Happy Times with Asperger Kids and/or Parents

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I asked someone this question in another thread in the General forum, but realized it would be better here. I'm just wondering, since I know people who have Aspie kids and we all hear about the problems in the media - does anybody have any HAPPY experiences to share with their Aspie loved ones?

I'm especially interested in how people managed to disbelieve the pervasive notion that life with Asperger's could be anything but sheer torture (as Autism Speaks claims it is).

And is it easier to raise happy Aspie kids if you yourself are Aspie? How much did your Aspie/Non-Aspie parents affect your parenting?

Both my kids make me so happy. One with high functioning asd and one nt. They are both unique and make me smile many times every day. I think Autism Speaks are really negative and concentrate on the difficulties rather than the positives. That along with classing asd as some kind of disease that can be cured makes it more difficult for parents to have a positive relationship with the children they have in my opinion.

I guess it depends how you define 'happy', but my family used to go camping and hiking and fishing together when I was very young. I learned early on that my tendency to take things too literally could be turned into comedy and between that and the inability to connect with people in normal ways, I was a clown as a kid. Our extended family was especially large on my Mother's side, so there was lots of interaction with aunts, uncles and cousins.

My parents recognized that I was not like other kids, but Autism, much less AS, were unheard of in those days. There was a pretty much incessant campaign to "normalize" me, which failed at every turn and gradually caused me to become more and more unhappy as I realized that the person I am was not acceptable and I was expected to transform into someone I was not and could never become. As I became an adolescent and teen the differences between my way of thinking and everybody else's really became a bone of contention and I intentionally isolated myself to keep the inevitable conflict to a minimum.

Would it have been better if I had been diagnosed as a child, so my family knew what they were dealing with? Maybe, but I doubt it would have made a great deal of difference.

As for my parenting, you'd have to ask the kids I brought up. Of the 2 steps, one was a dream, the other a nightmare. My own biological child has no traces of AS and has been a great student and socially well adjusted. If their success is any indication, I did okay. I generally got on with my kids well because I'm a goofball and it made them laugh, but I never talked down to them or cut them much slack for irresponsibility.

As for happiness, we had the same kinds of moments you'd expect any family to have. We played catch and batting practice in the yard, recorded school plays, shared holidays with family, read bedtime stories and did homework together.

I guess I've never really had a clear comprehension of what the neurotypical concept of "happiness" is. I know what misery, depression and despair are - is "happiness" just the absence of that? Or is it some heightened state of bliss? 'Cause I know what it means to be unhappy and not-unhappy, and I know what it's like to be excited when something positive happens, but I really don't know if I get "happiness." It seems as real to me as unicorns.

Hi, just so everyone knows - it was me that Worzee questioned in the other thread

First off I'd like to address the Autism Speaks problem.

I'm lucky really that I live in the UK so am not subjected to Autism Speaks propaganda like my American counterparts are. I only come across their drivel here on Wrong Planet when people complain about it (and quite rightly in my opinion).

I dislike the propaganda put out by Autism Speaks because it tells parents that they should be devastated by their child's condition instead of helping them come to terms with it. Tell someone who has been made vulnerable by the shock of diagnosis that having an autistic child is a disaster and you only serve to fuel the shock with negative thoughts. I'm not surprised that many parents get so desperate and depressed. How are US parents supposed to develop a positive attitude towards their children when they are constantly told their children are not even real people?

The main Autism charity in the UK is the NAS which has the slogan "accept difference, not indifference". They don't paint Autism as the apocalyptic disease that AS does, preferring instead a positive approach to Autism. They certainly don't see autistic children as sub human or a disaster, and try hard to educate people about the good aspects of autism. That's not to say they are perfect of course, but it is a much better situation than in the US.

I just recently for example completed an Autism parenting course run by the NAS. The entire premise of the course was based on understanding the autism and learning how to work with the child without trying to 'normalise' them (which is seen by the NAS as cruel and unnecessary).

I think its partly because our culture accepts difference more easily - we have a long tradition of actually loving our eccentrics for the colour they bring into our lives. So it is easier for us to accept that some people are just a bit different and maybe need more help.

