Does anyone in your family have autism?

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I am the only one with autism in my family.
They all understand me pretty good. My parents had training in raising me.
My cousin who is more like a brother has always understood me incredibly ever since we were very little.

My son has LFA, and my daughter is either very HFA or an NT (she is currently being tested).

My father's first cousin was - from what information I am now gathering - an LFA. I did not know this until literally 2 weeks ago. According to some relatives, she was completely non-verbal, "withdrawn", and had "weird behaviours" (aka stimming). She died young.

My MIL's first cousin has a grandson, who is the *spitting image* of my son. He is 13, and also squats on the lower end of the spectrum like his cousin, my son, but has recently begun to communicate via typing. That gives me a lot of hope that the two of them will migrate up the spectrum together. When they met last year, they studiously avoided each other, and wandered around vocal stimming, flicking their fingers to the corners of their eyes. BUT, it was interesting to note that they were stimming on the same sounds, and when one changed sounds, the other magically followed suit !

Imitation of some sort, aye ? To me, that seemed like an acknowledgement of each other even if - on the surface - they didn't seem to want much to do with each other.

My brother has autism, and is also developmentally disabled. He is verbal, but only speaks in short phrases. He isn't the stereotypical LFA; he is very talkative, affectionate and social. I understand him, but only on a surface level; I don't really understand how his mind works, since it is so different from mine.

My Mom was clearly aspie (the more outgoing type) and somewhat borderline. My father definitely had a pair of traits.

In my husband's family, it seems like about half of them are autistic. In the men it comes as a hobby or talent. The person may or may not seem a little odd, although they're always well-liked. In the women, they're also well-liked but they seem "nervous."

I don't think anyone in my dad's family is autistic. I'm pretty sure several members in my mom's family are autistic but were never diagnosed and would never admit it. There's a sense that "something is wrong" or "something is off" but to suggest that it's autism would somehow be offensive. It would be easier for them to think it's a chronic physical problem than just being a different sort of person.

I have a distant cousin on my mom's side who is diagnosed with Asperger's (I met him only once when we were kids, and we got along great), a toddler cousin on my dad's side who is nonverbal and currently being evaluated for ASD, and several other family members on my dad's side (including my dad) who have lots of ASD traits. I imagine some of them would be diagnosable and others wouldn't.

Some members of my family understand me well, and others don't seem to understand at all.

As far as I know, there's no autism in my family going back quite a few generations--on both sides.

My mother recently casually stated that she might be Aspergian. She believed Aspergers has no connection to autism, though.

Prior to getting diagnosed, I had to fill out a questionnaire. One of the questions asked about mental health issues in my extended family. I remember asking my parents about this (as it asked about grandparents, uncles, aunts, cousins). The biggest surprise (for me) was discovering how pervasive mental health issues were – on both sides of the family.

BTW - I suspect my Dad has Asperger's as well. Which is not much of a surprise. Both my brother and sister have commented many (many) times that "you are just like dad". Unfortunately, that was not intended to be a compliment. Sigh.

My grandpa has Asperger syndrome and I have a slight suspicion my dad has a form of autism as well but some things make me doubt it. I'm fairly sure he has ADD like me though.

Yes, that´s right. I´ve been reading the same, and I can see, that there were some cases in my fathers family of types of chronic depression and an epileptic or two. I don´t know about my mothers family, but she was the obvious one of them.

I am the only official autistic person in my family going back a ways cause my mom is into genealogy. However, my dad and his father (granddad) who has passed away are/were at best described as strange individuals. I personally don't think my dad has autism, he functions too well however its a popular opinion here that autism is not a disability so it could be he has a mild form of it and I have a slightly more severe form of it. I actually come from a long line of doctors and lawyer, I don't know how the more recent generations screwed that all up.

i figured out i have autism by reading about it when my nephew was diagnosed. my dad likely had it, too, but having been born in 1927, never had the opportunity to be diagnosed. he self-medicated with alcohol, which eventually killed him.

I just found out that my father and his father had/have autism, but that they are also/were horrible people... like the phrase "being an as*hole and autistic aren't mutually exclusive" this was the case with them. They are still alive, but I don't have much contact with one of them so it's hearsay honestly, but the other.... is not an understanding person. He, in fact due to internalized allistic hatred of ASD people and their characteristics holds VERY negative and out-dated opinions on autism and gets very annoyed and upset when I act "aspie". Not very nice people as a whole.

Although, now that I realize that they are both aspie/autie I theoretically could manipulate them in ways because I understand them better than the other NTs in their lives who know of their quirks but can't "fathom" why they are the way they are and attribute motives and reasons to them erroneously. But I'd rather just not have any contact with them and just get away... that's another story though!

Their AS mostly manifests itself in rigidity and hatred of change, and their bizarre insistence on specific patterns and sensitivity to certain stimuli- which is where we all kind of seem the same which disgusts my mother....

So, in total in my whole entire family that brings that body-count to: 3.

My whole family is BAP.

I'm an AS/ASD person, so is my daughter. My mom has all the same traits but she lived her life in a different era and is unlikely to be diagnosed at her age. Many of our relatives show some but not all of the traits. Same for my spouse.

Both my son and I have it, and I wonder about my father. My son and I had identical childhoods, much to my dismay, but we didn't realize we were Aspies until after he went to college.