Parents of young children

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Really need help...

I'm a single mom to two year old twins. I recently realized I have Asperger's after doing research about my son's behaviors, now realize he is fine, but all the clues were there about my own childhood, and current behaviors I still have,

Just got fired from my job, second firing in less than a year,

Extremely stressed when working, then taking care of screaming toddlers, no rest, very disorganized, now depressed, wondering if I will ever be able to work again, can't hold a job!

I put all my energy into keeping them happy, forcing myself out of isolation for thier sake, not easy to do, and checking my anger & exhaustion, putting up a happy front so as not to create a difficult environment for them, I love them more than anything, want them to have a happy mom and not an emotional mess like I am now,

No friends or family in the area, isolated from family anyway due to being misunderstood,

Looking for parents with Asperger's to get a sense of community and learn to cope with being a parent of toddlers, I wear earplugs around them, they are so loud, They go to daycare even though I am not working now, just four hours with them a night and I'm completely spent, sleep most of the day very depressed!

Everything online is for parents with AS kids, not the other way around...

Should I get a dx or find a psyc that can help me cope? Everyone tells me it will get easier when they are older, but what about work? I want to work at home but how will I make enough to support us? Thier father is not around, no support there. Can't get ssi/disability for AS? Not a disability?

Any advice or direction to forums/threads appreciated, glad I found this board.

There's an Aspie Quiz in the Members Only folder.

Thank you Tim-Tex

That sounds really hard.
I'm a self-diagnosed Aspie with two kids.
But I didn't have twins and I wasn't alone.

My older kid is just like me, so he was easy. My younger one is more middle-of-the-road and I was never as sure of myself with her. I call her my little Marilyn Munster and wonder whether I could have done better.

When they were little, I joined play groups at a couple of local churches (I'm not a church person). They went pretty well. Maybe being around young mothers would be helpful, even if they don't know anything about Asperger's?

Now you've gotten me started.
In my first quick google, I've found these:
http://www.asparenting.com/tag/aspergers/
https://www.mothering.com/discussions/s ... p?t=995807

I don't think being an Aspie should make motherhood particularly difficult.
I would think that the hard part is just having twins.

I am a single mom with an Aspie son who is self diagnosed ASD- You sound like you have a huge situation on your hands. For the record, A.S. is considered Autism and does meet the requirements for disability. My son get SSI and I am the beneficiary payee. It helps a lot. The only thing I can suggest right now is ask for help There are many facilities out there that can help ease the financial burden. TANF/WIC/CHIP/Foodstamps/daycare assistance-find out if there's a mental health facility in your town that operates on a sliding scale. Try to be specific about what you need. I know about being overwhelmed and depressed. You can PM me but I will be offline next week as I am going on a trip tomorrow. Check out the Parent's Forum here. Welcome to Wrong Planet you can vent here and learn an amazing amount.

I'm also autistic, and for me, that feature does make it hard being a parent. Sensory sensitivity (especially to noise), massive need for time alone, executive dysfunction issues and a need for predictability and order....all very hard when you have kids. I can only imagine with twins. I nearly killed myself when I had two 19 months apart...it was so, so hard with two that little. My hat's off to you, Phoenix.

I know exactly what you mean about everything being geared to (NT) parents of kids with autism. I've been searching, too. Even this forum isn't geared to us! I can recommend a couple of blogs that might help you feel less alone:

Life with Aspergers - Gavin is an AS father and writes about his experiences in general, and sometimes specifically about being a parent. He has a good series on the advantages of AS in parenting. He also posts here at WP.

Mama on the edge of autism - Mama Edge doesn't have autism herself, but she has two teenagers that do, as well as a lot of heavy, heavy stuff in her life, and she writes so engagingly and with such humor that it makes me feel really happy. She's a very nice person carrying a heavy load with grace.

And there's my blog, which has a lot of entries about a lot of things, including many about how hard it is for autistic me to be a mom.

There are other blogs (I link to them from mine) that don't have anything to do with being a parent, but still help me cope because I can so relate to what the person writes about their experiences in general.

"Hello," Phoenixx77. A pleasure to welcome you aboard the Wrong Planet. Here are some WP forums that you may wish to look into.

Parents’ Discussion Forum: http://www.wrongplanet.net/forum19.html

Work and Finding a Job Forum: http://www.wrongplanet.net/forum18.html

Social Skills and Making Friends Forum: http://www.wrongplanet.net/forum7.html

I wish you and your twins all the best. Take care now.

Being a mom is easy. I love it (well, most of it). The hard part is dragging myself out of bed, searching for the basic necessities to go to work each day in a dirty, messy house, then coming home exhausted from a stressful job and trying to play with them.

I hate going to work! Is this AS or just everybody?? I love being home and having an organized house and energy for them at the end of the day. I just don't think I can pull off the working single mom bit and I don't know what to do.

I will post more later, thank you all.

I didn't have to when they were little. It's wrong, and I really believe that everyone knows that an an instinctive level. Society just keeps getting stupider and stupider. But when it's the only game in town, you just have to deal with it.

I tried it when my first kid was about a year old. I got a job in a daycare center so that I could be near him all day. I found out from the inside how it works. It simply doesn't. For example, they will flat-out lie to the parent about how the kid stops crying the minute she leaves. Some of them do stop crying. Some of them don't. Some of them cry, all day long, every day, for months on end. No, it's not good for them.

There's no such thing as "quality daycare," unless you have a built-in grandmother or some other unusual arrangement. And a preschool that's attached to a daycare center, even if it has a part-time certified teacher, is just glorified daycare. It's just a warehouse, for the benefit of industry. The only preschool that can be good for a child is the kind that only runs for a few hours, two or three days a week, and then you have to pick him up and take him home. The best is a co-op in which the parents are expected to be involved, like maybe once a month.

The only really reliable test is whether the kid likes it. If he doesn't like it, it's a bad program, or at least a bad placement for that child. He might not be articulate enough to explain it for twenty years, but he shouldn't have to. The fact that he hates it is all that you really need to know.

Some people simply don't like little kids and prefer to dump them on strangers, and happily believe that the "slam the door and run" method is good for the kids. You know in your gut that it's not, that it's only good for the factory or wherever mom works, but they keep telling that lie. If they can just keep you working and running, you won't have time to think and realize that the whole system is a lie.

For those exceptions who dislike kids, they are probably better off in daycare. But not for the majority. It's not just an Aspie thing. The system is bad for everyone.

Then again, if you can get a diagnosis and use that as a reason to stay home for another four years, that could be good.