I've actually have a lot of stories to tell that will make this web page too long. So I'll be telling them one by one. My name is Michelle. I'm 23 with autism and here is one of those stories:

Born in 1986 on the 30th of May I was a normal, healthy, bouncy baby. As I started to grow however, something was not quite right. I didn't behaved like any other toddler did. For one thing, I ended up in places where I shouldn't be (such as the top cupboard, the doll's cot, mum laundry basket, etc.) didn't spoke with words but with noises and didn't understood most things like what someone was doing.

School finally arrived but I only knew how to say five words properly, the rest were just noises. Concentration was terrible so my year one teacher suggested mum to take me to see a doctor and he diagnosed me with ADD. I was also on medication (I hated those dreadful little pills. I stopped taking them once I reached high school) to control my hypo behavour. While it did calm me down (and robbed me of my personality) other strange behavours emeagred. An activiy we did one time was to follow a ball that was hung by a stocking with our eyes. I had a lot of trouble doing that, but everyone dismissed it (one sign missed). I wasn't very good at eye contact (another sign missed). I didn't understand some of the work I received and couldn't do it. That was also dismissed. So I would be kept in during recess, because the teachers thought I was being lazy. Reading aloud was another thing I didn't like as if I said a word wrong the whole class would laugh at me.

I didn't do too well making friends. I would just hang around with the person I liked (most of them were very tolarate thank goodness). I was also an easy target for bullies. From year one to ten I was bullied. It became so bad at times that I would be coming home crying and saying that I won't never go back to school. Like the time in year seven (this is rather strange) I was afraid of the Titanic. That fear slipped away in year nine and I still don't know why I had a fear of this (please don't ask). Anyway, I tried my hardest to kept it to myself, but there was always one boy who always knew how to expose a secret and that day became intense, it was horrible. I even snapped one stage and screamed out "SHUT YOUR MOUTH!" Teachers were no help with this bullying as they would tell me "Just ignore it." How can you ignore that, though? If they jumped into my shoes for the day they would definetly not be saying that. The bullying stopped in year eleven as I finally figure out what to do. Someone who thought I still feared the Titanic (which I don't) came up to me and said rather cruely "Wasn't it sad when all those people died on the titanic?" my response was "It was a good movie though wasn't it?" they kept trying to do that for a few seconds more till they finally gave up! I kept giving them the same response and they weren't getting anything out of me, so they left me alone. Because of that brilliant idea, I didn't get bullied for the rest of year eleven or twelve.

Back to the earlier years, teachers were saying I was rather rude and would yell at me for it. The only problem is that I didn't know what I was doing was rude. So I didn't know why they were yelling at me and would get upset. Another problem I have was I tended to daydream a lot, espcially if the work I was given was too hard for me to do. I didn't know how to ask for help back then. Mum has been fighting to schools for ages to make them help me. They did have a program to help childern that were having trouble with school work and mum kept asking why I wasn't on the list. They said that I was always on the list, but since I was doing private tutoring they took me off the list.

High school was worse though as the new teachers didn't seem to listen. Mum tried to get me into special ED when I started but sadly was told by the special ED principal that I wasn't quailifed. So I continued failing. Ended up being shifted to a lower english class becuase the work I was given was much too hard for me. Math was worse as when mum received my school report, she became angry at the comment that was written there. It said "do the best you can and stop asking questions." After that comment I was shifted to a new math class.

Year ten was probably the worse school year of my life. I was accepted In a VET program that was run by the high school. Mum had a look at the program and thought this would help me heaps. She was very disappointed. It was an all girl class and they were very nasty towards me. The teachers thought I was rude and would yell at me. One teacher came up to my mum in woolworths one day and said that I was the most rude and arrogent, didn't get along with the others. Mum nearly filed a complain about that teacher as we had a lot of trouble with her. When mum had a meeting will all of the teachers of that program she said that I had ADD and that same teacher said "Every second child has that! It doesn't mean a thing!" That teacher tried to fix my problem by making me write down the so called polite things I did everyday. I hated it! So I didn't do it, and she never bothered to check it.

One day mum decided I had something more than ADD, so she did her research and ask a couple of specialist to have a look. Mum told the VET teachers that I might have a chance of being diangosed with autism. That same teacher reckoned that I would never be diangosed with autism. But I was! I was finally dianogsed with autism at the age of 15. That same teacher went quiet after that.

After year ten things started to pick up. A new special ED principal had arrived and since I had fallen behind by a lot, mum thought she would give it another try with this new principal, and that principal said. "We will take her under good will." I was finally getting the help I needed and these new teachers were very caring too, something I was not used to. I did year eleven english with assitance and since I did so well at it, I even did year twelve english with assitance and past. My mum and dad couldn't even be prouder. I even won the postive youth award in year eleven. It was the first award I had ever won from school.

Now I'm working at a childcare center called Lingalonga. I was telling this to one of the staff one day and she said I should of been diangosed earlier as those teacher should of been able to pick it up. I told her autism wasn't know very well back then, and she said "You still should of been diangosed earlier." I sat there listening as she told how she know when a child she looked after has autism. So I asked her "When I first started work here did you already knew that I had autism? She did indeed. So quite happily I said

"I wish there were more people like you."