Brand new! Sibling with Aspergers.

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Hi, I'm new here, so thought the polite thing to do would be to introduce myself
I'm Alice, and I'm 18. I have a 24 year old brother with Aspergers. I helped him set up an account here a few months back and thought it would be a good idea to get one for myself as well. I'm interested to meet other people who have family members with Aspergers and also other Aspies! My brother is the only experience with Aspergers Syndrome I've had and I would love to understand more about it.

I suppose I'm a little overbearing, as I have a little agenda here. My brother really struggles socially and, although he's doing much better since joining WrongPlanet, I'd love to help out and find people similar to him here, with the same interests and hobbies (he LOOOVES films and T.V., proper media junkie). I suppose I should just butt out but nothing would make me happier than to see him happy and making some friends here. Gosh, I sound like our mum now!

A little about me though: I'm a first year student in Swansea Uni, studying psychology, which is going swell. Although I suppose I should be getting on with my towering workload rather than signing up for yet another social networking site. Oh well.

Thanks for letting me bore you, feel free to message me

Hi, Alice! I'm currently researching the history of Swansea (from 100 to 1600 AD) for a British history class so I was excited to see that you live there because I've really been enjoying the research and getting very passionate and wanting to visit Swansea some day. Part of my father's family is from Pontardulais, also, so there's just one more reason why I might end up in Swansea some day.

I am glad you joined. I have wondered how it affected my sister (ten years younger than me) to grow up with an older sibling with asperger's (although we did not know that about me at the time as I was born in 1967, too early to have been properly diagnosed in childhood. I was finally diagnosed in 2001 at age 34.) I think my sister enjoyed that I was "different" but was also confused as to why I always had such a hard time with things.

At any rate, welcome to Wrong Planet and I hope you enjoy your stay here. And I think it's great that you're so close with your brother!

Welcome!

Hello, Alice - and welcome to the Wrong Planet community.

Oh wow, I had no idea Swansea was so interesting! I've only lived here just over a month but my hometown is not very far and I have a lot of family here, so I was a pretty frequent visitor I'd recommend Swansea in the summer months, it's really lovely. I'm not familiar with Pontardulais, whereabouts is that?

My brother was also diagnosed later in life, at the age of 22. I have to say, prior to that, I think myself and my parents were very much at a loss when it came to understanding my brother, it could often be difficult and frustrating talking to him. I would say, like your sister, I was often confused as to why he would struggle with certain things. And I have to say I probably wasn't the best younger sister growing up! But since he's been diagnosed, life is ten times better, everything makes more sense. I feel we get along so much better now than we ever did before.

Thanks for replying! If you ever have any Swansea related queries, I'd be happy to help (although I'm dubious of how useful I'd be!).

I'm glad you are here.

It is! The professor had a whole bunch of British towns and each of us had to pick one. Four of them were Welsh and I *begged* her to let me have Swansea. Most people know it for the recent history of being the home of Dylan Thomas and of mining and being called Copperopolis because of the copper shipped over from Cornwall to be smelted (because it takes so much more coal than copper in the smelting process so it made more sense to bring the copper to the coal instead of the other way around.)

But the stuff I'm looking at is all way older than that, going back to when Swansea (Abertawe) was a Viking trading trading post. I'm supposed to go back even further, but from what I can tell there really isn't a lot of information earlier than that (I'm trying to find the Roman information because I have read that the Romans were in the area but I haven't found good sources I can cite yet) unless you go all the way back to the bronze age menhirs on the Gower Peninsula or the Red Lady of Paviland, but that's all way before what I'm supposed to be researching and not so near to Swansea anyway.



The summer months do sound lovely, especially with the seaside being right there. Pontarddulais (I left out a d before. Kind of easy to do with Welsh names! LOL) is what we in the States would call a suburb of Swansea. I don't know if you use the word suburb or not. It's a village about 16 kilometer northwest of Swansea and considered to be part of the greater Swansea area.

My father's father's father's father's father was a blacksmith in Pontarddulais (yes, I have the ultimate Welsh last name! Jones.) He was kicked in the head while shoeing a horse and as he lay dying, his last words to his son were "take care of your mother." So the son, David, did just that, taking care of his mother and saving his money and when his mother died, David took a ship to Pennsylvania, which is coal country in the U.S. and was even part of the same mountain range as goes through Wales back in prehistory when the continents were all joined together, before they drifted apart. A lot of Welsh emigrants ended up coming to Pennsylvania because it looked so much like home and because there was lots of work for coal miners, which is what a lot of the new immigrants from Wales had been in the old country.

This is why I was begging for Swansea -- I felt like researching the main town connected to the village where some of my family came from would be a bit like researching my family history. Especially since it's very likely that my family had been in Pontarddulais for many, many generations before David left.

Sorry to go on and on like that but, well, with a brother with Asperger's, I'm sure you're used to a sudden "information dump" on a topic of interest! LOL



That's so awesome! A diagnosis can really clear up the mysteries. My sister and I actually lost touch for over a decade and then I found her on Facebook. I friended her but was so nervous that she wouldn't want to talk to me. I was thrilled when she friended me back! Catching up was slow at first but gradually we have "talked" more and it is so good to be coming back into her life again after all those years. We haven't directly discussed my Asperger's but I talk about it in my facebook so she knows and I think that's when she started opening up to me more, after I had posted some stuff and she had a chance to get some new context for my life.



Thank you! Be proud of your new home: it's got a lot of history and a lot to be proud about.

To WrongPlanet!! !