Aspie Mother--NT children

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This is an interesting topic.

I have been to various helpsites and forums and have not read anything like this.

I am an Aspie parent with three biological NT children--a son and two daughters. One daughter is 34, one is 13 and my son is almost 16.

My kids know I am different and their biggest challenge is my meltdowns. But they are wonderful, average, caring kids. I do not understand their need to conform to a peer group but I understand they they must do this. It is a part of the NT thing.

It is quite a challenge to be a parent. It is a challenge to be a parent of challenged children. It is a challenge to be a challenged parent of children who are not identifiably challenged.

I welcome ideas. Thank you.

I am an aspie with 2 kids. Neither is NT, but my Daughter has Williams Syndrome which is sometimes referred to as "the opposite of autism" people with WS are SUPER social. They are very skilled at language and social interaction.

Seriously the first day she was born she was trying to make a social/emotional connection in a way that is even deeper than NT babies. In fact WS infants have "the williams syndrome stare" in which even the first day they are born they are looking very intently to make eye contact and to emotionally empathize with their parents/other people.

It is really challenging but very rewarding. Every day when I come home from work, she NEEDS me to come pick her up imediatly, talk to her, and be affectionate/social. She is 1.5 years old and she is about to surpass my autistic son in speech skills. She is hyper aware of sounds and music as well (a very common WS trait) so when we hear a noise she will imitate it usually with near perfect pitch.

Despite their hyper social nature, WS kids tend to also share some traits with autistics (mostly sensory issues), so we definatly relate on that level.

It sounds like you are almost done teenage kids and all. Congrats for making it this far!

Dear Shaggydaddy:

Thank you for your welcome ideas in childraising. Even though I have 34 years of continuous experience as a mother, I still have much to learn.

It must be very challenging for you to have two challenged children. You must be a very caring person with a lot of energy. I have a sort of parental empathy and I see you must have the same or greater ability.
This sort of empathy I had to learn and practice if I wanted to be a satisfactory parent. My social and emotional levels are not on an adult scale so I have grown along with my children, but they have surpassed me in this area.

Your young daughter is an inspiration to many of us who need to practice social skills in order to function in the NT world. Best wishes for your son who has a different challenge and one I am familiar with.

Again, thank you for responding so quickly to my topic. I hope I have responded appropriately to your situation.

Have a safe and merry holiday season. Happy New Year.

Is that a typo that one daughter is 34 and the next child is 16? There must be an interesting story in there too.
I'm a mild aspie mom with a NT son, an aspie son, an autism plus daugher, an adopted leader of men NT son, and an adopted daughter with fetal alchohol effect.
The normal kids cope by laughing at me when I don't recognize their best friends when they bring them over. Once my baby boy said after I had asked who someone was, "Mom, he was the one you told he was wearing an obnoxious T-shirt and to not wear it in our house again." "Oh, and you're not wearing it. Thank you," I said to the young man. The group of young men seemed to think that was funny. I must have violated some social rule, but I thought I had kindly objected to the shirt with demeaning words on it. I thought it violated my home.

You said you were looking for words from us. About what in particular?

Dear Lelia;

Thank you for responding to my topic, for taking the time out of your busy schedule and challenging parenting duties. I am surprised at the number of Aspie parents--I am glad I am not alone.

I do have a 34 year old daughter. I am 53 years of age. My son is sixteen. I was young when I had my first and forty when my thirteen year old was born. I am currently separated from the younger kids' father. Being a wife is far too challenging for me.

I began this forum because I find it difficult to relate to my children's NT traits and the resulting behaviour. I was wondering how someone who lives on the Autism Spectrum copes with parenting children who are NT. Now I find I have no idea how to parent someone like myself. This would be interesting.

The words (anecdote) you shared regarding recognition of one of your NT children's friends sounds very similar to a situation I encounter frequently.. Now I know I am not alone, and sometimes there is humour in challenging situations.

It is interesting that you live in a city called Vancouver in a state called Washington. I must investigate on a map.

Hi sartresue. You must have gone undiagnosed for most of your life, right? What was it like for you in the first couple years of motherhood? Was it different from what you expected?

I am 25 years old and have a 2.5 year old son. I am not diagnosed but have struggled with aspie traits my whole life. Like you mentioned, I am having to learn to empathize and put myself "in his shoes". One of the hardest things to deal with has been my sensory threshold. It's more difficult for me to function when I am dealing with a lot of "surprise" touching (kids running up and hugging or jumping on me unexpectedly) and loud noises. One way that I've learned to cope with this, is to react by kissing my son when I am feeling overwhelmed and really want to withdraw. Channeling that discontent into a distinct, positive action seems to work really well. If you have any more suggestions I would love to hear them. You must have learned so much from raising your three children.

