Ellie Wilson

Great.

Great place to start as there is much to cover.

So let's get the ground rules.

All right.

An autism spectrum diagnosis is something that we call a neurodevelopmental disability.

And if you break those words down, neuro means something that affects your brain and developmental implies that this disorder is something that happens from the time you are born and affects the way your brain develops over time, a neurodevelopmental disability.

There are several components of the autism diagnosis.

And the ones that I think people are most familiar with are that autistic people tend to have differences in how they communicate, how they sort of process information, particularly social and sensory information.

And also autistic people have a tendency to require or benefit from a lot of repetition and routine in their life in one form or another, whether that's an observable behavior that they do over and over again.

or sort of a rigidity in how they like to sort of go through their days, weeks, months.

Those are the basics of what is an autism diagnosis.

Most autism diagnoses are made by the time someone is about five years old.

That's no coincidence that that's about the same time that children enter school.

But

frankly, autism can be diagnosed at any age.

And oftentimes we do see some folks not necessarily get diagnosed until they're teenagers, young adults, or older adults.

But the point is, if you are assessed for autism, you have to be able to attest to the fact that the way you communicate and process information has been so since you were a young child.

If it's something that onsets

in your teenage years or young adult years, it's not autism.

Totally.