Raised by Aspergers parent

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I got AS from my father's side. I have an autistic cousin on that side.
Well my father is very swedish. Which means he is quiet and very gentle. He doesnt argue much. For some reason he likes all music that features guitars. He cant hurt animals. He even sets spiders and such free in the woods. He doesnt say much. Ive heard him say himself that he doesnt really care about other people I mean he is nice and all. But it just doesnt come naturally to him to be interested in other people. he also got me into videogames and I was born in 92. It was unusual to have a gaming parent when I grew up. I say he has a mildly schizoid personality. But not a disorder of any kind.
My mother have been diagnosed with ADD recently and I got that from her. Well she is spacy and sometimes childish.

Wow, what a relief to find this forum. I am big sister to a severely autistic teenage brother and I have an aspie cousin so I guess AS is in the family. Also there are many members of my extended family that have mild traits. We've always known there was something off about dad but no one could quite put their finger on it. But as I grew up I began to notice strange behavior in my mum too. This may be quite long so apologies in advanced.

A lot of descriptions I've read here sound exactly like my dad. He can't stand sensory overload, becomes highly anxious in crowds or places with lots of traffic and noise. ( he has recently moved to the countryside and is much happier there). He lectures constantly, there's no such thing as a normal adult conversation with my dad he doesn't talk 'with' you he talks 'at' you. He won't let anyone get a word in edgeways especially if he's talking about an issue that interests him. He can't pick up on social cues such as when to stop talking, interrupts constantly ( but god forbid if you dare interupt him!). When we were kids we werent allowed to speak at the dinner table or have the tv or radio on. He would make us chew each mouthful 20 times before swallowing (literally). He was often very rough with me as a child if he hugged ne he would punch me on the arm or even get me on the ground and sit on me and it was actually very painful. He would tickle me so hard, with his fingers digging in between my ribs, I would bruise and if I cried he'd say I was being a whimp etc. 
He doesn't known me and doesn't seem to have any interest in getting to know me. Growing up decided what hobbies my brother would participate in with no consideration as to whether he even enjoyed them. He can spend days on end in the shed doing little projects ( even missing work because he was so absorbed in them) but never finish anything. 

My mum is a little different. Her main problem is emotional coldness. She fed me and clothed me and did the practical things she was supposed to do but always treated me like a burden sometimes even telling me so.  I don't recall a single occasion where she told me she loved me. She never offered guidance or advice ( according to her that was my school teachers' job). She has never shown an interest in any if us kids' schooling. Never asked to see our report cards, never went to parent teacher interviews. If asked she would have no idea what subjects we were studying. Couldnt care less if we were passing or failing. Always trying to get away with absolute bare minimum parenting often leaving me in charge of my siblings for entire days from about age 12 onwards ( my youngest bro was born when I was 12 so home alone with a new born). She cheated o n my father often telling me about her boyfriend and how the two of them were going to run away from it all some day. 
If I ever asked her if she loved me she would reply with "don't be stupid of course I f@*king do" or "I feed you don't I?" or "stop being so stupid" but she never actually said it. 
She's obsessed with beagles she has 3 and shows far more affection to them than she ever did to us kids. Her whole house is decorated with beagle stuff and if she sees something with a beagle on it at the shops she has to buy it. Even if it's totally impractical. She speaks like a child and never seems to notice or care when she upsets me. She both parents get upset when we don't call them or answer their calls and seem completely baffled as to why we would want to assert boundaries between them and us.

The worst thing about my parents is that they were very neglectful. I was extremely sick in my teens and if I told my parents they would accuse me if faking it or tell me I was 'weak'. When it got really bad I begged them to take me to hospital, they refused. My dad made me run laps at the local oval and do boot camp style drills and mum suspected I was pregnant and told me she wouldn't taken to the doctor because it was my own fault for "not keeping me legs shut". It turned out I had complete kidney failure and a heart condition and  was literally very lucky to be alive. I was commenced on emergency dialysis. When my mum found out she just laughed and told the doctor "oops we just thought she was lazy". When my dad found out he booked a holiday on the other side of the country and didn't return for two weeks and was completely absent throughout the whole ordeal. Neither of them have apologized for this and I'm not expecting they ever will. 

