Upbringing (for those diagnosed/realized as adults)

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For those that were diagnosed (self or otherwise) as adults, I am curious as to what your living situation was like as a child? I was thinking about this today because I found it interesting that so many of us can go for 20/30/40 years without anyone really noticing our aspie traits. In my situation, I feel it makes sense:

- I lived with my mom and her roommates from birth to age 2.
- I lived with my grandmother and great grandmother from 2-5.
- I lived with my grandmother and grandfather from 5-8.
- I lived with my mother and her fiance from 8-10.
- From 10-20, I lived with just my mom (and sister). However, my mom typically worked two jobs, or was just never around.
- From 20-23 (present), I've lived with my mom's ex-fiance (who is the only dad I ever had) and his wife and son. We have opposite schedules, however. They are gone by the time I wake up, and in bed when I get home from school or work.

Aside from an occasion a couple of years ago when a co-worker point blank asked if I had asperger's (upon noticing I didn't make eye contact) and an event when I was in middle school when my mom was screaming at me, so I went in my room and started rocking myself on my bed, and she walked in and asked why i was "rocking myself like a ret*d" (yeah, i know, my mom is a real piece of work)...no one has ever pointed out any of my aspie traits, so I never really thought much about it! Not until, in the last couple of months, my boyfriend started picking up on a lot of my traits. I'm not exaggerating in saying that, in the last year, I've spent more time with him than I've spent with any other human being (even my parents/grandparents)...so it makes sense he would be the one to pick up on it.

So, do any of you have any similar childhood experiences?

Im a hurry, but my quick reply.

I didn't realize it until age 39, and have worked with a private (certified) specialist directly for over 50 hours who confirms my diagnosis.

I came from what I consider a very healthy / nuclear family. My parents were both alive until I was age 35, never divorced, etc.

I took extensive drama and performed on stage as a kid (age 10 to 17), I think that played a key role in masking my problems. They advise this for Aspie children these days.

I had problems in school that were unexplained at the time (very smart but bad grades, social problems). I never got into drugs or drinking or other obvious explanations.

0-14: Lived in one house with mom, dad, and two older brothers. We had a stable, suburban home, although my mother had cancer, and was frequently sick.
15-18: Mom died when I was 15, dad remarried within a year, and I had to move in with stepmom. She wasn't evil, but was very controlling and posessive with my dad. He ceased to be the father I knew. I was eager to leave.
19-23: Moved out at 19, ending up in a different apartment every year with various roommates. This was a bleak, dangerous, self-destructive time for me.
24-present: Got together with a girl at 23, we had a son, and currently live in a house together, although quite unhappily. We are searching for a practical way to raise our son right but live separately.

The first one to notice I was different or that anything that might be mentally wrong was actually my stepmother. After moving into her house, she increasingly gave me funny looks at some of my speech and actions, and saw the problems I was having in life. Eventually she recommended that I see a psychiatrist. I was quickly diagnosed with Generalized Anxiety Disorder and Social Phobia. But this was at a point where I was so self-destructive that I didn't really care, and didn't pursue it further. I didn't realize the first thing about Asperger's until about 6 months ago, when my son's mother suggested it. She had previously been at quite a loss for explaining my personality, and the problems it caused for her. Desperation drove her to search for an answer. Asperger's Syndrome was what she found; and as soon as I read about, it explained my entire life. And here I am.

It all depends on who was looking? Was anybody looking? and in the 60's what were they looking for?

My mother does not even remember my birth, so why would she remember my childhood? (as one of 8 kids I was viewed as a disruption.)
(now, she acknowledges i have an ASD and she is a good old stick. we get on.)

0-19 I lived with my parents, who are both still alive and still married to each other and I see them like clockwork every week.....BUT

When I was little, we were poor and they did not get along well....There was a great deal of emotional/domestic instability

I also lived with my NT sister who I never talk to.

We moved around a lot...but all in the same city.

Every summer we would go stay with my grandmother.

The arts masks a lot of personality quirks. I was an avid musician growing up (I still am, actually), and I think most people just chalked me up to "being a musician." Somehow there is already a pre-made explanation for us, and no one needs to "figure us out" any further.

Like TobyZ I did a lot of drama as a kid, mostly organised by the church. I loved it, but couldn't do it now. I don't know if that played a part in Asperger's not being mentioned until I was 37. Interesting idea. My upbringing can only be described as average, with no huge traumas. People did describe me as 'weird' and still do, but not many can or are willing to qualify that statement.

I was raised by both my parents till I left home and got married at 21. I lived with my mother for a total of three months after my divorce, age 27, but I got an apartment of my own ASAP, and moved a very long way away as soon as humanly possible after that.

