How did your family took your Asperger/autism diagnosis?

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So?How did your family took it?
My mom never actually cared a lot about it.She just says everyone got some difficulties and challenges,even the NTs,and mine is Asperger syndrome,as long as I take my pills and I don't bother her with my Autism Speaks/Judge Rotten-burk (Lol! ) Center horror stories,she don't care at all about it.
My stepfather (yep,the violent one I talked about) never talked a lot about it.He got anger management problems,so he isn't in a good position to call me ret*d or mentally challenged.He mostly accuse me of using my Asperger syndrome as an excuse to not do chores or stuff like that.
My little brother was a real a**hole on this.He never understood my condition,each time I try to talk about my problems/fear to my mom in front of him he mokes me and say ''what's the big deal?'' or things like that.He frequently call me ''ortho'' (a very offensive Québec insult describing mentally ret*d people) when I annoy him or behave oddly,except that when HE annoy me,its perfectly all right.When my mom told me about my condition (without my permission of course) he went and told me I was a ret*d and very mean stuff like this.I hit him in the face (he's 3 years younger than me) and ran away in my room to cry.My mom punished my little bro really hard but she only gave me a little tap on the wristh for what I did .Fair enough I guess,my little bro took pleasure several time to punish me for things I didn't done .He also once said that I should come work outside to help build our barn because,as a ''ret*d'',I would never be able to get a job...(Of course my mom went MAD at him and he add the greatest punishement of all his life ).He also said to his Xbox LIVE friends that I was a complete ret*d just because I behaved a little odd next to him when he was playing Xbox...He also call me ret*d,trisomic,ortho or he say that I have a mental problem several time,and this makes me angry a lot...
My dad actually denied completly that I add Asperger syndrome when he knew it,saying that my mom ''invented all of this because she wanted an excuse for not raising me correctly''.This of course,made me really sad.He also said that my aunt (who have a more severe form of Apserger than me) was a little slow,and that's why she only work in a Wal-Mart,but me, I wasn't like this,and I would have a good future...
The rest of my family (aunts,uncles,cousins,grand-parents,etc...) were really nice to me about it.My grand-mother (who is probably the most tolerant and open-minded person out there) said she was glad that I was proud to be Asperger and that I wasn't ashamed by it . One of my aunt (not the Aspie one,she's one of my aunt on my dad side) said that she found me very mature and I explained my ''disease'' very well on Facebook (I later told her about how offensive it felt to use to be called ''dieseased'' and she understood well). My other aunt also said she found me very courageous and mature to talk about a subject like this and that I would always remain the same to her and my cousin. My older cousin who study medecine in a college of Montréal and who is gay told me that he understood how I felt a little bit because he comes from a small minority too who frequently get discriminated and stereotype.He finally said that one of his classmate add Asperger and he talked openly about it and that he was also the best of his class. I liked that!

I was wondering to know how does your family perceive it?

How did the world take Ricky Martin declaring he was gay?

Who's Ricky Martin?And how did the world took it?I wonder...

sErgEantaEgis, I'm sorry to hear that your family is not more supportive in trying to understand your condition. Your mother's remark that everyone faces some challenges is true only in the broadest and most generic sense. Yes, everyone has a hurdle to overcome from time to time, and all of us have personal issues and problems we learn to work around, however not everyone has to deal with as many difficulties as people with Autism and most are not hobbled by their deficiencies every single day of their lives as we are. I can tell you from personal experience that ignoring those handicaps does not make them go away or 'toughen' us up, as some parents would like to believe.

As for your pesky brother - well, what are ya gonna do, you gotta live with the runt. In my experience, its the bullies who get enjoyment out of throwing insults like 'ret*d' to hurt others who are themselves among the most intellectually unevolved people in any given crowd. The old saying goes: 'It takes one to know one', but more accurately, 'It takes one to call somebody one'.

