What are the autistic kids of parents here like?

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I was wondering in general how would the parents here who have kids on the spectrum view their kids particularly in relative to NT kids?

I mean, I know on some blogs I read of parents who have kids on the spectrum who describe their kids as being generally hateful and vicious and doing things like stealing things from their parents [http://www.confessionsofanaspergersmom.blogspot.com] and attributing it to being on the spectrum, which I strongly disagree with. And others say that their kids are not generally more vicious than other kids but have a fundamental set of challenges simply due to how hard it is for them to understand social interactions.

So would you say your kids are more or less aggressive than NT kids on average? What challenges do you think are the exact same as with NT kids and what challenges do you think are unique?

And also, are there ways in which you feel they make your life better as a result of their spectrum traits that perhaps they would not be able to do if they were NT?

I have a 15 year old daughter who was not diagnosed until she was in grade school. I will say that when she was in grade school it was a constant struggle. It was hard to watch her struggle with sensory issues, non-verbal communication and a lack of social skills. Fortunately we live in a school district with fantastic autism resources. We tried a wide variety of diets, treatments and services, discarding what didn't work and keeping what helped.

It was very stressful, but we could see her improve over time. It was also difficult for me personally because I had unrealistic expectations for her. I knew what my childhood looked like, and hers just didn't look the same. However when she was in middle school her IEP stated, "She has the social skills she needs to interact with her peers, she just chooses not to use them."

At that point I realized that she was happy the way she is. She didn't see a need to text others, spend time with others etc. She did make several friends in middle school and she is still friends with them today in high school. I revised my expectations of her and we have both been a lot happier since.

I love my daughter and am so proud of her. She is awesome (and she will tell you that herself) We were lucky in where we live and the wonderful people we have had to help over the years. We have never treated her autism as a disability, but rather a set of symptoms. Some of them needed to be addressed (social skills, non-verbal communication) some of them just need to be managed (sensory issues)

I'm sorry my reply is so long and I hope this helps.

My son has asd and he used to have a quick temper and lash out sometimes which my daughter never did. But to be honest I think that was more due to age and him being a boy as his is nt peers are also rougher and more boisterous and lash out more. He's 5 now and there isn't a lot of difference between him an his sister. He likes his own company a bit more often and I also have to watch him more closely as he has a tendency to wander off. He struggles with noisy environments but will generally just put his hood up or ask me to find a quieter spot so it's not like he's having massive meltdowns.
My nt daughter also has challenges he doesn't have though like if a friend won't play with her at school it's the end of the world whereas my son would just find something else to do. He also lies less than his sister but is learning how to do it!
So I would say they are like any 2 children both with areas of strength and challenge.

My son appeared more aggressive as a young child, but it was because he experienced more stress. Once he learned how to self-regulate, and head the warning signs of his own stress, he could control the aggression.

He is definitely different from other children, and that has its pros and cons. He talk on and on about things I have no interest in, but he also can talk on and on about many useful things. He doesn't date or have interest in typical high school events like prom, which means I don't get to oh and ah at how adorable him and his date are, but I also don't have to worry about him engaging in risky behavior. He hasn't been interested in getting his driver's license, which means I'm still stuck driving him everywhere, but I also have the advantage of knowing exactly where he is. He doesn't care how he looks, which drives me nuts, but at the same time I don't have to worry about him obsessing over superficial things.

I am lucky in having him be a sensory seeker, so I still get plenty of hugs from him. How many parents can say that their teenager is willing to hug them in public?

He's funny, smart, interesting, and completely unique. And uniquely my son.

My daughter is warm and loving and I am very proud of her.

I don't see lying, stealing or being aggressive or vicious as an integral part of autism at all.

I have two boys, 5.5yr old with ASD and 2.5 NT. My older boy is certainly not aggressive, I would say he's much more scared of the environment than anything. Most NT boys I see in kindergarten do a lot of roughhousing in the playground and my son avoids that and any confrontation at all costs, for good or bad. All kids have to adjust to change in their lives, whether that's a new teacher, new class, new home, new kids. My son just needs an extra amount of time to become comfortable with the environment before feeling at ease.

