My children have Autism...

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I know it's genetic. I might have it (or Aspergers) but I am not 100 per cent sure.

Firstly, my name is Cass. I am 30. I have 3 children. My eldest is 8 and was diagnosed last year to have high functioning Autism, my youngest two (6 and 3) are still being tested and there's a very good chance they could have it as well, actually my 6-year-old could potentially have Aspergers.

Anyway, they say it's genetic. I am yet to be tested. I thought I would come on here and ask for advice and see if anyone here could possibly tell me if I might have it (Autism or Aspergers)

1. I obsess over a lot of things, eg baby names, I am not expecting at the moment, but I can't help thinking about names constantly, this has happened since I was a young child. I am always asking people what their middle names are for example.
I'm obsessed with excellent grammar spelling. My boyfriend cannot spell at all and it frustrates me and I constantly have to write/type everything down over and over all the time. I am obsessed with numbers, birthdates, number plates etc and I notice patterns in a lot of things and often notice small details in everything. If I have an obsession nothing else in my life (at the time) seems to matter.


2. I do have emotions, but rarely show them. Eg my mother passed away when I was 8 years old, I knew what it all meant, I knew she was never coming back and I was sad, but I did not cry, infact I smiled after my Godmother (her best friend) broke the news to my sister and I, I just sad there with a blank face and said "ok" and got back to colouring in my picture, whereas my sister (who was 6 at the time) burst out crying. Same thing when my favourite aunty passed away 3 years ago. I was sad and all that, but when I heard the news I didn't cry or really seem to have any emotions, at her funeral I think I was the only one there that wasn't crying. I remember my sister saying "J just died and you're not crying, what's wrong with you?"It's the same when I am happy as well. eg when my children were born. I was over the moon, but didn't really show emotions. Or when I won $2000 about 10 years ago, I was happy then, and I probably should have jumped up and down all excited and screaming and all that, but...just a blank expression.

3. I often don't understand jokes/idioms/sarcasm. I am a lot better at it now that I am older, but still at times find myself over annalysing and thinking and not really understanding/getting the joke. When I was about 16 my stepmother was telling me to "pull my socks up" to which I actually went to bend down and pull them up. Or a few years ago at work, one of my collegues says to another collegue "monkeys could do it" and I just thought 'wow, really, monkeys are pretty smart then..' but he was joking obviously.

4. I don't like being touched unless I say it's ok. This does not make things easy for my poor boyfriend or my children at times. I have trouble with eye contact. I will look at a person once and then that's it. I literally will not look at anyone when they are talking to me (or vise versa). I find it extremely uncomfortable.

5. Loud noises irrated me a lot. Especially if I have many noises at once or many people talking to me at once. I get frustrated and at times I have 'lost my cool.'

6. I don't have many friends, and have always found it difficult to make and maintain friendships. The only friends I have now are online (I have met them all in real life though). I have always felt like a misfit. I had friends at school, but I didn't really care. I never felt close to anyone. Sometimes I would prefer to be alone. Even to this day. I didn't really want to play as a kid. I prefered hanging out with the adults, at parties etc I would seriously rather hang out and talk with/to adults. I found kids (even my own age) annoying.

7. My stepmother often took me to different psychiatrists etc for tests. I was a difficult child. They never found anything wrong (not that I was ever told though), but that was back in the early 90s and I am not sure if Autism or Aspergers was known then. I always felt like there was something 'wrong' with me though.

Ok, so there are some things about me. I need to know if you think I might have it or am I just being silly?

Thanks for reading

You sound like you could be on the spectrum to me.

I had the same obsession when I was around 10 or so!

Incidentally, AS was just starting to be known in the 90s. So it's entirely possible the doctors who saw you had never heard of it. (Autism was known about, but more low-functioning autism than high-functioning.) Or they may have heard of it, but not considered it in you because you're female and it's more common in boys.

