Asperger's Parents and Neurotypical Children

Post Reply New Topic

I think maybe they should of been more inclusive of autistic individuals before writing this!
http://www.empowher.com/news/herarticle ... ment-34064
Just one comment so far that I so agree on:
"People with AS face enough condemnation throughout their lives from both family members and from society at large. They do not need extra guilt and anxiety piled on by "experts"- telling them what bad parents they must be, simply by virtue of having AS. "

Just some more ignorant hate spewed from a self appointed expert, who actually knows nothing of the subject.

My NT daughter and me have a great relationship. And if she thinks I am "missing some clues", then she can ask and get the same answer from my NT wife.

She is right there are not allot of resources available on the subject, but after that the lady needs to shut her trap.

According to the census one out of two children in america will live in a single parent family at some point in their life. In 2002 about 20 million american children lived in a household with only one parent. This is more than one-fourth of all children in the United States. Lets ask those kids whether they prefer a single parent household or having 2 parents, but possibly one of them maybe AS? I think I know how they'd answer.

Really now, lets worry about something thats not a problem and ignore the elephant in the living room.

Francis I so agree with you, and feel we all should state out opinions on her web site, but to be totally honest if we are our usually direct honest selves we often get banned but really individuals need to remember we are often their children's voices... and that in fact many of us have lived experiences from being in families of spectrum and none spectrum, I so feel we are the experts...

I don't want to write down too much insults...

Actually I've Asperger and also my wife, and actually everytime people around me call me for their children problem. Actually I think that an Aspie could be a better parent because WE see things they don't.

I agree and feel in fact our tendency for perfection and to over parent if anything, helps us to understand each of our individual children..

I wonder whether the NT children in this article that grew up unloved were actually real...

Anyway, you don't have to have aspergers to be an awful parent, the same way you don't have to be neurologically typical to be a good parent.

I agree I have Aspergers but feel not my biggest problem that was my parents +++ and I feel had nothing to do with spectrum but circumstance!

I completly agree. The only real challenge for an Aspie parent of an NT child (actually my daughter is AS herself and at this point we hope that also the second will be on the spectrum) is "social-fitness" but it's nothing you can't do if you really care of your son (is the opposite problem of NT-parents with AS-child, for istance I'll have big trouble carring my son to the stadium or doing party in my house for him, on the opposite an NT parent could try to force AS child to do those thing...).

I think that the main point of parenting is understanding different needs and cope with it also if they contrast yourself. Said that I've read that AS parents only have 20% chance to have NT children.

I wonder if having 2 AS parents can result in NT children who develop many AS traits by learning from example?

Also (I think) many parents who probably have AS may not even be receptive to entertaining the suggestion, if they fit in within their own world and are comfortable with it.

Before the information revolution there were many quiet homes and taciturn parents, and the pace was slower and social competition didn't exist so much, or took different forms. Also there were many more stable social structures such as church parishes and strong communities, so AS people may have never experienced a sense of social exclusion in life. And much more routine without alot of diversity, esp in smaller and rural communities. Comparing/having sexual exploits as a mechanism of social climbing or validation just didn't exist.

If anything, AS were probably better parents because adherence to routine and strict behavior norms meant survival back then.

Here I am again--that As mom with her three NT children topic

I hate to burst a bubble and offer pseudosupport to "Pat", but her observation does fit my oldest NT daughter, who sent me an email and in it said I "ruined her life" because of my AS behaviour, but not quite for the same reasons.

She must have traded info with my youngest because now Esther is insulting me and wishes I was "normal." I am not kidding. Her best friend's mother thinks I am a "nutjob" and has reported me to Children's Aid. Fortunately I complained about her alcoholism to CA and other crisis centres about her daughter supplying Esther with alcohol from her liquor cabinet. (I do not keep alcohol, cigarettes or drugs of any kind in my home.) My daughter believes this woman (her name is Lisa) because she is normal, according to Esther. "Oh, I wish you would be normal like Lisa."

I am not kidding.

Only my son has shown any maturity in this matter.

My youngest wants to go and live with her father, who is NT (and is an unemployed gambling addict) as soon as he gets an apartment. (He is living in his van right now.) Guess who will not be living for long in a van?

Who is the parent here who seems to care more for a daughter?

And now everyone at WP knows why I have a dislike and mistrust of many NTs.

I think that if a parent has AS but doesn't know it, yes, it can be very hard for an NT child. Or just as bad is if they knew they were AS but did not try & take it into account when they parented. I know. My now wife & I had a hell of a rough time the first couple years, before she was dxd.

I'm NT, as are my kids from a previous marriage. My now wife was AS, but didn't know it. Typical family life & parenting was hard all the way around. She was unhappy with the children's unpredicatability and all of the usual chaos that comes with raising a child. The kids were unhappy and confused because they didn'tknow what to make of her coldness and not having any sense of perspective on what a typical child is. I was upset because I was caught in the middle. Most of the time no one was very happy.

It's all good now. She was convinced by a co worker to get dxd, which she was. It was hard for her at first but I am happy to say she's embraced her AS & we can all work together now as a real family. She understands her strong and weak points as a parent. My kids understand where her head is at & work hard to make her feel safe & loved. I let her be her except when IMO she may have a skewered perspective because of her AS & then I'll interject my NT point of view. Like I said, it's all good.

