gerj21
Well-Known Member
Hi there,
My name is Gerry, I am 43, married with 2 beautiful daughters (11 and 5) and we have just recently discovered why my 11 year old daughter and I are "different". My wife noticed it when we first met, and that is part of the reason why she was initially attracted to me, because I was not like everyone else. We just never knew why. My mother thought I just had ADD. My daughter is the same way I was growing up. We were getting frustrated with her and someone told us about AS. I shared what I learned with my wife, and she realized that everything we were reading described me too. It was like someone had done a study on me. I told my mother to research it without explaining it to her what AS was, and when she got back to me, she said without a doubt this is what I have.
Looking back over my whole life, there is almost nothing about me that cannot be attributed to these characteristics. I had very few friends from high school, and a few close ones from college that I still keep in contact with but most of my friends today are because of my wife. Without her, I may only have a few. I took a few of the online tests and scored well into the aspie range. That 200 point test that most everyone references was 174 point for me and back in high school (84-87), my guidance counsellor told me what my IQ was, but no one could figure out why I did not do as well as I could or why I had trouble socializing.
I have been depressed for several years knowing that something was different and why I did not feel I was living up to a typical adult male stereotype. Once I learned all of this, everything fell into place, and I realized that I do not HAVE to be something I am not. My wife has been very supportive of my differences now and we have also learned how to deal with our daughter. To say this has been life changing is an understatement, and I feel like I have crawled out from a dark hole that I have been trapped in. knowing is half the battle. I can better avoid anxiety since I know what can trigger it, and if I can't, my wife is there to help reassure me.
We are seeking an official diagnosis for our daughter so she can get any special help at school that she might need. I feel that seeking the diagnosis would be a waste of time and money for me, especially at 43 since I have learned to overcome many obstacles and I am just happy to understand myself better now. Today, I feel I have a very good job working with maps (with Lockheed Martin) which has been THE main passion of mine for as long as I can remember. My mother said I could spend hours studying world maps and road atlases just looking at the roads and features even before kindergarten. I even just completed my first class on computer scripting to automate cartographic analysis (Python for GIS, for any other geeks reading this
). I still have difficulty with some things, but now that I know what is going on, I am determined to overcome them.
If anyone wants to correspond with me, please do. There is still a lot that I want to learn, as well as offer any advice that I can, about anything that I learned to deal with growing up while not knowing what was going on.
Best Regards,
Gerry
My name is Gerry, I am 43, married with 2 beautiful daughters (11 and 5) and we have just recently discovered why my 11 year old daughter and I are "different". My wife noticed it when we first met, and that is part of the reason why she was initially attracted to me, because I was not like everyone else. We just never knew why. My mother thought I just had ADD. My daughter is the same way I was growing up. We were getting frustrated with her and someone told us about AS. I shared what I learned with my wife, and she realized that everything we were reading described me too. It was like someone had done a study on me. I told my mother to research it without explaining it to her what AS was, and when she got back to me, she said without a doubt this is what I have.
Looking back over my whole life, there is almost nothing about me that cannot be attributed to these characteristics. I had very few friends from high school, and a few close ones from college that I still keep in contact with but most of my friends today are because of my wife. Without her, I may only have a few. I took a few of the online tests and scored well into the aspie range. That 200 point test that most everyone references was 174 point for me and back in high school (84-87), my guidance counsellor told me what my IQ was, but no one could figure out why I did not do as well as I could or why I had trouble socializing.
I have been depressed for several years knowing that something was different and why I did not feel I was living up to a typical adult male stereotype. Once I learned all of this, everything fell into place, and I realized that I do not HAVE to be something I am not. My wife has been very supportive of my differences now and we have also learned how to deal with our daughter. To say this has been life changing is an understatement, and I feel like I have crawled out from a dark hole that I have been trapped in. knowing is half the battle. I can better avoid anxiety since I know what can trigger it, and if I can't, my wife is there to help reassure me.
We are seeking an official diagnosis for our daughter so she can get any special help at school that she might need. I feel that seeking the diagnosis would be a waste of time and money for me, especially at 43 since I have learned to overcome many obstacles and I am just happy to understand myself better now. Today, I feel I have a very good job working with maps (with Lockheed Martin) which has been THE main passion of mine for as long as I can remember. My mother said I could spend hours studying world maps and road atlases just looking at the roads and features even before kindergarten. I even just completed my first class on computer scripting to automate cartographic analysis (Python for GIS, for any other geeks reading this
). I still have difficulty with some things, but now that I know what is going on, I am determined to overcome them.If anyone wants to correspond with me, please do. There is still a lot that I want to learn, as well as offer any advice that I can, about anything that I learned to deal with growing up while not knowing what was going on.
Best Regards,
Gerry
