About Being Autistic and Unidentified.
This resonates deeply with me today. I've spent a lifetime believing I wasn't academic, I couldn't learn, I was no good at learning, just not good at numbers, had a brain that was good at some other vague stuff, but I never knew what that vague stuff I was supposed to be good at was. No one pressured me to do well at school but still I internalised the information that I could not succeed, I was no good at anything.
Helping my autistic child to do her high school maths GCSE homework has shown me that actually I CAN do it. I CAN achieve, I'm not NOT academic. What didn't work for me was the way I was taught. The school environment, the pressure to work at the same speed as my peers when my processing speeds and methods are different. They were not LESS than my peers, they were DIFFERENT.
I'm 47, I've spent my entire life thinking I couldn't do any of the stuff I now know (as a recently realised Autistic Adult) that I can do. I just need to learn in my own time and in my own way.
Its painful to think that if I'd have been identified sooner, as an Autistic person, I could have achieved so much more, and not spent my entire life feeling like a failure.
Our children deserve to know who they are so that they can thrive and know that they are not LESS than, they are just different.
Charlie
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