Those of us with " more strongly autistic " siblings .

Post Reply New Topic

What about those among us ~ like myself ~ who have siblings who are also autistic , to a stronger degree than we are ? That is the case with myself .
(Note: I am using the somewhat bland " more strongly autistic " so let's not get into arguments about saying " Classically autistic " " more impaired " , whatever . 'Kqe ?)
My younger brother (by almost-to-the-day 2&1/2 years) is both mildly ret*d and mildly autistic (At least one of the diagnoses of him was that , it changed some over the years and I'll maybe go into that later .) ~ I suppose the best way to put it is that he's childlike ~ Like about a 3-4-year old .
I don't believe he could read anything of the complexity of a typical post here and I believe that he could not write something such as this at all !
He lives in a group home in Somers , NY that my parents arranged for him for even after their death , he is well taken care of ~ I imagine that he is in better health , all around , than me ~ We have not physically seen each other in 19 years ~ You know , I'm homeless , and can't exactly readily afford to even hop that 'Hound back to NY - We are in phone & sending-him-letters-and-presents on his B-Dy and X-Mas level - Unfortunately , my stolen ATM some months back rendered me unable to send him that B-Day present (It was in late July - I would sens the present via the ATM card , from Amazon or whoever) - and I haven't sent the card , wanting to send it with the present at the same time (I would pick up a card personally and enscribe it , sending it personally for the personal touch .) .

_________________
Renal kidney failure, congestive heart failure, COPD. Can't really get up from a floor position unhelped anymore:-(.
One of the walking wounded ~ SMASHED DOWN by life and age, now prevented from even expressing myself! SOB.
" Oh, no! First you have to PROVE you deserve to go away to college! " ~ My mother, 1978 (the heyday of Andy Gibb and Player). I would still like to go.
My life destroyed by Thorazine and Mellaril - and rape - and the Psychiatric/Industrial Complex. SOB:-(! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !!

Nope...I'm the "autistic" one in the bunch.

One of my childhood friends, a girl, has an older brother who is severely autistic. Cannot speak, yet is toilet trained.

I'm the most severely autistic one in my family too. My cousin and my dad both have undiagnosed AS, but neither of them are as severe as me. My mom and my little sister both have dyslexia and ADHD, but neither of them have disability-related issues like mine, they both manage well. If your brother is really 53-54 and has the mental/emotional capacity of a 3-4-year-old, I'd say that's more than "mildly" intellectually disabled. Is he able to write to you?

Yeah....I can relate. When I look at my older brother through the AS lens, he is without a doubt on the spectrum. He has more outward signs of AS than I do. Knowing that I have it, and both of our sons have AS, he still hasn't put 2 and 2 together to get 4. ( And he is a nuclear engineer ) It makes me feel sad that he continues to go through life struggling and doesn't know why. Who know's, maybe he does and just is ready to except it yet. Either way he's still my big brother!

...You have a point ~ I guess I was thinking that he can , for instance , eat and go to the bathroom , etc. fine ~ As I said , a 3-4-yr old ?
No , he cannot write " a letter " at all . I had never even thought about that .

_________________
Renal kidney failure, congestive heart failure, COPD. Can't really get up from a floor position unhelped anymore:-(.
One of the walking wounded ~ SMASHED DOWN by life and age, now prevented from even expressing myself! SOB.
" Oh, no! First you have to PROVE you deserve to go away to college! " ~ My mother, 1978 (the heyday of Andy Gibb and Player). I would still like to go.
My life destroyed by Thorazine and Mellaril - and rape - and the Psychiatric/Industrial Complex. SOB:-(! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !!

Greetings. I don't have any immediate biological relatives really that have autism. My cousin does, and will probably be in a group home when he's older and my uncle Jim, already is in a group home (I think group home is the right term).

Anyways, but my dad shows some traits, though I don't know if he'd be diagnosed. Some of the traits may actually be caused by his AD/HD. He isn't diagnosed with AD/HD as an adult, but was a kid. He says he doesn't need help to manage his symptoms (though it has caused his relationship some strain at times).

But my soon-to-be stepbrother is "more strongly autistic" than I am. You could probably tell he has autism from being with him for a day, while it'd take much longer for me. He also doesn't understand as many social rules I have learned. But he also has pretty much all the specific learning disabilities, except two or three in the math category. He only has one there. I honestly thought he would have MID, but apparently, his full-scale IQ was not looked at because they said it was not an accurate representation of him (as many autistics full-scale IQs aren't). His reading is probably several years behind, along with his writing. He is a few years behind mentally in general.

I don't know what exactly you are asking, if you are asking anything. If you are asking something about your parents not treating you the same or something like this, then yes. My dad doesn't see me as having ASD, because he thinks of the mild end as the person I mentioned above since he's diagnosed with HFA, but I believe it's more H-MFA. So he gets understood for having autism and I don't, since you can't tell unless you've seen or know me for a while.

I suspect both my mother and father are on the spectrum but my case is more severe and debilitating, thus I received an autism diagnosis. If they were to be assessed, I surmise they would be diagnosed with Asperger's Syndrome.

