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Manguy89
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01 Sep 2011, 8:30 am

I have a brother who is ten years younger than me who's autism is more diablitating for him. I also have good friends with tourettes and his younger brother is alot worse than he is. My dad is the youngest of his brothers and he has as aspergers.. Is this common to get worse with the youngest siblings? How many of you guys have close family with aspergers. I honestly feel a bit lucky because they understand me. Anyone with more than two siblings that are aspies that see similar patterns?



Tuttle
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01 Sep 2011, 9:00 am

Neither my parents nor my sister are autistic - I'm the older child. However, my parents were both in their 30s when I was born.

From what I've read, you might be noticing the theory of autism being more likely when parents are older - younger siblings had older parents at the point of birth.



Manguy89
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01 Sep 2011, 10:08 am

Tuttle wrote:
Neither my parents nor my sister are autistic - I'm the older child. However, my parents were both in their 30s when I was born.

From what I've read, you might be noticing the theory of autism being more likely when parents are older - younger siblings had older parents at the point of birth.


This makes sence age is related to other conditions... Maybe the protein breaking down on the DNA has something to do with it. Downs and fragile X syndrome come to mind



Ettina
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01 Sep 2011, 10:30 am

I've also heard that some parents are reluctant to have another child after having an autistic kid, especially a lower functioning autistic kid, because they know autism is genetic and are worried about having to care for two LFA kids. It could be that parents who have an AS kid and then an LFA kid either don't realize their older child's on the spectrum until the younger one is diagnosed, or aren't concerned because they're expecting they'll get another AS kid. Whereas parents who might have had an LFA kid and then an AS kid instead stop with the LFA kid because they're afraid of having a second LFA kid.

In my family, I'm mildly autistic and my brother is quirky but not quite meeting criteria. I also know two sets of siblings where one is autistic, and both of them are the older siblings (a 10 year old LFA with an 8 year old NT, and an 11 year old AS with a 6 year old possible ADHD). My guess is that there's no consistent relationship, though specific underlying causes of autism may show birth order patterns depending on the condition. For example very young mothers are more prone to birth complications, while chromosome disorders (especially aneuploidies where an entire chromosome is lost or gained such as Down Syndrome, Turner Syndrome, etc) are more common in older mothers. Other causes of autism, such as inherited genetic causes, may have no relationship with age of siblings. (By the way, within sibships birth order or parental age has no relationship with Fragile X Syndrome, but the probably of FXS tends to increase in each generation because each child inherits a few more repeats than the parent had.)



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06 Sep 2011, 10:21 am

my older brother is an NT and I am an aspie but my brothers first born is an aspie and his younger brother is NT.


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06 Sep 2011, 2:14 pm

i have asperger and my older brother, two and a half years older, i believe he has it too, but much milder than me. he has three girls, the two older ones are NTs and the younger one might have very mild asperger. my father i think has it but rather mild and his younger sister is an NT, but there are almost four times more men than women in this syndrom.
i'm female and believe i have midium to sever asperger. certainly not mild.
the only way to find out is making a survey.



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06 Sep 2011, 2:27 pm

If my grandmother and uncle have it, then I say they are worse than me. Just by what I have heard about them. Either that or they never made any improvements. My grandmother has always been in denial about her problems so she never treated her anxiety nor her Alzheimer's when she got it so it wouldn't surprise me if she never did anything about her AS traits. My uncle I am not sure.



abstraction
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06 Sep 2011, 3:22 pm

removed



Last edited by abstraction on 12 Sep 2011, 4:14 am, edited 1 time in total.

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06 Sep 2011, 3:29 pm

I don't think my younger sister could be any more NT.


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06 Sep 2011, 5:45 pm

I'm the only autistic of my siblings, though one is slightly introverted (compared to me, as my family would say) and the youngest has ADD.


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MyriaJean
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06 Sep 2011, 9:07 pm

My little sister is diagnosed ADHD, but my mom and I are beginning to suspect she's on the spectrum and it just expresses differently for her than for us.



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21 Aug 2012, 1:08 pm

Not always the youngest brother is the one who has got the most severe autism form; for example, my older brother has severe autism, while I have AS and Tourette's, both medium-mild.


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Rattus
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21 Aug 2012, 1:33 pm

I'm the eldest and the only one on the spectrum, both siblings are younger and extremely outgoing and sociable..they are pretty much polar opposites to me and I wish I could be them and not me. The only person in my family I believe is on the spectrum (she's not diagnosed) is my paternal aunt.



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22 Aug 2012, 10:44 am

I'm the only one in our bucket of 4 who is on the spectrum.

It goes kinda like this

Oldest sis (Bipolar)
2nd sis (NT)
Me (AS)
Younger sis (NT)

Afaik neither of my parents are on the spectrum. However, there seems to be an intertwining theme between autism and bipolar when it comes to genetics. I think they're related somewhere.

It's been speculated that my paternal grandfather (who was a deadbeat, passed in 2003) had AS with the way he behaved, it's been speculated that my maternal grandmother (who was alcoholic, passed when my mom was 15) was bipolar. According to my mom, she had an aunt who seemed LFA, but this was many years before people got diagnosed.

I have a birthdaughter who is nonverbal LFA, my bf is bipolar II, his dad is bipolar I.

Afaik, my parents had me when they were 27ish. Bf and I had our birthdaughter at 20.



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22 Aug 2012, 12:00 pm

I know a family of 5 kids, and 3 of them all have different things wrong with them, but none seem to be Autistic. Well, I always thought the oldest had Aspie traits because all through school she was always a bit strange and I could relate to her in a lot of things regarding social difficulties. But now she seems emotionally able to go out clubbing with girls of her peers, and I thought it was signifficantly common in Aspies to avoid dressing up like a tart and going to noisy bars all night with other people of their age, not to mention the anxiety and the difficulties of it all. So she can't can't be an Aspie. The second one was a year below us at school and he was NT. But the youngest 3 a seem to have some condition; one has Epilepsy and comes across as socially awkward and is prone to being bullied (but I don't think she has AS). The second one has dyslexia and Dyspraxia. And the youngest has ADHD.

I am the youngest, my older brother seems normal but suffers depression and has some strange ways, but everybody's different I suppose and he is not Aspie. My mum and dad seem OK, and, unfortunately, I am the only Aspie in my family. Well, I am the only non-NT in my family, nobody else even has the slighest of a condition, all seem to be good examples of NTs.


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22 Aug 2012, 1:23 pm

Father: Classic autism (Probable, undiagnosed)
Mother: Asperger's (Probable, undiagnosed)
Little sister: Possibly PDD-NOS, possibly just introverted NT with autistic traits, hyperlexia, and giftedness.
Me: PDD-NOS; classic autism in childhood; looks a lot like Asperger's currently.

So... yeah, there's a lot of us. But unlike the OP, ironically, I was never "understood" by my parents. My dad died when I was little and my mom has always put my "bad behavior" down to a lack of a strong man in the house. She would marry guys that seemed like they knew how to handle things; they just abused me and sometimes my mom. She knew I was autistic--she's an occupational therapist who has worked with autistic kids--but she believed that it wouldn't help me to label me autistic, so she labeled me lazy, rebellious, and immature instead. I finally got a proper evaluation when I left the house and eventually ended up in a mental ward; soon after, a psychiatric nurse-practitioner with an autistic son recognized my own symptoms and I got a proper evaluation. So I had to put up with my mom's belief that I couldn't possibly be disabled, leave the house before I was ready to be on my own, and am now struggling to stay independent.

You're lucky, OP. Having parents who know and understand that you're autistic, and don't mind that you are, is a big step in the right direction.


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