I want a baby but not Autistic baby

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Eh. KIDS take over your life, and have meltdowns if the world doesn't revolve around them.

I'm talking NT kids here. NONE of my kids (4) qualify for an ASD diagnosis; I have dealt with A LOT of infant/toddler/preschooler/grade schooler/preteen (and now starting on teenager) meltdowns. LOTS and LOTS and LOTS. When my angelic NT oldest was a toddler, I carried a book in the diaper bag. When she melted down in the middle of a store, I would move her out of the middle of the aisle, restrain her, pull out my book, and wait for the screaming to stop. Eventually she learned that she was better off to reason/negotiate with Mommy...

...and she still sometimes lost control. This is the same child who I almost got into a fistfight with in a parking lot at the age of 8. We were taking a friend to the airport and stopped for ice cream. She saw a park and wanted to go. I said maybe on the way home. She started kicking the back of my seat hard enough to make the car swerve. After the third warning, I pulled over, hauled her out, and spanked her-- and she took a swing at me. My friend and I stuffed her back into the car; it was a couple of weeks before I did anything nice for that kid again.

The same kid, last week, threw a screaming door-slamming fit because I told her that she MUST wear some form of sanitary protection when she is menstruating. NOT KIDDING. The child has been evaluated-- she has no behavioral or developmental disability of any kind.

Anyone who says that properly-parented NT children do not have regular meltdowns doesn't spend much time around kids. Sorry, but it's the truth.

I have NEVER seen a child who does not blow up if it doesn't get its way, and although it gets better with NT kids after about 4or 5, it doesn't end. I have, though, seen lots of parents that will either verbally/emotionally (and behind closed doors physically) abuse their kids, or else engage in huge amounts of pacification and bribery, in order to make sure they don't do it where other people can see.

They ALL do it. Eventually they learn that melting down gets you nowhere, and that not melting down might actually get you somewhere, and then they learn to control it. Autistic kids, and ADHD kids, and Downs kids, and ODD kids, and GAD kids (alphabet soup ad infinitum) just take more meltdowns, and more time, to learn.

Sounds to me like we need to de-stigmatize children having meltdowns. Do they suck?? Yes. Are they annoying?? Yes. Should the melting-down child be removed from the place where people go for pleasure?? Yes, although I REFUSE to remove a screaming child from the grocery store, because I gotta get groceries sometime, and realistically, taking them out constitutes a reward, not a punishment. But that doesn't mean the child is "bad," or that there's "something wrong with them," or that the parent has somehow failed in raising them.

Kids. Melt. Down. Period.

Even grownups have meltdowns. My NT grandmother had them, my NT mother had them, my NT aunt has them, my husband and MIL (both ADHD) have them. I have them too-- I have just learned to SHUT DOWN when I'm around people, and save my meltdowns for typing on WP (or finding ways to self-abuse that bring pleasure to other people, like pushing the lawnmower at a dead run or well **ahem**).

Think, instead of whether or not you want an autistic kid (because NOBODY gets any guarantees, and at least so I was informed when the very nice genetic counsellor advised me to abort my last kid based on my condition, no, you cannot yet test for autism, it's just too complex), about whether you want to deal with ANY kid in the perfectionistic, bigoted, selfish, judgmental, convenience-worshipping society in which we currently live.

I might adopt.

I have a love-hate thing with small kids. They agitate me like anything when I'm stuck on a bus with one screaming or in a shop near one, but I still find them interesting and would love to have one of my own. A few years ago when my cousin was still little, I adored him so much and babysitted him a lot, and he was like any other toddler. And I loved him and seemed to have more patience with him, even when he was being loud or even having a tantrum. But if I see somebody else's kid having a tantrum out in public, I have to walk away. I just can't bear it.

But when I done some work experience at a preschool for 6 months, I really enjoyed it and found the children interesting to work with. They were aged 2 to 4. I got so used to the noise of children that I didn't even get upset when hearing kids in shops or on buses. And my favourite one there was actually the youngest and most tantrum-prone one there. I often wished I was his mother or sister, and could take him home, cuddle him, read him bedtime stories, take him out in his pushchair, and all the other mother stuff.

I do have a motherly instinct in me. I just need to get more experience with young children. I've been told that I'm good with understanding people with Alzheimer's, and I am very patient (I have a relative with Alzheimer's), so I think I will be good with my own child. My next door neighbour says she hates kids, but she has one of her own and they're really good parents to him and they love him more than anything.

By the way, how's everything going with your boyfriend?

I do know how you feel. Raising an autistic child can feel like 'twice the work', what with all the extra parent-teacher meetings at school and getting the child diagnosed and worrying that the child might get bullied and not have any friends and then you feel like a bad parents because no matter how supportive you are as a parent you still feel worried and upset when your child is upset. But usually if an Nt child with no mental disorders is brought up in a descent household they usually get on at school and have at least one friend and so on.

