AS relatives - Harmony or Friction?

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For anyone with a close family member with AS or suspected to have AS - How's your relationship with them?

My father hasn't been diagnosed (nor is he comfortable with the idea), but my mother, grandmother and I suspect him to be on the spectrum. If not, he at least possesses alot of Asperger's like traits. Strangely enough, the traits he does display are the ones which I lack or don't show to an extreme.

Anyhow, we 'bounce of each other' quite alot and bicker a good bit. We don't have many conversations, not only because we share no common interests, but because it's impossible due to our tendency to go into huge monologues and repeat ourselves ad nauseum (even though I'm guilty of it, I'll admit it annoys me when other people do it). Small talk definitely doesn't happen since neither of us are going to initiate. It's difficult even to get some banter out of him - While I'm zany and absurdist, he's completely lacking a sense of humor.

My mum is a different story. She is very much NT through-and-through, but we get along brilliantly. Due to her being a strong empath, she can read me like a book and seems to understand me better than most people. While my dad is extremely concrete, she's more of an abstract thinker like me, so there's plenty of opportunities for theoretical conversations and interesting discussions. We always have something to talk about. She has the same weird sense of humor too.

Even though my father might be AS, shares alot of my traits, we don't relate to or understand each other. Even though he's always been around, in many ways we hardly know one another.

Last edited by nothingunusual on 24 Mar 2009, 3:42 pm, edited 1 time in total.

My father was the same. I didn't share his interest in do-it-yourself, foreign languages, vintage cars or the Thirty Years' War, and he referred to the science fiction stories I read and wrote as "cock-and-bull stories". And being of different generations, we were on opposite ends of the political spectrum. But we also had some things in common - our taste for alcohol, our misanthropy, our atheism and our macabre sense of humour. I wish we could have "agreed to disagree" more often.

The only one I can think of who may be on the spectrum is a cousin who is seven years younger than I am. As a baby/very little girl she would rock back and forth on the couch repeating the same thing over and over sometimes. Way back then I had never heard of stimming or echolalia, but looking back I believe it was. I baby sat her regularly from when she was about three to eleven and we developed a close bond that continues with both of us in our 40s. I don't know if she is aware that she may be on the spectrum, I have wondered if she suspects that I am on the spectrum. She is very smart and had no language delay and has generally been able to make good money although the last year has been tough for her financially, but I have been able to help her out. She is one of my favorite relatives.

My father was insane.

He used to lock in me and my brother in our rooms when he came home and did not want us to run around. Sometimes, he pushed us into walls for no reason at all. Once he shouted my brother in his ear.

He used to hit our dog quite much. And of course he beat my mother.

Once, he became fined for beating up another man in street.

At end, my mother left him (2001) after he started to starve us. He had got obsession with money, so he cut our food supply with half. He started to stalk my mother after he got probation, and actually sent death threats to her.

I have learned that before he met my mother, he had actually got six months in prison for attempted sexual assault.

He was also chain smoker.

He died in 2007 from lung cancer. They say he drowned by liquids in his chest.

I am very pleased about that and hope he suffered very much.

My brother is only person I love.

He is very innocent and naive. He is seriously afraid of sex, dogs, whistling noises, and non-symmetric shapes. He is diagnosed with compulsive-obsessive disorder. He lives in a group tenement for disabled people. I send him gifts then and then, but have not met him or my mother since 2006.

My AS family members are not close. We largely have different interests and only seems to connect on certain levels with each other where our obsessions overlap. There is one family member I have very little in common with, but we can riff nonsensically with wordplay. Another family member loves to talk forever about whatever is on his mind, so whether we connect is based on my interest level in his topic of the moment.

My son is just like me, except that he's been sheltered. He went to a charter school through 8th grade and then a tech (geek) high school. He'll graduate in a few months, and then he's in for a rude awakening.
He was my obsession when he was a baby, and I got into his head and played his games. I was there, watching when "the light went on" at the age of six months -- he looked in the mirror and obviously understood that he was looking at himself.
My father -- I'll get to him later.
My mother might have a few Aspie traits, but she's so brainwashed that she's not worth talking to. Her parents said that she was a late talker, and that her first utterance was a full sentence.

