how sociable were (are) your mother and father, what affect

Post Reply New Topic

did it have on your sociability?

my father was a moderately shy man and in no way was on the spectrum.....he had a very monotoned voice as i do, but thats it......his brother however, was kind of a weird dude....probably outter spectrum or at least a near hit

my mother comes form a big italian family as sociable as you could get, lol............always lots of people around chitter chattring, lol..............sunday dinners with 25 people over every week....holidays galore

my mother had a gift for making friends as she isa very loving and giving person.she has so many friends and has lived in 4 places in her life and has made friends with so many people from everywhere....it is quite remarkable

i was raised this way so i had no choice, lol..........i guess it helped me with noises and constant stimuli going by me

i know i inherited at least one of my mothers social genes, lol............though i am intensley private and shy, i can mingle and make small talk with total strangers (again, everything gets easier as we age) i know growing up in this somewhat chaotic upbringing was for the better

My mom...very isolated and reserved and uncomfortable around most people...(AS-ish)
My dad is a high-end piano salesman. It is his part of his job to be sociable...(but there are AS traits on his side of the family too)...

Last edited by poopylungstuffing on 17 Jun 2009, 10:03 am, edited 2 times in total.

So-so social topic

My father was extremely withdrawn and an alcoholic. He could only speak when drunk. Naturally I preferred him quiet, as the drunken outbursts at home were very ugly.

My mother, for this reason, socialized outside the home. She would go out a few times a week, leaving us with said inebriated father.

I believe I got genes from both that made me AS, as one of my mother's brothers was definitely on the spectrum, and my dad sure was, as were many of his cousins.

I do not use alcohol, but my siblings are both addicted.

Good idea for a discussion.

My father was very quiet but really not in any way AS, as far as I can tell.

My mother is extremely sociable and extraverted, except she seems to have a lot of trouble applying conversation "filters." That is, when she tells you about something that's happened in her life, she cannot seem to filter out any details whatsoever, regardless of how relevant they are. So listening to her can be rather tiring.

The main times my mom is sociable is when she is talking about her obsessive interests...then she will go on and on and on....but in "normal social settings"...where she may not be able to talk about her interests....pretty much a wallflower..

hi lung, don't want to be a nosey %$&*, but what are her obsessive interests?

I forgot to say how I think it affected me.

My dad wasn't that musical, but his mother (my grandmother) was a hot-snot classical violinist in her day. Many of my dad's siblings are very creative (art, music, etc.). None of them really scream AS, though, except possibly my grandmother. My mother described her as "extremely selfish" and very much lived in the world that surrounded her. Really hard to say, though. I'd say I get my musical side from them. And possibly my shy side.

I think my extroverted side definitely comes from mom. I think I am somewhat better at applying conversation filters, but I'm not sure. If you can't do this, is it a sign of executive dysfunction?

Oh....Raw foods raw foods raw foods.....(there are some others relating to conspiracy theories like chem trails and whatnots...)...but raw foods dominate....and have for a while...they change gradually over the years...

Last edited by poopylungstuffing on 17 Jun 2009, 10:13 am, edited 1 time in total.

My dad is schizophrenic (undiagnosed while I was living at home), and my mother is the daughter of an Aspie, who while probably not one herself, is definitely NOT NT. She is VERY socially odd, has absolutely NO close friends and little relationship with her family now that her parents are gone, although she is incredibly intelligent, she (like myself) talks a LOT, and is extremely friendly with everyone, just won't let them get close to her. She also has pretty severe panic disorder, and for a good part of my childhood, was agoraphobic.

So....I'm probably not the best one to ask about this....

Like one of the posters above, though, I forgot to mention my parents' effect on me....

Well, between themselves being the oddballs they are, and my mother coming from a family lousy with Aspies, I was not considered to be terribly odd at all for not having a lot of friends, not wanting to socialize with children at all, and preferring my obsessions over people....since both of them tended to be that way as well. My dad's erratic and sometimes disturbing behaviour did have a negative effect on my social life (what there was of it) as a kid, though....anyone I WAS interested in befriending had only to visit my house and have to deal with Dad on a 'bad day' to never want anything to do with me again.

My mum is still convinced there's 'nothing wrong with me', but she bases that solely on two factors....I'm well-educated and well-employed, and I'm not in jail. I also have more friends than she does, which she believes is a clear sign that I'm even more normal than she is.

None of my parents are social. Believe that it may have made it harder for me to make friends. It probably would have been easier if I had more sociable role models. On the positive side: having parents like that made me seem very normal. Never realized that I had social problems because I was just like my parents.

Father: Aloof. Avoids eyecontact. Doesn't talk much. Not anxious at all around people, just uninterested. Believes that people can read his mind (lack of TOM?) and gets frustrated when people don't understand him. Impulsive and has a temper. Has no friends and no interest in friends. Spends his days building and fixing things (cars, radios, computers etc).

