Do you have any autistic relatives?

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No one else diagnosed afaik, but I highly suspect my grandfather (for one), was autistic.

Perhaps you can help me do some detective work: He was a professional athlete, and apparently the press nicknamed him “Poker face” for his reticence to speak or show emotion.

After he retired from sports, he spent most of the last four decades of his life alone in his bedroom smoking, drinking and watching sports on tv. He had no friends and no interests outside of sports.

Change some of the details to “The teenager spent the last four years of his life alone in the basement smoking pot and playing video games”, and doesn’t it sound a lot like “stereotypical” autism?

I have an ASD3 second cousin I have never met. He has lived in a care facility most of his life. I believe he is within a year or two of my age.

I strongly suspect my father was ASD1, but he passed away years ago, so we'll never likely know.

I also suspect one of my sisters may be ASD1. She has no interest in finding out.

I don't know of any other relatives

When I was a kid I noticed my similarities to my cousin, and it made me self conscious. Nowadays I'm kind of upset that I wasn't diagnosed earlier, considering she was diagnosed when she was little

I understand though, because she grew up in a much more sheltered environment and had less opportunity than me to develop independence. So in her case she has more obvious struggles

Yes, I have relatives that have been diagnosed.

My youngest brother has both a son and a daughter that are low-functioning and non-verbal.Even though my brother’s family and I live less than 5 miles from each other, we haven’t seen or spoken to each other since our mother died in 2012, when the family broke apart.

I also have a cousin, whose youngest son is diagnosed as high functioning. I have not seen jim in 11 years, at the last family reunion. Last I heard, he is a janitor at a local school district.

My 70-some year old Autistic mother is doing similar: avoidant sleep schedule (up at 2 pm, asleep at 4am), watches K-dramas on her phone. Thankfully she has been out of the house for social occasions twice this past year. Thankfully she has two friends she video calls every month or so. My ex-boyfriend's 70-some year old father has a sleep schedule that is a touch more regular and watches Norwegian detective shows on his phone. My ex-boyfriend won't consider that anybody in his family is on the Spectrum, but ... duh.

siblings, my mother, her mother, grandmas grandma, also my grandfather 's family... easy to see the autism in this line as far back as I could trace it.

Suicides in every generation as far as I could trace it, reports of autistic characteristics from family lore and medical records, news, etc... women under 25 and men over 50, even in this current generation, I have lost a cousin recently.

One sibling who seems normal.

My mother thought my father has ADHD because he kept changing careers and couldn't finish anything. After the divorce he was also erratic about being in his children's lives. On the other hand, it might have just been PTSD (he served in Vietnam).

My mother probably had something going on, but I don't think she ever sought a diagnosis because nothing was obviously wrong. She had few friends, rarely socialized, had rigid thinking, and constantly worried she was forgetting things. Nothing that seemed like a special interest though. Maybe just anxiety.

My mother's side of the family had something going on for generations that was overlooked because they were above average intelligence so it was brushed off as smart people not fitting in. I'm the fourth consecutive generation to consist of exactly two siblings, one of which never married or only married late (50s).

I could believe my uncle is HF autistic, though I don't know him well enough to be certain.

Great uncle was eccentric. I'm not sure how much of that was trauma plus probably being closeted gay. He was extremely interested in some complex concepts like game theory. I only met him once so again hard to say, but plausible.

Great-great-aunt had a remarkable administrative career and got a postgraduate degree from a prestigious university around the time of women's suffrage. She and my great uncle corresponded in Latin, because they could. Her intelligence probably intimidated potential suitors in that era. Maybe she was too dedicated to her career or maybe she was a lesbian or asexual. I only met her briefly once when I was a small child, and don't know anything about her personality to say if she was autistic. However, she fits the multigenerational archetype in that part of my family.

Do you have any autistic relatives?

I don't know but probably.

My mom, son, and nephew are all diagnosed, but I suspect that a few others who’ve never been tested have it, too.

Everyone on one side of the family, no-one on the other side. Do they respond when I keep in touch, no, maybe because they don't know they are neurodiverse.

Most of my relatives on my father's side are ND and somewhat mad... They're all highly intelligent and some obvious ASD and ADHD. Only one has been diagnosed (bipolar) though as far as I'm aware. There is a very obvious weird streak going back several generations...

Mother's side are all a bit boring and normal NT's.

My brother (older) is NT.

My daughter like me has just begun the diagnostic process. We are both very very similar, have our own dialect of made up and twisted words and phrases, in-jokes and weird noises. I am truly blessed to have that sort of connection with another soul, especially with my own kid. It does drive my NT wife crazy though as she frequently has no idea what the hell we're talking about.