My parents were the first to find out about my Asperger's, and they took it okay. My mom actually has some autistic traits, and she sometimes wonders if she also might have Asperger's. I don't think they were surprised, either; because I had to attend a special ed preschool for two and a half years because of my speech impairment. Basically, my parents always knew that I had something, they just didn't know what until my actual diagnosis.

And to answer your question about Ricky Martin, here's a Wikipedia article on him:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ricky_martin

My father just thinks of me as "funny in the head," and tells me, "just stop acting that way, be like everyone else," and things of that nature. He thinks one can just turn AS off if they want to.

My mother is in denial, she has a big problem with doctors and thinks any conditions are just doctors trying to get people to buy drugs and aren't actually real. She has OCPD and a slew of other things.

My brother calls me ret*d sometimes, and whenever I try to talk to him about AS or anything related to it he says he doesn't care and tells me to go away. So, I feel your pain there sErgEantaEgis.

My sister tries to be understanding, and will sometimes explain why people get mad at me for my behavior, and was glad that I knew why I'd had such problems all my life.

And my fiancee, who will soon be my wife so I include her as family, is wonderful and amazingly understanding. We talk about AS frequently and she always tries to keep in mind that I operate differently than she does. Her younger sister has AS also, so she's been familiar with it for a long time.

I talked to my dad about it today. He was supportive for like an hour...was even talking about helping me get to a doc for diagnosis, and then did a 180! He comes back to me and said that it was "the devil" and all I needed was "god".

I'm an atheist btw.

I want to scream!! !!

I never told them. Stopped trusting them a long while back.

I just wanted their support so badly. This disorder has wrecked my life in so many ways, and I'm having to live with them yet again! If the only people I can apparently live with don't support me...I don't know what to do.

We never formally had a discussion about it. I've suspected for a while now that I'm AS and my parents always thought I didn't or didn't understand why I needed to a diagnosis (I never really understood their thinking). So when I finally got it's been sort of an "eh, alright then" attitude. Sometimes they take me more seriously when I say something like 'I don't understand when you explain it that way' but we haven't made a big deal over the formal diagnosis. I haven't said anything about it to the rest of my family or hardly any friends.

For the record, my parents are really nice people who love me very much and always make sure I am well taken care of and happy. When they first found out, they were simultaneously very sad because they wanted me to live a normal life and very relieved because they finally knew why I was so "different". My relationship with my parents has really improved since my diagnosis, because now they understand that I'm just "wired differently" and I'm not being rebellious or lazy. For awhile my mom blamed herself, thinking it was her fault I turned out the way I did. But when we went to see the leading autism specialist in our area, he reassured her that it wasn't her fault, that I was just born that way, and she feels much better about it now.

My younger brother and older sister were very jealous of all the attention I was getting from my parents and doctors. My brother later admitted that he felt like he hated me during this time, and my sister thought I was exaggerating my difficulties in order to get attention. They bullied me constantly. Eventually though, my brother came to understand my condition better and ever since then we have become like best friends. My older sister tries to reach out to me, but I am leery of her because she's a pretty mean and selfish person in general, and I don't want her to hurt me anymore.

My oldest sister felt really bad for me and did as much research as she could on AS. She lives out of the country, but whenever she comes to visit, she makes sure to spend time with me because she really wants to get to know me and understand me better. She's very supportive of my special interests and always gives me gifts related to them. This time she bought me an Alice in Wonderland bottlecap necklace and she promised to keep her eyes out for more AiW stuff in the future.

My family never really Formally talked about it. My mom was sad but happy to know what is wrong with me. My dad treats me the same as always. Brothers and sister same way. Only real changes were my uncle. He not is scared to touch or hug me incase I am not okay with it. And the cat lady down the sreet that always hugs me and grabs my ass. She now thinks any person touching me hurts me.

I was lucky, from when I was very young my mum realised I was weird, and even when the doctors said it was nothing, she knew I had Asperger's and made sure I got my diagnosis