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🇺🇸 United StatesAutism Diagnosis at 14 Brought Relief After Years of Being Misunderstood
Ruby Hobbs-Leffler felt things with an intensity that even a smart little girl with a big vocabulary couldn't put into words. Life was an onslaught of bright lights, loud noises, intolerable textures and tastes. Feelings bubbled up uncontrollably: inconsolable howls in infancy, classroom meltdowns in childhood, rages in adolescence. Most children did not understand her. Neither did many adults.
Most children did not understand her. Neither did many adults. She was articulate and insightful in so many ways — why wouldn't she just behave?
No one seemed to understand the world was sometimes too much for Ruby. What she absorbed instead, her mother, Jessica Leffler, said, was that she was too much: too dramatic, difficult, strange. Her diagnosis with autism at age 14 was, to Ruby, a relief.
There were reasons for the way she perceived things, words for the sensory experiences that set her apart from peers. Why did Ruby have to go so many years without the support she needed? Why did none of the professionals the family asked for help identify her needs? Why did she spend the formative years of her life being treated by teachers and peers like a failure, instead of a person navigating a world designed for a different way of thinking?
Source: LA Times
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