Sorry had to vent.

Thanks.

I'm not sure if either of my biological parents have autism of any kind. I don't have a good relationship with either of them and they may cloud my judgement of them as to whether they are autistic or not. I've been estranged from my biological mother for the last three years (by choice) and I feel it's very likely I may be estranged from my biological father one day.

My biological father is very much a loud, in-your-face, seemingly confident and outgoing person. He acts as if he doesn't have a care in the world and every problem that occurs in his life is the fault of someone else (usually me). He believes that he was an absolutley perfect parent and that his parenting couldn't possibly be improved in any way, which I beg to differ. He has absolutley no faith in me and believes that without him I will go to pieces. He's always throwing the line "I have way more life experience than you" at me, despite the fact I have experienced many things he never will and have lived alone before.

He can be a control freak and I don't feel accepted by him. He's always saying things like "You really need to start conforming to...", "What you need to do is...", "You'll never get anywhere if life if you don't do...", "Any other girl/teenager wouldn't be cought dead doing...", "You'll never attract boys if you don't start doing..." and so on. He's very old fashioned (he was born in the 1950s) and believes in traditional roles and ideas.

If I had to give him a diagnosis, I'd go with Narcisstic Personality Disorder. But I feel like he's very insecure - he's been overweight all his life and is quite sensitive about it, he didn't finish high school and he hasn't had a relationship since my biological mother walked out on him in 1993. He barely keeps in touch with his friends and he has no hobbies or interests. He says he is too busy "looking after me" to have room for anything else in his life. Which again, I beg to differ. His idea of looking after me is telling me all the things that are wrong with me and making assumptions about how I feel and then making me have nervous breakdowns.

As for my biological mother, she was diagnosed as a schizophrenic in 2005/2006, however I have always doubted this a little, as the doctor who diagnosed her was not a trained psychiatrist and has made several negligent medical mistakes, one of which I was a victim of. I never remember my biological mother having any delusions or anything else that would indicate symptoms of schizophrenia. She'd been on anti-depressants for much of my so-called childhood, though.

The more I learn about austism and Aspergers, I believe that she is the most likely person who passed it on to me. She had a lot of the symptoms. Her social skills were pretty appalling, but she brushed this off as "being an introvert" and "people being mean". She would assume the cashier at the supermarket was her friend just because they said "Hello, how are you?" to her, for the sake of being polite. She would get "obsessed" with people, for lack of a better word and start trying to talk to and see them all the time, once they became "friends" in her eyes. Nobody stood for this for long, which she believed was simply a case of that person not being very nice. This was a recurring pattern throughout her life. I remember many times being dragged around to someone's house and meeting them, only to never see them again. I don't feel like this was a nuerotypical behaviour.

She kept to herself an awful lot. She seemed to never have any ideas of her own or have any ability to judge situations for herself. If somebody else said (no matter who it was), "My child was doing (such and such activity) at that age", she would automatically assume they were right and that I should be doing that too. If somebody said "I really like reading murder mystery novels", she decided she did too. It was very easy to influence her and boss her around (which my biological father and her abusive sister and mother relished in). Maybe this was just her personality or a lack of faith in herself caused by years of bullying, but maybe it was simply the bewilderment austistic people tend to feel when confronted with the actions of other people.

She would fixate on things. There were long periods (sometimes year long) where she would only listen to one album or one band, only watch one movie or only eat one food. She would often try to involve me in these obsessions and I often had no choice as the only person she was assertive or domineering with was me. To this day, I can't bear the thought of eating Tacos (which she ate for breakfast, lunch and dinner every day for a period of two and a half years).