When we found out that our son was Autistic, he was in hospital for severe compaction from chronic constipation, the consultant thought the underlying cause was autism. 18 months later that was confirmed to us by an official diagnosis. I won't pretend that it wasn't a shock, and that for a while I grieved for the NT child I had thought I was getting. I started to look at other fathers chatting with their sons and cried inside because I would never have that.

But then I pulled myself up by the bootstraps as they say, and took a long hard look at my attitude.

My son has always had a bubbly fun loving personality, and has always had the most infectious laugh - something that everyone has always commented on. Getting a diagnosis didn't suddenly take that infectious smile away, it didn't change his bubbly personality, or his habit of suddenly giving you the greatest hugs. Getting a diagnosis didn't make my son suddenly disappear or cease to be human (as Autism Speaks would have us believe). All getting a diagnosis did was to give us a different outlook on his future development. He will still grow and learn just like any child, but at his own pace and in his own way.

It was during the diagnosis of my son that the Autism specialist suggested that I too had autistic traits, so in February of this year I was given a diagnosis of Aspergers Syndrome. In fact I originally came here looking for more information on our conditions and kinda stayed

This was a kind of revelation for me too, one that cemented my positive attitude towards my son. I've always been eccentric, but then I'm an artist - people expect us to be a bit eccentric but perhaps more to the point, I'm still the same person I was before that diagnosis - just as my son is still the same son as ever. And I consider myself to be a very creative, intelligent person with a great ability to see the wonders of the world around me. My own success gives me hope for the future of my son even though he is more autistic than me, I just know that with the right help and encouragement he will grow up to be a good man.

Although I have Aspergers, I always tell people that I'm autistic, because I want them to treat my son with the same respect they treat me (and I do command a lot of respect from the people I teach art to and the other art professionals I deal with). I want people to see that autism is not something to be ashamed of or to fear. And most of all I want my son to see that I'm proud of what I am and therefore its ok for him to hold his head up with pride (well ok more likely look at the pavement with pride, but you get my meaning )

In my signature it says that life in our house is fun, and most of the time it really is. Sometimes he will pull a funny face and roar at me like a lion so I will do the same back at him and then we both laugh together. He loves to be chased around the house so I chase him (to squeals of delight and excitement). He is super ticklish and it only takes moment to have him absolutely rolling with laughter. but he can also be quiet and loving when he wants to be, cuddling up with his thumb in his mouth, rubbing his nose and distractedly playing with his belly button. Of course that has to be on his terms - you can't just go and cuddle him, but then I'm like that myself, so I respect his need for personal space when he doesn't want cuddling. I also don't try to correct his stims - if other people don't like it it's their problem not mine

The key is to take yourself down to their level and play on their terms (and that applies to any child ASD or not). Play in their world, and don't ask them to play in yours (why would any child want to play in an adult world anyway?).

If you expect an ASD child to 'normalise' and act like your other children you are automatically setting yourself up for a battle you will never win! As one Autism expert who is an internationally recognised speaker on the subject once told me, it is easier to change the universe than it is to change a child with ASD. I don't try to remove my sons autism - I try to work with it.

That is why we have a happy relationship, its not always perfect - sometimes he can be incredibly difficult, especially when he gets angry. But I always remind myself that he is not trying to deliberately make my life difficult, but is actually suffering from intense stress and simply cannot help being the way he is.

As you can probably tell I love my son very much indeed (as I do my other children)

Last edited by grahamguitarman on 17 Nov 2013, 6:33 pm, edited 1 time in total.

This negativity bothers me, too. I realize that parents are often negative about their children, whether NT or on the spectrum, and have made it my practice to surround me with parents who believe in putting family first and in looking for the good in their children. This is not to say that parenting isn't hard work, and parenting a child on a spectrum can be more challenging. But my kids all have / present their own challenges, and remain awesome. My dd decided a couple of years ago that we were an awesome family so that's what I expect and look for now. My dd on the spectrum has lots of good days. Yesterday she was laughing so hard at a tv show she was watching that I think the whole house was filled with her delight. And at 14, she is actually easy almost all the time... but then I like teenagers.
Once a teacher told me that she can tell how good a teacher is by asking him what his students are like. If he says something positive, she knows he's a good teacher. I've noticed the same with parents... the best ones look for the best in their children. I'll admit that sometimes you have to develop a lot of skill to find it, but it's worth it!

