LOOKING FOR ANSWERS BROTHER MIGHT HAVE ASPERGERS

Trinna · Emu Egg Joined: Aug 27, 2008 Posts: 2

Hello Everyone,

Thanks for taking the time to read this post. I’ll try to be as brief as possible. I am 39 yrs old and I have a brother who is 37 and we, his family, believe that he has Asperger’s Syndrome or something very similar. I am writing this post to get any opinions or information on the matter.

My brother was the product of a 2 ½ day labor, why my mother’s labor was not induced is not known but we suspect my brother suffered some amount of oxygen deprivation. He spoke late and has always been clumsy and had no friends and kept to himself as a child. He was terribly bullied in middle and high school and was in special education and had speech therapy. For a short time he was sent to a school for children with serious discipline and aggression problems but my parents had him removed from there since he was not aggressive and only acted out in self defense to merciless bullying. He is dyslexic and also has generalized anxiety and occasional panic attacks. He also has times when he is very, very happy singing opera all over the house and then has times when his mood is very flat and he is quiet and he can stay in his room for days at a time.

Our father has a son from a previous marriage who is socially awkward and inappropriate at times, a low achiever, has had a string of low paying odd jobs and is currently supported by a girlfriend. Our uncle (our father’s brother) also has a son with learning disabilities and does not work and lives with his parents, he is in his late 20’s. I fear there is a family connection to all of this.

My parents wanted him to get some type of vocational training but he had serious problems learning, although verbally he is really advanced and is very articulate and can read very well. He worked at fast food places and had problems like not following directions completely and breaking things, not only from dropping things but also from trying to force things into places they did not fit and then breaking them. To this day if he is given something that has parts or has to be put together he frustrates easily and often just forces things into the place he thinks it goes and usually breaks it or damages it. He was also always being taken advantage of by other co-workers who would make him do their jobs because he did not know how to assert and protect himself.

He can add very well and very fast but can not figure out the sales tax on a small item and often drops money on the street because he crumples them up in his pockets. He can be very forgetful and you need to repeat something a million times to him and he will still complete some part of the task wrong if at all.

If you did not know my brother and saw him walking down the street you would not know anything was wrong with him. If he spoke with you there would also be a good chance that you would not detect anything wrong. It would take various meetings with him before you noticed something was wrong and it would probably have to do with some social awkwardness.

The other day he was singing while bumping the gas of our mother’s car. Some people around him looked uncomfortable. He was whistling the tune to “Living La Vida Loca” and then sing the lines to the chorus of the song and then he would switch off and start singing the 80’s country song “My Baby is American Made” and he kept switching between these songs until he was finished bumping the gas and he never noticed the people around him looking at him strangely.

He is very clumsy and can not drive a car. He likes television shows like Judge Judy and Sabrina the Teenage Witch. He has 3 cats and plays with them all the time but does so in the way a child would. He expresses attraction to women but is afraid of them and shies away from talking to them. He has a crush on Oprah, certain local tv broadcasters and lots of different soap opera actresses.

It may seem like I am painting a very juvenile picture of my brother but this is what we find so complex about his situation. He is everything that I have stated above but he also can read his local paper or Smithsonian magazine, memorizes street directions perfectly after only being someplace once and can diagnose most automotive problems. Since a small child he was fixated on cars and trucks and can tell you all about the body, the parts, years, models etc….but he can not drive one. And if you asked him to change your oil he would either drain out the wrong fluid or bend some part trying to force it to fit into place.

Our family has never heard of Aspergers until a documentary we saw last week. The young man in the film was a lot like my brother. What also makes this painful is that my brother knows something is wrong with him and he often asks my mother what he could do to help himself. He recently asked our mom if eating only organic foods would help him think better. So for now he is eating lots of homemade mashed potatoes, cabbage, corn on the cob and lots of fresh raw fruits. He is also afraid of cancer and he read that apricots prevent cancer so he had me go out and get him lots of them.

My father retired to a small town 12 years ago with my mom and my brother. There is no employment there and my parents knew his pattern by then and decided to just keep him around the house because with only 1 fast food restaurant in town it would not be long before my brother was fired anyway, so he basically spends his days with my parents doing supervised chores around the house or yard and going out with them into town to buy groceries or other stuff like that.

If any of this sounds familiar or possibly like Aspergers I would love to hear from all of you. This is the first step we are taking on the matter. Our father recently died and I am the executor of his will and have been very busy so it would be at least 3-6 months before I would have any time to take him to see someone, a specialist that is. But that certainly is one of our goals for him. I thought this would be a good place to start.

I am open to any and all comments.

Thank you all for taking the time to read this and God bless,

Trinna