The major things you need to know about my parents is that they were both older than average when they had me, so I was effectively raised not by baby boomers as you'd expect, given my age, but by the generation before - and they were extremely old-fashioned even for that generation. Also, my mother was a narcissist, my father an enabler who suffered a great deal of ill health.

The upshot of all that was that some of my AS characteristics as a child - my extreme formality, my willingness to obey rules, for example - were positively encouraged because they fitted in with my parents' (especially my mother's) very rigid idea of what a little girl 'should' be like, even though they made me a misfit among kids of my own age. Actually, my social ineptitude got overlooked for very many years, I think because my parents didn't actually want me mixing with normal children (my mother was the kind who'd frequently call people 'common', and that encompassed anyone who didn't share her outlook, meaning almost everyone). For the first ten to fifteen years of my life, I spent most of my time in adult company. (While I see this as a consequence of my not having friends my own age, some members of my family still see it as the sole cause for why I was such a serious, formal child.)

It wasn't until I got older - and was somehow supposed to morph at age 14 from perfect Victorian doll-child to perfect 1930s Home & Garden woman!! - that other AS characteristics (like being into books rather than clothes and makeup), and sometimes the same ones (my lack of social skills, again) were used as weapons against me to 'prove' that I was somehow 'wrong'. They did, as it happens, call me stuff like mentally ill, not right, wrong in the head, but there was never any attempt to find out if that was the case (and I was almost certainly depressed as well in my late teens, just to complicate things) - I was just supposed to 'fix' myself by changing my behavior. I don't honestly think my mother would ever have accepted me as an NT daughter, but she certainly never did as AS. (Rather ironically, the one other person in our family who may be AS is her brother, and she never approved of his personality or lifestyle either.)

My life has a lot of very heavy shait, that's why I rather think "luckily it's in the past, I survived it so I can tell myself that story and make sure it won't happen again"


Be glad of what you live for it has formed you, even the most painful crack in your skin has a lesson to remind you: that it can always be worst or better, but more important: that it is (you & now).

Happy journey!

Hahaha eh...I owe my dad a little for toughening me...he made me HATE wimpy people but I still hate him for the unsympathetic hypocrite that he is. The smallest things in my life (fears and crisis I go through) were either scorned or ridiculed by him even though he is a lazy aspie-like anti-social himself.

Both of my parents were lazy in their parenting and it rubbed off on me. My mom is a total Korean psycho who speaks more like she's yelling and gets on my dad for every little thing. Yells at him everyday. Why the f**k they are even married, I dunno. And then after every fight my dad talks to me in a childlike manner like everything's fine.

They're complete hypocrits who won't accept ANY fault with the bad choices they made in raising me. They encourage me like any normal child one day and then give me all of that "life's tough" s**t the next day. They're always disciplining me for my Aspieness. They still spanked me even in my 20s despite the fact that nothing they have done discipline wise has really affected me or got me to change for them. Their poor choices for me are my motivation for defying them.

Both of my parents were very religious and so long as I was quiet and I didn't get into trouble they didn't care. Moved when I was 10 which meant that I left all of my friends behind and I never formed new ones. Got into two fights at school but also awarded a handful of prizes because all I did was bury myself in books rather than chase girls or play sports. Went crazy at 18 and they didn't realize that anything was wrong until I didn't arrive home that night. Father died when I was 38 and my Mom died three years later, I didn't care and I found the funeral boring.

My brother turned out a bit weird as well but I'm not sure what is wrong with him as we haven't spoken for ten years and I don't know where he lives now.

Lived with my parents until I was way WAY past thirty then left home to get a better job. After that things improved a little. Diagnosed with AS at 45.

Vanilla Slice

I changed schools a total of 14 times by the time I graduated. I bounced back and forth between my mom and my dad and whoever they were dating at the time. Since then I've moved 2 more times. I'm 22 now and I should be amazing at meeting new people but it still frusterates me. Anyways, My parents knew something was wrong when I was a child and took me to a couple psycologists and counselors. They considered ADD, OCD, ect. Nothing seemed to fit. Eventually my symptoms got better (probably because changing schools so much forced me to develop my social skills) and I my parents let me be. About a month and half ago, like everyone else, I read my life story on Wikipedia and here I am.

I lived at home with both of my parents who really never had and still don't have the best marriage. I lived at home until I was 23, and I was definitely the black sheep of the family.

Interesting question. I think my mother is an aspie, or close to it. She has always managed to get the meals on the table and hold down a job as needed, but she's got a whole list of quirks that are VERY spectrumy. My dad has a few aspie traits as well, but in a different way. I was never particularly close to any of my grandparents, but I honestly believe that all four of them were AS.