Thankyou Ettina, I am not worried at all. As I said I have always felt out of place or whatever, so if I AM diagnosed with it, at least I can say "now I know why I am the way I am"

You most likely have it. I have all of those things and I was diagnosed with high functioning autism. My dad has aspergers as well as both of my brothers and my sister. The studies my parents had us go through was to see if it is genetic. It most definitely is. It gets dificult but is possible to make it through.

Thanks for the feedback so far

Have you been watching the news, honey??

DO NOT GET TESTED.

I only skimmed your post, but you sound pretty mildly affected. There really isn't much help out there for you. A self-diagnosis will give you as much validation as a professional one.

ESPECIALLY as a mother, before you go and get yourself a diagnosis, PLEASE read some of the horror stories here. Consider the effect of stigma and marginalization on your family. Consider the possibility of not being able to find/hold work if they succeed in rolling your HIPPA rights back. Consider not being able to advocate for your children because no one will take you seriously because you are "ret*d" too.

Please, for your kids' sake, be very very careful.

ETA-- OK, based on spellings, it looks like you're a Brit. So HIPPA does't apply to you, and things might be better for you as far as social reprecussions go. Please consider your situation and be very, very, very careful. This is not a game you are playing; it is not some fascinating journey of self-discovery. There are kids involved. Sounds like you are a single mom. Anything that can threaten or lessen your ability to raise them in strength, peace, and security is NOT something you want to consider lightly.

Last edited by BuyerBeware on 30 Apr 2013, 5:48 am, edited 1 time in total.

Holy sh*t, is that bad in US? Sometimes it sounds like a horror movie.

It sounds strange that precisely in US the gouvernement can interfere that much in citizen's lives...

That's American Calvinism for you... those not the Elect go to Hell, and therefore the role of the State is to get those clearly not the Elect used to the Hell experience.

I don't thnk it's that bad. At least not anymore. I have 2 kids on the spectrum. I got my dx recently and don't feel adversely affected by it at all. Unless you are going into the army or some high security job it is unlikely that it will ever come up. I wouldn't worry about it. If it feels right for you, do what you need for peace of mind, because that is the most important thing that you need to best take care of your kids--PEACE OF MIND.

It's not that bad for most people, but it can be. There's a lot of stigma associated with mental illness and disability, and if you don't know how to deal with the system, you can be left out in the cold or even labeled as a malingerer. If you've been keeping up with what happened to Amanda Baggs during her recent hospitalization to get her feeding tube, you'll have an example of the typical prejudice against disability and against doing things in any way but the typical one. She points out multiple times that she loves the tube and finds it very much of a relief to be able to eat again, while many of the people at the hospital thought it was a tragedy... You know what I think would be a tragedy? Somebody freaking starving to death (or dying of aspiration pneumonia) because they thought a feeding tube was such a horrible thing. It's not. Oh, and autistics apparently don't need proper anesthesia. She's had to be really strong, surviving all that bigotry, not giving in to the pressure to just give up and die (yeah, seriously). I suspect we are all that strong, but I wish none of us ever had to find that out.

However... I don't think this is a reason to avoid identifying as autistic. I think that those of us who are at all able to fight for our rights and the rights of others should be open about being autistic because it means we can protect the people who aren't able to fight as easily or are more easily dismissed--the children, the people who are institutionalized, the people who have problems communicating or have been pushed down so much that they hesitate to communicate; the people whose families don't care. I think we need solidarity, and I think we need to stand up for each other.

It's your choice, though. I think as a mother you would want to do whatever helped your children the most... that could mean getting an evaluation so that you could understand your own limitations better and get help more easily; or it could mean not getting the evaluation, muddling along on your own, probably with your family's help. I can't demand you do one thing or the other, especially since you do have those kids. The one thing I think you shouldn't do is pretend that you don't have the differences you have. You may or may not be autistic--you may just have some subclinical traits. But the worst thing you can do when that happens is try to deny them or push them away. Instead, learn to understand yourself and how these things affect you, so that you can more easily communicate with others, especially the neurotypicals around you--your husband and one of your children, especially. Sometimes it's also useful to study psychology and sociology, because those things are the study of neurotypicals by default and will teach you some interesting things about how people tend to behave.

