What is it like to be a Parent of an Aspie?

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Well since I first even got to know that there's something "Asperger" in diagnose of autistic spectral things, about last month (november), it's been an avalanche of understandings both of myself and my three kids.

My ex, simply after a couple of lectures said frankly "Oh my god, you have Asperger" so I contacted my psychiatrist and asked for a complete investigation for Asperger. It's not that I care wether or not. It can just be good to know. I have not exactly Asperger but close to it.

What "asmom" describes about particular foods frightening and so on I can only agree. Fish is a particular piece there. They simply can't cope with the fact that a fish has been killed to eat but other animals is no problem. They love to fish. But since I have my own ways of fishing they learned from me. My mid son is extremely afraid of open flames. It's my fault, heating oil too much when I was going to fritate something so the oil whent on fire, but I naturaly had a lid available. So it was about 0.5 seconds of flames. We have trouble with having candles lit after that. He and his younger brother blow them out. NO open fire ALLOWED.

(Curiosity: My daughter was almost mad at me because she got more fish than her boyfriends ever imagined you could catch, she was allowed to borrow a match rod from me and she in the time the guys got 3 fishes she had a live bucket full. I use a english style streamwater floater with the smallest fly catching hooks you can find. A maggot has trouble to fit on that hook and I use live worms)

My youngest who's in pre-school adds, subtract, multiply and divide numbers faster than we can type it on a electronic calculator. And has a language like he's 2 years old. He's having difficulties finding friends, since he's having difficulties in learning social manners.

Midst is the esthetic guy, loving nature and things in nature. And animals. Can handle any animal hand has my reading abilities of emotion of animals. Can't though understand humans. 8y old and having girlfriend for 3y. Steady. They are going to marry themselves when they are allowed they both state.

It was very tough at first. Not knowing what was going on.
A lot of the time I would just sit and hold him and talk softly or not talk at all to bring him down from meltdowns. I was able to key in early on the space and food issues and although I understood the sensation he was having, I didn't know why. I just thought he was hypersenstive to certain things.

Now that we know he has Aspergers, life a much easier. There are still challenges though.
At birthday parties it takes him about 30 minutes to warm up to the environment and a lot of times he won't eat because of being overloaded or he can't tolerate the food. He can handle the cake and ice cream just fine... go figure ;o)

Every new experience brings different challenges for us but our public school system has a great program for him and his speech therapist is absolutley incredible so we are able to adapt to situations better and better each day. He goes to preschool and just out of shear luck his teacher had went college with her major focusing on austistic children. Couldn't have worked out any better.

He loves preschool and his teacher this year had heard he had aspergers and was very concerned about this at open house. After a couple of days she raved to my wife about what a sweet, well mannered child he was and how she is surprised at how much she looks forward to seeing him each Tuesday and Thursday.

I don't know if he can still count to 500 since he doesn't 'obsess' on numbers and patterns as much since his therapist has tought us how to broaden his horizons some.

Fun and challenging is my best description of being a parent of an aspie.

Being the parent of an Aspie, it not something i can sum up in a pragraph, but i can tell you we dont go anywhere as a family because he does not not want to go outside of the house he does,t like crowds , basically he likes to stay home all the time that is his comfort zone. I can tell i am very stressed at times but i would't change him for any amount of money in the world. He is a great human being who cares a great deal about peoples happiness. He is so much fun to be around he makes me laugh, he likes to tell jokes, knock knock jokes are his favorite.

I'm 24 year Aspie and I was born in former Czechoslovakia, at the eastern side of the Wall, where nobody had a clue about AS. My parents recognized that I'm a little bit weird child, but they didn't know that it's a sort of known disability. They treated me as an extraordinary NT child and it was the mistake. They didn't understand, why I'm still attached to my weird interests, why I'm not having fun with my friends, why I'm not dating with girls and why I'm avoiding to find a part-time job.

I was systematically teased by my classmates during elementary and high school, but in most cases I didn't tell it to my parents. I wanted to keep them in an illusion that there is nothing wrong with me. To be honest, I was doing it also to convince myself. In fact, I was living in some kind of dream world, but it helped me to survive, especially after father's death.

