Fear to have kids now

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If I am ever in a position to be able to care for another child, I will adopt or do foster care instead of having another biological child. Even without AS being in the picture, adoption is a very loving thing to do.

Yep it is, not always easy to do but it is wonderful when someone has the ability to adopt a child though how easy it would be for a parent with AS/Autism to adopt knowing there are more strict rules with adoption in many areas not really sure.

I didn't mention it above, but the reason I'm on this forum is actually that my husband has AS.

I don't have a lot of patience with people who aren't willing to work with their partner, in general. So I would say one partner needs to be able to tell the other when something you do bothers them or isn't pleasing to them, and the other partner needs to try to learn to do things differently. It's unfair to expect anyone, AS or NT or anything else, to be able to magically look inside you and know what you want and need at all times. I think if one partner isn't pleasing the other, the recipient has a responsibility to say "Could you do X instead?" and the giver has a responsibility to try to do X. And that's certainly *not* an AS/NT thing. IMO, if she didn't like the way you kissed, she should have tried to tell/show you how to kiss her; and you should have tried to learn to do it the way she wanted. Expecting one's partner to magically fill one's every desire is a fiction borne of too many movies and romance novels. It doesn't happen that way for anyone.

My husband's stimming doesn't bother me at all, and staying up late playing games doesn't bother me except when he complains the next day about how tired he is. (Or when I'm trying to get him to come to bed ... especially since even saying "I would like you to come to bed now" is too subtle for him!) Some of his other AS traits do bother me, especially because I'm pretty introverted myself so it's hard for me to make friends too, and I feel like being with him sometimes makes it harder. On the other hand, I have a lot of secondary AS traits as well, and so (for example) it's nice to have someone who understands that I just spent six hours on the Internet reading everything ever written about how to train border collies or who sympathizes when I get frustrated over the games my co-workers play. Overall, my husband is fabulous and I wouldn't trade him for anyone, period.

I think, though, that the main problem is the wall you're referring to; the rest is just details, more concrete ways to explain the feeling you and she mean by "wall." And all I can say on that is that there's definitely not a wall between me and my husband (I just asked him to be sure he agreed, he said "no; an occasional fog, perhaps"), and I think it would be hard if there were. And I don't know if there are people who could have a relationship with that sort of wall, and I don't know if there are people with whom you might not feel that the wall was there. I'm just one NT woman who happens to be very happily married to her AS husband, who, as far as I know, is very happily married to me.

When my son was 6 y/o we learned that he had AS. By that time, I was divorced and remarried. This new discovery led me to do a lot of research on the subject. During my research on AS, I concluded that my father must have had AS as well. The list of symtoms unequivocably matched my father's uniqueness.

The first thing I would like to share, is that I love my father more than any other person in the world (other than my son). Sure we had some really bumpy roads in dealing with his differences (and his addictions), but, man, I learned so much from him. I learned to fix cars, plant gardens, and tear apart the copy machine that somehow ended up in our backyard. He taught me to paint pictures, to ride motorcycles and to dig post holes (not to mention the correct way to lift something). We painted houses together, fixed plumbing and built a multi-room chicken coop with central heating. We went camping, gathered fire wood every Fall, and he taught me how to drive on the back country roads. I can't even tell you all the things my Dad did for me. I'm more than likely NT, but his ways rubbed off on me all those years. I love my Dad with all my heart and always will.

Now on to my son...he is 11, and is exactly like his grandfather. He is outdoorsy, in the woods, hiking up the largest mountain he can find. He likes to build things with his hands out of wood or Legos when no wood is available. He is the first to volunteer to paint the house, fix the plumbing, move 60 cinder blocks to the backyard, move 35 of the unused cinder blocks back to the front of the yard, and plant the garden. You won't find him anywhere where there is a crowd: not amusements parks, not water parks, not carnivals, not Disneyland, not anywhere where people are.

My point, to the OP, is that if my father had not been there for me, I would not have been able to teach my own son how to do any of these things. If I had not been exposed to my father's eccentricities, I don't know if I would be able to connect with my son as well as I do.

Oh, and the secret to raising kids is to just be there for them. They don't need all that extra garbage that society tries to make you feel you should be doing with or giving to your child. Just be there for them...be patient, listen, and love them.

I had my tubes tied at age 23 and I think my AS had a lot to do with it. I'm extremely sensitive to the sounds and smells of babies..they make me want to vomit.

I also have a hard time taking care of mundane things, and I'm sure my kid would get taken from me cause I'd forget to feed her or bathe her or something.

I also just have a hard time dealing with my emotions and didn't feel like putting a kid through that.

CentralFLM: Oh, there are roadblocks. In communication we struggle. If he gets mad, he shuts down and the argument ends whether I'm okay with that or not. Attempting to continue is a bad idea. That's hard because I really need resolution to things. Early in our relationship I would feel hurt when he didn't want me to touch him. Neither of us knew it was overstimulation due to his AS. He explained he loved me and enjoyed my touch most of the time, but said his skin felt too sensitive for touching, and touch was almost painful. I felt as if I was loving him from afar at times. His intense logic can be difficult too. Sometimes I want him to respond with feeling to something, and he responds with logic. Sometimes that is good, but sometimes it just feels lonely. His hyperfocus can be irritating when I want to ask him something and he seems angry for my interrupting. It's like a brain cramp interrupting him, though I do understand because I am the same.

