Hello, newbie here

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Hello gang, I'm not sure this is the right place for me. I'm not AS - actually that's maybe not true as I do exhibit some behaviours. Hmmm. Anyway, I'm not here about me.
My father is Asperger's, all the way. He's 67 and undiagnosed, and that's not going to change. As far as he is concerned, he's normal but everyone else around him has some kind of problem. It took me until my early 20s to realise that, statistically, that can't be right. My childhood and that of my brother were bloody awful, and it's taken me years to identify why.
I've been doing a lot of investigation into this over the last few years, I've spoken to other Asperger's, I know what's going on. It was in many ways a huge relief to find out there was a reason for everything. When I read accounts of other kids growing up with AS parents and how their lives were, it feels amazing and hugely emotional to me. The sense of recognition is such sweet relief, and such sweet pain too. That said, finding a reason doesn't make it any easier to live with on a daily basis. Even simple conversations with my father are challenging (that's putting it charitably...). I'm 35, educated, independent, not overly emotional or neurotic in general, and yet simple conversations with my father reduce me to tears on a regular basis.
I've pretty much come to terms with the idea that there's nothing that can be done about the way he is, particularly as he is in denial about mental health diagnoses of any kind - "they're mad" is his explanation for, well, pretty much everyone and everything. He doesn't believe in autism, ADHD, depression, chronic fatigue, none of it - it's all self-indulgence, apparently. Under those circumstances, I feel all I can do is keep educating myself on the subject, to keep learning ways to deal with it. It seems to me there's a lot of info out there to help parents dealing with AS children, and some for those with an AS partner, but very little for people in my situation. I find this website extremely helpful and it relaxes me to read about AS and all its different manisfestations in people's lives. I hope that's OK with you lot.
I'm sorry I've gone on, but my mother has been away the past week so I've had to deal with my father and I'm really at the end of my tether. Let's just say it's a good job I don't know anything about mushrooms, otherwise I'd be out there now looking for the dodgy ones to slip in his breakfast tomorrow .

Hi, Santa, and welcome to WrongPlanet!

Oh. Dear. Yeah, some of us Aspies are real jerks. Someone posted a long time ago that no Aspie should ever be a parent. As a mother of five, two of them adopted, I've been angsty about it ever since. I can't tell if I've just given the kids a number of things to laugh about, or if I have damaged them. I don't think I have, though one touchy-feely daughter fled us as an adult to find a family elsewhere. Surprisingly, she did not go back to her birth mom. She had severe ADD from fetal alcohol effect, so I was doing the best I could with another kind of brain damage.
Your father sounds like an extreme version of my father the hermit. I grew up listening to him shouting at the evening news. And he has still not forgiven me for becoming a Christian, and then after years of Democratic activism I became a damn Republican. So when we are together we talk about the weather and the birds in his back yard.

Welcome to wrong planet!

Welcome aboard the Wrong Planet, Santa.

A very special Welkome to WrongPlanet, with a K.

The WP Kink

To WrongPlanet!! !

Hello Welcome to WP!

Welcome!

Welcome.

Welcome!! Although I am new too so that feels kinda artifical saying that...but nevertheless welcome.

"Why can't spontaneous song and dance be a cultural norm?"-anonymous