Have you ever learned a new word and then suddenly discovered that it seemed to be everywhere? It was always there, but you just never noticed it. It’s the same with autism too, I think. Recently, I’ve started noticing autistic tendencies in people that I never had before. Some of the people who I had previously thought were simply quirky now seem to me to be undiagnosed members of the spectrum.

Some people still look at autism like it’s black and white... e.g. “that guy is 100% typical but that guy over there is 100% autistic.” We all know that the autism spectrum is a spectrum (thus the “spectrum” part of the name). Many people have learning differences that are so subtle that they will never be diagnosed, but they’re definitely on the spectrum, albeit at the edge. The question is, where do you draw the line? A similar question might be: on a smooth grayscale spectrum from white to black, where is the boundary between light gray and dark gray?

And does it matter, really? If you’re a school-aged child who would benefit from services, you bet it matters.

I thought back to one of my friends from middle school. Jana Cahill was interesting and quirky, and several of us boys used to joke with her. I hope we weren’t mean; I don’t remember being mean, but I think most people (myself included) were thoughtless knuckleheads as kids. As for Jana, I don’t remember us teasing her, but I do remember acting silly around her so that she would call us “cads.” We didn’t know what a cad was, but we knew it sounded funny. When we got into high school, Jana and I didn’t have that many classes together so we didn’t talk that much, but I would see her in the halls at times.

Flashing forward twenty years, I didn’t get a chance to talk to her in person much at our class reunion, but I did email her afterwards. It turns out that she had a very late diagnosis of Asperger’s Syndrome, way after high school. I (and most of the other kids in school, I imagine) had no clue of what was going on in her life at the time or the struggles that she was going through. That must have been a tough time for her. She seems to be doing great now, as far as I can tell, and is a Self Advocate of the Longview Gregg County Self Advocates, a group that speaks out for Texans with disabilities. A younger person who seems to have had a similar story is Bethany, one of the presenters on our site; she spoke extensively of the difficulties that she had in school in our ten part series “Uncovering Asperger’s.” I hope to film Jana too in the future speaking about her experiences.

I’ve been told that these two situations often help individuals with learning differences cope with their condition: having a diagnosis and having a group of friends and family who understand what that diagnosis means. Hopefully, AutismSpot can help, especially with the education part of the latter issue.

Jana pointed me to one other useful resource: Autism-Asperger’s Digest Magazine.

Each issue that I’ve read is packed with relevant and practical information, and I really like their vision statement. Among other things, it says, “knowledge is power,” “readers have a right to know about different programs, philosophies and avenues for treatment,” and “we believe in the ability, rather than the disability, of individuals with ASD.” (I had wanted to include all of the good quotes from the vision statement, but I ended up practically reproducing the entire thing, so I had to hack it to just the quotes above.) Like AutismSpot, they don’t push a single methodology but rather strive to provide enough information about the different programs so that the individual reader can decide for herself what is best. As an example of some of the typical articles, the issue currently on my lap has features about modifying medication, teaching organizational skills, and developing dating and relationship skills. I’m sure many of you already get this magazine, but if you don’t, I encourage you to check it out. And no, they haven’t paid me to say this (despite my repeated requests).

If any of you out there has another resource that has really helped, let us know. Or, better yet, get the people behind your resource to create a MySpot page, and they can tell their own story.