My 2.5 NT says hi to every person who looks at him while we're doing ABA therapy right now to work on initiating conversations with my older boy. The weird part is the therapy isn't a challenge for us as parents anymore, that's just our life and at times it's more strange to us having a 2.5yr old who talks.

Challenges for him are both physical and mental. He's not yet strong enough or coordinated to climb playground equipment nor can he ride a bike. He goes to sensory room every day at school and does exercises to help him relax and grow stronger. He needs to see success early for him to want to continue trying anything new and that's probably his biggest weakness. If he feels he's going to fail at something, he won't even try, even in small tasks like putting on pants in the morning. He's yet to get fully dressed himself.

Mentally he gets 'zoned out', he doesn't play with toys like a typical child, instead he much prefers to put the toy on a table and act out every action himself and then talks out loud while playing or thinking. He can sit on the toilet to go pee and can sit there for 15minutes while he tells himself a story out loud and won't get off until he finishes it.

If my house is quiet I get worried.

The challenges we face are learning how to help control these urges and strengthen his core. One day he will ride a bike like the neighbours and one day he will climb the yellow ladder at the playground.

He's unique and has changed me in many ways. I no longer judge the parents struggling with their child in line at a grocery store and I don't see physical disabilities anymore.

He's generally always happy and if what he's doing looks weird to others I just don't care because that's who he is so deal with it.

I have three kids. My child with ASD is the middle child, they are all very close in age. None of my kids are particularly aggressive or vindictive or difficult to control, however each of them requires a slightly different approach. All three of my kids are very smart (the one with ASD perhaps the smartest of all). I am not on the spectrum, but I find it probably easier to parent my two sons (NT and ASD) than my daughter (NT), although parenting is not necessarily an "easy" thing by any stretch of the imagination. I "understand" my son with ASD in many ways, and at least know how to approach him if he is having a meltdown he cannot express. I feel that he's actually really consistent in his reactions/moods, once you understand him and the way his mind works. My daughter is much more unpredictable, being both dramatic and hormonal

I think all three of my kids make me a better person, for many reasons. But I will say that my career path is in working with children with autism, and I don't know that I would be doing that if not for my son.

My child is honest, kind, and giving
a joy to be around
Better behaved than typical children
My child whines a bit too much and struggles academically
I worked hard for my child.


Some children on the spectrum have other medical and mental issues and these are often wrongly attributed to the autism.
Stealing and lying are not part of the spectrum.

I don't have any NT kids. I have a 15 year old and a 13 year old who are both autistic. We don't really fit in here (as they do not have Asperger's), but we don't really fit in anywhere.

Violence: I don't think they are vicious. My older son can be a bit aggressive these days, but it's mostly frustration due to lack of communication I think. I don't think he is trying to hurt someone "just because". My younger son did go through a phase when he was about 4 years old, when he used to go up to kids and push them over and then laugh. It was disturbing, but I don't even think that was vicious. I think that was because he was interested in how people react to stuff and wasn't realising that these people have feelings due to severe ToM issues. Anyway, he hasn't done that in ages, and is generally very sweet. In fact, nowadays, he is actually quite moved by sad people, and wants to give them hugs, and verbally offer them flowers (that comes from a long story where we gave a sad person flowers to make them feel better).

Unique challenges: My kids both have major communication problems. My 15 y/o doesn't speak or use any other form of communication including writing (besides whining and aggression)- he doesn't even point at stuff. My 13 y/o has verbal ability of a 24 month old according to his last assessment, but it does vary at times. He has severe epilepsy which seems to have affected his retention of language. My 13 y/o doesn't really sleep either. My 15 y/o is a VERY picky eater. My 13 y/o has a bunch of other issues, related to epilepsy (he has Dravet syndrome which causes a bunch of other developmental issues). Combined, they have a lot of sensory problems and problems with changes in routines.

