Leonard320, you exemplify a situation that I fear is going to be all too common in the coming decades.
The need to medicalise every little thing in our current society means that lots of "shy" and "slightly clumsy" individuals are now getting medical diagnoses to go with these traits
And I'm really having trouble understanding why. Until I get cynical, then I wonder if getting your kid a diagnosis of Aspergers (if you don't fit in) or ADHD (if you're badly behaved) somehow absolves (in their own minds at least) some parents from responsibility over the way their child develops...
"it's not my fault they're like this, they have a medical condition"
And then said child (who back in the day would for the most part would have been considered e.g. shy but bright) has to break out into the big bad world, and comes up against e.g. the need for constant evaluation of their condition, specialist assessment of their condition prior to employment, and (dare I say it) discrimination on the grounds of perceived higher maintenance due to having a condition.
Also, traits found in e.g. Aspergers/ Chronic fatigue/ ADHD, can, I suspect, be found in everyone to some extent, at some point in their lives (I know when I look at various DSM diagnostic criteria I always go "Oh! I do/did that!"). So at what point does or should being really bright but not very good at parties become an issue of diagnosis? Why should a perfectly functional human being have this done to them?
In short Leonard320. I hope you get what you want. You seem perfectly eloquent when posting online. I just can't help but think you're probably going to have some pretty needless obstacles and extra hoops thrown in your way to cope with.
Regards,
JR
P.S. As an interesting aside, and purely anecdotally, from my position of being able to deal with kids from most social backgrounds, I've noticed that the kids with the actual or presumed diagnosis of ADHD, ADD or ODD (oppositional defiant disorder, medicalese for not doing as your told
) often come from the lower social spectrum, single parent families, unstable home circumstances etc. etc. While the Aspie/ ME/ kiddies seem to derive from the countrified middle class, stable, booooring parts of our area.
Well I think it's interesting....
Rant off.