generally feel more comfortable with people who aren’t neurotypical, and this is giving me more insight into how to make relationships even better.
Thank you.
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Okay, something just clicked in my brain. If you converted those to what’s called Camel Case:
ILikeThatDog and shutThatDoor
You would be a typical programmer. And a significant number of brilliant programmers are neurodiverse.
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Mine:
Your neurodiverse (Aspie) score: 70 of 200
Your neurotypical (non-autistic) score: 154 of 200
You are very likely neurotypical
Boringly mainstream. No real surprise, but I suspected before taking the test that I might have ended up a little farther to the right of the chart. I am too old to have ever been tested as a child, which is just as well, as I think I was probably seen as withdrawn and socially awkward. (The categories back then were restricted to normal, village idiot, and possessed-of-demons.) Getting older and getting more life experience has made many positive changes.
I had the same problem with the questions as many others here, which is that the range of responses is not adequate to really describe my nature, or anyone’s. On most tests like this, if there was a box marked “It depends”, I would tick that for 75% of the questions, so I take the results as interesting but not all-defining. I am large, I contain multitudes.
Mostly what I take from my results is that I’m introverted, which I knew already, and which says little about my spectrum ranking. FWIW, I feel really at home in the BB community, so the awesomeness of you folks must be my kind of awesomeness. I don’t have enough likes to go round, so consider yourselves all liked.
Edit: Oh yes, those damn clothing tags. I take them off as a matter of course, and I’m not a particularly sensitive type. They seem to be made of synthetic material, and stitched with coarse or monofilament thread that affects me like needles to the back of the neck. The advent of tagless t-shirts tells me we are not alone.
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[quote=“MarkDow, post:139, topic:81030”]
https://cdck-file-uploads-global.s3.dualstack.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/boingboing/original/3X/e/5/e5abaed260c195fce40bf07a6efb1765d13a2949.png[/quote]
Given the apparent face validity of this instrument, I’d say these results are accurate.
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[quote=“teknocholer, post:157, topic:81030”]
Boringly mainstream. No real surprise, but I suspected before taking the test that I might have ended up a little farther to the right of the chart.
Mostly what I take from my results is that I’m introverted, which I knew already, and which says little about my spectrum ranking. FWIW, I feel really at home in the BB community, so the awesomeness of you folks must be my kind of awesomeness. [/quote]
I really wouldn’t read much into this. There are a lotof atypical cognitive types who would fly under the radar of this inventory, which doesn’t even purport to assess introversion—and introversion itself is a questionable personality dimension.
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That’s probably one of the most accurate answers I’ve gotten from any test.
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… and if you slam words together without CamelCase, it’s called German.
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