But not all autistic children are 'hard work', believe it or not. When I was a a child I was very easy to have. I was nonverbal until I was about 8 or 9 but I was still easier than my Nt sister. The only thing about me was I always had to be watched because I didn't seem to have any sense of danger at all. I could have easily walked into the road or into a river, etc so had to be watched all the time except for when i was asleep. But otherwise I hardly had any meltdowns, and when I was frightened of something I would only cry, not scream. But generally I was very easy, and my mum could take me anywhere and I would behave. My mum was very soicable and was always yapping away to friends but i still was happy just sitting there with a toy or just looking around quietely at whats going on around me. But my mum didnt want me to be autistic and so didnt get me diagnosed. ALthough my mum didnt want me autistic i still grew up into a happy adult and I am actually extroverted believe ir ot not so you cant always blame the parents for whether the child turns out unhappy or not.

Like I said before, I don't want to have a child with ANY condition of any sort. But on WP most discussions seem to be only about ASDs and NTs, and other conditions what don't make a person ''normal'' but don't make them on the spectrum seem to get forgotten, as though there are only two different types of people on this planet. It's a bit like when I think of countries, I mostly think about the UK and the USA, and forget about France and Spain and Poland, and also countries people don't mention often, like Greenland. But anyway back to the point, yeah I don't want a child with any condition at all, I want a happy, healthy child, but I'm just talking about Autism here because it seems to many parents on the spectrum have kids on the spectrum, as if it comes from quite a strong gene.

It's like my uncle really wanted a daughter, but he had sons instead, and still wishes he had had a little girl. But just because he didn't get a girl, doesn't mean he loves his sons any less. He's proud of his sons, would do anything for them, and doesn't know what he would do if he hadn't of had them, and he just loves them to bits and is a very loving father to them and they love him and are as happy as families should be. That's the same way I feel about a child. I would still love the child whether it's NT or Autistic or Down's or Cerebral Palsy or anything, and whatever the child turns out like, it will still be my child and I would love it no matter what. But while the child does not exist in this world, and I'm just thinking of having one (not planning on having one, just thinking about having one in the future) I prefer to have an NT child - yes and also physically healthy. I'm not saying having an NT child means no worry for the parents, because all decent parents worry about their children and often run into problems with them at some point, like going with the wrong crowd, having an injury (like breaking a leg), etc. But with an Autistic child, the problems are more unique and some parents feel alone and feel like there's no outside support. My mum felt like that a few times when I was a teenager. We suddenly got signed off the social worker team's list without no warning, when we still needed the support. So she had to chase them up to find out what was going on, and when she finally got through to them they didn't sound very supportive. I really needed that help because I had no friends at school, was failing my grades, and the school said they didn't have any courses for me to stay on another year and do, so I had to leave and I wasn't really ready to leave school because of my disability, and it was a very stressful time. And not to mention when I started school at 4 years old - my mum nearly had a breakdown because I was behaving very strangely and the teachers thought it was caused by child abuse at home so I nearly got took away from my parents, and they were in tears because they knew they weren't abusing me in ANY way, and nobody guessed it was because I had Asperger's, because I was like any other typical baby and toddler. So that was all a big stress too. And all my NT cousins and classmates didn't cause their mums this hassle when starting school. I still feel bad about it now, even though I was only 4 years old at the time.

I dont blame you I was a real handful as a kid my dad likened me to Bart Simpson LOL!

If you aren't prepared to accept a kid who's different, I'd suggest not having kids.

I wouldn't want ANY condition to be passed down to my kids. I once watched a documentary about a couple who both had a condition where their face was deformed (can't remember what it's called), and there's a chance you could pass it on to your children. They had 3 children, and 2 of them inherited the condition, and the parents were very upset. Apparently they don't know the child has this condition until it's about 7 months old, when the face starts to grow into an unnatural deformity. And the parents may love their children whether they have deformed faces or not, but society makes conditions like these unbearable to live with. We could all sit and say ''society should accept us for the way we are'', but it doesn't, and we can't change it. Children who struggle to fit in or look like their peers have a greater chance of being bullied in school, and children with conditions like ASDs are more likely to be lonely at school, which makes being bullied even more unbearable. And no matter how much support I would give my ASD child, when the child gets older he or she might start to want friends and be accepted, and get depressed and unhappy if they can't make friends. I went through the exact same thing when I was a teenager. As a little kid I didn't think about it too much and it seemed easier to fit in, but when I got older I began to realise how lonely I was, and I was so depressed. I just don't want my kid to end up like that.

Bringing up children isn't easy for anyone, and most children are hard work. But I always think that a child with a disability is ''twice the work''.

And I don't hate myself. That's a thing of the past. I just hate Asperger's itself.

I honestly don't believe that Asperger's, per se, is a condition. I believe, in many cases, it's merely an alternative way of looking at things.

I'm more afraid my kids will be NT. I understand Autism. I could handle an autistic kid. But what would I do with an NT kid who likes weird stuff, like fashion and phone calls?