Adoption/hunger to connect forms adaptive skills

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I am interested to hear from as many adopted aspies as possible and your life experiences.

The reason being is that I have written a book (A Painful Gift-The Journey of a Soul with Autism) which is to be launched in a couple of months, and the whole writing experience has led me to reflect very deeply on the impact adoption can have on the personality, with particular relevance to the formation of highly adaptive skills with individuals within the autistic spectrum.

When I was dx with AS nearly 2 years ago it was a great relief as it made such profound sense. What baffled me, and deeply disturbed me, was how convincingly NT I had become, to such an extent, that I baffled even the most sharpest of professionals.

However, as time has passed and reading the lives of many folks with AS such as caiseal mor and Donna Williams, I have come to see how trauma and deep emotional distress can result in dissociative type identity problems. I also understand, that even the average aspie who has not experienced trauma and who has had the good fortune of having loving parents and friends, can still have an NT persona to support then though the struggle in life.

However, psychologists now know that ALL babies who have been adopted have no pre-trauma personality, and the effects this has on the new-born is simple.............it is being re-wired to attune itself to any possible danger of experiencing abandonment (thus triggering the original trauma). For such adopted babies who were also High functioning autistic, it seems to make sense that survival can take priority over autistic expression. As was the case with myself, as any degree of unusualness or oddity (my natural autistic expression /personality) would be met with psychological abuse and humiliation.

Although everyone is welcome to respond to this, I will off course be paying great attention to those who have AS and were adopted.

It is a growing conviction within me that my great hunger to connect with others and be loved by others, stems from my early experiences of profound loss and deprivation. In so doing, I developed extremely highly adaptive skills born out of emotional and brutal necessity. The image of a carrot here is very rich, with it's root being (root being my aspie nature) stunted and blocked by a brick. (the brick being a trauma/adoption and also parental neglect)



Many thanks.

Chris

Interesting idea to think about.

I was not adopted but placed in foster care when I was almost four years old.
Some of my early memories are a confusing montage of violence and chaos.
It seems my accumulation of memories operates independent of language development.
I wasn't speaking coherently until I was around eight or nine years old.

Thank you both for your responses

Wishing you both well

Chris

Hang in there. It just may be that the adopted AS person has not logged on recently and seen your appeal.
Your thread title interested me because I have adopted two children, now grown. I have a mild case of AS as does one of my birth sons, and I also gave birth to a severely autistic daughter with multiple co-morbids. The son we adopted is a normal, intelligent, aggressive man that we had an interesting time raising as his personality was like none of ours. We are proud and happy he is safely in the hands of the USAF teaching other men how to survive behind enemy lines. The dangerous things he is doing now are much safer than the dangerous things he did before he joined. The daughter we adopted was supposed to be the normal, healthy daughter I could have as an adult friend since the one I gave birth to would never be to me what I was to my mother and I wanted that kind of relationship badly. Oh, I miss my mother. But anyway, HA! Ha ha ha. Idiot social workers. I knew within fifteen seconds of obtaining her that there was something wrong. So I got to raise a girl with Fetal Alcohol Effect who was the kind of person I have avoided all my life, and she put us through Hell. Oh well, we now have a glorious granddaughter through her. Both adopted children somehow came to grips with being raised by one of the weirdest moms in the world. (When people ask my daughter why I'm like I am, she sighs and says, That's just her.) ((How come nobody ever asks that about my husband? Hmm.))
Anyway, having adopted and having adopted transtempramentally and transracially, I am interested in all things about adoption. Oh, and my siblings adopted also, one got a son from India, and one got a daughter from China.

Thank you for sharing that.

Chris

I’m not adopted but have adopted two biological sisters. One had been taken from her birth mom at age three and the other from her birth mom at birth. Our youngest is developing “normally” (whatever that is) and our oldest is being tested at the end of the month for Aspergers. We have been a family for eight years now and our eldest has had a rough 3 first years and now the effects are being compounded with Aspies. I have had difficulties trying to get her tested as her teachers have attempted to label her with AD (they have since apologized and now agree with me). The social worked insisted we are too hard on her and need to lighten up.

In many discussions with my wife and a social worker at my daughters school (who has been by my daughters side since grade one and an excellent mentor for her) I’ve expressed that their seems to be a condition that runs parallel to her Aspies that is a ghost of her past. The key issues that she caries with her are; 87 out of 93 scheduled visits with her birth mom resulted in no shows. The agency where she waited for the visits felt compelled (rightfully so) to entertain her, consequently resulting in a lot of strangers passing by and stopping to pick her up or amuse her for a few minutes. Today, no one is a stranger in her eyes and everyone is friendly. She did have several attempts to reunite with her birth mom, the longest being 3 months. After that, her speech deteriorated, she had rashes all over her body (same diaper for hours and suspect days), lost several pounds (bad at 2 years old). She also, and still today, feels compelled to smell EVERYTHING. Suspect it’s from sour milk, bad food consumed during these stays.

Just scratching the surface, hope this is what you’re looking for and it helps. I’d be very interested in reading more about this and am anxious to read subsequent threads.