Dear Gwenevyn:

Thank you for responding to my topic, for taking the time with a young one running around.

I was not diagnosed until 2000--and with great difficulty. When I was a teen aged 17 I was told I had autistic traits, when they could find no psychosis or true depression. I was having meltdown after meltdown. I left home in my 17th year and became pregnant when I was 18. My daughter was born December 11, 1973. I have been a mother continuously ever since.

I don't know how I coped. I just took it one day at a time. My daughter learned that I was different. (As she is now an adult with a live in boyfriend but no children of her own she has indicated that that was then and this is now. She is a city bus driver, a lifeguard and helps her boyfriend with his catering truck on her days off.)

The years flew by. I did not make major errors but I probably experimented a lot and read many books. I wasn't as close to Janet as I could have been. I am not good demonstrating loving emotion. I suppose this hurts people who are NT. I almost felt I had to pretend, even though my IRM (Internal Role Model) always assured me I did not have to--just be myself. It is always easy in retropect to understand what could have been done. I use this method when I research. I have limited social skills. I can only read and understand print.

Conversation on a verbal level with adults and not my own children is torture for me, though i talked to my children a lot so they would be very verbal. Now that they are all older, they come up to me to talk and i accommodate them.

As I age my AS traits are even more apparent, at least to me. I feel more self conscious, but unapologetic.

No regrets. I wouldn't want to be NT, even if I could get a glimpse of what it was. For over forty years I have studied the horrors of genocide inflicted by NTs like nazis, fascists and other terrorists.

I have very little interest in men. I refer to myself as nonsexual. I like to be a lone adult. The best thing I ever did was to have children, but it is a choice and not everyone can do this, for what ever reason.

I love my children. I just do the best I can. I try to rational and level headed as is humanly possible.

I hope this helps. You say you are young with a young child. I hope you have emotional support to assist you in raising your small son. Parenting has been the ultimate challenge for me.

I am AS with two NT children, daughter 24 and son 23. I get on particularly well with my son, we talk computers etc
My daughter it is harder she likes to shop and buy fluffy pink things and teddies, when she was smaller she always wanted to play tickling games which I could not stand and it ended in rows.
My son thinks it fun to make me believe stupid things, he pretended he had learnt fluent Japanese and kept it up for 3 days before admitting it was a joke, he always tells me after a while when something isn't true.
My daughter gets frustrated that I am 'silly' and behaves like the parent a lot of the time.
When they were little it was a house of 3 children, now there is one 'child' and two grown ups

Sartresue, you are welcome.

I am retired from child-raising. My baby joined the AirForce about two years ago. I live three blocks from the house we bought for our daughter with autism plus, and now I only babysit from time to time.

Tomorrow all the children with be over and three grandchildren as we hold a family council and celebrate Christmas early because on Christmas Eve I am leaving for Rwanda.
www.comeandseeafrica.org.

Hi, I'm AS and the mother of 4 kids. My bio daughter is AS(age 9), my husband is also AS. My adopted son is mildly ret*d - 5 yrs old and just diagnosed, and my adopted daughter is definitely NT, is high-energy, ultra extroverted, talkative, etc. I also have a new foster/adopt baby boy who's 7 weeks old- time will tell if everything is ok with him. All 3 of my foster/adopt kids were drug exposed/addicted at birth.

I used to have a REALLY hard time handling the sensory issues with a noisy household. My husband still does and so does my 9 y/0. I found Zoloft to be my lifesaver. It seems like it has taken me down a notch, like I'm not quite running at such an elevated sensory level- it's mellowed me. I'm not as stressed out. It's been wonderful with the anxiety as well. I have been diagnosed as mildly bipolar too. I have never really had meltdowns since I was a child, but I would shut-down instead. I block out the world and retreat into my own head when things get nuts.

PArenting is challenging. Being AS and parenting special needs children is extra challenging. I work hard to know my limits and keep my stress levels down.

Dear Jennyfoo:

Thank you for responding to my topic in this forum. You must be quite busy and I will respect that and not keep you occupied here for very long.

I thank you for advice on how to cope with challenging children. You stated you are using medication due to sensory challenges.