I figured out that I have AS just recently by self-diagnosis. I was already talking about it with my mother, but she simply doesn't believe it. She even refused to accept that something like AS exist.

My parents did a lot of mistakes, but sometimes they accidentally did the right thing. Right after the revolution in 1989, came also substantial changes in education system. The mandatory Russian lessons were canceled and most of the elementary schools selected the best pupils from each class, in order to form separated class with extended German and English language lessons. I was one of the best students in my class and I really wanted to be one of the chosen few. My parents didn't allowed me to go there. They thought that it's not good for me to change all my peers and teachers during first years of elementary school. It's clear that as an Aspie, I would never survive this change and now, I'm grateful to my parents for their decision.

i LUV my boy i dont even see parenting an autistic child as a bad thing its really just a different way of life... soooo many challenges but i feel my son is going to b stronger than i could ever be... i am so proud of him hes beautiful smart and i dont think i would change him except to make it easier 4 him it is hard to deal w at times cuz i dont know if i am on the right track or if there is something more i can do or sometimes i ease up on the "therapy" i try on my own to do w him and think guilty thoghts of how im lazy and should be working harder... he is only five and has only just started his behavior management stuff..... but sometimes for one day out of the week(sometimes more often sometimes less) when he looks at me and is sooooo clear in what he says , i get excited... the other days there is always a bedtime and always a holding my hand time and a time that he makes me feel like im a queen there is nothing so great a feeling than that knowing that somehow we connect and he understands i try.....

So many days,I dont know where you are
Vacant stare,when i ask how you feel
Blank expression masks what's in your head
But I dont dwell
I embrace each moment
waiting for the next time
Our spirits touch and I know we understand each other
The love so strong in my heart for you
God,I pray is strong enough
I believe when you reach for my hand
In rare moments of clarity
You're trying to tell me
Love is enough to wash away
Unintentional mistakes.
Love is enough to hold on to
To forgive the lack of patience;
my own and other people's ignorance
I believe if you could express
You'd tell me Mommy its ok
Confusion overwhelming is forgiveable engulfed
in your love
So I will hold you through your storms
I will reach for you when you allow
and back away when you need to shut down
And I willhold your hand through it all
til one day, you are healed or i understand
I will hold to those rare moments
when our spirits touch
I will keep them tucked away
for those more trying days
and cherish them and you,my special prize
forever are my light....

You helped me last yr and made me cry this yr.

Take care.

Our son was dx'd in november '05. And our daughter has yet to be dx'd. This is due in part that our two kids are at opposite ends of the the AS spectrum.

Our daughter is highly intelllegent, has a small but very tight knit group of half a dozen friends. She is also an introvert and would rather spend her time reading, on the computer, or her true passion art. She has always been very artsy, and loves to sketch, draw cartoons and comics, paint and everything "art" related. She recently took her psat and scored 180.

We thought that was a bit low, but she scored higher than 88% of the sophmores nationwide. She has been able to develop a sense of humor, and has a very quick wit about her. Probably because I am so much of a smart a__ myself.

She shares similiar interests as me, her dad, we are both fascinated and intrigued by anything ancient egyptian, not to mention archeology in general. Classic rock, which wasn't classic when I was listening to it, is her preferred genre of music, and she loves electric guitar as do I. We are planning on taking lessons together, now that we have relocated to WA.

She loves multi tasking and can carry on several online chats at the same time, while doing her homework, doodling a new cartoon, and listening to iPod or iTunes. She has always maintained high academic expectations for herself since she started school. Usually straight A's, honor roll, perfect attendance, etc.

She is getting emails from colleges all around the country, wanting her to apply. She is beginning to enjoy the fruits of all her labor.

We love her, and know that whatever career she choses, she will be a success....

Our son is at a different place on the spectrum. Besides his AS, he struggles daily with bi-polar, OCD, ODD, and depression. Gee, wonder why? We are also sure that he is having issues with executive dysfunction.

