Autism assessments are definitely strange in the moment. Mine was around 5 hours long total and I had to bring my parents. The assessor was lovely but the ADOS is indeed weird and I also got the dreaded flying frog book. My understanding is that those activities are meant to gauge your ability to infer emotions/intentions from expressions/social context. I was completely stumped with them. They ask a lot of questions that might feel invasive or unrelated but they're all structured to gather info.
Reading the report a few weeks after was oddly enjoyable though, I was diagnosed with level 1 ASD, apparently I have a good understanding of marriage but "little to no" comprehension of how friendship works which explains why I call literally anyone who I speak to on a semi regular basis my friend 😭
If you're not diagnosed and feel your assessor misrepresented your symptoms I'd encourage you to look into BAP (the broader autistic phenotype, aka people with some traits of autism but are not impaired by it enough to justify a diagnosis) or get a second opinion. Either way it's never a bad idea to see if some coping tools commonly used by autistic folks, like sensory tools, distress tolerance work, stress reduction, etc, might help
I am DEAD thinking about you narrating the children’s book 😂😂
Hahahahaha I was so annoyed 😂😂😂
Autism assessments are definitely strange in the moment. Mine was around 5 hours long total and I had to bring my parents. The assessor was lovely but the ADOS is indeed weird and I also got the dreaded flying frog book. My understanding is that those activities are meant to gauge your ability to infer emotions/intentions from expressions/social context. I was completely stumped with them. They ask a lot of questions that might feel invasive or unrelated but they're all structured to gather info.
Reading the report a few weeks after was oddly enjoyable though, I was diagnosed with level 1 ASD, apparently I have a good understanding of marriage but "little to no" comprehension of how friendship works which explains why I call literally anyone who I speak to on a semi regular basis my friend 😭
If you're not diagnosed and feel your assessor misrepresented your symptoms I'd encourage you to look into BAP (the broader autistic phenotype, aka people with some traits of autism but are not impaired by it enough to justify a diagnosis) or get a second opinion. Either way it's never a bad idea to see if some coping tools commonly used by autistic folks, like sensory tools, distress tolerance work, stress reduction, etc, might help
I appreciate your thoughtful reflection!