It wasn't perfect-- nothing is. There were some epic fights-- usually over clashes of ideology, or times that I wanted to be more independent than common sense would allow (ex. the time I decided, at 11, to solve the transportation problem by walking about 5 miles along US 250 to my friend's house, or the time my cousins and I took ourselves for a walk in the woods, got disoriented, and didn't get home until dark).

But, as a general rule, growing up with my ASD father was an excellent experience. I'm not really sure what made the difference. I think it was that he understood me-- other than being more motivated to try to fit in because I'm female, my AS is almost exactly like his-- and the fact that he was scrupulously fair, he went out of his way to treat me the way he wanted to be treated and the way he wanted me to treat people.

He listened, in general, to what I had to say. He gave me a voice in the running of our home-- something that might only have been possible because it was just him and me from the time I was 12. He gave me work to do (he had to-- it was just us; he was a coal miner and spent 60+ hours a week more than a mile underground) and made me feel capable and important. People say it's unkind to make kids work around the house, but I really don't agree. When I was 12, my jobs were to start supper (thaw out meat in the microwave and cut up veggies-- he did all the stuff on the stove when he got up-- he worked midnight shift at that time) and pack his dinner pail. I remember feeling SO IMPORTANT-- like I had finally joined the ranks of people with value. That was about the time that I stopped sicking out of school-- I remember very clearly deciding that I was "big enough to deal with it." That was probably a phrase I got from him-- he very seldom threatened and never belittled-- he just told me that I COULD, indeed, do whatever it was that needed done.

By the time I was 15, he was working day shift. My jobs, now, were to keep the main living area neat and clean-- pick up stray things, sweep and mop the floors (nobody told him that dusting was necessary, so he didn't tell me and we just didn't dust), feed then dogs and water them if the creek was dry, do our laundry (one day a week), and still start dinner as before (he took over packing his pail when he started day shift, since it needed to be done in the morning he did it before he got me up). The whole mess took maybe an hour or an hour and a half a day-- and I felt BIG doing it.

My only other job was to keep my grades up. He knew I was smart-- he knew he was smart, and remembered that he just quit trying somewhere in high school. So he expected an A/B average, no excuses. That was a scary thing for me because I didn't know how to judge my own performance-- I never knew, when I took a test or turned in a paper, if I was going to get an A or an F-- didn't know how to judge what teachers actually wanted, and didn't know how to ask questions to find out, but other than two Ds in the sixth grade (personality conflict with the teacher), I always managed to do it. I just threw everything I had at every assignment-- it left me stuck staying up very very late lots and lots of nights (it wasn't unusual for me to go to bed at 2 o'clock in the morning, and I had to be up at 5:30 because the bus ran at 6:50). I wish someone had been able to teach me how to go to school-- but it wasn't as if any of the NTs in my life had a real good grip on that either, and it would have been much worse with a parent who was always nagging and on my case about the hours I kept.

I remember, as a little kid (maybe 7 or , taking what seemed like hours to pick out a book (when I was small, I lived with my grandparents or my mother; he picked me up on Saturday afternoon and took me to the book store every payday). He did not nag me to hurry up-- he bought a newspaper and sat on the bench in front of the bookstore so he'd see me if I tried to leave or if anyone tried to snatch me. When I'd picked out my book, I either had $5 to pay for it (kids' books generally cost $3 back in the 80s), or I was to take it to the cashier and then come get him. I guess some people might think this was terrible parenting, but it worked very well for us.