His short term memory is almost non existent. He has difficulty remembering what we talked about 20 minutes ago. Examples for homework are gone before he gets home. Homework is an absolute nightmare, and have been the cause of more meltdowns than we can remember.

Although he has access to a computer since he was three, he is just now finding a use for them, and that is online chat and email with friends, so he doesn't kill the charge on his cell phone.

Although his new school has lockers, he prefers his backpack, probably due to sensory issues, and is one of only a few kids on campus to use a backpack. His favorite preoccupation is office products, pens, pencils, mechanical pencils, binders, dividers, and notebooks.

We are currently about to begin evaluation testing at school, so that we can finally get an IEP put into place to help with some of his issues. Fingers crossed.

Our son is trying to develop a sense of humor, but it usually comes out as an insult or inappropriate comment. He, too, is finding an interest in music as well, but he can't stay focused on his guitar for an amount of time to actually progress. But he does like it a lot.

No interest in history, not yet, he would rather be skateboarding or swimming. His skating talent is limited, but he is at home in the water, swims like a fish, just like me. Also loves the X games, but has no interest in Olympics, or other sports.

He will probably not go to college, because he has no interest in college, as of today. He can hardly stand middle school. No idea of what high school will be like.

We love him, and hope that he can be happy in life someday, for him that would be a success...

We will do whatever it takes to provide the best for our kids, but we know it may never be enough.

Each and every day is an adventure, and nightmare rolled into one. The never ending roller coaster can be fun at times, but absolutely terrifying at others.

The endlees dr appointments, calls to the school, meetings and consultations, second opinions, second guessing, and the thought that it may never, never end, I think that is the most difficult part to deal with...

Thanks for listening, not many people are willing to do even that...

CurtisD

when he was little his doctors would not believe me when i told them he was an Aspie. doctors don't like having their diagnoses made for them and if you do they reject it. there were no services available for him; i had to do everything myself. he had severe asthma and what the docs thought was cystic fibrosis. his dad took off when he was 3: too hard to raise kids, especially this one. i had to explain him to everyone, his brother was his guardian angel and his pseudo father. i believe his Asperger's began after his last immunization. with the increase in immunizations paralleled by the increase in autism and asperger's, i want this to be a possibility listed on the patient insert for immunizations and i want pediatricians to warn parents this could happen. he was mind bending to raise, exhausting, enjoyable, challenging. he was teased, bullied, and early on was aware he was so very different than others. we celebrated difference. counseling, talking, encouraging, daily repetition of adl's made it a 24/7 parenting job. he graduated the valedictorian of Stanford, but cannot keep a job. he has leveled all his anger at the rest of the world for teasing, making him feel different, abandoning him at the one who was a constant in his life and therefore safe to level the anger at: me. i feel like i have lost him after putting in maximal effort to make sure he was self sufficient. he has no empathy and is easily angered. he feels he does not have to live with societal norms; it cost him his job. he is a chronic liar and reinvents himself to be accepted, and hangs with other outcasts of society. i know i did my best, but he will not accept his diagnosis though his siblings kindly try to help him. he has spurned the one long lasting true friend he had, and eventually hurts everyone in his path. with his fanciful persona he lives with a woman twice his age and her two sons. i miss the wonderful person he used to be, the once happy boy, the once smiling child who found the world fun and exciting. i miss my son and i will never have him in my life by his choice. he chooses anger, misery, not taking medication. he doesn't know how others feel so cannot judge that the "giddiness" he felt with a course of antidepressants was simply normal happiness. he is used to being depressed and feels safe there. i didn't smoke or drink or take drugs or have a difficult pregnancy or delivery. i did have a husband who abandoned his wife and sons and had to work two jobs to make the bills. life was no different for him than for thousands of others. so he will remain swimming in his pity pool. i get depressed and feel bad when i see my friends with their kids and grandkids and know that this is not for me. i feel cheated, though i know he is more cheated by having his brain wired differently than others and being unable to enjoy life the way others do. sigh. it is what it is.