She was physically, verbally and emotionally abusive to me as a child as well as neglectful. Although there were a couple of things she got right, when I confronted her about this as a teenager she would simply stare at me dumbly and shrug. Sometimes she'd say "I'm sorry", although even I could tell, she was just telling me what I wanted to hear and it wasn't a genuine apology. Again, this may be representative of the inability autistics often display to understand other peoples feelings.

So in short, I definetly feel that if I have Aspergers (I am 99.9% sure that I do), it definetly came from my maternal genetics. I have a great-aunt on that side who was in a psychiatric institution all her life, although I don't know what for. Might have been a severe kind of autism.

If you've read this far, Congratulations. Have a cookie.

Wow. I'm really lucky.

I got AS from my Dad. He had a really horrible temper-- it wasn't a good idea to disagree with him, some of the arguments were epic-- but other than that he was just about the best.

He understood me-- for a lot of years, he was pretty much the only person who did. We did a lot of fun stuff together-- going down the road screaming along to the radio and not caring that neither of us could sing, spent a lot of time in the woods, drank a lot of wine when I got older.

He put up with my rigid routines, and I put up with his. He taught me to understand a lot about myself. For a lot of years I was ashamed of him-- I think the worst thing was growing up being told by the rest of the family, "Your father's stupid and so are you." He was loud, spoke first and thought later, like a big kid. I used to call him Lennie (like, Of Mice and Men). First it was derogatory, then I felt responsible for him, then finally it was affectionate.

He wasn't perfect. Innocence stops being an admirable trait at some point. He was prone to denial and depression and substance abuse. He never missed child support payments or weekend visits. When my Mom died, he just stepped in and raised me. That wasn't easy-- I was spoiled and wild and pretty messed-up. He helped me sort all of that out and taught me enough that I left home at 18 and didn't (quite) crash and burn.

He didn't have a lot of people around him, but he was really good to me and my kids and his mom and my stepmom. He was one of my best friends, and one of the goodest people I've ever known. Maybe not one of the smartest, but one of the best.

I miss him. We all do. It's hard to believe one perennially stoned Aspie could leave such a giant hole.

Thanks.[/quote]
Your mother sounds like a sociopath (Anti Social Personality Disorder) or NPD (Narcissistic Personality Disorder), and your father might have been trying in a weird way to "toughen you up" so you could survive her, but he might be a Narcissist as well. (NPD). I've heard it can coexist with autism, but I'm not sure it's true.[/quote]

My father was 100 times worse than my mum (despite how it may sound here). He's very narcissistic I'll agree with that. I remember as a kid having to listen to him talk about his day at work and how amazing he was at his job and he was over qualified ( despite the fact he always gets fired from jobs but that's because people were "playing mind games" with him not because he was dangerously incompetent).
My whole childhood I wad lead to believe we were poor. Having to eat food from the garden because apparently we couldn't afford to buy some. Wearing clothes and shoes that were too small and falling to bits because. Once we asked our dad to buy us raincoats in winter he made us wear garbage bags with holes cut in them. Years later I discovered my dad was actually earning a lot of money when we were kids and had over $150,000 saved up. My mum was terrified if my dad and she helped us survive him. She knew how ro handle him.

Great to find this thread.

After meeting and making friends with an Aspie couple last year I have become very interested in learning more about it. My friends are very open about their aspergers and talk a lot about growing up with it, and how they are coping as adults with it. They are 2 of the smartest and most wonderful people I have ever met (and have even taught me tricks about coping with social situations) even though im not Aspie I do get social anxiety + OCD. Anyway..all of this discussion led me to realise that my Dad is most likely on the spectrum. Like most of the people here - he never has been diagnosed and never will (he will not go see a doctor, and if he did he would never talk about anything that wasn't a serious medical condition). We would never bring this up with him either as I don't think he would understand, want to know about it or care to hear about it.

I do feel relief though thinking that this explains our relationship (or lack of). It explains a lot about my childhood and possibly about how I am.

