When two aspies makes kids how do the children turn out?

Post Reply New Topic

Is there a significant higher degree of low functioning asperger, full blown autism or other problems associated with two aspies making kids?

Only luck, or a geneticist would tell. I would suggest going to a geneticist. You can have a LFA, HFA, AS or even NT kids. I would go to a geneticist though because I don't like taking chances for things like this.

I don't mind having NT or spectrum kids. The only thing about NT children though is that besides how they are wired, I might get jealous of them getting dates sooner than I did.

This is something where your essentially at the mercy of probabilities. But the probabilities might be skewed.

I remember there being attention around the number of cases in Silicon Valley.

Both my parents appear to me to be AS, especially my mother. I have two siblings, one with a different father. My sister and I (from same Aspie father) appear to be AS (I have self-diagnosed, sister not) although my sister a bit less so. The other sibling with different father, same mother, does not seem to have AS. He is quite social and outgoing, but has an unusual personality. I have asked both my parents, and neither recalls anyone in the extended family who has severe autism. That is the only data I have to offer.

having 2 AS parents will greatly increase the chance of their child being on the spectrum, but to my knowledge, there is no known link between the functioning levels of parents and kids on the spectrum; just as two NTs can have an LFA child, two LFAs can have an NT child, and any combination in between is also possible

I am diagnosed with Asperger's and far more severe than my husband but we believe that he is also an Aspie. Together we have a son with Asperger's and a daughter with classic Autism but it is sort of hit and miss. My first husband is undiagnosed Bi Polar. My first son had early onset Bi Polar disorder and we believe Asperger's (not diagnosed), he also developed severe drug addiction which is from my side of the family....skipped me but hit my son hard. He fought and I fought with him but after two years of being clean he overdosed on August 14th 2011, my Birthday is the 24th....I hate my birthday now and Christmas was very difficult. Anyway, sorry to go off on that, Im told its normal for me to do that.
I have two daughters from my first marriage as well. My 21 year old does not have autism but has sensory processing disorder....she is very social and was from a very young age. Worried about babies crying ect. My 19 year old daughter has Asperger's and we believe she has a disease called POTS syndrome which was misdiagnosed as Bi Polar disorder because blood drains from her brain and into her digestive system and legs making her appear as if she has some psychotic disorder at times.

The fact is that researchers really don't know yet. While it is a bit dated, I think the following brief article hits on some of the info that you may find helpful. http://www.actionbioscience.org/genomic/dougherty.html

Simon Baron-Cohen has a theory about this, here is a link to some of his research. http://autismresearchcentre.com/new_pubs

I can only speak from personal experience, I'm aspie and so is my cousin - She and her NT ex had 3 NT children, her child with her current partner who has anxiety and OCD has classic autism. My partner also has anxiety and OCD and we have a child with classic autism.

I believe that if two aspies have a child, the child may be a lot more likely to be on the spectrum, but will also be very likely to be high-functioning and well-adjusted because the child will be much better understood by the parents and therefore be better cared for.

I think raising a high functioning aspie should be alright. In particular if one of the parents has knowledge.

I believe my Father in Law is an undignosed aspie who married Mother in Law who is not and they had 3 normal kids. However, when my husband and I had kids one of two of them ended up being an aspie.

It may take awhile to get a big enough sample size to study this effectively.

They haven't been diagnosing AS in large enough quantities until the mid-nineties (I think that is when it got officially added to the DSM, right?) They may prefer to use Aspies that were diagnosed relatively young, as opposed to in their teens, for all I know. Aspies probably, on average, reproduce older, when they do reproduce, than NT's. Then of course the children have to be old enough to test, and a lot of Aspies do not get diagnosed until 7 or so.

I guess you and your mate could look at your parents/siblings/grandparents/aunts/uncles etc. and try to figure out if there is any pattern in your families. The less AS tendencies you see, I would guess would correlate to a lower percentage probability in any progeny you have.

I think that having more neurological and psychiatric issues in your family increases the odds, but how much they are increased in open to debate.

My husband is bipolar and I'm an aspie with a history of seizure disorder. We ended up with two kids on the spectrum. My older son has classic autism, in fact. However, as a result of intensive intervention and meds for anxiety, he is very high functioning. My younger son is very high functioning with mild language issues and off-the-charts anxiety (controlled by meds).

I love my kids very much and would never trade them in for an NT set. However, I would advise anyone who is at an increased risk of having a child with low-functioning autism to be prepared. Do you have enough money to care for a child with special needs? Would one of you be able to quit your job if necessary in order to care for the child? Will you have enough time and patience to deal with a demanding child? What if your partner chooses not to help with the child's care? What would your partner want to do if the child had significant special needs?

(I didn't ask all of these questions myself and have pretty much made the best of a tough situation. Hindsight being 20/20, I would definitely tried to save more money before having kids, which is my number one recommendation).

It means that the child will have two really cool parents who understands them and their quirks.