Unless I scared him-- say the times I lit out on my own, or when I got very depressed and stopped eating my freshman year in college-- he was very unemotional about parenting. He always gave praise for accomplishments; he was affectionate and told me often that he loved me-- but he was very logical in the way that he parented. I appreciated that a great deal and he often said that I was, by and large, really no trouble to raise. I don't think that was by design, other than that his nature was to do the easiest and most logical thing and then let well enough alone-- I think we just got lucky that it was a good fit.

I can think of lots of little stories. I remember as a teenager, we would watch the news and MASH together at supper time. We would talk about current events and politics-- sometimes we fought over that, as he always was more of a good party-line Democrat and I tended to make up my own mind. I learned a lot about developing ideas doing it, though, and we had a good time.

I don't know if treating me as an equal and running a very democratic house was really a good idea-- I have problems with other parents (and my in-laws) in raising my own kids because I do not care to and do not know how to run an authoritarian household. It just doesn't seem right to me. I have tried a few times, on the principle that it is an authoritarian world and a child that grows up thinking s/he is an equal is going to suffer, but I'm not very good at it. This also causes conflict between me and my husband, as he was raised in a much more authoritarian home where the goal seemed to be to keep the parents out of your life as much as possible-- he grew up with Mommy and Daddy's word being absolute law, and I don't know how to raise kids any other way than as partners.

It might have been wrong-- but I sure did appreciate it at the time, and also in retrospect.

I haven't read the rest of the thread, but a few points come to mind.

First of all, I think there is a world of difference between how many challenges I face raising my high functioning ASD son, and the challenges a family faces raises a child who is non-verbal and indeterminate IQ. As much as I disagree with Autism Speaks on many levels, you have to remember that they are talking the later, and kind of discounting the former.

Second, every family has amazing, happy moments. Read our thread for the families with the kinds of kids Autism Speaks is trying to focus on, and you will see a lot of triumph and joy.

Third, is my personal. Sure, we had some rough patches, and they were extremely rough. But my ASD child is and always has been the most interesting and joyfully unique person to be around. No matter how rough things got, there were ALWAYS moments of complete joy. Your heart breaks for your child in the rough spots BECAUSE you know how amazing they are, and what could be there if it weren't for the rough spots.

I think there's too much external pressure on parents to be living some ideal where their kids hit all their milestones at exactly the right time and get invited to everyone's parties. I have genuine happy moments with our kid every day and I'm very proud of him.

Is that not a problem though that Autism Speaks completely discount the majority of people they are supposed to represent?
And most of the parents I know who have kids with autism have kids at the lower end of the spectrum. None of them consider their kids the burden and tragedy Autism Speaks say you should.

This is true, I'm lucky that my son is somewhere in the middle, not high functioning but not at the severe end either.

But through my volunteering work providing Art based services for two charity organisations working with Autistic people (one for adults and one for children) I have encountered many severely Autistic children and their parents.

Even though they can sometimes be very challenging, most of the Autistic people I have met and worked with have also been a delight to know - both adults and children. And more to the point, not one parent I have met consider their child to be either a burden or a tragedy, and despite the difficulties, they all have joyful stories to tell about their children.

Yup-- I'd say that's an excellent encapsulation of the problem. 1) Even though it's obvious that they focus only on the most disabled kids, they still dehumanize and devalue them. One HOPES that those children can't comprehend what is said about them, every day, by people who allegedly mean well. 2) Even though it's obvious that they focus only on the most disabled kids, they claim ALL of us in their statistics. ALL of us in their advertisements. They openly and explicitly claim to represent ALL of us-- and, in the public mind, that's exactly who they DO represent.

Obviously, the people who have threatened my family and very nearly killed (or at least grossly mis-medicated) me are responsible for their actions. Obviously, I'm responsible for being naive enough to put myself in a position of them having access to that information, and for choosing to comply with them when everyone who knew me was screaming "STOP!"

But I know what was running through their minds-- the same thing that's running through the minds of parents who KILL their ASD children. And I know where they got it-- I know that Autism Speaks disseminates that kind of "information" (as just exactly that: authoritative information) to doctors, nurses, pediatricians, mental health workers, teachers, support workers, and families.

