ROLL CALL for Parents on the Spectrum!

Post Reply New Topic

For conversation sake I am a mom to 4, married, professionally diagnosed and have multiple challenges day-to-day. I have not worked in 6 years but look forward to going back to school one day. So many challenges that I will post later if people want to chat/converse on here. I would like to see if there are other parents on WP.

Mom or Dad?
Diagnosis: Professional, Self, or Suspected?
Children?
Challenges?
Employment/School/Stay at home?
What would you ideally love to do/be like but haven't been able to due to ASD or other reasons?
Supports-do you have any supports in place at home, outside, in work, therapies that help?

Look forward to talking to you

Dad
Diagnosis: Self (at this point)
Children? 1 NT, 1 Diagnosed ASD, 1 very likely, working on setting up diagnosis
Challenges? I really do not see any challenges at this point, in fact, I think many of my "Aspie Traits" have made me successful, though others around me may disagree. My wife often criticizes my strict adherence to rules. If I had to list any personal challenges, it would have to be interpersonal skills, but I think I can navigate them enough to get by in most situations. I can "fit in" enough in most situations enough to not stand out in a polar way. My biggest challenges are with my children; their idiosyncrasies, anxiety and drama they create.

Employment/School/Stay at home? Full time Telecommuter, though I used to work in an office.
What would you ideally love to do/be like but haven't been able to due to ASD or other reasons? I don't think there is anything that I couldn't do, but rather, just slowed. For example, I should have been able to finish college early, or at least in 4 years, but ultimately I went back and got a degree, including a Masters.
Supports-do you have any supports in place at home, outside, in work, therapies that help?

Mom or Dad?
I'm a father.
Diagnosis: Professional, Self, or Suspected?
Self diagnosed (together with my wife), though my daughter is formally diagnosed.
Children?
Yes, one daughter 4 years old.
Challenges?
I need my wife to write me a list if she wants me to do anything.
Employment/School/Stay at home?
I work full time as a chef, and for years my obsessions centered around food.
What would you ideally love to do/be like but haven't been able to due to ASD or other reasons?
There is nothing I want to do that I cannot do due to being neurodivergent. Some things just take me longer to process/understand (and otherthings I pick up at an absurdly fast pace)
Supports-do you have any supports in place at home, outside, in work, therapies that help?
My wife is patient with me and explains the motivations of other people to me. I have a lot of time to follow obsessions and am able to decompress alone often. I try to meet her needs as much as I can and she tries to meet mine.

Moved from General Autism Discussion.

I'm a Mum with Aspergers diagnosed by a pro but not qualified to give out the piece of paper. - getting tested for the second time soon. The first guy rejected me on too much eye contact!!

Daughter diagnosed with aspergers for 10 years or so. She's now 15.
Life isn't easy at all. I'll add the answers to the other questions later. I'm really tired tonight

Mum
Diagnosis: No diagnosis beyond early childhood traumatization but definitly not NT
Children?: DD 11 has an 'official' diagnosis.
Challenges?: Raising my child without lining the pockets of the pharmaceutical industry is a challenge.
Employment: Unemployed, could never earn the wage that would make it financially interesting for me to work.
What would you ideally love to do/be like : Happy with whom I am and as I am, thank you.
Supports : Horses. They don't judge, they have no expectations and DD loves them. Extended family but not blood-related. Special ed. and internship for DD during school days beyond that.

Mom orDad?
Diagnosis: Professional, Self, or Suspected?
Children: 2. Boy, ASD. Girl, BAP.
Challenges: Exec Function issues impacting work and domestic life.
Employment/School: Full time employed, never complete my BA.

What would you ideally love to do/be like but haven't been able to due to ASD or other reasons?
I wanted to be an astrophysicist (also was very interested in geology and atmospheric sciences), but I could not finish college. I still love physics, but I need to learn more math before I can get to the material I am most interested in. I don't know if I am capable of this. I wanted to be an artist until I spent time with artists in New York.

Supports: My wife has helped me in ways beyond measure. She saved my life when I was a young man and I would be nothing without her. My employer knows about my diagnosis and I believe this has helped very much, possibly saving my job. My performance at work is weird--exceptional in some areas, abysmal in some others. The things I am praised for and that make me a subject matter expert are difficult and take advanced skill. The things I suck at are extremely simple and considered the most basic. It's a pattern that is hard to understand without the diagnosis, but really makes sense in terms of specific EF issues.

I love my kids and they love me. They are teenagers now but we hug often and share an absurdist sense of humor.
Meeting my beautiful, passionate, brilliant wife and having kids with her are by far and away the best things that ever happened to me. If I am a remotely decent husband and father, I consider this a greater achievement than anything else I could have done with my life, despite my regret at not working on the LHC.

Mom or Dad?

Mom
Diagnosis: Professional, Self, or Suspected?

Professional
Children?

Two boys, one diagnosed ASD, one NT
Challenges?