What is avoidant sleep schedule? I ask because I always struggled to stay on a normal schedule. I had chronic insomnia when I was younger, and when I was working I was always sleep deprived. I even landed in the emergency room a couple times with a lazy eye and several other scary symptoms of exhaustion.

It wasn't until I had to take time off work and was able to sleep whenever I could that I first experienced a semi-regular 8 hours of sleep a night. A few years ago I discovered the term "Delayed Sleep Phase" and that studies show it may be impossible to alter without inducing negative health consequences.

Nephew: has diagnosis. I've only seen him once when he was little, and I don't think we interacted. Perhaps surprisingly, he's doing well as a football player, so clearly he's capable of teamwork.

Father: was never diagnosed but I'd bet dollars to doughnuts he had ASD. I really dug him when I was a child but later on I began to find being with him difficult, though I couldn't help loving him. He would data-dump about his special interest (pigeons), and hog the conversation, and his eye contact style was to stare constantly at me while he was talking, which made me feel very uncomfortable. Our values were rather different. He'd briefly deserted us when I was about 9 years old, and I don't think I ever forgave him for the pain that had put me through. And his social ineptitude put me off him just like it put most people off him. I feel guilty about failing to fix our relationship and for minimising my visits to him, especially as he'd been such a great father till things went sour.

Sister: undiagnosed but I can see some ASD traits in her. We were quite cruel to each other when we were kids but get on well enough as adults, mostly. A few years ago she embarrassed me by sending me tons of information about some topic we'd been discussing. I didn't have the time or will to read it and I felt terrible about being therefore unable to comment on the info in order to demonstrate that I'd read it. She also got into CD ripping and sent me tons of CDs, most of which I didn't like. I always listened to them at least once though, and was therefore able to feign a bit of interest in them. I have a hard time coping with unwanted gifts, being too soft-hearted to say I don't want them or to quietly throw them away. She lives too far away for us to meet very often so I don't know how well we'd get on if we were together for very long.

Paternal grandfather: undiagnosed but had some of the traits for sure. Most of the time he'd be unable to get a word in edgeways during family visits, but when he did it was usually to express a view that ran counter to everybody else's, e.g. the time we were discussing prices and saying they were too high......he remarked that if you don't buy it then it doesn't cost anything. As a child I showed him my "Bayko" set (plastic bricks for building models of houses). The consensus was that it was a marvellous toy that had practically everything. He remarked that it didn't have a coal cellar. But he was only mildly annoying, and he was a sweetie most of the time. I never stopped liking him, even though we never said much to each other.

Cousin: undiagnosed but I think he is. He lives alone, never had a partner. He's very able with practical matters. Growing cactuses seems to have been a special interest with him at one time. In his workplace he helped a lot of people to get their full pension rights that the management had been trying to hide from them, as he'd got his brain round the complicated rules. We used to play together happily as kids, but we've barely seen each other or communicated since those days. Nonetheless I relate well to a lot of what I know of him. Anybody who uses intellect to stick it to a corrupt employer wins my seal of approval. He's quite a cynic, and highlights many of the crappy things about society that I also hate. He does it without vehemence, just stating the negative facts and I can almost see his eyes rolling in the tone of his voice, though as I don't look at faces much I've not noticed him actually rolling his eyes. We're somewhat alike, but his speech, although intelligible, is still quite mumbly, while I've managed to train myself out of that. And I probably to come over as rather less negative than he does, though his cynicism doesn't put me off him in the least. Thinking about his style makes me feel that quite a lot of my cheerful and hopeful outlook is just gloss, and that if I were more honest and blunt then it would be hard to tell us apart.

All in all, I can't comment much on how I get on with relatives, as I've traditionally taken the view that family membership doesn't behove me to include them in my life, and for a long time my ideology seemed so far removed from theirs that I felt I couldn't be myself when with them, so I've largely avoided them. I've mellowed a lot since, but we've been out of the habit of seeking each other's company for so long that I doubt things will ever be much different.

When my mom stays with any of her children or is by herself at home, she has a normal sleep schedule. When she is at home with her husband (my dad), she goes to bed at 4am, wakes up at 2pm and then she only has to be with him for dinner. She would not say she is avoiding him (b/c she avoids talking about avoidance ); I guess we could split the difference and say my dad triggers her Delayed Sleep Phase.

Probably, but I'm the only one diagnosed.

Two cousins on my father’s side of the family. I strongly suspect my dad’s father was.