Should I test my kid for autism or myself?
How do I deal with the fact that I secretly want my kid to be diagnosed as autistic so I can be too without having to seek an adult diagnosis?
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penelope@penelopetrunk.com
Adults diagnose themselves. There is no one who went to school to learn how to test adults for autism. And there is no special test. When you go into the testing situation, the person will just ask you a bunch of questions that you can ask yourself. The test results are wholly dependent on what you decide to answer to subjective questions.
This is all to say that if you think you’re autistic, you are. There is not a problem with people misdiagnosing themselves as autistic. It just doesn’t happen. The more important thing is what do you do with it once you know. Because autism is an umbrella diagnosis for dozens of specific issues.
If you do this — accept that you have autism and start learning specifically how it impacts your life — then you can model this for your kid. Autism is a family condition. If one person has it everyone has it. So you and your kid can learn aobut it together. And you can tell your kid how lucky they are to know early in life — they can do so much more with what makes them special once they understand it.
Penelope