For that matter, I know where I get the "information" that feeds the hopelessness and self-loathing I have to fight EVERY SINGLE DAY. I don't want that for ANY child, at ANY level of functioning; I can't forgive, accept, or excuse that.

I agree that the way Autism Speaks discounts the so-called higher functioning individuals on the spectrum is a problem, but I wanted to address the specific question asked, and not get into an Autism Speaks debate, either about what they should be addressing or how much truth there is to what they say (although I did counteract by directing to our sticky thread). Point being, I can't speak for the types of families the OP seemed to be envisioning, even though I did share some thoughts on what I THINK might be their truth.

Thanks for all the thoughtful replies everyone! I wish there were more, I wonder if the fact that there are so few kind of explains why Autism Speaks is so successful. Maybe enough people just didn't see it though.

DW - thanks, I'm reading that thread, it's fascinating.

I remember once when I was a little girl. We had this cat. It was a big long-haired black cat named Buffy.

Buffy was mean as hell. You couldn't pet Buffy, you couldn't cuddle Buffy, Buffy did not like kids. Buffy did not like anyone except Daddy. But I loved cats, and my grandparents were so determined that I was not getting a cat that Grandma actually went to the extent of badgering the pediatrician into telling me I was allergic to cats. So Buffy was "my" cat at Daddy's house, and I loved the horrible cat.

One Sunday we took Buffy to the rabies clinic. I got to hold Buffy in the truck. Buffy was not happy. So when Daddy opened the door, Buffy laid my arm open from wrist to elbow and lit out over the hill. Bye-bye Buffy.

Bawling BeeBee. I guess I would have been about 4. Screaming. For. Hours.

So Daddy and I go looking for the cat. No cat. It's going on 5 o'clock. He has to take me back to my grandparents. No cat.

Hysterically bawling BeeBee. But-- a custody agreement is a custody agreement is a custody agreement. So back to Grandma I go.

Inconsolably bawling BeeBee. So what does Daddy do?? Why, takes me inside and drives away, of course. And then he goes home...

...and drives all over Creation until he finds someone with kittens to get rid of. Picks out a little silver tabby kitten. Drives back over to Grandma's.

"Look here what I found. Now, she has to live with me. But this here is your cat. Think about what you want to name her."

And then he took the cat home and went to work. Midnight shift in the coal mine.

That's why he's Saint Alan of Aspergia. Because he did what any parent would do. He was an Aspie, doing it with an Aspie kid. He didn't have books or experts or therapies to help him. He didn't know he was a disabled man raising a disabled child. He was just a guy raising a kid, doing the best he could think of at the time.

I named the cat Smokie Jo. She was not mean, and did not hate kids. She lived with us for a long, long time.

OMG. Make me cry why don't you!

That's a great memory!

I have lots of happy experiences with my daughter. She's very high functioning (Aspergers). Her difficulties are very hidden and, when I see other kids who are lower on the spectrum, or even high functioning boys, I often have to remind myself that she has issues too. I'm very accepting of my daughter's differences. Her behaviour can be very difficult at times, e.g. getting ready in the morning can be torture and she's behind with self care skills, but I'm completely accepting of the less problematic differences. She is who she is and I love every aspect of her.

Here's just a snippet of my proud moments:

Today, she's off to school with 2 certificates to show at assembly. One is for her 100m swimming badge. She goes to one-to-one lessons now, as the group lessons were too challenging for her. She put in the work, so she's made me proud. She's happy and we're all happy. The other certificate was presented to her on Monday. She has been attending horse riding sessions for ASD kids. Some of those kids are non-verbal and this is the first thing that they've been able to attend, as an after school class. I've not witnessed a single meltdown. Understandably, their parents are overjoyed. I'm proud of my daughter too, as her behaviour has been perfect, every week, and she can ride a horse now. Also, on Tuesday, she told me that the teacher had taken her aside and told her she was the only one in her group to get all of the maths right and they were really hard questions. This is really good, especially considering that, until this year, she had been at another school, where she was assessed as being a little bit below average for maths. She's come on so well that she's placed with kids a year older than her and some who are two years older. Now, she's doing better than any of them.