Do I wish I knew that I was autistic as a child? That’s a hard question for this black woman to answer
Originally published on Medium
I met up with family this past fall who hasn’t seen me since I was a little girl. Interacting with them, I noticed some neurodivergent traits. The possibility was confirmed when I found out one of my little cousins is officially diagnosed with ADHD.
When I met him, I could tell right away because we’re so similar: he’s a picky eater (we have similar favorite foods!), he likes to make random noises, and he jumped up and down every few seconds while sitting on the floor. I wanted to join him in his wiggles but I settled for (hopefully) subtly swinging my legs back and forth. My great-aunt called at him from her comfy chair to sit down and asked “Why couldn’t he keep sitting like everyone else?”
I winced. Because he has ADHD I wanted to say. But I didn’t know how to do that without being rude. You don’t talk back to your older relatives like that. Especially not to ones who last saw you as a little girl in hair ribbons and probably still think of you as one.
And that’s partly the reason why I’m not sure it would matter if I was diagnosed autistic as a little kid. No one fully understands autism, especially back then, and being black and female complicates things.
As a black girl, I learned to not talk back to adults, to not really talk at all around them. They didn’t seem to want to hear us kids. The only way to get heard was to talk louder and talk more and even that wasn’t a 100% guaranteed method. My little sisters could but I never figured out how and copying them didn’t work for me so I stuck to being quiet. This meant no one knew how much trouble I had expressing myself, especially as I got older. I didn’t know how to share the trouble I was having socially. And as a young person, I couldn’t ask questions and get the explanations I needed.
(“Because I said so” is not a reason, okay? It’s rude; kids are human, too.)
No one seemed to notice any of that. I was smart and doing well in school, so I had to be doing okay, right?
Did anyone pick up on my autism as a child? I was usually one of the few black kids in my classes so this obvious difference could explain away any odd behaviors. Interestingly, my one bullying experience was from the only other little black girls in my 4th grade class. Could they tell that something else made me different?
It’s possible an elementary school teacher noticed something too. She brought an event to my mom’s attention after a school assembly: I didn’t speak to a little girl. (My little kid memory is fuzzy so I don’t recall exactly what happened.) My mom pushed back that this wasn’t an actual situation so it was dropped. At the time I was relieved my mom stuck up for me (one of her often-used strengths: defending her daughters against unfairness). Looking back now, I wonder why this particular incident pushed my teacher to say something. Did she notice my autistic traits and want to get me some help? Who knows.
And if that was her goal, it might not have helped me.
Autism was and still is mostly seen as a mental health or intelligence issue. That label could have affected how people saw and treated me. I’m sure my mom would have fought against that outcome. To her and other adults, I would still be seen as shy, as needing to just try harder. And remember, I inherited autism from someone in my family so why would they consider my behavior weird?
I wonder: How many of us are black with no idea of our neurodivergence because our family members are also undiagnosed and didn’t notice anything odd, because they didn’t have the luxury to relax enough to notice there’s another reason why life is so hard?
When I saw my little cousin trying to stop jumping up and down during my visit, I wished he could wiggle around as much as he wanted to when visiting his grandma. And I recognized myself in his grandma, the version of myself before being diagnosed, always monitoring me and my sisters’ behavior and how we appeared to others, making sure we acted how we were “supposed to” even in the privacy of home.
We were all so alike.
So do I wish I was diagnosed earlier? I don’t know.
I don’t care anymore, honestly. I’m just glad I have the privilege to know now.