I'd like to get a diagnosis but there are two potential problems.
One is finding where to go. So far all I find are places that evaluate only children. Well, you can't help with that one.
The other concern is from reading posts of others about criteria based on infancy and early childhood. I'm an adult and my parents are dead. Does that mean there can't be a Dx since I have nobody to provide information I would have been too young to remember?
Personally I think so, even if I disagree with certain diagnostic centres on the assumption that one MUST always have a parent or sibling there to give that account in person. I can see the validity of wanting them there, because a lot of the time the first answer is "there is nothing wrong" or "he was normal in that respect" and it is only when you go into detail that the parent etc. often says "Actually yes he/she didn't do X, Y or Z like the other kids". But the fact is it's not always possible...
It should however be possible to provide recollections from your childhood (about how you developed, the things that frightened you as a toddler, what you were slow or fast at learning, how you interacted) and at least a basic outline of development and bits and bobs from anectodes that parents used to tell or that relatives might remember.
The idea of diagnosing a developmental disorder without even considering the person's development (0-12 months to before high school for example) seems rather foolish. If it was a personality disorder then OK (although even there, I believe childhood is often examined for trauma etc.) but it's not, it's a developmental issue and without looking at the development how can one know that something isn't an acquired problem?
Having said that, I am sure there are more obvious cases, especially when one looks at more strongly autistic individuals who may still display obvious stimming and other characteristics, where the presentation in adulthood leaves little doubt about the diagnosis of an ASD.
However I do not believe development should be ignored completely even in those cases, as it can often help pinpoint areas of difficulty that the person may not be directly aware of. It can also help track down psychological issues that may have arisen from a person's difficulty in childhood (ones they may have forgotten or not realised that this could have affected them so much), which often make a person's autism more of a problem than it actually is.
Thanks for your reply. Sounds like I might be simply out of luck then. At my age, any relatives that were not also tiny children at the time, are dead by now. All I've got to work with is what I can remember.
Thanks for your reply. Sounds like I might be simply out of luck then. At my age, any relatives that were not also tiny children at the time, are dead by now. All I've got to work with is what I can remember.
Depending on how much you can remember that could well be enough. My parents not only live in another country, but they are also the kind of people who equate AS and ADD etc. with "defects" and thus I cannot have them. So I couldn't exactly bring them along, not that they would've understood much of what the specialist would've asked them!
However there are plenty of things they have told me in the past that described my behaviour as a small child (toe-walking, stimming/humming, things I said and how I said them, social interaction/lack thereof etc.) and my development to a certain degree, plus many things I have found out through occasional questions in Emails (precise milestones etc.).
There are bound to be anectodes you remember your parents, uncles, aunts etc.) telling you or telling others to your great embarrassment, or perhaps those relatives who were your age might be able to tell you a thing or two about their memories of you. If you ignored them or kept forcing them to play a routine game, never spoke or made them listen to you talking about your interests for example, they may just remember that. Or if you were hyperactive, or refused to walk, or cried a lot etc.
Another thing that may help even if nobody remembers your childhood is of course if there is a family history of AS, ADD, ASDs etc. That would probably help tip the balance even if your own development is unknown.
In my family, I don't think anyone was ever diagnosed but there's a lot of examples from both my mother and fathers' side of at least Aspie traits. All my Dad's brothers (including one who breeds rabbits and will not talk about anything else, until recently having almost completely ignored his own family and their needs) are a bit like Ricky Gervais' character in The Office, for example, cringeworthily socially inept and blunt, but they just keep talking on and on. They can't help themselves.
A cousin on my Mum's side was a typical Aspie as a kid, train obsession included (he plays with real trains now 
), another is an engineer and has a reassembled cockpit in his cellar. His son was "asocial" as kid and used to attack children who tried to interact with him, and is now a polite and well-spoken young man who is struggling with executive functioning and painfully aware of it.
My great-aunt (gran's sister) is described by many relatives, including my gran, as "a cold woman who would ignore visitors and never seems to want any company" (although my grandmother, when she still lived on her own, wasn't exactly a welcoming host either. She loved to repeatedly tell the same stories over and over and was mostly unaware of whether people were interested or not. My mother often says that she had the impression that her parents saw their children as objects and didn't care if one of them went missing).
One of my uncles is a rigid, narrow-minded man who is a passionate hunter (not for pleasure as such, in Switzerland there are actual jobs for this, people who keep the wildlife in balance) and has some very interesting/peculiar views on the subject. (He often eats vegetarian food for examle, he sees what he does for a living from a dispassionate, realistic point of view)
Several of my Mum's sisters are quite loud and blunt, and one is obsessive about order and cleanliness, always inspecting people's house and bluntly commenting on any mess or dirt. Those two are quite sociable, but family gatherings are chaotic because everyone talks over everyone else and everyone is constantly interrupting.
My mother is perhaps the least sociable of her sisters, but also has a lot of problems with communication (and interrupting people) and can seem very selfish and disregarding of boundaries. (She will grab people's drinks and not understand why they get upset when she drinks their stuff instead of getting her own, for example) My partner finds her extremely difficult because she is "very rude" and "not at all considerate".
Anyway, just giving you an idea of the kind of details from family history that might be of interest to a diagnostician when specific info is unavailable.