What is ADHD & Autism?

Question

I have ADHD and Autism. I want to lean more about it! My sister wants to find a cure of Autism. And I have no clue what it is!! I have trpple in school a lot.

Answer 1

Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) .Three types of ADHD have been established according to which symptoms are strongest in the individual. These types are described below:
Predominantly Inattentive Type: It is hard for the individual to organize or finish a task, to pay attention to details, or to follow instructions or conversations. The person is easily distracted or forgets details of daily routines. Predominantly Hyperactive-Impulsive Type: The person fidgets and talks a lot. It is hard to sit still for long (e.g., for a meal or while doing homework). Smaller children may run, jump or climb constantly. The individual feels restless and has trouble with impulsivity. Someone who is impulsive may interrupt others a lot, grab things from people, or speak at inappropriate times. It is hard for the person to wait their turn or listen to directions. A person with impulsiveness may have more accidents and injuries than others. Combined Type: Symptoms of the above two types are equally predominant in the person.

Autism, As the name "autism spectrum disorder" says, ASDs cover a wide range of behaviors and abilities. People who have ASDs, like all people, differ greatly in the way they act and what they can do. No two people with ASDs will have the same symptoms. A symptom might be mild in one person and severe in another person. Some examples of the types of problems and behaviors a child or adult with an ASD might have follow.

Social skills: People with ASDs might not interact with others the way most people do, or they might not be interested in other people at all. People with ASDs might not make eye contact and might just want to be alone. They might have trouble understanding other people's feelings or talking about their own feelings. Children with ASDs might not like to be held or cuddled, or might cuddle only when they want to. Some people with ASDs might not seem to notice when other people try to talk to them. Others might be very interested in people, but not know how to talk, play, or relate to them.


Speech, language, and communication: About 40% of children with ASDs do not talk at all. Others have echolalia, which is when they repeat back something that was said to them. The repeated words might be said right away or at a later time. For example, if you ask someone with an ASD, "Do you want some juice?" he or she will repeat "Do you want some juice?" instead of answering your question. Or a person might repeat a television ad heard sometime in the past. People with ASDs might not understand gestures such as waving goodbye. They might say "I" when they mean "you", or vice versa. Their voices might sound flat and it might seem like they cannot control how loudly or softly they talk. People with ASDs might stand too close to the people they are talking to, or might stick with one topic of conversation for too long. Some people with ASDs can speak well and know a lot of words, but have a hard time listening to what other people say. They might talk a lot about something they really like, rather than have a back-and-forth conversation with someone.


Repeated behaviors and routines: People with ASDs might repeat actions over and over again. They might want to have routines where things stay the same so they know what to expect. They might have trouble if family routines change. For example, if a child is used to washing his or her face before dressing for bed, he or she might become very upset if asked to change the order and dress first and then wash.

Answer 2

This is something you and your parents should have discussed with your doctor when you were diagnosed.

Answer 3

You need to tell your sister to read all the way through www.gettingthetruthout.org and read some of the entries at ballastexistenz.autistics.org. She needs to know that autism isn't something to be cured. (I recommend those two sites specifically, because they clarify that even autistics designated "low-functioning" don't necessarily want to be cured, but you can find many more anti-cure websites and essays written by autistics online. Make sure that she reads all the way through www.gettingthetruthout.org. If she stops too soon, she might get the wrong impression.)

"What is autism?" I'm autistic and I'll try to answer this for you, but again, try reading writing by other autistics for even more information. The autistics.org library is a good place to start.

Being autistic means that you have a neurological configuration different from the norm (those of us in the autistic community call non-autistics neurotypicals or NTs). It doesn't mean that you're wired defectively, just differently.

Our senses are different from NT senses: we tend to be either hypo- or hyper- sensitive to sensory stimuli of different sorts, have an increased incidence of synesthesia (a crossing between senses, to use an example from my experience, the ring of a telephone looks like a red spiraling corkscrew), have difficulty parsing speech (central auditory processing disorder), hear pitches that most people can't, and have difficulty reading text because of various visual processing issues collectively known as Irlen Syndrome. (Those aren't all of the sensory oddities autistics can have, just a few of the most common.) Some of our sensory sensitivities can put us at a disadvantage in a society designed for NTs - for example, many of us can see fluorescent flicker, which can result in anything from minor irritation, to headaches, to falling asleep. We do something called stimming, which includes things like flapping our hands, rocking back and forth, listening to the same piece of music repeatedly, and jumping up and down. This allows us to deal with sensory stimuli so that we don't become overloaded, and also lets us get the extra stimulation we may need. Lots of NTs try to stop us from stimming, but while bigots may dislike it, it's necessary for us to function in this world.

Most NTs and many autistics think that being autistic means that one has poor social skills and lacks empathy. In reality, we have autistic social skills and so have trouble interacting with NTs, but are usually just fine with other autistics. While NT social interaction generally takes the form of intrusive give and take interactions, we do better in parallel. We can be successful with NTs, so long as they are willing to do their half of the work to communicate with us, and we can have trouble interacting with other autistics if they have been trained to pretend to be NT or if we have not been allowed opportunities to interact with our own kind, but as a general rule we're better at interacting with other autistics, just as NTs are better at interacting with other NTs. We're also just fine at empathizing with other autistics, and no more lacking in empathy than neurotypicals. Most normal-brained people have difficulty empathizing with autistics. That's why they bully us, why they think that a particular therapy (ABA) that invalidates who we are and tries to replace us with a neurotypical person is helpful, and why they so often excuse the murder of autistics. (Not saying that all neurotypicals are like that, just that many are.)

We also tend to have 1-3 very intense interests, called perseverations. Mine is autism, specifically autistic advocacy, if you couldn't tell already. *g* These are a good thing, and we need to have time to focus on these interests. Monologuing on them isn't bad, in fact, it's one of the parts of natural autistic interaction. If you can't do that, though, it doesn't mean you're non-autistic. I'm the same way with sharing my interests through speech, I learned to hide them from the time I was about 8 years old. I just don't consider that a good thing, since I would like to be able to discuss my perseverations in real life and not just online.

Oh, and we tend to have difficulties with spoken communication as well, though some of us are eventually fine with it. We're almost always better with text than with speech and usually have trouble with telephones. We have trouble with the figurative language that NTs use, often have trouble with slang, are straightforward in our words, and are often echolalic, meaning that we repeat things that we've heard over and over again.

So far, it seems that autism is genetic - our parents tend to have autistic traits themselves, and we usually have relatives on the autistic spectrum. Autism is not mercury poisoning, and not food allergies. We are more prone to things like allergies than NTs, and we may act differently when those allergies are treated, but we're still just as autistic as we were.

To get in touch with more autistics, I recommend joining LiveJournal (if you haven't already) and joining the asperger community. (Asperger's Syndrome is a diagnosis many of us are given. Lots of people like to separate Asperger's from autism, but there really isn't a meaningful difference between the two.) Lots more people will give you answers to your questions there. Or you can comment at my LJ (I'm invisible_k) or friend me. I'm happy to answer questions. :-) This is long enough already, but if you want to ask more specific questions about autism and how it could connect to your problems in school, I'd be glad to answer. Email is fine too.