I have a brother 17 years older than me who was diagnosed with severe autism back in the '80s. I don't think he's autistic at all, though. It's true that he doesn't talk and can't take care of himself on his own, but for all the other things, he's the opposite of an autistic, so much that both me and my father look/act way more autistic than him in those aspects. He can recognize emotions and facial expressions very easily, since he's non-verbal he communicates solely with his face and gestures, he's openly very emotional, he's never had any sensory issues, nor special interests/"obsessions", and he requires change a lot as he gets mad when there's too much routine/things are all the same. Pretty much all my family by now agrees that he has been misdiagnosed and that his mutism and regression was caused by some trauma in his childhood (he was a perfectly normal, even though very gifted, child up to the age of 3).
I've grown up with him all my life since my mother always refused to get help from institutions, and what I hate is that she's always told me, ever since I was a child, that I would have had to give up part of my freedom to look after him when my parents would be dead. All this despite the fact that my mother knew I had problems of my own (I've been diagnosed with ADD as a child and I've struggled with depression and anxiety in the past), but since I was the one who could talk and was "better off" and was born second I apparently have a duty towards him and have to have no life of my own.
Don't misunderstand, I love my brother, I'm sorry for what happened to him, but it's not up to me to look after him and stop living my life for him. I might look like a heartless jerk for saying so, but I have no intention of wasting my life after another person, not even after my brother. This doesn't mean I don't want to help him at all, lock him away or never seen him again, I just want to live my life, be free, do what I want, work and have a family of my own. I don't want to sacrifice myself like my mother did, she just made him even more disabled than he was because she didn't try to make him at least a bit independent, at all. He's capable of doing way more things than she gives him credit for. I swear that if I have to fake my death and drastically change my life to avoid this responsibility, I will do it. The only thought of having another person completely depend on me for the rest of their lives makes me feel anxious and trapped, and no one seems to understand that because whenever I mention it everyone (except for my father, he's the only one who understands me) starts yelling at me and treating me like I'm a bad person and and egoist who deserves to die.

The person in my family who I think is on the spectrum is my father. I'm pretty sure he has Asperger's (he has been diagnosed as being "midly schizoid" when he was in his 30s, but I don't think he's schizoid at all), but I wouldn't know if he is better off than me or not because in some areas he is more skilled and in some others I am more skilled.

...I have things to say to Jake and Chir , but not now .
I have , at least now , no " Mom always liked you best ! " complains - swe haven't lived in the same house since Jimmy Carter's administration ! (That means DURING Peanut Prince's time...yes ?)

_________________
Renal kidney failure, congestive heart failure, COPD. Can't really get up from a floor position unhelped anymore:-(.
One of the walking wounded ~ SMASHED DOWN by life and age, now prevented from even expressing myself! SOB.
" Oh, no! First you have to PROVE you deserve to go away to college! " ~ My mother, 1978 (the heyday of Andy Gibb and Player). I would still like to go.
My life destroyed by Thorazine and Mellaril - and rape - and the Psychiatric/Industrial Complex. SOB:-(! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !!

My brother has autism and intellectual disability. For him, it's not that his autistic traits are so severe; it's more that his intellectual disability is so severe that it impairs him a lot.

I'm pretty sure my sister is not too far from me on the autism spectrum, but applied a great deal more effort to learning and adapting to social rules. It's hard to say if I started off worse, or just made different choices and seemed worse off for a long time.

Now, it seems like the positions are moving again. She suggested that she might be on the spectrum, and it caused some things to click into place in my mental image of her. I suspect that my work on myself assisted in large part by all the information that I get here on WP, has helped me understand and manage some traits that had previously caused me problems. Meanwhile, I think she made some kind of internal commitment to black and white thinking. Obviously, she doesn't see it in those terms, but over the past decade her judgments and punishments have gotten very strict. Oh yeah, you don't break her rules and they should be obvious. We haven't talked as much, gradually over the course of the decade. I made mistakes, too.

We have each had our grudges against each other about unfair treatment, and I think some of her feelings arose because she saw me having trouble with things that she had learned to handle before her older brother did, saw no one notice her efforts and me getting coddled, and justifiably got frustrated. Do the less autistic or approximately as autistic siblings feel that way?

...Jake , I'm not sure what I was going to say , except that (Maybe just that ? ) you make me remember my late aunt , whom I have thought might've been a little non-diagnosed AS , tho she led a completely normal life ~ I have meant to post about her , maybe I'll start another post on that , if here don't mind ?
Chirpy , I am sorry for your situation .
This line could be about " less/about equally autistic " relatives , as well...I was just thinking of myself and my brother , my own situation .

_________________
Renal kidney failure, congestive heart failure, COPD. Can't really get up from a floor position unhelped anymore:-(.
One of the walking wounded ~ SMASHED DOWN by life and age, now prevented from even expressing myself! SOB.
" Oh, no! First you have to PROVE you deserve to go away to college! " ~ My mother, 1978 (the heyday of Andy Gibb and Player). I would still like to go.
My life destroyed by Thorazine and Mellaril - and rape - and the Psychiatric/Industrial Complex. SOB:-(! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !!