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fiddlerpianist
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Joined: 30 Apr 2009
Age: 46
Gender: Male
Posts: 1,821
Location: The Autistic Hinterlands

21 May 2009, 8:22 am

Okay, so my mother really isn't AS at all, but she does seem to have a few social deficiences. For instance, she seems to not have an internal filter about what to say and what not to say, so just about everything comes out in stream-of-consciousness style. She's like this when talking with me, she's like this when talking with friends... she's like this with people she has just met. It's like she doesn't know which information is important enough to share, so she simply shares it all. She also has a tendency to miss a joke and take some things literally. Then again, this hardly seems to count as a social deficiency, being that she is able to make friends pretty easily. Perhaps it's just a social oddity?

Anyways, I have no idea if I inherited (genetically or environmentally) some of this from her. I certainly can get bogged down in describing details, but it's more indicative of me talking about my special interests than simply recounting stories.

She was a teacher before she had my brother and I. She recently recounted a story about a child in one of her classes that sat in the corner and obsessively read the encyclopedia. (She told me that he probably would have been diagnosed with AS these days.) She was required by the principal, when he was being "disruptive," to be dragged down to the office and paddled. She tried to avoid doing this as much as possible, but there was at least one incidence where she pretty much couldn't escape doing it. She absolutely hated it to her core and told me that it was one of the reasons she became a stay-at-home mother.

She was extremely patient with me growing up. When others thought I was strange, she just saw me as "unique." She refused to have me tested (whatever that would have meant back in the 80s) because I was doing well academically... and I believe that was one of the best parental decisions she ever made.

I have always suspected that she could relate to me on some level better than my brother (who is much more NT than I am). For as much as she talks, I know very, very little about her childhood. I have always wondered if she had a lot more social trouble when she was young than I know about.


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"That leap of logic should have broken his legs." - Janissy