Have I considered leaving? To be completely forthcoming with you, there have been moments when I have considered it, yes. But I consider escape from people frequently, and most of it is just that flight response felt in moments of intense frustration. What it always comes back to though is that, while there are challenges, all relationships have them. I've never actually deeply considered leaving. But also, you must understand...I'm an aspie too.

Some things are dealt with as best they can be. Some things are overcome, though usually it comes down to acceptance or management of the issue.

That was really well put, and I agree!

Are we married?

I'm an AS husband, and you just described my home life perfectly.

there

I don't mind being an aspie but I mind paying for the mistakes made by my aspie dad and his narcissistic nt wife and having to care for my fragile x brother. He is the reason I don't want to have kids because fragile x is a sherman's paradox getting worse with each generation plus his selfcenteredness is from his mother's side of the family regardless of fragile x and I am not naturally obsequious to others emotionally. I have had an easier life than my aspie dad and my fragile x brother. I am definitely not nt like my mother but people have been sweet when I am not in the presence of my family. I was very fond and loyal to my aspie dad though he was a much sweeter person than I am, I think he wasn't as loyal to me as I was to him. I think that loyalty is the one trait that I have more of than the rest of my family but I am also much more logical about emotional ties and that is because of my non aspie grandfather but without self imposing empathy and sympathy upon myself, I would be like my non impaired grandfather in other words a bastard. I am not as controlled by nor attached to the people I demonstrate caretaking for as is socially common. I either like you or I don't.

p.s. apart from not wanting to burden bio kids with increasingly debilitating fragile x, I have been reading adoptionblogs.com and as much as I like babies, I am afraid that my cold side when my brother displeases me would make me unsuitable to have a foster or adopted child. However, I have noticed that a sense of obligation restrains my impatience and I have a sense of obligation when I see Chinese babies. I only think that I may not be similar enough in personality to a Chinese baby to do her justice but I do know that I would be attentive and try to not be abusive. I wouldn't be an ideal nonbio parent but I wouldn't betray a child's trust. I hope. I think the babies are luckiest who have lots of laughter and intelligence in their life. I'm not sure I have that. I'd hug them a lot though.

I am almost 43 years old, and it doesn't look as though I will ever get married. I would like to get married someday if I find a compatible person, but I fear for any children I might have. My maternal age puts me at high risk for having a Down Syndrome child. Also, I take medication for seizures that could cause deformities in a child. I also suspect I have AS, and I don't want a child to be bullied as I was in school. It would take a great leap of faith for me to get over all of these reservations and get married and have children. Cats are safer. I don't have to worry about them. The biggest thing I have to face with them is old age, and that's hard enough to contemplate.

I made the decision not to have children when I was a teenager. I am 45 now and I don't regret not having kids. As I get older, I find I like them less. My original reason was because I didn't particularly enjoy my own childhood, but now I just find kids emotionally exhausting even if I am around them for a brief time.

I like cats.

Are you of Chineseethnicity,Cer???????????

I never wanted children before I knew about Asperger's; in fact, I was considering having my tubes tied. Now I've decided to wait a little on that decision, because learning that I probably have AS has made me realize that my childhood wasn't difficult because the world is an evil place or I was an evil child; it was because my brain was different but no one realized it. I still probably won't have children, but it will be because I don't want children and not because I'm afraid of them being AS or autistic.

yes, Harry, but my father and I never fit in. He fit in better than I did but my NT mother and my fragile x brother are the ones who blend in amongst the Chinese. Oh, and Chinese have long said that there is something "different" about my paternal grandmother, my father and me on many separate occasions. All three of us are definitely aspies and we are noticeable but my mother gave my brother Fragile X and she operates under the radar perfectly. She is not an aspie. She despises aspie behavior and apparently her MIL bumped into walls the same way I do and she makes a point about that. The NYT article about aspies didn't make her more sympathetic just as telling her that she gave my brother Fragile X didn't really make her regretful over the years of saying to him why are your feet angled like that, what is wrong with your face, how can you be so stupid and just blurting out at me every so often that my father and I are so repulsively truncated. On the other hand, I don't like her kinds of hands and feet nor her face. I think she looks all claws.

I think that many people were kind to me despite being an aspie so I don't think of it as NT vs. Aspies. I like NTs but I think my worldview is accurate and realistic because I tracked my father's troubles my entire life and you know, he couldn't protect himself because he was an aspie but those bad things didn't happen because his aspieness made them happen, they happen because this is life, a wilderness and some people are sociopaths and predators. I don't know what good telling people would do since I don't believe in sympathy from others but I do appreciate the people who did NOT bully me or my father because we made social mistakes because that means their kindness and tolerance was extra special. I've seen people who intentionally pour salt on wounds as second nature starting with my mother. It's life but I think some aspies take it harder. I think I take things not hard enough. I think that being able to put up with a lot of s**t became MY second nature so I tend to concentrate very hard when someone bullies because I want to make sure I get the full implication of their abusiveness since in my lifelong experience, bullies ALWAYS include the aspect of you deserve this when they pull their crap. I like to get the whole picture no matter how disgusting.