Anxiety, multitasking, and managing social situations stick out to me right now.
Employment/School/Stay at home?

Work full time. I'm married, but my husband is currently a full time student.
What would you ideally love to do/be like but haven't been able to due to ASD or other reasons?

Make friends easily.
Supports-do you have any supports in place at home, outside, in work, therapies that help?

Lists everywhere, CBT therapist, and an understanding husband.

Mom or Dad? I'm a mum

Diagnosis: Professional, Self, or Suspected? Recently Self Diagnosed. For years I thought my son and I had a psychic link... Then when he got diagnosed I realised I just had the same triggers as he does!

Children? 1 Boy age 6 diagnosed ASD last June, 1 Girl age 2 no concerns as yet.

Challenges? My sons school refusal, awaiting transfer to specialist ASD education unit.

Employment/School/Stay at home? I've been self employed for a while but not able to work due to unpredictability of my sons day.

What would you ideally love to do/be like but haven't been able to due to ASD or other reasons? Work!, I'd love to work again! I worked in China for nearly seven years doing education type development projects.... I miss it terribly.

Supports-do you have any supports in place at home, outside, in work, therapies that help? Stress has put a lot of pressure on relationship with my partner. It looks like we'll be separating soon though hopefully he'll stick around to help out with the kids.

Mom
Diagnosis: Professional is in process, Self
Children son with ASD
Challenges? Severe anxiety, severe executive functioning difficulty particularly in task initiation.
Employment/School/Stay at home? SAH; I lost my job when I was pregnant

What would you ideally love to do/be like but haven't been able to due to ASD or other reasons? Keep a job? Manage normal stuff like housecleaning and bill paying without screwing it up or it being like pushing a rock uphill? Be able to do things out of my routine without the whole thing crashing around my ears? Not be in constant, low-level pain due to fibromyalgia that is probably related to my neurology?

Supports-do you have any supports in place at home, outside, in work, therapies that help? Am currently working with a psychologist who specializes in ADHD to get a grip on the executive functioning issues; I understand myself better, but although we now no I have valid reason for things being hard, we haven't found a way to make them easier. Anxiety is being remediated with meds for the moment, although we are looking at a neuropsych profile to target meds better.

Mom, 37 years of age
Self-diagnosed 1998, professionally diagnosed 2011 Asperger's syndrome/ASD Level 1
One spouse: Husband, 34 years of age, self-diagnosed ADHD
Four kids: Daughter 13 years old presumed NT possibly BAP
Son 7 years old Dxd ADHD
Daughter 5 years old suspected ADHD
Daughter 2 years old, too young to suspect anything but I'm starting to wonder

Challenges: Depression and severe anxiety
Beyond severe social anxiety
Executive function issues in the areas of multitasking, parallel processing, and working memory
Tactile, visual, and auditory hypersensitivities
Keeping up with 3 loud kids and a teenager considering all that!! But we have a lot of fun.
Making myself wash the dishes when there are so many more fun things to do!! !! ! Singing with hyperactive kids is waaaaaay cooler than scraping crusted-on cream of wheat off a saucepan. Just sayin.
Keeping the toddler out of the sugar bowl while I'm hyperfocused on something else. Dammit, she's in it again!! !!

Stay-at-Home Mom. By choice. Sort of. I don't have the mental/emotional energy for a full-time career and full-time motherhood. My hubby has a really high-stress, high-demand, high-input career (engineering), and I was also on track for a high-stress, high-demand, high-input career (college prof), and we got pregnant and realized that, if both of us went down these paths, no one would be present and engaged with the kids. One of us was going to have to make a choice: More than one kid, or career. So I chose full-time motherhood. I like my job. I think I made the right choice. I'm very grateful to have had that luxury; I realize "a choice" is not a luxury everyone gets. It's just going to get hard when the baby goes to school. I will have to find something to do all day, or I will sit here and perseverate. At the same time, it can't be TOO socially taxing, or I won't have anything left for the kids.

I realize that I will never "earn up to my demonstrated potential." That's OK. I really don't mind. We have food and shelter and a way to get around; other than that, my kids and my sanity are riches far beyond anything money can buy.

I wish I were NORMAL. I wish I could go to the "Mommy and Me" playdates and socialize, but I'm grateful they at least let my kids hang out. I wish I could stop being afraid that everything I think, everything I feel, and everything I want to do "is autism." I wish I could go out and meet people and know that I would be conducting myself OK without having to be constantly hypervigilant. Meet people?? I wish I could take my kids to the park without being afraid I'm going to mess it up. I wish I weren't constantly "on guard," always on the lookout for "autism." I wish I didn't feel like the parents of autistic kids in those horrible AutismSpeaks commercials-- except that the autistic kid is me. I wish I wasn't sad about all of it.

