Family history of autism

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I was thinking about it lately and I noticed that my autism can be traced back to my mom's side of the family. My mom has some autistic tendencies, but not enough to get any kind of diagnosis. Her mom is autistic, as well as some of her siblings and many of my cousins on that side of the family including one cousin who is non-verbal. My dad's side of the family has no history of autism as far as I know, although I do have one cousin on that side of the family who has some autistic tendencies. My dad and his brothers are way into engineering and their dad is a bit of a garage tinkerer too, so I know what side of the family I got my love of engineering from. Both of my brothers are also way into engineering and I like to joke that the Y chromosome in my family contains the engineer gene (which may actually have some truth to it). My brothers and sister are all NT, but I wouldn't be supprised if a few of their future kids end up being autistic.

So how about the rest of you, can you trace back the genetic origins of your autism?

I think it likely in my family, though no-one else has a formal diagnosis that I'm aware of.

Since talking about it with my Mum, and her involvement in my evaluation, it seems that she shares a lot of traits with me - many of which she has hidden beneath a similar "normie mask" (i.e. I could not have picked them up by observation as a child).

Her brother was my favourite Uncle when I was little - odd, because he was a very quiet reclusive guy that I saw only very rarely, even when we used to live a few streets away from each other. As I learn more from my Mum, I am discovering that the similarities between me and him are very striking indeed. My Mum often used to call me by his name when she was a bit flustered, so I think she has been subconsciously aware of the similarities since I was quite small (he is younger than her, so she was aware of his childhood traits from looking out for him, though not what might have caused them).

My brother's children appear to have some of the traits also - particularly sensory sensitivity and difficulty identifying their own bodily functions, and obsessiveness in their hobbies and interests. They have not been diagnosed, and their traits may well be sub-clinical, as they are all doing very well at school and have make good friends there. It's interesting, though, that they seem to think very highly of me and my endless blabbing about my interests, just as I did with my Uncle.

No. I don't think mine was caused by any genetic factors. I was born with a lesion on my brain that caused seizures and NLD, and seeing as how 40% of people with autism also have seizures, I think that lesion had something to do with Asperger's as well.

My mom has told me, since my diagnoses, that she is pretty certain that she is at fault for all the Aspies in our family. Me, my niece from one brother and both of my other brother's sons. After thinking about it for a while it made too much sense not to be true. Except that when I thought about it what made even more sense was that her brother is also an Aspie as well as her dad. My grandpa on my mom's side was one of the quietest people you'd ever meet. Of course this is all coming from observation as my mom and uncle will never get diagnosed and my grandpa passed away several years ago. But I'm certain that I'm correct. So there is no telling how far back the autism runs in my family.

Four of my paternal grandfather's descendants, including me, have an official clinical psychologist's diagnosis of classic autism (1), Asperger's (2), or autism spectrum disorder (1: me). My family also thinks that my dad and paternal grandfather had Asperger's or ASD, but they died before three of us four cousins were diagnosed. My aunt and uncle were NT. The uncle had a daughter (classic autism) and son (NT, who had an Asperger son). The aunt was NT but had an Asperger grandson.

I think the ASD goes back farther still, but it's impossible to know for sure. My dad, grandfather, and great-grandfather were all teachers and very smart, but known to be pedantic, eccentric, and had poor social skills. My grandfather and uncle also had photographic memories. If you asked grandfather what line was at the top of a particular page of one of his books, he could recite it from memory. Grandfather had stomach issues like me--he had a bleeding ulcer so bad they removed part of his stomach.

The poor social skills go way back (one of my dad's interests was genealogy). My great-great-grandfather got into a feud with a neighbor so bad that the neighbor burned down his shop. During the Civil War, my great-great-great-grandfather was put on trial for getting drunk, shooting his commanding officer dead, and deserting the army, but was so good at arguing the law, he got acquitted on self defense (the whole account is in the National Archives). He was constantly suing his neighbors and stabbed one of them in a brawl (not fatally).

My father and his mother, and my mother and her father.

I'm not sure with my family. I don't believe there's been any formal diagnosis of autism amongst the relatives I'm aware of, but that's not to say there aren't abnormalities of some description.

The biggest abnormality in my family has to be my dad's sister, who is deaf. But then also, I think (not 100% sure) that an uncle on my Mum's side has ADHD (but he's her half-brother so even if that's so, it might not be genetically linked to the shared blood). There's also a history of degenerative hearing issues on my mum's side (though I've yet to notice it emerge on anyone below my grandmother in the family tree).

Interesting to hear these stories

My parents are in denial over my daughter but I can see autistic traits in my brother and father...

