Favourable environment for developing AS traits

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Were you raised in an environment that let your AS traits develop and flourish?

For three years of my early childhood I lived at a secluded farm with no other children to play with (apart from my first cousin who used to visit us every wekend with her parents because they had an orchard where we lived).

Later when we moved from a village to a town, I was often presented with new books and toys I had a great time with so I was never bored and I was rarely outdoor, spending time mostly at home reading and watching TV.

Anyway my mother isn't very social herself (well, she very likes spending time with people but doesn't have close friends who would like to visit us) and I was never introduced to any forms of entertainment as a kid - I wasn't taken anywhere (at best to amusements parks when they arrived in the town, the area they used to encamp in was barely few blocks away so even to my lazy mother it wasn't an effort to take me there).

im speculating here but it sounds to me that it would be reasonable to explain that your mother may have AS
and may have inadvertently promoted an As friendly environement ( little outside contact) because this suited her.

No, lol, it's on the opposite

Mom doesn't exhibit ANY AS traits and the only reason we lived in that small village was that she simply couldn't afford to buy a flat on her own. It was the place she was born and raised in so when we had to move from our previous place of living she simply came back to her parents.

But she doesn't have any traits - ANY interests (apart from reading those silly novels about love and watching soap operas she isn't interested in anything), she's very closed-minded, doesn't have any stims, no social deficits (she's simply too lazy to keep in touch with others but she likes meeting people as she says herself), no sensory issues and nobody would call her eccentric, different than other women. Before she does a thing she always checks if others do the same because she HATES sticking out.

ok sorry i inferred incorrectly.

I think my environment reinforced this belief that I am not good enough just existing and I must prove myself worthy of existing at all times and others have more intrinsic value than I do. In other words, I was raised to feel less human. I blame my mother.
My mother really was out of touch with reality when I was a child.
My father might have been a better parent but my mother drove him away, he didn't have the psychological strength needed to fight her when she filed for divorce.

With all these contradictions ,mystery and mass in AS/HFA study , it is very probable that AS/HFA might not be real autism (as classic autism) but only kind of personality/disorder. Yet there are some 'evidences' show that AS/HFA are related to so many genes on different Chromosomes and it's kinda inheritable .

......but isn't ANY kind of personality type of each human being is related to genes and environment? Yes, it is.

Aren't many of personality and behavior traits can be genetically inheritable ? Yes.

So AS/HFA might just be a personality type but unacceptable by the majority of people.

Lately, even 'shyness' and the physical manifestation of shyness are not acceptable anymore:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/750813.stm



So Irulan , you theory is very valid. Your AS/HFA might be the resulted by where and how you lived and by your personality.

It can't be HFA because I developed speech early (I spoke better and used "bigger" words than other children) and I was never suspected by adults I could have an autism spectrum disorder, it wasn't that visible to others so they didn't worry.

Speaking in terms of personality disorders, those develop later in life while when I recall my early childhood there were already symptoms that my development was a bit different than in case of my peers. Anyway a personality disorder manifests (as the name itself says) as a personality that is out of the norm while I had also more physical symptoms. For example I could already read when I was only 2,5, I was clumsy and didn't like touching since I was 2 or 3 according to mom's memories. I had an eating disorder since my very early childhood too. I rarely smiled and my face didn't express too much. I didn't have empathy then, I was never a sensitive child at all.

No, the total opposite environment here. But the ASD traits developed anyway.

I was taken to play groups of babies, kids, taken out to play with kids, taken to clubs and all the time, yet managed to be totally isolated to the point of not playing with, not talking or listening to children. I was also taken to meetings of middle-aged and old people, lots of restaurants and pubs, to events and acquaintances of my parents.

quite the opposite here as well, I had a lot of people put a lot of effort into socialising me, which worked well enough while around them. as soon as I'm out there on my own I'm just as AS as any textbook AS might be.

I think that some environments may exacerbate the more difficult aspie traits, while discouraging the positive aspie traits.

Asperger's is a neurological difference. It's there no matter what the environment may be. The environment does greatly affect the expression of those traits.

It's difficult enough for an aspie to socialize, but when attempts to reach out to others are met with ridicule or other psychic pain, it's unlikely that social skills are going to develop. If intelligence is not valued, then intelligence (especially in girls) may be suppressed.

There was "no such thing" as AS when I grew up, but I talked and learned to read at a very early age and then was sent to Montessori school, and private school, as my parents thought I was academically gifted and fostered that. So I think Magique is on to something. I was confident to the point of being egotistical, because my parents chose to emphasize my strengths.

I did not meet my first real friend until 4th grade. My parents were extremely overprotective. I remember feelings of intense loneliness even (especially) in a crowd going as far back as nursery school. My parents always seemed to think my state of isolation was acceptable, even preferable. And they, themselves, typically did not socialize, either.

I had a very unusual, very studious, very isolated childhood. I think it hid and intensified a lot of my personality traits , but ultimately I think it made me more confident -- I always had a scapegoat. I think I blamed my parents for all of my social inadequacies until college, at which point I started to kind of like myself a little bit, as the proverb goes, to accept the things I could not change....