Back to the original post. Yeah, IMO it could be real hard for an NT child to have an AS parent. Could be. Doesn't mean all parents w/AS are crappy. But if they've got NT children they may have to work a little harder at it so the kid comes out fairly balanced.

Cheers.

I get your point granatelli, but I want to say something else:

is it harder for an NT child to live with AS parents then for an AS child to live with NT parents?

I don't think so, actually I think that for ANY children is difficult to live with parents a lot different from them, I think I would have suffered really a lot in a "normal" family (at least half of my family, counting grandparents, uncles, cousins, etc.. are AS, and the others are still pretty weird^^ ).

I'll agree with most of the article. And yes theres a huge problem if both parents have it. My parents both show signs of it. My mother has some odd repetitive behaviours and has trouble showing emotion and my dad always had trouble seeing things from my point of view and he had narrow views eg. he had some crazy notion that you should tell the truth ALL the time. Problem is how do you tell if the kid has AS too or is just emotionally cold cos their parents had trouble showing affection. I obviously have some traits of AS. The big problems are the learned behaviours from my parents which i eventually realised were not normal but some may have sunk in or been ingrained from my childhood. This is why if i EVER get married (yeah right!) im gonna try to find someone that complements me rather than someone who is like me. This lessens the risk of children suffering from these effects considerably cos at least one parent will be able to relate to them properly.

Hi, I agree. I just posted a comment on that article. I'm a NT child of an AS mum and I can assure you I'm real.

My relationship with my mother has broken my heart and been one of the most painful things in my life. I have finally realised that she is AS which has been a huge help to me in understanding why she is the way she is - why she seems uninterested in getting to know who I am. As a child, of course, I misread things to mean that there was something wrong with me because I couldn't feel a connection with her, she responded strangely to any emotion I expressed, certainly lacked ToM and empathy for me and others, was paranoid especially about money etc etc.

This has affected me profoundly. I have had mental health issues my whole life. There are, of course, other aspects that have contributed to this, but I feel my mother's aspergers is a big part of it.
It just makes me feel sad for all of us.
Zel

I suspected my father was/is an AS prototype. My father could not physically touch us or show affection. He had very violent mood swings and no friends.

We sought of accept the way he is, label or no label.

Hi everyone!

This is my first post here and I was compelled to reply to shadfly's comment above, even though this is an old thread. I don't have any confirmed diagnoses to back this up, but I am starting to suspect that I am a neurotypical child (now adult) of two parents with varying levels of Asperger's. Growing up, I always felt there was a marked difference between how I perceived situations and how my parents perceived them, and I felt that I always had to adjust my actions to my parents' view of the world.

To make a long story short, I absolutely believe that I exhibit a number of Asperger's traits as a result of my efforts to conform to my parents' view of the world (and some of these traits have become habit), but that I do not biologically have Asperger's. Edited: I just took the AS quotient test again, tried to be really honest with myself, and only scored 19. Every time I take that test I am stunned that I don't score higher.

My parents seem to not really know how to express emotions other than "anger" and "perfect." If I express something to them that makes them feel something, they become flustered and try to end the conversation. I remember that most of the times I was upset and crying as a child, I was brusquely told to "get myself under control," and as a result learned to suppress emotions myself. My parents often don't make eye contact during conversations, and I was never told by them to do it. I was rewarded for suppressing my emotions and my parents encouraged me intellectually and academically.

I didn't realize until my friends started getting married that married people had other friends. My parents also never keep in touch with people if they move out of town, and I was always told that keeping in touch with people is "bothering them," rather than showing them that they are loved and missed.

To make a long story short, I grew up feeling disconnected from the world. I believe that my parents don't have it in them to connect emotionally with me, but because I didn't have that connection, I did feel unloved. Then, I took that belief that I was unloved (along with the Asperger's traits I picked up) with me into the outside world, and as a result struggled to connect with the outside world.

It wasn't until I was 28 that I began to discover and express the more emotional (neurotypical) side of myself, as I learned that it was 'okay' to be different from my parents even though I love them very much. I learned that I feel much more whole and complete when I express affect, emotion, and vulnerability. It's a side of myself I shut off around my family because they don't respond to it. My brother once made a poignant comment, which was: "It's not that Mom doesn't love you. It's that she's not able to give you the deep, emotional connection you want from her."

The reason I believe that my Asperger's traits that I show are learned from my environment (and not innate) is that when I'm around neurotypical people who show me warmth, emotion, and affect- I embrace affection that's given to me and I instictively become more warm and emotional myself (without intellectualizing or thinking about it).

Anyway, I apologize for rambling, and I'm not sure if my observations on my family are correct, but I do think they give me a greater understanding of myself and my environment. I look forward to reading and posting more as I learn more about the Asperger's and the neurotypical world and where I fit.

And, to those with AS that read this- I love my parents more than I can express, and in no way do I mean for this post to be critical of them. It's because I look up to them so much that I picked up a great deal of their traits. Maybe it's a positive thing to be "on the border" of the neurotypical and Asperger's world, as I feel I am. It gives me a greater understanding of both ways of looking at the world.