Is it more difficult for Aspies to be good parents?

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I think that there is a lot of truth in this, and it does help me to feel a little encouraged. Thanks

Thanks so much for the different perspective, everyone. I think that I can definitely see more clearly now that all people have advantages and disadvantages when it comes to parenting. I see that in my case, AS comes with its difficulties, but it's also an advantage in the sense that I will likely have an easier time making sense of my sons behavior and anticipating his needs than someone who hasn't "been in his shoes" before.

Thanks again for all of the support.

Um...my experience has been that the vast majority of parents who walk around telling other parents that their kids are "advanced" are either delusional or lying.

I will never forget when I used to have my daughter in dance classes. The other moms seemed to turn their nose up to her (and me) because she was not the "perfect little girl" that their perfect little angels were. Honestly, she did really good in the class and her behaviors were so easy for the instructor to manage, but these were a group of mean moms who were clearly living vicariously through their kids and who clearly needed to be "better" than everyone else in order to feel good about themselves. All of their kids were "perfect" and "advanced" although to be honest, most of them didn't seem THAT different from my daughter.

One day, the moms were talking about the PREPARATORY MATERIALS they had purchased (like SAT study guides!) to help their 4 year olds get accepted into a kindergarten gifted and talented program. Can you imagine that? Drilling your kid to study for that? Anyway, they were talking about how hard it was and how many hours they were putting in and how no matter what they did, their kids weren't picking up reading. One of them asked me about it (I am pretty sure to validate her impression that her daughter was so much better than mine) and I said "Oh, she's reading around the 1st grade level now." Stunned, they all stared for a minute and then said "What did you do to get her to do that?" "Nothing. She did it herself."

I rarely revel in that kind of thing, but I will admit that made me feel SO GOOD to put them in their place.

Take what any mom says about their kid being advanced with a grain of salt. Moms are not the best judge of such things. Another thing...many of the things that made my son "advanced" as a toddler were actually warning signs of difficulties to come.

I think there are two areas where someone with AS will face some big challenges... which won't be addressed in the NT books

On a sensory level, you don't get to walk away sometimes when you really really need to. You also may have to go places that are hard for you BUT your child needs you there. This could be easier if you have an AS child as they may have similar sensory needs. With an NT kid, their needs may be really different and require you to spend time in hard spots (Chuck E Cheese is my most loathed example). OR, if your child is mid meltdown in a public place...you have to do whats best for your child, even if it's pushing you toward meltdown.

On an emotional level, while you may get your AS child better than an NT would, I have also seen plenty of AS folks miss that someone else in the same situation may feel differently. So while you will likely have a huge advantage over an NT parent, it is possible that you miss what your child needs because you think they are the same as you....unfortunately for my son with AS, he was unable to communicate what was up for him SO this was a problem for us making assumptions.

On the other hand.... I think that the self awareness I see here is a HUGE advantage over the parents of the world who auto pilot parent. We here are thoughtful, care, and analyze the heck out of situations. In the long run, I don't think the challenges make for worse parents just because of a DX, in fact, if we are talking about the folks here who deal with their issues, I think the converse is true. That said, I don't want to minimize the challenges that are unique to this subset of the population. Only by failing to address the challenges would someone be a bad parenting candidate.