My mom sometimes seems to be more autistic than my dad

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It's always been an inside joke in my family to mention that my dad seems like an aspie. Mainly because he loves spending time on the computer, he gets special interests, he hates being social and he gets meltdowns. There's one autistic trait my mom has very badly that my dad doesn't have.

Flat affect. My mom rarely smiles and her voice is either monotone or it has a weird tone. She never seems to show enthusiasm for anything in conversation. That actually drives me crazy. Even though my dad hates socializing he seems to be better than my mom at times. He also shows enthusiasm for things like a normal person.

She also has language issues. That meant I said certain things weirdly when I was a kid. I was very embarrassed about it. For years I've thought it was because my parents are from a different country. Now I know something is up with their brain. A lot of their English mistakes weren't common for Spanish speakers or intentional. I really think all parents should avoid English mistakes when possible to avoid passing language issues to their kids. When I was a kid they thought I had language issues. I actually have a high verbal IQ. I just couldn't show it until I listened to proper English.

My mom claims that small talk with strangers is supposed to be flat. It's not supposed to be. That usually means someone is having social issues at the moment. When I'm feeling healthy I actually enjoy small talk with strangers. Even if the topic isn't my interest. She also can't keep friendships very long. Probably because she's too flat. Most people don't show enthusiasm for people that don't show enthusiasm for them. That's just human nature.

I disagree with that. If a parent struggles with speech, it's far better for them to talk naturally and often than to inhibit themselves trying to talk correctly. For example, with Deaf parents who can speak and sign but are much better in signs, their hearing kids do better if they sign regularly than if they try to force themselves to primarily communicate with speech. Sure, their kids are a bit slower to learn spoken language if they don't make the effort to speak, but that exposure to sign gets their language circuits primed to pick up spoken language once they spend more time around hearing people. Same with foreign people - it's better to teach the kid the language that the parent is most fluent in, and let the rest of society teach them the majority language.

If you weren't on the spectrum, you'd have picked up correct speech patterns as soon as you entered daycare or elementary school. For whatever reason, autistic kids are often slower to lose an accent, even when their verbal IQ is high. Even so, you might not have had that high verbal IQ if your mother had talked less to you as a child - which she would have if she was trying not to make speech mistakes. Talking a lot to kids boosts the kid's ability to process language, even if the parents have language impairments. The single best predictor of language milestones in most longitudinal studies of young children is how much parents talk to them.

Speaking Spanish to me wasn't the problem. The problem was speaking a broken mix of English and Spanish. They also spoke in a certain way just for fun. I really don't think parents should speak in a certain way just for fun. My parents definitely did that.

I started speaking normally when I was about eight. Before that I had language issues, so I was afraid to talk. I think I had a low verbal IQ because I wasn't exposed to enough proper English. When I started reading longer books my verbal IQ probably spiked up. Last time I had it tested it was 113, but my head was really foggy. I wonder what my real verbal IQ is.

I have an unethical suggestion.

You could take one of the shorter autism tests, like the AQ, and randomly ask them the questions in conversations here and there and jot them down somewhere that they won't see. When you have a total, put them in the online form and see what they score.

EX) Hey mom, If you had to choose, would you do things on your own or with people? What about you dad?
I like tasks where you do the same thing over and over. Do you guys like things like that?
[those are questions 1 and 2]

I don't actually recommend the AQ anymore because it has leading questions, but it's fairly short. The others are too long to do this with.

I don't know about my mom, but my dad would probably enjoy taking AQ type tests just for fun.

Give it to them!

If you think they'd really be up to take one, I suggest the RAADS-R. It's a little longer, but it lets you say if something is true now or when you were younger, or both, etc. I think it has fewer false negatives.

And it could be that one is autistic and the other is on the BAP (broader autism phenotype), with some autistic characteristics, but not enough to be considered autistic. This can happen if you are related to autistic people, spend a lot of time with autistic people, or just naturally.