I scored a 30. On the Autism Spectrum Quotient test. I took the test on facebook but y’all are not on facebook. How do I know y’all are not on facebook? Because The Commander is not on facebook (she is on twitter though), therefore, y’all are not on facebook!

According to the folks who put the test together, “Eighty percent of those diagnosed with autism or a related disorder scored 32 or higher.” I am pretty darn close. Of course, it’s just a test on the internet and the disclaimer is that, “the test is not a means for making a diagnosis, however, and many who score above 32 and even meet the diagnostic criteria for mild autism or Asperger’s report no difficulty functioning in their everyday lives”.

Yes. I have long suspected I wasn’t too far off from being autistic. I am not autistic but, as the beach urchins were growing up and I was hanging around the public schools volunteering, there always all this talk about autism and Aspergers and the difficulties that so many children were having with school, yada yada blah-de blah-de. I am not a very kid-friendly person from the get-go. I’m not warm and fuzzy with most children, although I was pretty over the top with my own kids but I suppose that’s biology taking over. When I encountered kids in the schools who fell somewhere along the high end of the autism spectrum, I could often understand why they were having difficulties. I don’t think a lot of the wonderful people who become teachers are necessarily prepared to deal with some of these kids. I think that a lot of the folks who are drawn to teaching as a career love to be around other people and may not understand how overwhelmed a kid with Asperger’s (for example) can get in social situations. Like school.

I’m not sure if the term “autism” had been invented back in the Pleistocene Age, when I went to grade school. I didn’t hear about Asperger syndrome until sometime in the 1990s or whenever. I suspect that if I had *exhibited* more difficulties adjusting to school than I did as a kid *and* Asperger’s had been defined back in the Pleistocene Age, I may have been a good candidate for an evaluation and might even have been labeled an Aspie. As it was, I did okay in elementary school. I was ahead of the game academically (mostly because I was old for my grade) and although I wasn’t the best at socializing with other kids, I managed to play with lots of the kids in my class and me and my best neighborhood friend (who attended the nearby Catholic school) were BFFs until we hit junior high and I’m not gonna go on from there because junior high and sometimes high school sucks for lots of kids.

My life has been pretty dern good. I’m still not the best at social situations but I am okay if I can find something to focus on or there’s a bit of whine. I have some really good friends. Friends who have laughed off my social difficulties and refused to give up on me. And I am a very good friend once I understand and trust someone…

I could write on and on about whether or not I think that the public schools in our country are properly serving kids on the autism spectrum. I think that most of these kids are highly intelligent and creative in their own way. They know how to do things that others do not. We need to support these kids and not make them (or their parents) feel like outsiders.

Enough. Did you take the test? Did you get the score you expected?

This entry was posted on Saturday, October 30th, 2010 at 6:34 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.