Analyzing your parents

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When you look at your parents, do you see your autistic traits as more likely having come from your father or mother? Do you think that there's something about your other parent's personality that triggered the blossom from oddball-ish person to full blown aspie?

I do. I'm quite sure I'm aspie from my dad's side (no prior history of autism whatsoever). My mom's side has a long history of depression and bipolar disorder, and I hear this ties into AS. Also, my mom has concentration issues that I have as well and I can't figure out if it has anything to do with AS.

My parents both seem mainstream NT, though my dad's dad was almost certainly an aspie.

My Mom and her father have what I suspect to be Aspie traits.

My mom is a diagnosed Sociopath. I haven't read that is a correlation, but I've read where they look for Schizophrenia and such, so that might be a connection. It's basically the same brain problem, missing or bad wiring. That's just an extreme of it. I think my dad's father was said to have alcohol induced Schizophrenia (because he hallucinated while drinking and was disconnected from reality altogether). However, that was in the 1920's and I think you'd have to suspect that could have been alcohol allergy instead and rule that out to get a true diagnosis. I'm not certain how much his diagnosis was worth. His children didn't display that and I've done the genealogy of his side and there doesn't seem to be any of that although there were plenty of stories about them and some even printed in newspapers. It would seem something like that would have popped up again.

My mother had a brother with a severe speech impediment. He was thought to be ret*d back then, but when it showed up in some of my cousins (not his children), it was discovered to be a physical abnormality and was cured in speech therapy. I don't think that kind of speech problem is what they look for in correlation. I think they are looking for brain abnormality not tongue abnormality.


So, I'm not sure where that would leave me. The biggest correlation on both sides seems to be red hair. The redhead gene is on both sides of my family.

My dad has mild AS traits, but is definitely not a full blown Aspie. However, I'm certain now that his mom had full-on AS. Of course we didn't know about AS back in the day- just thought she was wierd. My mom is NT but her side also has a history of depression/bipolarism. She is fine but both her mom and her sister (my aunt) had/have issues.

I have one sibling, a younger brother, who is not only NT, but uber-NT. He has unbelievable social skills. By far the best of anyone I have ever known. He would make a great politician or salesman if he wanted. It's like, as well as his own, he also somehow ended up with the social skills that were destined for me.

My first child is coming in October. It will be interesting to see if he turns out like me, like my brother, or somewhere in between.

I don't think my mum had any Aspie traits. My dad was generally a social person and got on well with lots of people. However he did exhibit some secondary traits, having a number of stims for example. My grandparents were all pretty NT as well, as far as I know.

My siblings are completely NT. One so much so that the only prizes they won at school were for character and sport. The other was a lawyer.

One of my kids has exhibited some Aspie traits; so much so that we took him to the doctor a while back for a diagnosis. The doctor said he was showing some symptoms, but overall not enough to say anything for certain.

My grandfather (on my mom's side) had noticeable AS/schizoid tendencies. He was the one of my relatives with whom I really got on, too. We were like the best of friends, I told him about all my thoughts and difficulties, and he took time to explain to me how this world works.

My mother's side, including my mother and grandmother, are overly emotional and lack balance. It could be anything - hysterical tendencies and depression most definitely, maybe bipolar and borderline disorder too.

Schizophrenia and/or schizoid tendencies seem to run on both sides of my family. So does alcoholism.

Yup, Dad had AS, I'm pretty sure. Mom has ADHD and also Borderline Personality Disorder. Genes are pretty powerful things, aren't they?

My father had many of the traits I have. He was manic depressive (more depressive than manic), focused on one subject. I think a relationship with him would have been possible, but one should have been capable to ride a rollercoaster. My mother was much stronger but very selfish and egotistic, she has never had any friend and was unable of any form of generosity. Being the one persecutory with me, and the other cold and avaricious I always thought that my problems were a result o a very difficult family. Now I think I know better. But in my case, as in many of the cases I see here there, there is compound difficult to extricate. I am mind blind. But what if a mind blind grows in an environment of mindblindedness?

My father was schizophrenic.

I think my father is fairly NT, but my mother was a different matter. She was always very obsessive, especially with housework and had an order things were done in. I picked up on this as a teen when I realised we always went to town every day and to the same cafe and to the same shops, but it suited me as it was predictable. She also lost her temper very easily, and would take it out on me usually. She was pretty cold towards my father and treated him more often with disgust. She would never talk about her bad childhood with him or anyone else. In fact, she was quite a closed book. She collected videos, and books on film mostly. But she did do things like point things out to me as a child. She was always pointing out different animals or birds or butterflies. So I don't know. I do not see her as normal. She would often not believe me when I was unwell or would tell me off if I hurt myself for being clumsy rather than comfort me. She was controlling and would not let me wear what I wanted as a child. I wanted to wear the same things usually, she wanted me in pretty dresses. She would ignore me and favour my brother if I did things she didn't like and called me 'It' when she was annoyed. Very cruel. And it has had a great impact on who I am today, so I often wonder, what is the AS and what is the damage caused by her treatment of me.

My mom perhaps. I don't have a dad. My grandfather has AS.

Given how my parents treat me like crap, bullying me psychologically left and right, they're definitely full-blown NTs. (Aspies typically don't get an ego boost from being in a position of power.) So my AS probably came from my grandparents; the trait must have skipped a generation.

Graelwyn and Paolo,

I understand your feelings that you can never disentangle what was caused by your childhood as opposed to your disorder. For me, I think it's a case of my brain caused me to respond to my mother's behavior in a certain way. I responded to her in a radically different manner than my brothers did. I was very analytical with her. My brothers were extremely emotional and thought they had done something to make her not love them. I either ignored her or confronted her with exactly what game she was playing. It's strange that I knew such a thing about her long before I found out about her diagnosis, but I saw her as playing with people as if they weren't people. I knew she had no capacity to connect to us or anyone else. I'm not sure I could have done that if my brain hadn't been different.

But, I don't know how you could ever diagnose someone like me from a Psychiatric angle without getting lost in which came first the chicken or the egg problem. Maybe that's why I'm so stuck on I have to see it in imaging. I need to see the brain's function to be satisfied. Otherwise, I just don't see how you would ever disentangle that mess from reactions based on true AS. It could be partly that and partly that I just think observation by a NT is going to be so subjective that it can't possibly stand up to scrutiny.

Does that make sense?

I don’t think that one thing came (or come) before the other I think they were somehow running alongside. I was “special” since I was two or three years old. My father reacted to this with irritation and aggressivenes and my mother, who was at odds with my father (they didn’t even sleep together after my birth, which was clearly not planned nor wanted) and forseeing life in older age in absolute loneliness, nurtured the idea that I should be with her like a kind of pet and servant. This is hard to relate, but there was no one who could have affection for my mother. Nor did I: I only wanted to flee but had no equipment for a real independent life. Moreover my father was very well known and, though I lived all my life at a good distance, also geographically from my family, there was no place where I was not my father's son and treated in consequence with “tolerance” and resignation, like a “case”.

Like Kafka said in his letter to father, “I envisaged the world on a map as something occupied nearly exclusively by you, the place reserved to me was very tiny and surely not corfortable”. Kafka was certainly mistaken in faulting his father as he did. But he lived his relationship with his father in a tragic way. An autistic needs a protective environement, and this he didn’ find at home.

How are you doing now? Have you found your place away from your father?