Hey! I've Found My People!

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I found this website while searching the various websites about Aspergers and Autism. I became interested in finding out about Autism when my young cousin, who is six, was diagnosed HFA, at age 3. In reading the information at the various websites, I realized that I may possibly be on the spectrum myself.

When I came to this website and read the message boards, I see myself in a lot of you all. Now I understand why I was always chosen last for team sports in school. Why I was picked on and called names. Why I was never asked out on dates in high school and even now as a grown woman in my 30s, I only have had one BF.

It didn't help that I had NT parents who are very social and have lots of friends. I think they do love me because I am their daughter, however, I am not the daughter they had hoped for. They just did not understand a kid like me at all. Like many of you my parents would ask me, "Why don't you act like everybody else." I would tell them, "Because I am not everybody else." My mother would complain because I always kept to myself. She would say, "Why are you cooped up in this house all the time, why don't you get out and meet people?" But for someone like me, meeting people is not that simple. Sometimes I don't enjoy meeting new people because I don't feel like I am going to make a new friend. I feel like I am just going to meet another person who is going to end up putting me down just like everyone else. How do you tell your parents, "Mom, the other kids don't like me." You just can't.

Sometimes I felt like I was bullied even by my own parents. They made me feel like it was my fault that the other kids picked on me. My mother would say, "Maybe you wouldn't get picked on so much if you didn't act so stand offish." The most hurtful thing that was said was when my father said, "I think the hospital gave us the wrong baby, I think they gave us some drug addict's baby by mistake." That one stuck with me forever.

I'm glad that not all parents think like that. The parents at this message board are very supportive of their children and are willing to do whatever it is possible to help their children be successful in life.

I came along at a time when Autism was not understood. I glad that there is more information out there for the younger generation that is coming up. My little cousin has come a long way since her diagnosis. She went from a non verbal 3 year old to a 6 year old who is now learning how to read.

Well this is me and this is my story. I look forward to talking to you all.

It's good you could find it out for yourself.

Other's had to find out about that I had Asperger's , until I started to become "aware" of issues regarding autism or asperger's

That sounds like me! I just think about it as getting to know myself. I haven't been diagonosed officially yet, but you just know don't you?

Welcome to Wrong Planet. Your insight could be of special benefit to your young cousin.
I hope sometime you can forgive and forget what your dad said about the switch when you were a baby. It's very harsh, I agree.

Aspergers is usually inherited from one of the parents, and since you mention one of your cousins was diagnosed, it is possible that there be more autistic people in your family. I found out i have asperger almost a year ago and I remember listening to a song that said "I would change myself if I could, I'd walk with my people if I could find them", and I was wishing I could find my people and what it would be like to walk with them, until two months ago I started discovering many aspergers in my own family, aunts, uncles, cousins, my brother, my grand father and most important, my own father, which is shoking because he spent my childhood bullying me like you said for being too "shy" and weird, he made my early years a living hell.

Hi!

Welcome to Wrongplanet!

I hope you enjoy posting here!

Well, since I am a bit odd myself, I was one of the first people to pick up that something was different about my little cousin. It was when she was about 18 months old. Most kids at that age are starting to talk. But my little cousin couldn't talk at all. Not even simple words like "mama" or "dada". All she could do was make these high pitched screaming sounds. But my little cousins mom was in denial that something was wrong. She would tell us that she didn't want her child labled and felt that her daughter would eventually "catch up" to the other kids. I guess it is hard for a lot of parents to accept that their child has a disability.

As for my dad and his harsh comments. That's not the first stupid thing he has said and it probably won't be the last. When he makes those type of comments I just roll my eyes and say, "Whatever, old man."

I wholeheartedly believe that I also have other relatives who are on the spectrum. But since they are adults they were never diagnosed. Or they were thought to be mentally ill rather than have an autistic spectrum disorder.

I have a male cousin who is in his late 40s to early 50s who may possibly be on the spectrum. As a child, he was a chronic runaway. Even as a small child, 2 or 3 years old, he would wander away from home. My mom said that many times, my aunt would have to call the police or tell the neighbors to look for him. As he got to be a teenager, his running away problem got worse. My aunt, who was his mom, sent him to live with another aunt. He ran away and when they found him, they found him sleeping in a trash dumpster. If a garbage truck had come along dumped the trash, he could have gotten crushed to death. The aunt that he was staying with sent him back home to his mom and said, "Oh No! I can't handle a kid like him." Another thing they always said about this male cousin was that he alway looked at you "under eyed". He never looked directly at you. Which indicated to me that he had poor eye contact.

I also have another cousin, who lives down south, and I believe that her mother is on the spectrum also. Her mother is very withdrawn and didn't like to socialize with anyone. She would get up in the mornings and do her housework but when she was done, she would go back into her room and stay there all day. I would go to visit them for summer vacation and the whole time I was there she would not speak to me. Not a "hello" or a "good morning". She would just walk past you like you were not even there. I know that I am not the most social person myself, but at least I will speak and be polite. But my cousins mom took the cake.

With people like you in her life she'll have a chance at a brighter childhood. What was said to you is so appalling...I can't comprehend how a parent could say something like that to their own child. I'm lucky as my parents both probably sit on the spectrum somewhere closer to the autistic end than the other, so abnormal was normal in our household and we never had to be somebody too different from who we were.
It's sad that parents say these things in ignorance and in moments of exasperation...things they can't possibly mean, but things that are remembered forever. At least with growing awareness of autism, things should be different for our children.