It's tiring, it's fascinating, it's annoying, it's frustrating, it's never ending, it's ups and downs. It's life. Most important is the amazing facts and memories for my daughter's knowledge on the subject of dog breeds, dog and animal behaviour, training, temperament, her ability to completly become absorbed in her own topic and concentrate for hours on end. Her love of justice and equality for all animals. Her ruthless honesty can be admired at times yet we cringe at othe times Her thirst for knowledge and endless reading, giving us a well deserved break from her biting and violent rages when having a good day. Her ability to soldier on when shunned daily by her peers at schools, life can be lonley and thank goodness for the library! The most tiring and endless task is not our children but the lack of understanding from the rest of the world. I am sick of "Asp what?' Why is the world so intent on making life so hard, advocate, advocate, advocate. Keep going. Sometimes I would like to stop the world and get off!
I wouldn't change my beautiful 10 year old daughter for the world, I now ignore 'the stares'and 'the comments' my daughter is who she is, wild, exciting and extremley interesting, it just takes a patient person to notice her and let her true colours shine, then she shines, bright!

What an interesting topic...I've enjoyed reading all of your responses. It enlightens me so...

Being the parent of an AS son who's now 17 has been a joy for me, as well as the most difficult task (if you would call it that) that I will ever face and have ever faced. I had an extremely difficult delivery with him and wondered if it might affect him later in life...nevertheless, when I saw his face just after birth, it didn't matter...I knew my love for him would never falter. I knew that I would always be there for him, nomatter what. He was always such a very happy and content child. He had (and still has) his "stims" (of which I recently learned was called that -- Stim: Short for 'self-stimulation', a term for behaviours whose sole purpose appears to be to stimulate ones senses. Many people with autism report that some 'self-stims' may serve a regulatory function for them (ie. calming, increasing concentration, or shutting out an overwhelming sound) --) and to be able to nurture him and guide him has been an experience of a lifetime...and I wouldn't trade a second of our time together. He was my baby joy and now he's my teenage joy. I couldn't ask for a better son. He wouldn't tell a lie to save his life, is well mannered and loves so loyally. I have a sound system through his school (and have previously) and work directly with teachers, etc. to obtain the best for him throughout his school year. He dislikes school immensely, but knows he has no choice, so he makes the best of it. He holds his own making A's and B's, with the occassional C. He makes me so proud. I see the looks that people (adults, as well as kids) give him and sometimes I want to strangle them...then I find myself wanting to scream -- "Can't you see what an awesome kid he is!?" But all they see is from a distance...they can't see his real inner awesomeness..they see him sitting there off in his own little world, making noises that they don't understand...clapping his hands...and laughing hysterically tp himself...and if possible, pacing. That's one of his favorite things...pacing. I sit there smiling...thinking to myself how lucky I am. I used to be bothered by other people's reactions when he was smaller, but now it bothers me NONE. He's my little man, he's perfect as far as I'm concerned. And the best part of all the looks and reactions he gets is that HE SEES NONE OF IT, or at least for the most part doesn't, but seems to not let it bother him. He always says he is a "loner" and wants to keep it that way...I say it's his choice. Although every now and again I'll encourage a friendly get-together with a couple of kids he knows. Because he does say every once in a while that he's got no friends...it breaks my heart. I know how difficult things are for him. It's very frustrating seeing your child go through these types of issues and you feel like there's nothing you can do. Except be there...he knows that I am. But when I feel depressed...all I have to do is think of his smile and his nature...and it makes me smile. We have recently been dealing with the new issue of his learning to drive. What an experience! He got his learner's permit in 10th grade (he's now a Junior) and is still learning. We just take it one day at a time. He actually went to take the test last September after he turned 16, but unfortunately failed at his first attempt. He was down about it, but we talked and he's okay about it. We just practice when we can, I don't make it a big deal! If it were up to him, he wouldn't drive at all...and the sad part about it is that I wonder if he'll ever be able to drive completely alone. We will just take this one day-by-day. Now that he's getting older, I often find myself wondering about him graduating high school, going to college and what the future holds for him. I just want to be there for him...I guess that's what Mom's are for...and love him unconditionally...always.