Growing up, my dad was generally either away at sea or working late. My mom was a stay-at-home-mom for the most part, and she spent most of her time sewing. She constantly sews, and she insists it's because she has to. That's true to some extent, because of her shape, which clothing manufacturers don't accommodate. But it's more than that, I think. In all the time I was growing up, I can only recall a few "friends" coming round. My parents were friends with a married couple from college, and they visited about once a year. And there was one neighbor lady who dropped by for coffee when we lived in this one place. After she left, my mom would always roll her eyes and say, "God, I thought she'd NEVER leave!" In other words, my mom wasn't/isn't a social person. At the time, though, I didn't think twice about it. To me, that was "normal", and I was/am just the same.

When I was 21, I met a friend who taught me that you can ASK people for things. Like, if you go to the store, and the item you want is too high to reach, you can ask someone for help. I NEVER witnessed my mother doing that, or chatting with a stranger, except if the stranger initiated it. And even then, she was relieved when they stopped. Again, though, this seemed normal.

I always did what I was told, and was well behaved at home. I do remember that sometimes my mom spanked me or slapped my face, because I had "talked back", even though I didn't mean to. That was what her mother did, so it was just "normal".

There was one time during my childhood when I had a real friend, and a period when I was one of a group of playmates, who were, for all practical purposes, "friends", although I found them annoying most of the time, and didn't care about them. I mostly preferred to play alone in my room, and almost never sought people out. I see people posting on here all the time, complaining that their family are trying to force them to socialize. I didn't get that. There was no one around who thought my socializing was anything less than normal. And thank goodness, too, because that would have been annoying.

I did well in school and was considered extremely intelligent. But looking back, school wasn't demanding like it is now. I don't remember getting homework until high school. And we didn't have effing Science Fair Projects. I just came home, arranged my stuffed animals in a circle, and made them sing along to my Theodore Bikel album. Or Electric Light Orchestra. I don't even know if my mom was really aware of what I did, to tell the truth. She pretty much just went about her sewing and housework, and didn't try to make me do "activities". We were mostly a one-car family, and my dad drove the car to work. There wasn't anywhere else to go, other than playing outside, which I did a bit most days. It wasn't like nowadays when every kid has to have a thousand and one after-school activities, and daycare, and all that nonsense.

So...any social anomolies, or other odd things, my folks didn't pick up on, because A) They were not watching, and B) It all looked normal to them.

And besides, I'm talking about the 70's. People weren't tuned in to these things back then. It was a very different world. Now, around high school EVERYTHING changed. My parents got divorced, and I lived with my dad (and his psycho-lesbian new wife and her crack babies), who thinks once you are 15 you are all grown up, and should fend for yourself. I dropped out of college-prep classes, and only went to school half the time, and began sleeping around with sailors. No one noticed or gave me any reason to believe that I was on the wrong path, so I just lived that way, to block out the fact that I couldn't cope with school, socially, or academically, with all the crazy assignments that require you to cite references for stuff you intuitively know. I thought I was being "grown up", and even the teacher who I confided in and TOLD all those things to, acted like he thought it was cool that I was so "mature." WTF?!

So, there you go. Way too much for all you ADHDers, I know. Sorry.

I grew up with a lot of trauma, so dr's and my family always attributed my "quirks" to that. I grew up really fast and I was also very smart... no one really suspected anything. Sure I had no friends growing and had trouble socially in high school, but people thought I was just shy. Then I met someone who shares a lot of my quirks and we are still very close to this day. I believe that she helped me through highschool. Not until recently was it brought to my attention and my family and psychologist believe AS is a very real possibility. I haven't sought out an official diagnosis, I don't really feel that it's important for me. I'm learning to cope with things and have great support from my family and friends.

Self-diagnosed at 40.

Had a nuclear family...one sibling. Two parents.

Grew up with virtually no friends most of the time. Social problems in school. Nobody knew of AS back then, and I'm not so symptomatic that it's obvious something is wrong with me.

Harassment in school caused me to get Fs for a while because I hated school. I was taken to a child psychologist to concluded I was being lazy and I should be punished if I didn't work to bring my grades back up. That's the limit of my parent's interest in the matter.

I think my parents knew something about me has never been quite right, but there are kids who just turn out that way, so absent some very awkward behavior, they just presumed that was how I was.

Ironic in hindsight because my parents both look at me at times and wonder why it seems I can never get ahead in life in spite of my working hard to get good grades in school (post high school). Then again, my family is good at living in denial, so maybe they just didn't want to deal with what might really be going on.