I don't think they have a lot of 'NT' challenges anymore, at least not for their age group. They are at an age now where the difference between them and NT kids is very profound.

Impact on my life: Oh yeah. They've definitely made my life better, not sure how much is due to autism though. I think they have made me a much better, more open-minded person. They have also shown me the world from another angle that I wouldn't have seen otherwise. My older son is an intensely fascinating individual. I wish others would take the time to appreciate that, but I certainly appreciate it. I couldn't have asked for a cooler kid, which is kind of weird thing to say considering that he is my severely autistic son, but IT'S TRUE. He likes to take photographs and short films, and they are just so awesome. My younger son is the most friendly, cheerful, sweet child I've personally ever met (I may be biased). I love how he finds joy in small things. I think I appreciate very 'small' accomplishments more due to them as well.

I have no NT kids, so I can only answer in relation to what I imagine might be true if I had NT kids.

My son is very non-aggressive. He is gentle. He seemed aggressive sometimes as a young kid because he had poor understanding of personal space and did not grade his movements very well (couldn't distinguish between a light tap and a hard slap), but he even then most people were confused because they couldn't figure out why a non-aggressive kid seemed to be acting aggressively. He is notably less aggressive than most boys his age.

My daughter is more aggressive, but not necessarily in a physical sense. Whereas I would describe my son as "soft," I would describe her as "sharp." Don't get me wrong, she is a sweet girl and people generally like her, but she has sharp edges. She is maybe a bit more aggressive than most girls her age.




My views on this change. Sometimes daily. Some days they seem to have the same challenges as their peers, only more exaggerated. Sometimes they seem to have totally different challenges. In general, I'd say my son's challenges are rooted mostly in failures related to non-verbal communication (he is diagnosed with NLD). He has some issues with motor planning and visual-spatial issues which are not common in NT kids. He is 13, for example, and has never been able to master riding a bike. He also would not be able to find his way to our house if we dropped him off 2 blocks away.

My daughter seems to have more difficulty with perspective taking, which can lead to misunderstandings in her friendship group. She, for example, tends to think others have ill intentions when they do something she doesn't like or expect, whereas she cannot understand why people "misperceive" her moody outbursts. She thinks they should know it has nothing to do with them and not be bothered, when to everyone around her, it appears she is lashing out personally. She can see things from multiple perspectives when they don't involve her, but when they involve her, she can only see things from her own perspective. She also suffers from selective mutism, which is not something NT kids deal with.



My life is definitely better because of them. Without them, I would have never recognized what was "wrong" with me. I would have spent the rest of my life feeling like a failure because I could never get it "quite right." They make my life better because I feel a deep connection to them, not in spite of their differences, but because of them. We "get" each other, and I often feel like we have an invisible thread between us that other people don't have. They also forced me to learn lessons that I had previously avoided. Such as advocacy, patience, and unconditional love. I think that most people who know me would say that I have always had those three things, but it has only been through parenting my kids that I feel like it is "real." I feel like before them, I was only playing the part. Now I get it. They have also taught me how to enjoy the little things in life, things that I am pretty sure parents of typical kids don't really notice, because they are taken for granted.

I know a lot of people may say it, but I wholeheartedly mean it when I say I wouldn't change a thing.

Now, things are going fairly well for both of them right now, so it is easy to revel in our shared weirdness and see us as set apart in a special way. It is much more difficult when they are struggling with something. When they struggle, I hurt. Moreso when their struggles are due to the ignorance of others. I have always said they will be held back by the ignorance of others more than they will ever be held back by their own deficits. But for right now, things are "good," so I feel pretty enthusiastic and happy. Mostly because it is easy to feel that way now. It is harder to continue to feel that way when we hit a rough patch and in my 13+ years of parenting atypical kids, I know that the smooth parts are always interrupted by rough patches. It is the way it goes. But even when things are hard, I wouldn't change them. Just the world around them

I'd say my son is totally non-aggressive, I've never seen him purposefully hit anyone out of anger or aggression. He can however seem rude, say if someone is blocking the entrance to a piece of equipment on the playground he will just go around them, as if they do not exist but even then he doesn't shove them or anything.

