IF YOU HAVE/ARE FAMILIAR WITH ANY A.S.DISORDER PLEASE READ

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i am not autistic, i am in love with a man who has not been diagnosed as autistic, but has traits that are common in those with autism; lack of sleep, ridiculously gifted musical abilities, mood disorders, lack of a filter when speaking his mind. He did not actually speak until he was 3 or 4 years old. However, he has two brothers that are autistic, one of them is severely limited by, he does not talk, can not clean himself, etc. The other brother is a little bit more aware of things but still deals with moderate to high autism. i recently learned that the second brother i mentioned is actually my fiancee's fraternal twin. since this is such a specific occurence it has been hard for me to find information on my topic. I guess my questions are, what are the chances of both twins being autistic, as i said my fiancee shows some typical yet mild signs of autism. my other question, since i do plan to reproduce with this man, is how likely is it that our children will too deal with autism? i know autism is still very much a mystery to us, and i have been interested in the disorder for quite some time, as i think that we all have at least a mild form of autism. does ANYONE know where i might be able to find this information?? anything would help.

Sounds like he could be a mild Aspie or HFA, especially because of the speech delay. Regardless he's carrying the gene, and with all of the autism in his family I think the chances are pretty high that you might have an autistic child, no telling how severely they might be affected.

Here's a link to a website that may help you:

http://autism.about.com/od/causesofautism/a/genetics.htm

Taken from the website:

Its likely he's AS or HFA (especially as his twin has it). I knew a set of (I believe) identical twins & both twins definitely had it. I believe their is only a 1-2% chance that only 1 twin will be affected (but you should double check that). As was said before, their is a high likelihood that you would have autistic children with this man if you have any. This is especially true for the firstborn child. Some families (like your fiancee's) have multiple children on the spectrum and others its just the firstborn child. Good news is, if you do have children with this man, you know what to watch for in your future child(ren) from birth on.

Very high, though being a fraternal twin doesn't give him odds too much higher than just being a sibling. I've seen odds as low as 1:20 given that a sibling of an autistic person will have autism, and as high as 1:3... Chances are your fiancee's autism was missed because his brothers' cases were so obvious and his parents stereotyped autism as always severe. (It is not. About 90-98% of autistics will be verbal in adulthood; and the biggest block to complete independence for autistics isn't autism, but prejudice that keeps us from getting decent jobs or educations.)

More likely than in a typical family, but by no means certain. Your children, if one or more of them are born autistic, will however have a lot more opportunities than your fiancee's brothers did; by the time they are grown, the disability rights movement will likely have increased equality in school and at work to a high degree, making it quite unlikely that they will face the more severe of the problems that our generation does, or that our parents' generation did. Education/therapy is also making great strides. I don't think that you really need to worry about it; if you're ready to raise a child, you're also ready to raise an autistic child, because by definition when you commit to a child, you commit through thick and thin no matter what the world throws at the family.

If you are very worried that you wouldn't be able to raise an autistic child, I would suggest waiting to have children until you are ready. Even if you were to adopt, there'd be no guarantee that the child wouldn't have a disability of some kind--and if you're a parent, you need to be willing to learn the extra stuff. Anyway, the vast majority of the skills you need for autistic kids, you need for typical ones too.

THANK you everyone for the replies!! !