ever wonder where your autism came from?

Post Reply New Topic

The only thing that I can think of is probably my parent's age when they had me. Maybe the genetics made my brain different from most, I don't know. I mean none of my relatives have any mental disorders that I know of (unless they are good at hiding it).

No one in my family has been diagnosed with autism but I think it runs on both sides of the family. My mom and her brother in particular seem to be textbook examples of Aspergers.

On my dad's side it seems like it goes back and forth between low IQ and high IQ. On my mom's side there are more ADHD traits.

No matter how you label any of it, just looking at the kinds of traits that run in my family, there was no way I could have been normal.

All my family members including my mother and father where all NT's with great social circles and good working careers and all had an IQ of about 90 and no known history of mental disorders of any kind. Then here I am born as the autistic freak(black sheep) of the family with an IQ of about 154. How the hell do I get ASD from a family that had never had mental disorders of any kind in our history.

Identical or fraternal?

Fraternal twin of an autistic = 3-5% chance of being autistic (same as other siblings)

Identical twin of an autistic = 90% chance of being autistic

There's a strong genetic component to autism. For me, it's on the maternal side. I had an uncle and aunt who were both very low functioning autistic, and my mother was HFA, and I strongly believe that my sister is, too.

Personally, I seem to have inherited whatever NT traits I have from my father's lineage, and because I was talking well before age 1, and reading simple words aloud by age 2 (according to my parents, of course) I see myself as Asperger's with a mix of NT traits. I have searched my memory about my father's aunts, siblings and cousins, and see no evidence of any autistic traits in any of them. He lost his parents at age 10 in a car accident, so all I have to go on are his maternal aunts.

Genetics is a complicated subject. We are a collection of genes, that have both dominant and recessive alleles. Take blood type. The allele for type-O blood is always recessive, yet, it's the most common blood type in the world.

Ashkenazi Jews and some other Eastern European peoples, notably Finns, can be carriers of the recessive allele for a congential disease known as Tay-Sachs. If both parents are carriers of the recessive allele, there's a one in four chance that any given child of theirs will develop Tay-Sachs and die in early childhood, most always before age 10. My wife is of Finnish ancestry, and the Tay Sachs gene runs in her maternal line. One of her cousins, and one child and grandchild of other cousins, died of Tay-Sachs.

I don't know the genetics of autism well enough to say much more about autism specifically.

Because God wanted it for me, also from fetal distress with complications and extremely low birth weight.

I think mine came from a fall my mom took when she was pregnant with me (she miscarried my twin). I think that because there is nobody else that I know of in my family that had it, in fact the they are all very social and successful. But then I barely knew anybody on my dad's side, so maybe there were some there.

Mum - doesn't really have any friends. She's got no empathy, was unable to be empathetic or sympathetic towards me or my brother growing up
Mum's dad - Sick f**k who doesn't know the rules of society
Mum's mum - Probably NPD/HPD, I dunno, she's got no remorse and used to sleep around a lot pre 1970s, married 3 times.
Mum's sister - Possibly AS. She's always been reserved, quiet, doesn't say much, just says "yeah" to everything, doesn't see anyone except when she works, she was the oddball out of her siblings (my mum is the youngest of 5, she has 2 brothers, 2 sisters, so 3 girls and 2 boys)

Dad - Most likely AS, or some kind of personality disorder. He's racist, he doesn't know how to talk to people, angry, he sucks his thumb, eats his bogies, bites his toenails, he's a massive kid. Also very abusive, so I'm now f****d up with BPD because of it.
Dad's mum - Agoraphobia, again possibly AS. She doesn't know how to talk to people, a fuss is made about her, etc.
Dad's dad - We don't know his history, my dad was the result of an unwanted physical relationship...

Cousins on mum's side - 4 are possibly AS or ADHD. 1 cousin is DEFINITELY AS, no doubt about it. Another has eating disorder history, self harm, generally again very reserved, quiet, doesn't want to deal with society etc. I don't ever remember her having friends or anything.

That's about the only stretch I can think of in terms of AS traits.

My mom miscarried my twin too... I've never known anyone else that's happened to.

My dad defiantly my dad.

Pretty sure mine comes from my parents.

Me neither! It's weird right, cause you always wonder what it would have been like.

I've got a cousin on my mom's side with HFA, but other than that I think I'm the only person in the family on the spectrum. My maternal grandmother had epilepsy which I know often goes hand-in-hand with autism, but I'm fairly positive that she didn't have it- she did have undiagnosed mental health issues though (depression and possible bipolar), and I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if that's where my own issues with mental illness came from.

As far as how I ended up with AS, I have a fairly strong inkling that it has something to do with possible brain trauma sustained at birth. I was in the breach position so they had to turn me around, and then during the actual delivery they had to use forceps. My mom says that if she could do it all over again she would have had a C-section to bypass that mess altogether. It's kind of frustrating sometimes to think that my AS could have possibly been avoided and that I wouldn't have had to deal with all the pain and hardship I've been through, but at the same time it's a relief to know that mine might not be genetic in the event that I end up having kids down the line. At least that's how I try to look at it...

I imagine mine is because of brain damage while i was being born.

Since i had the birth cord around my neck and was starting to turn blue and dying.

Kinda sucks to think, that if the stupid nurses had taken action, and my mother hadn been lying their in pain forever, i might actually have been not as stupid. but what can you do. Good start to life.

OHH!! ! Am I the only one in the whole world who has no reason behind my Asperger's (a.k.a. curse)???

It seems everybody who posted in this thread either had complications at birth, or were born prematurely, or were born an unhealthy baby, or were very light in weight, or had older parents, or has a lot of relatives with Autism or Asperger's.

I had NONE of those. There's NO reason for me to be born with this f*****g s**t, and yet I was. Why am I so UNLUCKY???????????????????????????????????????????????????! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !