LOOKING FOR ANSWERS BROTHER MIGHT HAVE ASPERGERS

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Lioness,

I too feel genetics are somehow at play here.


Liverbird,

My brother is currently receiving benefits. My parents, especially my mom asked the doctor about his “condition” and the SSI doctor told her that there are many mildly ret*d people in the world without a diagnosis and that she may never know what is wrong with him and to just stop thinking about it because she is simply torturing herself when nothing can be done about it anyway. I know when he was in school my mother searched for answers all the time and was told that he was “a little slow” but nothing more. The people making these comments were school psychiatrists and psychologists. I think in a way that putting him into special education classes might have hurt him because like I said in my original post he is very articulate and can understand many things. Many teachers considered him to be nothing more than a behavioral problem but I know as a fact that my brother always kept to himself and it was the other students who tortured him. I would always defend him whenever possible but I was not always around and he only fought back when he was at the end of his rope. Unfortunately for my brother, he was also the biggest boy in school and much stronger than a lot of his classmates. He could not tell how much force to use and would sometimes go too far. We were afraid that he could seriously hurt someone one day. So when he was placed in special ed things got a lot better because he was not with the mainstream kids anymore.

On a side note, his doctors told my mom that he would probably never talk or read. This may have been true of most ( I am not sure ) but thanks to my mother my brother is very verbal and an excellent reader. I felt so bad for him as a child because my mom would make him study with her all the time and he would sit there with tears rolling down his face.

Lelia,

You said “It seems to me that your brother could be on the spectrum with co-morbid bi-polar”. We have wondered about bi-polar and we will be looking into this in the near future.

You also said “He sounds simultaneously fun and frustrating. I think I would like him very much until he broke something I cared about.” You hit the nail on the head with this statement. He is very witty and can charm you very easily. He often is the life of the party so to speak but then if his mood is either too high or too low then it affects his behavior. He’ll start getting too loud or leave in a sudden huff of anger. When he gets too happy he’ll squeeze your shoulders and pat you on the back and it feels like being attacked by a hungry bear in the woods. We tell him all the time not to do this but at least once every month or so he’ll do it and I am left feeling all beat up and sore for the rest of the day.

Here’s an example of his sense of humor: He will disagree with me about something out in public and we will argue a little and then he will give in to whatever it is I am telling him to do or not to do, respectively. Then he starts to say out loud something like this “ Yeah, that’s right, you always get your way. If I didn’t love you so much I would snap your neck off and sit on you till your eye popped out. I could really clobber you with just one hand, pow!……right in the face. I’d smear your brains all over the sidewalk…. (then he starts laughing out loud very, very loudly, then he continues) “ But if I killed you mom and dad would be upset and I’d have to be a fugitive from the law and I’d have to escape to Mexico and I don’t like really hot weather and all because of you…You are so lucky that I love you!! !” By this time he can be screaming at the top of his lungs. Now, even though I find myself laughing I do not let him see my face as I am walking away from him because then it makes it worse if he sees me laughing. But if you were casually walking in the street and saw this he might frighten you, especially when he seems very serious and angry but is only playing around.

You are right about the boredom. But his lifesaver is out local church. He attends church meetings 2 times and sometimes 3 times a week. Without his church meetings I think he would be totally depressed and despondent. My husband does his best to take him to places that will mentally stimulate him, usually guy things like car shows or things about construction. We also take him on vacations with us. My mom likes that because it gives her a break from him and visa versa.

I appreciate all your posts, thanks to all.

Trinna