Family Member With Asperger's?

Post Reply New Topic

Okay, so I'm pretty sure that my cousin (well, mums cousins kid but whatever...) has Asperger's. It's not just me who thinks this - practically all of my extended family do to. However, his parents seem to be in denial, and their not doing anything about it. I get that it's a scary thought that your son might have an ASD, especially when you family up until now has been as 'normal' as this one has, but their just making it worse for themselves. I'm tempted to talk to the boy myself and tell him what I think, but I think that's my Aspie bluntness coming in because when I mentioned this to my mum she practically forbade me from doing it! The family might come up to visit soon, and I'd like to raise the topic with them then, but I don't know how. Their son is quite aggressive at the moment, and seems to me like he's finding it hard to cope, because I think he knows he's different, he just doesn't know why. I think putting a name to this difference would help him immensely, but of course it should be his parents who talk to him about it.

So I'm basically asking, how do you think I should raise the issue with his parents? I'm tempted to get my mum to do it, she's NT and so much more tactful than me...

Maybe get your mum to mention where the behaviour your cousin exhibits is similar to yours and how she managed it? This might plant the seed in their heads about ASD, rather than bluntly telling them, which may make them deny it further.

I don't think there is much to say on the subject because at the end of the day all anyone could really do is speak with the guys mother. Even then that's risky as it can cause family wars. I'm sure if he does present with *serious* deficits in certain areas, his parents would take him to see a doctor/therapist about it and they would be in a much better position to start the ball rolling on a diagnosis.

There are those of us with ASD that are so NT-like there really isn't a point to the diagnosis. It is because of this that I always say leave out the diagnosis until those in charge consider it a serious problem. So I'm a little bit socially clumsy, most people find it funny, I use it to make friends. Besides, I'm British, I love making fun of my self so it fits right in with my sense of humor and works to my advantage. Had no one suggest I get diagnosed, I still would have been socially clumsy, people still would have found me funny, but a lot of things that went wrong in my life would not have gone wrong.

This is an interesting point fort me. "It's genetic"? OK. "Family members often exhibit similar traits, if sub-clinical"? I get it.

However, I personally have no one diagnosed in my family. I have a number of doctors in my family (my father included) and one person who is extremely intellectual and highly successful in this kind of area. I also have an entire side of my family that is incredibly reserved, non-social (as opposed to anti-social) and who would come across as "shy", reserved or having a degree of social anxiety. My own father died when I was quite young and I never knew him so it is difficult for me to evaluate his personality, or really that of any of his side of my family, as his death sent my mother across country from his family's "home base" back to her own, and contact with these people inevitably became quite limited.

I feel that there are probably other autistic people in my family in the past, but one must remember that such things--in the high-functioning form particularly--simply weren't known about by people or regularly diagnosed before the late 1980's or so. To a lot of people of an age when they would have been in childhood in the 1960's or before, this would have been considered something something more highly stigmatized and horrible, which high functioning people would probably try to sweep under the rug and deny in order to fit into society better, if possible. I also come from a family that does not "talk" about "bad things", so it wouldn't have come up if it could have been hidden.