I'm sorry if it's sounded like I've rambled...

It's strange how I have dealt with this syndrome for such a long time, but have just recently learned of so many new things through this web site. And just being able to speak of such things to people that actually understand, in such detail...feels like a ton of bricks being lifted from my shoulders.

Thanks for listening. Have a great day!

My brother was exactly like your son, and your daughter was like me.... I presume the daughter is the oldest?

My brother now works in a large chain supermarket - where I think his affinity for pencils and stuff is taken advantage of ... he is the manager.

Does your son wet the bed? - my brother had alot of trouble fitting in.... he had a very hard time coping with not being normal.
Does your son talk more with girls? my brother found that he was able to fit in better with girls (I am now jealous of his affinity for women)

...Your duaghter will be fine, I ended up going to uni to be an engineer, I'm sure she will become some-one very intelligent.

....Your son on the other hand will probably have a really hard time throughout his childhood... I would be careful about how he ends up finding friends. It took my brother a very long time to realise he should talk to males asell (once he had no choice in an unisex school) - he finally has male friends too.

As a parent of an Asperger's twelve year old son, I have found it to be more of a challenge than my first born daughter. We have very stressful days, but a cuddle and a love you at the end of the day says it all!

lol

Thank you CurtisD for your response...and everyone else too.

My son is the oldest of my two children...he's 16 and she's 14. She's very protective of her brother, altho they are typical siblings and act like they despise each other! I often wonder what my son will wind up doing/being when he's out of high school next year...but I always tell him YOU CAN DO ANYTHING IF YOU PUT ALL YOUR EFFORTS TOWARD YOUR GOALS AND OBJECTIVES!

No, my son was never a bed-wetter. He also gravitates toward older people, especially teachers. But just recently, he's been way more social toward guys and girls...it's GREAT!

Yes, I agree...my daughter will be fine...she's very supportive of her brother and takes care to help him out anytime he needs it. She's not an Aspie...

And yes, my son has had a hard time throughout his childhood...and still does...but not so much as when he was younger. He got picked on terribly, but always hung in there...and kept his wonderful, spirited self! He's such a happy, content kid...and I'm terribly proud of him, as I'm sure you can tell by this information I've provided.

As for him and friends...he says he's a loner and likes it that way. He does what he wants where that is concerned..that's his choice.

Guess that's all for now. I still appreciate the input, so keep it comin'! Take care...

I have a ten year old son w/ Asperger's, has been diagnosed less than a year and boy has it answered lots of questions. There are good days and bad days. My son is very bright, creative and has lots of imagination. His passion is video/computer games, this is what he eats, breathes and sleeps. He is most definitely a "momma's boy" and prefers me over my husband. He loves going to the movies and loves to swim. He's very funny and I love to hear him laugh. On the flip side he is very easily irritated, frustrated and angered. That can be very challenging. In this state there is no reasoning with him. He will yell, tell us no, call us names, stomp around, and just basically lose all control. It's hard because
literally a minute later he will act like nothing happened and smile and laugh and start telling me about something from his video game etc. This is hard for me to understand. Though there are days when I don't think I can go another minute, I wouldn't trade it for anything because this is my son and this is the way he is and I love him no matter what. It makes it all worthwhile to hear him say "I love you" and give me a hug - and he does this alot

What I wish my 9yr old Aspie daughter could teach me is what am I suppose to say or not say when she is raging? I admit it, I am emotional so when she blows so do I. I do my best to back off. My first reaction is to touch her whether it be rocking her, grabbing her arm or holding onto both shoulders so she can refocus. It makes me sad and mad when she yells and scream hurtful words. She is learning on her own to leave the situation to calm down in her room. She doesn't understand how to apologize after her rages, so I am never quit sure if she is OK. She appears ok.

My daughter is one of four. She is #3 and home-educated.

Any thoughts?

I am reading anything I can get my hands on. My daughter wants me to to teach her social skills.