If someone takes one of his toys he will take it back, that is about the only aggression I've seen.

I've also never seen him do something out of spite or malice or to annoy someone, in fact he generally wants to do things the "right" way he just doesn't know how sometimes.

As an example a neighbor child who is NT and two will ask for some object another child is looking at, and then throw it down the hill into an inaccessible spot just to aggravate and annoy. I've never seen my son do anything like that.

Basically for my son other people or kids are total non-entities, he will ignore them if possible. I totally can get that and empathize.

Good to see this discussion of autistic kids appearing or being vicious, hateful etc.
My younger boy, 4yo, 3rd of 4 kids altogether and diagnosed ASD, does give that impression sometimes, especially to his older brother and to my better half, which makes things quite tough for her sometimes; less so with me.

My take is that:
- he does not yet have a good understanding of what kind of touch / physical contact other people enjoy / don't enjoy
- when he gets a negative reaction from someone (e.g. after poking his finger at them) he finds it hard to accept that and try something else / someone else / find something else to do - I need to show him
- The phrase "Accumulation of resentments" (as used by forum member eikonabridge, e.g. here) rings very true - particularly re. people that he has had a number of not-so-successful interactions with, and not many positive interactions to neutralize those.
- he does not yet understand concepts like "mine", "his/hers" or personal space
- of course being non-verbal compounds all of the above.

Of course, the alternative theory, the one that says "he's just being an a-hole" is equally plausible. But here's the point, if you're an engineer rather than a scientist, theories are just mental tools that help you solve specific problems. Having a concrete goal such as "I want my son to have fun and not hurt others" means that the endeavour I'm engaged in with my son is more akin to engineering than to science - so I use the theory that gives the best results, without regard to whether it is the most scientifically "correct" one.

(Geeky example: Newtonian physics. It's basically obsolete, but it has the great advantage of being simple enough for me to actually understand and use, and since I never really move at near-light speed or operate nuclear reactors, it covers everything that I need. So, with all due respect to Einstein et al, Newtonian physics is the right tool for me, even though there are newer better theories that can explain and predict more phenomena more accurately.)

I find I make most progress with my son when I view problematic behaviour as either just lack of awareness, or failed attempts at communication, and then try to address those, rather than (even in my own head) using judgmental terminology like "he is being vindictive" or such. Even when that latter theory sometimes seems equally plausible
One tool that has helped me no end is Marshall Rosenberg's "Nonviolent Communication". There are videos of his workshops on Youtube. YMMV but it did a lot of good for me.

I would not say my daughter is more aggressive. At all. However, she is more reactive and negative. She perceives language negatively much of the time. She cannot determine mood or intent from tone or inflection and so she defaults to interpreting things negatively. This might just be a phase or some kind of defensive maneuvering.
Because of this she can be verbally terse or sound angry to everyone. Which they perceive as aggressive. And most people become defensive or angry when presented with someone who appears angry or terse. So it can be a bit of a cycle. So then, my daughter withdraws and stops trying to interpret or interact. It's a really frustrating way to live I am sure.

I have one ASD kid and 1 NT kid (and I am ASD also).

I wouldn't say my ASD kid is "more violent", but I can certainly see how he would be interpreted that way because he is less predictable, more dramatic, and louder when something bothers him. He also seems to think the world is out to get him and interprets others as being more hostile towards him. All of this gives off a vibe of more violent. However, past his toddler years, he's never hit or hurt anyone. And he cares deeply for other people and the earth.

I'm a teen with autism and I find that autistic children tend to be more short tempered and can struggle socially but are far more loyal and honest than most none autistic children.