Do you have other relatives on the spectrum?

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Just curious. I wanted to see the amount of people on this forum that have other relatives with ASD. In my family, my older brother has diagnosed LFA, my father shows very mild AS traits, my grandmother (my father's mother) showed AS traits, too, and also one of my father's cousins had LFA. What about you?

Oops - I should have clicked non-close relatives, too. My brother, my youngest son - and I am thinking my eldest son, too - he has bipolar but as he has been stable, the bells are going off - he was a high energy sensitive kid where my youngest son showed "classic" signs, probably both my nieces - my youngest niece I would say absolutely - my cousin's little son has autism, some of my Mom's relatives - and, no surprise to me, my dad is coming to terms with the fact that HE fits the profile pretty soundly. I suspect one or two of his sibs and two to four of my very numerous extended family's kids and grand kids.

I'm the only Aspie in the family. I have 12 first cousins, and none of them are on the spectrum. 2 of my cousins, my brother and one of my aunts, seem like they're PDD-NOS, but still have better social instincts than I have, and don't have special interests or frequent outbursts like I have. They're probably just shy and maybe a little bit socially awkward.
When one of my youngest cousins was born, I always thought he might be an Aspie. When he was a toddler, the teachers at preschool noticed he wasn't mixing that well, and he also had noticeable speech delays and was still in nappies at the age of 5. But he suddenly quickly grew out of those when he got to about 8, and now he's 15 and is always out with mates after dark and doing all the other social activities typical teenage boys do. Well, I know he is definately not Aspie, I just thought he might be in his early years of life.

But I still consider myself the only one on the spectrum on my family. I've always wished for somebody else to have AS or Autism (or any other disability, for that matter), so that I won't feel like I'm the only one that doesn't go out at week-end nights. It seems everyone here seems to have at least one relative close to them that is on the spectrum.

The data from this will likely be incomplete since it may be hard to tell if older relatives had it or not. For example...

My paternal grandmother was extremely dysfunctional and likely had NVLD at least. My brother is quite dysfunctional as well, and has problems holding employment and taking care of himself, but I haven't seen him much since I've been aware of Aspergers, so I have no idea if he has it or not. My parents don't think he does, but I think it may be that they don't know much about Aspergers and just compare him to me as a child when I had something closer to traditional autism.

It's interesting to note that all my siblings close in age to me speak without prosody and have issues with facial expressions, an absence of long-term romantic relationships, and one or more deficiencies with nonverbal cues (even though I'm clearly the only one who showed autistic symptoms as a child) while the younger siblings do not. What we three had in common was living near a mercury mine as kids. I'm not saying that mercury causes autism -- I just find the coincidence interesting.

No one else in my family has actually been diagnosed with Asperger's, but most people have psychological issues of some sort. My mother has severe OCD and can barely leave the house or she'll have a panic attack. My cousin suffers from severe depression and anxiety and has missed tons of school because of it. My uncle was the same when he was younger. Everyone in my family, on both sides, suffers from depression and anxiety. I don't think my dad has Asperger's but he definitely has some Aspie traits. So yeah, as my aunt put it, I had no hope of being normal lol.

My sister's daughter has AS and my Aunts daughter her son has AS

My 3-year-old niece is diagnosed autistic (still non-verbal). There are other issues in my family as well. My mother has something for sure but I don't think she's been diagnosed with anything. She seems to have some sort of mild psychosis (or possibly neurosis, hard to tell - she's definitely a severe hypochondriac though) and paranoia, but since she manages to function and denies that there is anything wrong with her and refuses to get help, we'll probably never know exactly what the issue is. There are also a lot of learning disabilities, particularly with reading.

I suspect other family members of having mild forms of ASD.

My uncle is very strong Aspergers, as in he'd easily be diagnosed today. He had an LFA son, one of my cousins suspects himself to have Aspergers, too. I'm diagnosed NVLD and AS.

I have a cousin diagnosed with PDD-NOS. In my family there were many people (mother, grandfather, uncle, granduncle) who were never diagnosed because autism was unknown in those days, but they all showed signs of autism.

My niece was diagnosed with PDD-NOS a few years ago. There is other mental illness in my family but no other confirmed cases of autism spectrum to my knowledge.

My parents think my dad's mother may have had it. She has Alzheimer's now and lives in a home for elederlies. My dad's brother could have it and maybe my great uncle who has been dead for 12 years now. My mother thinks one of her older sisters may have had it. She had problems in school and with other kids. My dad has traits but not even close to being on the spectrum. I wonder if my mother has some sensory issues because she doesn't like bright light, she doesn't like short shorts, she can't stand the sound of people smacking their lips, she doesn't like her bare skin touching certain fabrics either on the furniture and car seats. That is why she wears long shorts.

But there is no one in my family who has classic autism nor do I have any cousins who have a child with it. No one has ever been diagnosed with AS either or anywhere else on the spectrum nor my cousin's kids. But learning problems do run in my family and language problems and ADHD, depression, anxiety, and I have a aunt with schizophrenia. My youngest brother seemed to show a few traits but not even close to being on the spectrum and he does have depression and ADD. Amazingly he got through school without an IEP and I wonder why my parents never took him to any doctors. I didn't even start to notice his problems until he was in 6th grade. Now he seems to be doing better now after he became a dad and he got his life together.

I think my dad probably has AS but he is 60 and doesn't feel he would have anything to benefit from bothering to try to get diagnosed now. He actually probably could still get a diagnosis because he has a sister who is a fair few years older than him who has a lot of experience with autistic people and could probably testify to his early development. He also has a sister - my other aunt - who has various profound intellectual disabilities and displays, amongst other things, various autistic-like symptoms. I'm fairly certain my mother would not be considered to be autistic but it is interesting to note that she is also very reserved; she doesn't display emotion much, she doesn't respond to stressful situations well, she doesn't have a wide range of interests and isn't interested in having any sort of active social life. There are other things which would definitely rule out a diagnosis for her but it does make me think whether the combination of my father - who I would place money on being an aspie - and a mother who has a number of broadly autism-like traits has caused me to be more likely to have AS.

I was actually reading about this kind of thing earlier today but there is no absolute consensus as to the cause(s) of autism. Certain genetic syndromes have been demonstrated to frequently cause autism and numerous other genes have been implicated. There is a particular school of thought which I am inclined to subscribe to which is that the conditions which we describe as autism, aspergers etc are perhaps caused by various different genetic factors (e.g. mutations, heritable or otherwise) and environmental factors (e.g. in utero stuff during the early formation of our brain and CNS) in different individuals and that these different causes all result in similar presentations of developmental disorder. This would account for the fact that finding one particular "cause" of autism has been so difficult to accomplish.

Nephew is diagnosed with AS