Supports: I keep lists for everything I need to do.
I keep trying to train a pack of ADHD kids to use an inside voice and talk one at a time so I can understand what they're saying.
I have a routine for every day; I do not melt down if it gets broken, but chores and tasks do get forgotten if it gets changed.
I have mantras for fighting self-hate and anxiety written on notebook paper and taped to walls, doors, and windows all over the house.
I have an enormous garden out back (even though I feel really guilty about spending any time in it, because self-reliance is my special interest, and it's a common one, and it's not very profitable, and that's autism, and autism is bad...)
I get to contribute.
My husband lets me keep extra food and stuff in the house, so I know that if the agoraphobia gets out of control, we will still be able to eat well even if I can't force myself into the grocery store for two months.
My husband gets the mail, reminds me to pay the bills, and almost never complains about picking up milk, eggs, fruit, and cigarettes. Because he KNOWS how much energy it takes for me to make myself go to the store.
My husband honestly isn't a very good listener. He has a really nasty habit of yelling at me for getting upset or sad (I know he doesn't mean to, he just doesn't realize how he sounds). He has this impulse control problem with saying the things he knows will hurt the most to "win" an argument. He has this impulse control problem with following me when I try to walk away from an argument before I completely explode. He has this impulse control problem with thinking he can stop a meltdown by hugging me and talking at me. Sometimes, I honestly wish he maybe cared just a little bit less fervently. But he DOES care fervently, and he keeps trying, and he forgives me when I screw up, and he accepts all the stupid autism things, and THAT'S PRICELESS.
I keep lists of ways to try to distract myself from depression and anxiety.
I have a handful of really good friends who are good listeners and DO get it. I'm pretty sure it's "emotional adultery," but sometimes I call them up when Hubby is at work anyway and talk to THEM about how I feel instead!! !!

Additional Supports:

A bunch of music.

A lot of books. When nothing else works, I can indulge in escapism. The kids think it's a treat, because they get to watch lots of TV and cuddle on the couch all day.

A houseful of hyperactive kids. They color the world very brightly. The only time their antics haven't been able to pull me out of myself was when I was horribly overmedicated and suicidal. I realize they don't exist to amuse me. It's not something I ask them to do. I don't even think they're aware that they're doing it (except that I tell them all the time that they are funny and smart and "brightly colored" and "are my sunshines"). I think that they just DO IT by doing their own little things. Like right now. The little ones are in the playroom pretending to be inside some kind of computer game. I'm sitting at the table typing and watching, out of the corner of my eye, to make sure nobody, like, climbs up the shelves or gets skewered with a kid-sized chair or anything. My grandma's in the hospital, and everybody down there told me to stay here, and I'm actually pretty upset...

...but not when I'm watching my kids. It's like watching self-narrating monkeys on Animal Planet or something. Sometimes I get a "drive-by hug" from The Boy. He's always been like that.

I'm going to be really f****d when they're all gone. Of course I want them to be self-sufficient and not dependent on us and all that good stuff...

...but it wouldn't break my heart if they didn't go too far. EVER.

Mom or Dad? mom
Diagnosis: Professional, Self, or Suspected? professionally diagnosed with Aspergers and mixed expressive receptive language disorder
Children? boy-Aspergers, girl-NT
Challenges? sensory issues and speech
Employment/School/Stay at home? employed
What would you ideally love to do/be like but haven't been able to due to ASD or other reasons? I can't imagine myself separate from my issues. I work in the field I ultimately want already.
Supports-do you have any supports in place at home, outside, in work, therapies that help? extended family, speech therapy

Look forward to talking to you [/quote]

Wow, what a wonderful response! I hope to write more shortly. Thank you for sharing!

Dad
Professional diagnosis
One non-spectrum (so far as we know) two-year-old daughter
Empathy
Freelance writer, work from home
I don't know what I haven't been able to do or can't do
I have my wife for support. We currently live with her mother, which gives the mother-in-law assistance while we get free childcare.

Mom
Diagnosis: Professional

Children: 2 boys that are quirky. one may be add but no official diagnosis

Challenges: anxiety, sensory issues, and difficulty reading facial and social cues. My husband would say that I am terrible at reading facial and social cues. I think if I concentrate hard enough I can pick up on some patterns. It's just exhausting and I will admit that I get a lot of things wrong. I just wish people were more predictable.

Employment/School/Stay at home: Currently, I am a sahm since we homeschool. I had difficulty before when i worked with health issues and anxiety issues.

What would you ideally love to do/be like but haven't been able to due to ASD or other reasons: I would love to be able to talk to people other than my husband and children and not have horrible anxiety. It would also be wonderful to be able to go into a store without being overwhelmed by smells, lights, and sounds.

Supports-do you have any supports in place at home, outside, in work, therapies that help: My husband is very supportive. I generally just force myself to do what I think I should. When the kids were younger, that included play dates, music group, etc. I didn't fit in and it was horribly anxiety producing but nobody else seemed to notice. People tend to just see me as a quirky nerd. My mother use to tell me to just smile and force myself to do things.