I grew up thinking Mums are for emotions, hugs and talking to while Dads are for discipline, making me do my homework. I can't recall ever being asked questions such as: How was your day? How was school? How are you feeling? So i would be surprised when I went to friends houses and their Dads would ask me things like that. I started to wonder, why doesn't my Dad talk to me? He would pick me up from school and there will be silence the whole way home. This is not normal right? For a long time I thought it was.

As I got older we were able to have conversations that existed mainly around work, computers, technology, tax - practical things.

He doesn't look people in the eye when talking, doesn't really socialise, but can talk for hours with someone about a topic he is really interested in.

He gets incredible road rage to the point of me having nightmares about being stuck in a car with him while he is on a rampage and deciding my best option is to jump form the moving vehicle.

He can come across a being very rude and uninterested so Mum avoids inviting people over to the house.

Whether we know it for sure or not it helps to think about it, its shifted my perspective of him. I need to think of new ways to try to engage in conversation, need to not be offended when he doesn't reply to me, or doesn't talk to my friends that are over, doesn't ask how I am, won't eat dinner with the family.

I haven't read every single post on this thread, but I've read quite a few, and I haven't seen much that was positive. I am a single mom with AS and a 4 year old daughter who is scheduled to be evaluated for it on the 15th. Doesn't anyone have any positive memories of being raised by an AS parent? After all, I know I understand my daughter in ways I would have given anything for my parents to have understood with me.

Hi all

I am the father of an Asperger's child - diagnosed am also an Asperger's - undiagnosed though the psychiatrist that was key in diagnoses of my son said that he was sure that I was as well. My connection with Asperger's comes from my mothers side of the family -- my mothers showed many traits of Asperger's personality as well. In her family my uncle Dale was fully an Asperger's as well - I remember as a kid going to work with him on a Sunday so that we could play computer games (in the early 1960s) and that he was absolutely fascinated with computers - a true geek before there were geeks - He displayed many of the Asperger's traits. My brother is determinately an Asperger's as well. My sister seems to have missed it by a narrow margin as she does show some traits to a lessor degree. Two of her three children I would suspect are Asperger's as well. So you might say that the "force runs strong in our family". My mother did in fact advocate for me as I was growing up and I came to feel that she knew what I was facing as I grew.

The one thing I have going for me and my son is that I know what he is going through - while there are some differences between our expression of Asperger's in many more ways we are affected the same. So that I can offer him advice and shorten his learning curve in many places. I can also be his advocate because I know just how important it is for him that he gets the help and challenges he needs. I have him enrolled into a science centric charter high school that specializes in high performance very advanced classes and I have seen Asperger's traits in many of the students in this school (fortunately my son has also inherited my intense interest in the physical sciences). With just a little luck he will be well challenged and find young people much like himself to connect with.

Not long ago I came across a mother who's son was diagnosed with Asperger's who was beside her self with fear that her son was never going to grow up and be "normal". What struck me the most with this woman was just how ill prepared she was for the task and how much harder her sons path was going to be because he had no parent to aid and protect him.

I am convinced my father is on the spectrum and while there were some good times, he was a nightmare in areas where it counted. He's a weird combination, that I've never experienced elsewhere. An Aspie and a 'Jock'. He was an excellent footballer and played for N.Ireland's under 21 team, which goes a long way in certain social circles. So basically, he's a nerd who's also a bit of a a 'hard man' and 'one of the boys'.
He's quite a brilliant man and has a narrow focus in the engineering and architecture fields, and didn't rate anything else other than maths and physics. My talents were in the artistic side of things. I won awards for art and creative writing, but to him these were weaknesses and not something 'a real man' studies, so his Aspieness made him set out to 'correct' me. In the UK at the time when you got to forth year at secondary school you had to pick which subjects you wanted to pursue aside from English and Maths and I was forced to do subjects I had no interest in and quit the subjects I enjoyed and excelled in.
I pretty much gave up interest in school at this point, so he resented me for giving up on school and I resented him for putting me there. I basically hate the guy and haven't spoken to him in almost 4 years