Who has is harder: aspies or NLDers?

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@Tamaya Maybe your sister is autistic too? I think it is not impossible for autistic girls to have close friendships in all cases of ASD, some of them (especially the more intelligent) may look "relatively normal", especially before puberty. Had your sister lower birth weight than you and problems in early childhood? Which learning problems she had? How she functions?

In my case my sister had larger birth weight than me and I started to show "weirdness" before going to elementary school. But I was diagnosed with a PDD when I was 16 - 17 years old and my sister probably still has no mental health diagnosis at all despite being 24 years old. My sister looks "in between" me (having social pension due to PDD and other issues, like schizotypal disorder and OCD) and our brother, who is allistic and functions properly but who had obviously the highest birth weight from the siblings (I had 2150 g, my sister had 2650 g and our brother had 3600 g, we all had similar gestational ages (on time) and we all had 10 points on Apgar scale).

My sister is the middle child, and is the only one out of us who my mum had complications with during pregnancy. The midwife was worried the unborn baby wasn't getting enough oxygen in the womb. She was born three days early, which I wouldn't say is premature.

I was actually the heaviest baby out of the three of us, but I was born five days late. My mum's pregnancy and birth with me was actually the easiest. She was in her 20s when she had all three of us, and so was my dad.

I don't think my sister is autistic, because I believe it's rare for an autistic mother to have an NT child, and her 13-month-old baby doesn't seem autistic at all. She makes eye contact, is pointing to objects, mimics actions, laughs a lot and has a very expressive face.

Mind you, I reached all those milestones by 13 months too, according to my parents. So maybe autistic babies can still develop typically, I don't know. Or maybe, if my sister is on the spectrum, her baby is just extremely lucky and got her NT father's genes.

Maybe your sister is "mildly" autistic and has "mild" autism due to both perinatal issues and genetics factors (which can appear to be crucial in your own case of more typical autistic presentation than in her, if she is in fact "mildly" autistic)?

In me and my siblings, the lighter the child, the more strikingly autistic a child is. Brother weighed much more than my sister and is allistic. Sister weighed significantly less than younger of her older brother and she appears for me to be autistic in less striking way than me. I weighed 500 g less than my sister despite very similar gestational ages and length (which meant low birth weight and significant fetal growth restriction) and I was diagnosed with Asperger syndrome as a teenager, some years later I was diagnosed with co-morbid schizotypal disorder and got disability pension.

I'm "mildly" autistic too but I have ADHD as well, which my sister doesn't. I have the combined type ADHD, a severe case or something.

That's interesting - your sister had perinatal issues, but she may be not autistic and does not appear to have ADHD while you, despite better perinatal conditions, have ASD and severe case of ADHD-combined type.

I did DIVA-5 test nearly a year ago and it suggested that I have moderate ADHD-combined type. I have diagnoses of Asperger's, schizotypal and OCD. In my family there appears to be gradual progression from me with PDD and disability pension to my sister who appears to be "half me, half our brother" in neurodevelopmental and psychiatric conditions to our brother who is allistic and functions well which appears to correlate with fetal growth parameters - the worse fetal growth, the more atypical the child.

Yeah, it contributes to my resentment of being like the way I am, because it's a "why me?" cry. ADHD doesn't even run in my family. Depression, anxiety, low self-esteem and RSD does seem to be a common family trait though, and I feel like I kinda inherited all of these to a greater degree, causing a different brain-wiring (AS and ADHD). But I still don't know why me. My mum didn't drink or smoke while pregnant with me (she didn't smoke anyway, and she was a responsible parent so didn't drink, though she drank a bit when she was pregnant with my sister but that was before she knew she was pregnant. I was planned, so my mum knew straight away when she was pregnant with me and didn't drink any alcohol at all. She didn't want it anyway while pregnant with me, as she felt too nauseous and tired).

I don't wish AS upon anyone, but sometimes a tiny part of me kinda thinks what it would be like if my sister's baby turns out to have AS or ADHD, like I would no longer be the only one in my family with a diagnosis. Please don't judge me or anything, as I'm not maliciously wishing it upon my niece, but sometimes I feel that at least ONE other person on my mum's side of the family sort of "should" have an ASD, if I have it. My sister didn't know she was pregnant until 5 weeks into the pregnancy, so up until then she was smoking weed and drinking alcohol. She stopped abruptly as soon as she found out she was pregnant, and began taking folic acid, which probably helped brain development or something. I wish my mum had taken folic acid when she was pregnant with me, then I might be NT like everyone else too.

Maybe the firstborn child of a woman has relatively higher risk of having autism than firstborn child's younger siblings born from the same mother? Maybe it is such a relationship, maybe it has something to do for example with hormones' levels in the womb?

I am the firstborn child of my mother too, in addition, I had serious asymmetric FGR with LBW, probably due to my mother's illness before bearing me. I was conceived some months before the wedding of my parents. My brother is about 40 months younger than me and our sister is above six years younger than my brother.

I'm not the first born child, I'm the third born.

Thanks for the information.

How good is your visual thinking? Mine is definitely not above average... I do not have aphantasia and rather do not have hypophantasia, but I have strong dominance of verbal thinking and a lot of internal voice. I do not have good three-dimensional visualization abilities. I can have a lot of melodies and songs in my mind.

I do not have prosopagnosia. I am rather good at recognising people and rather many people with pervasive developmental disorder (even among someones with good visual thinking) are profoundly bad at it. I do not have developmental topographical disorientation.

I may "fear" that I have just emotional disorders and personality disorders instead of pervasive developmental disorder and autism spectrum disorder with co-morbidities associated with emotions and personality.

I'm not sure how good my visual thinking is really. I can picture and imagine things, if that what it means. My mind is full of chattering, images, memories, colours and emotions.

I have somewhat similar. But I am not proficient in visual thinking. I have something like "visual thinking dyspraxia" - I might be not able to rotate 3D or even 2D objects in my mind, I have poor "moving" visual thinking abilities, my pictures last short and verbal thinking definitely dominates in my case. I have a lot of melodies and songs in my mind and often particular melody or particular song repeats in my mind "constantly" many times one after another. I can imagine smells, tastes, touch, sounds, pictures. Does poor visual thinking abilities (but not aphantasia and probably even not hypophantasia) combined with impaired nonverbal communication and executive functioning problems mean NLD? I would say that non-autistic NLD would not make a person socially "weird", but that it would present with impairment in reading graphs and charts, dyscalculia and dysgraphia in elementary school. If someone likes maps, has very good marks in elementary school, has no dyscalculia and dysgraphia but is socially different, it definitely suggest autism, not nonverbal learning disorder (although many autistic people have more or less NLD traits in my opinion). Autism is pervasive and is associated with social-behavioral functioning and NLD is specific and is associated with learning problems, not social-behavioral impairment. I think that poor nonverbal communication is an autistic traits and having NLD does not mean that someone has to have problems with nonverbal communication.

I think it depends on the person.

For me, NVLD is far more of a hindrance to a good life. ASD give me passions, and NVLD makes me suck at them. I can barely drive because of this disorder, and I really enjoy martial arts, but I can't remember the forms necessary to succeed, so I always end up quitting in frustration after falling behind everyone else.

I would say that NLDers have it harder because their disability is belittled and dismissed. Period.