For example, they cannot see your emotions so they assume you are not feeling them--a fallacy, but something you may be able to solve by saying (for example, at a funeral) things like, "I really miss this person. I feel really sad. I feel like I should be crying, but I just don't cry much." That will tell people what you are feeling, in words. You may be seen as a stoic, but that's okay; it's close enough to the truth that it'll do. When somebody dies I often tend to get practical, ask people if I can help them and specify that I really do want to help them... like I could help clean for a while, take a load off them while they're grieving. That kind of thing. I am better at showing sympathy by *doing* things. I don't cry much when people die, either. Everything just feels wrong when people die; it's like a pattern has been broken and things are all out of place. There's a huge gap where they used to be. It makes me feel uncomfortable and uneasy. But I don't really cry. The only people I have ever cried for have been cats. I don't know why. Maybe losing a cat is just simpler than losing a person; not more or less intense, just simpler. A cat is a simple creature. A person... People are huge and complex universes. At least that's how I feel about them.

Anyway, you seem to be pretty good with words, so use that strength to explain things when you know the NTs around you don't get it. It's okay to express emotions your own way; in fact, I think it'd be really invalidating if you forced yourself to express them any other way. But it's also a good idea to make sure the people around you know what you're feeling. They're at a disadvantage if they don't, and worse, they assume they do know what you're feeling (i.e., little or nothing), and that adds even more confusion. better to use words.

No it isn't that bad, we actually have more protection in the U.S than in the U.K.

The U.S ADA probably offers the strongest protection for disabled people in terms of discrimination in the world.

FYI though if you do get diagnosed, tell no one, Not even family, true some could take it well, but some could take it badly and constantly hold it against you. Don't want to risk it.

She only speaks from experience. It was never that bad for me and one of my aspie friends online who lives in Ohio never had it bad. He's told everyone he knows he has it and never experienced anything bad except for one aspie online who gave him a hard time for not being offended about Mozart and the Whale and telling him he isn't an aspie if he went to a wrestling match.

If you're diagnosed, no one is going to know unless you tell them or someone else does who knows you have it. Our medical records are kept private and even employment can't access them but that doesn't apply to the government when you want to join the army or something. Only we can disclose our diagnoses to our work.


For some people things are already bad even without a diagnoses or no one knowing they have it because their condition effects them that much or they are in the wrong environment, and things are still bad even with a diagnoses and people knowing about it but it has no effect on how they are treated. Sometimes things do change in a bad way after a diagnoses because your partner thinks it's just a excuse and thinks you use it as such or people treat you different like you are slow or incompetent after you tell them you have it but the same thing can happen without a dx too after you tell them you have it after you self diagnose or suspect you may have it.


But in the states, our disabilities and diagnoses are kept private and not disclosed to other people. So if we apply for work, they are not going to find out about it but with the internet now, they may if you are not careful if you know what I mean.

Actually not even the Military has access to your Medical records unless you sign them over to the Military, and they are forbidden to ask you to sign over such documents.

In the U.S their is zero requirement disclose any disability or need for accommodation prior to hiring, so it is always best that you DO NOT disclose. If you do need accommodation you should wait until AFTER you are hired, because such accommodation must still be provided and cannot be held against you.

I find it extremely condescending to call the op"honey." Yes, i totally agree that she doess need to be careful. for so many obvious reasons. But self discoveryis a good thing! Don't givee her a hard time for wanting to know more about herself. As for getting an offi ial diagnosis, for an adult or child its better not to if you want all your freedoms. There are some situations where for some ppl it is better to have an official diagnosis. better to educate yourself so you know how to best help your children and if their symptoms are mild just know about the challenges they may face but refrain from getting them labled.
Best wishes