AS parents with AS kids

[moon gazer]

I'm an Aspie mum, with a young Aspie daughter with selective mutism. Sometimes I feel like I must be a ###### mum because I too struggle at times with social situations and feel like my daughter might be learning all the wrong lessons from me! The only benefit of our relationship is that:

 

1) I can totally *get* her

2) Knowing what a hard time I had growing up and which areas I really struggled with, I know which areas of hers need improvement and am determined to find every resource I can for her to help her improve the areas which she is weak in, for instance, social skills.

 

So a blessing and a curse, that's how I see it.

 

However, I have a dad whom I believe is AS. He was very cold emotionally all those years when I grew up under his roof. I hated him for a long time because I thought this man never loved me or valued me for who I was. Only recently have I seen another side of him as we started getting into contact again - only by email, as we live too far from each other to visit regularly. He's old - 70 - and I sense he just wants to maintain contact with his estranged daughter because he feels his time is short. But his emails expose a very different side of him which I'd never been aware of, and for that I will always be grateful - its brought me closure, and I realise now that he did really care about me, he was just incapable of expressing it in a way I'd have understood. He had huge problems in his marriage with mum, which I think his AS personality might have played a part. Also his emails are quite odd emails, always includes lots of detailed factual info which are not really useful to me or relevant to the spirit of keeping in touch - i.e. not really stuff people say to each other when they're trying to catch up. Okay, so as an Aspie woman, I feel that on some levels I seem a bit more clued up to social interaction than my poor old dad ever was.

 

Am curious if anyone here parents an Aspie child and he/she himself/herself is an Aspie too?

Edited February 6, 2011 by moon gazer

[bid]

Hiya

 

I have a dx of AS, and my eldest son has AS, ADHD and Dyspraxia. My dad was also identified as having 'mild' autism at the end of his life.

 

Welcome to the forum.

 

Bid

Edited February 6, 2011 by bid

[moon gazer]

Hi Bid

 

Hiya

 

I have a dx of AS, and my eldest son has AS, ADHD and Dyspraxia. My dad was also identified as having 'mild' autism at the end of his life.

 

Welcome to the forum.

 

Bid

[sesley]

hi i understand my 11 year old with ASD because the things he is having difficulits,like social intereaction and exploding with temper is my trait. I also am guilty of having little aperthy with others at times and i have to try myself to interact though even though i like a lot of time on my own and say hopefully socailly accepeted things in replys.My Oh says i am very like him though no one has ever diagnosed me with autism.The upshot is that most of us parents will have simular if not same traits as our children.Our phsycologist said that,often parents can see them selves in the children with autism.

[moon gazer]

Sesley, apparently ASD can be a mix of genetically inherited and environmental factors, so I'm not surprised if families of ASD children show strong traits in family members. I know my Dad and Mum show some strong traits themselves and can find cousins, nephews, etc. who show traits too, but people don't often seek diagnosis unless the traits are to such an extent that is making daily life hard for the person (or his carers) to manage. Also in the olden days, HFA wasn't really considered a real condition, was it? When I told my Dad that me and my daughter had it, and that I thought he might have traits of it in himself, understandably, he was in denial. In his generation, to be diagnosed with some sort of mental incapacity of some sort seemed to be considered a shameful thing.

Edited February 9, 2011 by moon gazer

[RainbowsButterflies]

That's a really interesting point - I spoke to my Dad recently about seeking a diagnosis and he was very against this, and went on about self-fulfilling prophecies. He had a similar attitude when an EP wanted to diagnose my younger brother with ADHD - it would have made a huge difference to him if he had actually got some constructive help at that point in his life - I worry that it's too late now.

 

Going back to your original point, according to my HV I am having the opposite problem and am projecting my own difficulties onto my daughter when it's just 3 year old behaviour. Only time will tell, but if she does have AS then I can see a double-edged sword - some things will be easier as I can see where she is coming from, but others will be more difficult because we are both too stubborn/inflexible...

[DaisyFulkirk]

One of my parents ‘came out’ to me that they recognised in my diagnosis meeting with the clinical psychologist that they are the same as me eg I am autistic and so are they. I think that they are quite cautious about sharing it with my other parent (their partner) because Other Parent is very very neurodevelopmentally normal and not very tolerant of my/our autisticness with it. Which is sort of surprising given that as far as I can tell they are happily married and have been for something like 26 or 27 years. I think that Parent telling me that they had realised that they are autistic is one of the best things that could have happened in terms of how much easier it has made it to talk about what I find hard, being anxious or unhappy and things like that. I do think that Parent being autistic changed the way that they could care for me and my siblings but I think mostly in a good way.

 

People I was at school with, once I had moved to an inclusive school where I was welcome and supported and valued, always used to say how nice Parent is and how much they wished that they had a parent like mine. I think that partly that is because Parent is very pragmatic, practical and calm and is also very consistent in how they respond to things. That always used to make me feel safe.

 

In my family there are Parent (self-diagnosed autistic), their spouse Other Parent (as ‘normal’ as they get), me 25 with diagnosis at 19 and significant autistic impairment, Sibling 1, 23, who has some very minimal impairment, most noticably around coping with unexpected change, and Sibling 2 who like Other Parent is very typical socially and functionally and interestingly is also the only one who likes things like travelling (had a gap year between school and university a very long way from home) and team sports.