Mother: Anxious and reserved around people. Is interested in social contact. Has tried to be social and get friends several times. She would usually attend some party at work, try to act right and try to make friends. And after a few weeks she would give up and be depressed and isolate herself. She hasn't tried this in several years and has now isolated herself even from her family.

Believe that my father may be HFA and my mother AS but they do not have professional diagnosis.

Last edited by Vimse on 17 Jun 2009, 10:33 am, edited 4 times in total.

Father - NT, overly sociable (but also paranoid), pretty much ruined my childhood/adolescence forcing me into endless abusive social situations.

Mother - very likely AS, almost zero sociability without SSRI's.

My mother was a recluse... she was really shy if you didn't know her well. If you knew her, she would talk to you about all sorts of things.... mostly birds. That was her "most" special interest. After that it was John Saul books and other "creepy" reading material. In all of her life, I only ever knew her to have two or three friends that came and went in her life over the years. They were ALL canary enthusiast who were breeders of the little birds. That was the ONLY thing she had in common with these women. When she died.... there wasn't a soul at her funeral that wasn't a blood relative. My mother also had severe anxiety and struggled with depression.

My father died when I was about 3.5-4 years old, so I don't really remember too much about him. I have memories, but they don't reveal much about how outgoing he was/wasn't. From what others in the family have had to say, he was an extroverted ukulele playing weirdo and a born salesman. He drove a Mr. Clean truck selling Mr. Clean products and then later ended up selling everything from vitamins to vacuum cleaners. He didn't really have "friends" per se, but he would talk to anyone and was apparently never at a loss for words. He also apparently had some sort of way of becoming the center of attention (probably because he liked to sing and play his ukulele). He also had an affinity for Alkaseltzer. It was his favorite beverage. His father was an engineer and a jazz musician. That whole side of the family was "jazz" oriented and they all played piano, sax and/or clarinet. They were ALL pretty weird. My fathers father drilled holes in one of his kitchen cupboards so that his "liquor could breath".... if that says anything!

So far as myself.... I tend to be extroverted, overly talkative and socially reclusive. Basically, I will talk to total strangers and tell them whatever I feel I need to say and then go home and resume being a reclusive weirdo. I do, however, have a couple of "friends" and they are all scientists. That is the only thing we have in common, too. I guess I am very similar to my dad and my mom in many ways. It can go either way. I think both of my parents were a little "special", but I don't really know which one would have been "on the spectrum". They both were a little suspect..... I have a brother who has a ton of AS traits, but he has no diagnosis. He is oblivious to his oddness, I think.

Last edited by whipstitches on 17 Jun 2009, 10:30 am, edited 1 time in total.

My mother is very sociable in some ways because she is an extrovert; she loves to chat and smile at people when she goes out. She loves chatting on the phone. However, she is very reluctant to attend social gatherings or have guests in her own home. When she does invite someone she likes, they are usually much older than her and she makes them listen to her going on about her intense interests or obsessions.

My father is quite introverted and unsociable. He is on the spectrum. He only socialises with people well outside the mainstream of society.

I grew up mostly around my mother and her superior conversational skills etc., yet did not assume any of them myself and am even worse at socialising and social conversation than my father.

Well, hm. I don't know how to describe them, really. I guess I'll just try...

We lived out in the country with a lot of space around us. We didn't have much money and we had a LOT of kids. Both my parents worked and never seemed to have any friends. I mean, there were families we knew as a family, and each parent would stand around and chat with people at church or other places, but there was never anyone, while I was younger, that was represented to me as "mom's friend" or "dad's friend". I later learned that dad did indeed keep to himself while mom had friends at work and church but didn't get out much with them that I know of. From my view, both parents avoided social situations a lot of the time. Dad always seemed more social because he had this gift of social BS where he could talk with apparent knowledge on any subject, even if he really had no idea what he was talking about. I saw all this as if from a distance because I felt like little more than the last of a litter, a kid who hung around with the younger siblings of the family and didn't have much connection with the older ones. Nobody asked me what I thought or felt that I know of, for all I know they forgot I was even there. My parents were so busy with older troublemaking teenagers that my tendency to play quietly by myself was welcomed and completely left as it was. My parents didn't tell me anything about themselves or their families. So basically they didn't socialize where I could see except in group situations when they took us all to church or church activities. I don't even remember them having any affection for each other. When I was older and one of my brothers told me dad proposed to mom on a dare, I believed him. Mom said it wasn't true. I suppose not; she did cry at his funeral. I was upset by his death because I'd never known anyone who had died before. But it hasn't really bothered me since. It's hard to miss someone you hardly knew. That's the way it is with the whole family. I have siblings I haven't seen since 1996. Seen, or heard from, except for the rare forwarding of an e-mail. But they're all pretty annoying, so whatever.

I guess I can't separate my parents from the rest of the family socially. I did have older siblings who had some friends. How it affected me? I don't know. Who's to say whether I would have been distant, isolated, and uneasy with human contact, if they had actually given me a few lessons on how to interact with people instead of just punishing me for doing it wrong?

My parents are extremely social people. What influence did this have upon me? I don't know.