I think my father in law has aspergers..

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karyu
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19 Jun 2013, 2:47 am

I moved in with my in-laws 3 months ago as I had an unplanned pregnancy and began to see how unique my father in law is. He is 63 so too old to have been diagnosed with Aspergers but he seems to have a lot of Aspie traits. FIL was a supply agency teacher he last got work 3/4 years ago (they stopped giving him work after he was bitching to agency staff about the commission they took off his wages) he still rings them up everyday at 7 AM and says "Advising Availability" you would think after 3-4 years of no work with that agency he would give up. He has a very rigid routine gets up at 6:30 has a bowl of muesli and 4 slices of toast every single day without fail! When he went to singapore on holiday he had a huge meltdown because there was no muesli available in the country to eat he wanted to go home! He goes busking in the town centre everyday from 9 am- 6pm and makes a couple of pounds MIL has told him he could get a little part time job on the tills but he says he won't do a "crap" job he has a 2:2 degree in Physics so assumes he is intellectually superior to everybody else. He has no social skills, no friends and so very pedantic about the most minor things. Does it sound like he is an Aspie?



neilson_wheels
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19 Jun 2013, 7:14 am

May be, maybe not. People at that age often like to have a routine.



Joe90
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19 Jun 2013, 12:03 pm

Why are you trying to diagnose him?


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Lulabell
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04 Apr 2023, 11:15 am

Its nice to know there are reasons he acts this way towards people. Im 98% sure my FIL of 29 years is on the autistic spectrum. He’s been called OCD, narcissistic, a sociopath (by my husband when his feelings have really been hurt). Knowing this is likely the case, helps me calmly move past his idiosyncrasies instead of calling him an as*hole and getting all worked up about his lack of consideration for others feelings.



MatchboxVagabond
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05 Apr 2023, 6:50 am

Lulabell wrote:
Its nice to know there are reasons he acts this way towards people. Im 98% sure my FIL of 29 years is on the autistic spectrum. He’s been called OCD, narcissistic, a sociopath (by my husband when his feelings have really been hurt). Knowing this is likely the case, helps me calmly move past his idiosyncrasies instead of calling him an as*hole and getting all worked up about his lack of consideration for others feelings.


It's a lot easier to deal with these things if you're yourself diagnosed as you don't have to leap to suggesting an evaluation be performed. And sometimes the person does have significant, life-impacting traits, but not actually be within the boundaries of the diagnosis.

And, there are other diagnoses that are often times misdiagnosed as ASD. It's hardly unheard of to get some sort of schizo diagnosis when it's actually ASD, and both ADHD and OCD mask over it as well.

I"m a bit in the same boat as my wife seems to have a lot of traits that aren't commonly seen without ASD. I'm just going to humor it to the extent that it doesn't get in the way of my autism needs, and hope that she either chills out a bit, or realizes that she is a bit on the different side.