Only child or sibling and ASDs?

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With siblings.

I have two brothers and one sister who are all younger than me.

Had no siblings. Most friends were similarly lacking in social graces.

Had no idea how poorly it was all going until six years of being in a relationship with an NT. Constant pseudo-therapy from her was a big help, but now she has gone from my life. To be honest, afraid of losing social skills acquired, pulled back from people a lot in the year since we split up. For the record, she is also an only child.

I have a younger brother by 4 years, but we are not and have never been close. We also did not grow up together (separate houses). I have two step siblings on one side of my family, one my age and one my brother's age. The three of them grew up in the same house. My step sister (my age) and my brother tortured myself and my step brother relentlessly because we were both so weird. They were more alike than my brother and I. Amazingly enough my step brother ended up with a schizophrenic dx and me with AS. I have 3 step brothers on the other side of the family who were awful little creeps that picked at everyone especially each other. Only saw them during the summers. I have a half sister who is 12 years younger who has a severe ADHD dx.

Do I think that growing up this way had anything to do with my AS? No, I'm just weird. Always been the weird sister. All my life, with all of them. I'm just obviously, not the same. I thought maybe I didn't even come from this family really. LOL.

My son has no siblings. He's AS. Did it make him more AS? I dunno. He always had me to help him through stuff.

I think the difference has been that I learned how to deal with bullying and teasing from an early age. He learned about it at school and it crushed him. He had known nothing but acceptance and thinking he was the greatest thing since sliced cheese. He had been in early intervention where he was usually the highest functioning except for speech. Then I brought him back to the US and put him in public school and that was just odd. It was a different perspective, for sure. I'm glad I had him in early intervention, it helped with alot of the socialization piece without the sibling crap.

I have three older brothers. I am the youngest. I was adopted in case you need to know if they are biological siblings. We are all close. They all have kids which is probably a good thing because my parents will not be getting any grandchildren from me.

I have a twin brother and an older brother.

I'm very close to my twin, we have been to all of the same schools including college. He's more eccentric than I am in terms of looks but a lot of people say we're alike he's just the more outgoing version of me. I went to the mall with him and some of his friends and I got excited about something so I started jumping up and down, then my brother did the same thing. His friend said "you two are so random!! !"

Until I was ten, I grew up in a children's home (basically, an orphanage - my mother couldn't look after me due to economic adversity and a lack of immediate family - all she had was a very unco-operative mother) .... so I had LOTS of pseudo-siblings.
I'm sure it offset what would otherwise have been a much more Aspergic childhood - with the anguish of greater adjustment.

The big down-side was a very, very impersonal upbringing - it was more or less like a boarding school, except I started at six months of age - very regulated, almost military ... you were part of a big machine.

I'm sure that had psychological consequences, though I know not what they might be since I never had the intimacy and support of parents and siblings.

I think I developed an NT exterior, while remaining pretty Aspergic internally.

I eventually went to live my my ma and grandma aged ten - but I don't think I ever really related to my mother as most kids do.

Sometimes I feel a bit bereft when I see what it is for kids to have parental support - someone to run to when you're scared or hurt and someone to guide or even push you.
Although she was a nice person, my mum was extremely hands-off - so I never really discussed school or life much and made all my own (generally pretty uninformed) decisions.

It's still weird to see people relating to their parents as confidantes, soul-mates and mentors.

By comparison, my early life practically bordered on experimental.

Psychologically, I don't really think kids thrive in institutions - humans are designed to do best in the intimacy of family life.

What hope for Aspies in institutions ?

I think it was Mayor Giulliani who said "The worst mother is better than the best institution".

Amen to that.

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If you only knew how much I relate to this statement. In a way, I think that it masked a lot of behaviors in my immediate family. I mean, no one expected the only child to really thrive at social events, right? Even more, because my parents were older than the norm when they had me (mom was 31, dad was 45) none of my cousins were my age, either, and my mother stayed home with me. So I was NEVER around other children.

I found out today that my dad had a sister who asked my parents to take care of her son in the early seventies. He was a "genius" who "memorized baseball statistics" but she couldn't handle the stress of having a child. If I have AS, I definitely got it from my father's side.

I grew up in a family of 8 (4 boys and 4 girls), and I was the second to the youngest, with 1 younger brother. We were close in age, 10 years apart to the month from oldest to youngest. I honestly think I would be a complete recluse if I had had no siblings or only a few. The best thing for me was the wide variety in the family -- each of my siblings vary to a large degree so there was always immense diversity in the household.

I only started to speak, where others could understand me, because I had noticed that my mother could understand my younger brother without him using gestures, and she could not understand me. Before that I was unaware that I was different with regard to language. I could read at 4 years old out loud and be understood, but if I tried talking without reading, I didn't realize that my speech was all garbled. Once I realized that, I would read my thoughts in my mind when speaking.

I learned how to associate in society through my siblings. Sure, I was still the shy guy who never had close friends, but at least I could get on well in society. I was still pretty reclusive, never going out to socialize on my own, until I was about 36. And yes, it is difficult to deal in small talk, but I get along well with those who can hold an intellectual conversation.

My theory is that the more siblings an autistic person has, the better, for the most part. It is sort of a microcosm of society, but small enough and close enough to learn an immense amount from, experience to help with the outside world. I would have to say that my siblings helped me to understand different aspects of human behavior, and learn how to react to the different aspects. Without them I don't think I'd function very well.

Picked up on social skills? Maybe, not always. I was always being told I was weird and should act normal. And they played pranks on me a lot.
Having siblings that hung out with their friends a lot just showed me how different I was.
The scars haven't healed.

I have two older sisters and a younger brother. I'm envious of people who were an only child because of all the headaches and heartaches that my siblings have caused me.

My sisters are in their early 30s and my brother is still in his teens. I've never been close to my sisters, partially due to the large age gap between them and myself. Another factor is that my eldest sister has nearly always lived abroad and is a religious fanatic, and my other sister is quite mean-spirited and selfish, to put it bluntly. Lately it seems that they're trying to reach out to me, but I want nothing to do with them. It's not that I don't forgive them for the things they've said/done to me in the past, it's that I don't trust them.

My brother and I used to be extremely close, but there is an increasingly large rift forming between us. Over the past year, his personality has completely changed for the worse. It feels like he's not even the same person; like I don't even know him anymore. I used to want him in my life all the time, but nowadays he's so unpleasant that I hold him in the same regard as my older sisters. In other words, I don't want anything to do with him anymore, and I look forward to the day when he moves out.