I have never taken any kind of medication, except for physical illnesses. I am not living with a challenge that would benefit by regular medication use. My meltdowns have eased since I passed through the change of life, though I still experience them because of my inability to understand and appreciate the NT issues my children experience. I engage in my idiosyncratic stimming behaviour when I experience sensory overload. I also inform my children that I love them and experience parental empathy. My children keep me grounded on this, the wrong planet (not the website). You must be very experienced using parental empathy. This is truly amazing. May i extend to you best wishes for the season and Happy New Year.

Dear Alexbeetle:

Thank you for responding to my topic. I understand you have two adult children who are NT.

The fathers of my three children are NT. Only the father of the youngest two has contact with my children.

I applaud your raising two NT children, but it is not indicated whether you raised them by yourself. This is a very challenging situation in itself, and this is why I stayed with the NT husband as long as I did, in order to provide some kind of NT role model on a daily basis for my children. Now I wonder if I made a wise choice as some of the more negative traits my children exhibit would seem to have originated from him, especially his lack of tolerance for visible minorities. Why he seemed to accept my differences for any length of time is unfathomable to me at this point.

Your anecdotes about living with NT children indicate you have a sense of humour, which I value in print as it evokes interesting visuals. You also must have some patience and demonstrate parental empathy. I appreciate the suggestion of finding commonalities with the children. I have employed this unconsciously in the past and now that I am aware of it I can use it more readily.

Best wishes to you and yours during this holiday season and in the years to come.

As a general rule, people with Asperger's probably shouldn't have children, particularly women. All the traits of Asperger's are the polar opposite of what is required to be a nurturing empathetic parent. If Asperger's is indeed the correct diagnosis, declining to be a parent would be desired and easily tolerated.

I'd like to hear more from people with Asperger's parents who aren't afraid to describe it as the nightmare it very well could have been.

Apologies to the original poster. Perhaps, in the case of your family, your kids survived and thrived, but I think even those who are just extremely introverted or desire a certain amount of personal freedom should think twice about ever having children.

My youngest sister has WS! She is 16 years old. It is very interesting how much WS and AS have in common, and where they are completely opposite. And the combination of children with both must be very challenging at times!

And to the OP, that must also be very challenging! I think the fact that my sons are so much like me, makes it much easier for us to function together as a family. On the other hand, you don't have to worry about trying to teach them social skills when your own aren't very good. Was the fact that they could figure all that social stuff out on their own a bit of a "silver lining"?

Agitprop, I'm sure some might be offended by what you're saying, but you are right on target. I say this as a 42-year old autistic mother. I love my children intensely, but parenting with my colossal need for "down time" (alone, silent), my propensity for sensory overload, and my executive dysfunction has been a nightmare for me. I have and show a lot of love, especially when they're babies; I somehow have infinite patience with babies, and even in my worst suicidal depression, I warm up and my heart melts when my toddler enters the room.

As they get older, it gets harder for me. My kids are *great*, but the noise, activity, disorder, and so on wreak havoc with me, and I do a lot of teeth-gritting, door-slamming, and yelling. I am by no means okay with this, but it is what it is. Now that we know where it comes from, my husband and I are hopefully in a position to figure out what we need to do to get me what I need, so I can calm down enough to be the mother I really am: sweet, nurturing, a good listener.

So that would be my advice to women with an ASD who want to have children: know your limits, know what you need, and plan for it ahead of time (all things I didn't do adequately, because I didn't know I was autistic; and then didn't do adequately again, because I was in denial). Hint: you will want some kind of regular childcare, and you will need a room of your very own. It doesn't have to be big, but it has to be all yours and only yours, with a door you can close and a "do not disturb" sign.

I'm undiagnosed but have alot of the traits. My 4 y/o son has AS and my 2 y/o daughter is NT. I find both kids challenging in thier own ways. My 4 y/o can have melt downs of the nuclear kind, and I find that dealing with it and handling them are very hard for me. He challenges me everyday with some of the things he does. I understand why he does them but it doesn't make it easier for me. Like asking 32 times on a subject, But Why?......or grilling me on the names of all his trains, he's obsessed with Thomas trains......Melting down because something didn't go his way, being abrupt, telling me what to do, telling me to shut up. When these things happen, I want to hide.

My daughter is girly, loves wearing dresses and loves pink. I think because she does think normally and process things normally that I have an easier time with her than with my son. She's less work. I can not deal with her when she's in screetch mode, my ears will feel like they are going to bleed out and that makes me want to run away, but other than that, she's really just the easier one.

Not long after my son was born, I remember looking at my husband confused and asking why he was still crying because I had fed and diapered him and there should have been no reason for it as I felt I had provided what he needed. My husband looked at me like I had 3 heads and had to explain to me that my son was crying because he wanted me to pick him up.