Both sides of my family fit the 'Broad Autism Phenotype' profile. In my family, it seems to affect the females more severely for some reason.

It's likely, my Grand father on my dads, side is autistic. From, the little I know about him, (He passed away when my dad was 14). He sounds autistic. =

Runs on my mom's side of the family & several of my generation cohorts & their kids have also been diagnosed.

I've often wondered, since I don't know my extended family. My dad has enough traits that he was tested for ASD when I was, but I know my mom's side has had mental issues that are never elaborated on. I do have one child and nephew with ASD, and one nephew with severe ADHD.

My grandmother could have had it or just have traits, my uncle may have had it or have the traits, my dad's uncle liked to be alone and never been married and he also liked to take things apart and he never stayed long with family meals because he would just go home but it never dawned on me if he could have been on the spectrum or have traits, and my dad has ADHD so there are similarities. My mom thinks he has AS traits because of his social ignorance, especially what he did at a nice restaurant in downtown and then he thought what he said was hilarious and my mom was so embarrassed and the waiter was embarrassed for her and he was real loud about it. Being diagnosed, I know going to a place and then complaining about the prices there and saying how much cheaper something is if you buy it elsewhere. I am guilty was that but I didn't know then and then I knew after reading Babycenter. I also have a cousin on my mom's side who has never left her home and she relates better to older adults but I dunno if she has traits. Then there is my aunt which is her mother but I also dunno. She could have had other things.

But no one has ever been diagnosed with autism or with Asperger's or PDD-NOS but there has been a ADHD diagnoses on both sides of the families and ADD for my cousin on my dad's side. Other things that are in my family are schizophrenia, anxiety and anger issues, Bipolar, learning disabilities, speech disorders, language delay.

My father has strong traits. He has been evaluated for multiple mental illnesses but doesn't fit any of them, not truly. I'll leave it at that as THAT is a long story.
My Father-in-law also has many autistic traits. Flat affect, monotone speaking voice, severe lack of eye contact, shuts down in conversations he doesn't like/can't tolerate. Prolonged interests/obsessions. Self-taught musician. Etc, etc, etc.
My grandmother (father's mother) has signs, including a minor diagnosis for Bipolar disorder that isn't medicated, and doesn't actually make sense since she doesn't exhibit the right signs....
Paternal grandfather does, but that's a much longer story.
I have two sisters, and a brother that exhibit traits. I'm one of 6 on that side (dad and step mom), and for me (I'm #1), #3-sister likely has BAP, #4-brother is likely on the spectrum (learned 3 languages almost on his own, used to sell 'profiles' on Halo and Guitar Hero after he won the games, was nearly-nonverbal as a child, withdrawn, delayed gross motor skills, and evaluated neurologically for a tremor he had when tired/overstimulated/etc), and #6-sister who, like me, is just a nerdy geek who doesn't quite fit in anywhere, is exceptionally awkward, tends to accidentally cause problems, is pegged as being argumentative, and has some surprising executive functioning issues, as well as a tendency to easily cut of relationships that shouldn't be easy to sever (we are very similar). I wonder about my biological mother's son, but I haven't seen/talked to him in 7-8 years, so I would have no way of knowing.

I'm the only one in my family that has anything like autism.

Mom was clearly very aspie-ish - always creating her own, very artistic, creative world. She was a systemizer by heart. She did have characteristic borderline traits, manipulating/lying to save her ass here&now, - because she had a massive anxiety-problem (her parents had to let her "find her face" in quiet in the morning over a cup of tea in bed, before entering the scary world).
My granpap was a schoolteacher, so he probably thought: "Oh, so I got one of those too".
She showed some signs of ADD too, - but over all, she was honest and direct, - intelligent and naive, technically and logically very sharp - and managed to learn, at 82, when my father fell ill (stroke), to tackle authorities and laws by herself - in their language. That´s admirable.
Afterwards she was the one who trained him. I´m proud of her.
So, she was a very mixed character - difficult to categorize, both weak and strong, but overall a gifted aspie with some ADD, I believe.

Her brother was characterized as schizoid by my psychologist many years ago.
I don´t know much about her earlier family history.

My father was a manager at Philips, a "math-man", - privately a "garage engineer", a house builder, a "farmer" keeping sheep - and a fisherman with his own boat. He was warm, very social - often socially naive, but on a deep personal level soft and reclusive. (Fitted his astrological sign: Fish).

There had been dynamic characters, quirky crackpots, depressives and epileptics in his family. Very mixed.

So, they both had some strong traits, I´d say.