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I wish I'd thought to read out loud what I was reading to my son as a baby.

Oddly enough I was better at household chores in the beginning, samantca, than I am now. I don't think I cooked better or more but I used to tidy up and wash up more often/comprehensively. We had a better sink. Two deep sink bowls, and big drain space. Here the sink is old ceramic, jammed into a narrow angled/triangular corner with inadequate draining surface. The feng shui is all wrong.

The laundry got done more regularly too because we didn't have a machine and went every sunday, all three of us, with toys for son, and the sunday newspaper for the papa, to the nearest launderette which was peaceful and quiet then. I would sit outside and smoke a couple of rollies while the machines spun, and my son would race round the central table with cars or planes in hand, and the papa would sit with the paper. Now we have a machine it all piles up until I reach some critical state of requirement for clothes, or "efficiency" drive, or something.

I have always been bad at cleaning floors so they tend to get a bit disgusting. But then studies show that obsessive cleaning and antibacterial/antiseptic processes may be contributing significantly to the number of allergies/auto-immune diseases in society. I am not as scared of dirt as many seem to be. I think so long as eat reasonably healthily "dirt" is not the dangerous bogeyman it's painted as in ads and advice pages.

I think that the more people bring up children in isolation the more become dependent on the media for pictures of how others live. I think images in ads/TV series etc enter into our ideas of how things should be, and then frighten us into obeying them or leave us feeling inadequate. The pressure on AS parents is ironically likely to be greater than on NTs because we see fewer real examples of how people actually live. We have ideals in our head, produced by various influences, and they make /made me panic.

Demand time for yourself, samantca, time when your husband/the father of your child has to either look after her, or find someone else who can. It is crucial to AS mental health to have time alone to process/go offline/download etc. It wasn't easy to ask for, in fact even imagining that I could ask was very hard. I got monday afternoons ( when the papa was doing "office" work at home so he was able to babysit. I used to go to the cinema, and/or sit with a coffee at a cafe watching people pass. At other times, weekends, I would just go to bed for a few hours or a whole day, daydream, totally switch off.

Hang/hold on. It does gradually get easier, I think.

Thanks ouinon.

I totally suck at doing housework. I was also better when my daughter was a couple of months old. But i never did much then either. But atleast i did some laundry every day and dishes etc.

Thing is, ive never really been able to demand anything for myself ever since i got this anxiety stuff. I feel like people wont understand, and people just frighten me. My NT bf as well. We are so different that its almost a nightmare. And right now im at my moms with my baby girl, cause we dont know if we will break up or not. And all because we argue over who does what at the house, and also cause i have a desperate need to sleep sleep sleep sleep these days. So my bf gets upset with that. He never understood me. All he could think about when i told him i thought i had AS was that he was scared he would have to do everything around the house

So now im completely confused, and im scared i wont see my daughter as much as i want. But i try to take the time she spends with her father as time outs, and just try to take care of myself. The thing is, ill never be good at housework, but its been easier when im alone because my NT bf constantly put me down with what i did/didnt do. Im still not effective, but atleast i get something done.

Im glad this thread is here, thanks everyone

A group effort topic

Where do I start? My two kids at home are so social, and they drive me bonkers. It was hard with my first one but these tow are even more so! Loud. This results in sensory overload. Jeepers. You would think I would be used to all this chit chat but even after 34 years, I wish I could go live in a cave! It was easier to eliminate this when they were younger. I have become more irritated by it. I realize it is normal for them but it is not normal for me!

Rant and Roll topic

Thanks for reading, Samantca. I just have to keep suing my romm for time outs. I do love my very social children, and if something horrible happened, jeepers, then I would probably miss the chitty chatty way.

Here is hoping you do not go into sensory overload.

So many wonderful posts, it's hard to respond to them all appropriately. Which is an argument for a separate forum - different threads could be posted. But at least we have this thread. I've been asking and advocating for a place like this on this forum, and all it took was Ouinon starting a thread! I feel kind of stupid for not just doing that all this time.

And so far the people who have responded are all really supportive. Even in some of the other "adult" threads, people can sometimes get judgmental and difficult, yet so far at least, there is none of that. Just the feeling of relief that we're not alone in finding parenting w/AS an almost insurmountable task.

About my two daughters, the 18 year old is NT but has PTSD from being sexually molested twice when she was around 6 (and which she repressed until age 15 when she told me about it - and when I found out about it I felt like the worst parent in the world to not have been able to protect her from it AND because I didn't know about it when it happened). I don't know about you guys, but pervasive guilt is a huge problem for me and much of it has to do with feeling like a bad parent.

My 17 year old has AS traits along with severe anxiety. I have watched her with wonder as she negotiates relationships in her own special way that works.

I want to respond to Samantca's posts:
I think arguing over household chores is more common than we are led to believe. We do it too. Having a dishwasher and your own washer/dryer are huge helps. We don't have a dishwasher and after one bad fight last week I went and bought paper plates and plastic cups and utensils, and am making everybody eat off those since nobody wants to do dishes.

Anyway, your situation sucks. Is there any way that perhaps you could hire a cleaning person once a week?

Drybones - welcome. I hope you stick around and encourage other AS Dads to join our discussion. Regarding hiding AS from my kids - my whole life has been an attempt to try to be like "normal" people, and now at age 44 I pretty much "pass" for NT.

I don't know how much help I can bee in this thread/forum, as I raised my four children and helped raise a couple of others before I knew there was such a thing as AS. My youngest was three when the kids and I found ourselves on our own, with me working on a farm farm from light to not.

That said, I will be interested in seeing where this goes and will try to add what I can, when I think I have something of interest or help. AS parents need all the help we can get. Getting that help from NT parents can show us the way it is "supposed" to be done. That doesn't always translate into actual help, however, as we sometimes just can't do things the way they are "supposed" to be done. AS supporting AS strikes me as a good thing.

Pops