I would tell her that I'm an Aspie, chat a little, and look for an opening to ask. I've done that recently with a couple of parents who's kids were in school long ago with my kids. I was right about one kid, wrong about the other.
Looking back, I can think of a number of old friends who I think were Aspies. I think that's what drew us together. I wish I were better at maintaining relationships. People tend to drift away and we lose track of each other. One even has an Autistic daughter, but the last time I saw him I didn't know about Asperger's.

Mine, too. Totally different story, but the ending was the same -- no one missed him. I'm sure he was an Aspie, but he had been kicked around some. A lack of compassion and an isolated mind. Not a good combination.

I considered him my negative example. I got much of the same raw material, but took it in a completely different direction. He never attempted to understand the people around him. I was psychoanalizing him by the age of 12. He sneered at anything related to psychology. So do I, but not in the same way. It's a load of crap if you insist on reading it as a "science," but as philosophy or food-for-thought, it's worth knowing. (Like religion -- there's a lot of good stuff in the Bible if you relax and read it as literature, but if you take it too seriously it doesn't make much sense.)

Why not? How far away is he (geographically)?

Last edited by Tahitiii on 25 Mar 2009, 12:46 pm, edited 1 time in total.

In my work, I am sometimes relocating, so it depends. But usually minimum of 200 km's and maximum of 500 km's. I do not simply like to socialise, and my mother dislike me very much, after I without explanation ended relationship with my then girlfriend. My mother was very fond of her.

I would say my father is Aut. I've never gotten along with him. He has his routine, and the way things must be done, which is not mine. So we've had numerous arguments. His obsession with our lawn (not yard, but lawn) was most distressing for me as I was the appointed groundskeeper. I wonder if he'd possessed the knowledge that he's Aut if things would have been any different.

My mother has some Aut traits, but I think she's NT. I get along better with her, though we still had our problems. For example she'd plan meal preparation 2 weeks in advance, only buying such quantity of ingredients as was called for in her recipes. Snacking was not provided for. (it wasn't like we couldn't afford it - my father being a mechanical engineer)

My oldest brother is mildly Aut, and I get along great with him. He keeps to himself mostly, but shares various revelations with me. I remember playing the various strategy games he'd made up based on his obsession with the Napoleonic wars back when he was a teen.

My next oldest brother is like my mother - NT with some Aut traits. When we were kids, living under the same roof, I didn't get much of a chance to interact with him as he was usually part of some athletic program or another. His obsession with German (or Bavarian?) culture had it's points of interest. Yodeling, for example. Largely, we don't have much in common. I was always his inexplicable little brother. Only years later did he reveal to me that he had some sort of a martyr complex which caused him to act out in order to divert our father's less friendly attentions away from his other siblings. He told me he'd felt guilty going off to college leaving me home alone with our father.

My Grandfather and one of my Uncle's on my Da's side are suspected AS. I hate them; they're jerks.

My uncle on my mom's side is suspected AS. He's nice. I like him.

My brother is AS. We get along well enough for siblings.

The human shield. I can relate to that. I left when I was 16. My sister, ten years younger, told me recently that she spent countless hours crying under the dining room table, and nobody noticed.

I wish I could leave now. My husband is a different brand of jerk, but still unhealthy for me. My kids are 18 and 15. If I leave, I know that their relationships will degenerate. I can't see the kids moving out until after college.

Right now, I don't have a permanent job and I don't have any options, so I've been sleeping on the couch since August. But when I do get a reasonable job, I can imagine getting an apartment with the idea of switching off, so that we each spend half the time at either place. Especially for when he gets a new girlfriend. His ego won't allow him to stay alone for too long. I wouldn't want him to be totally dishonest about it, but neither would I want them drooling all over each other in front of the kids.
For the long term, I have no special attachment to the house itself. It's just an investment. I picture it as "Grandpa's house."

I may do that at some point Tahitiii. Nice avatar, that's the scolding fish from The Cat in The Hat isn't it? Dr Suess rules, deceased or not!

My father is on the spectrum and my mother has many of the traits. I am not at all close to them.

My father was always very distant (but of my siblings, I think he liked me the most.) My mother was OK until I reached my teens; then she'd be hurtful and say awful things to me on a regular basis. She cared far more about her obsessions than my welfare. She had no interest in my university studies, not asking about my exam results, and denied my severe anxiety issues.

Both completely left/leave me to my own devices and rarely check up on me. Throughout adolescence (and now), I received less support from them than my same-age peers received from their parents. At first it was extremely lonely, but now I actively avoid them; the damage caused by neglect has been done.

I somehow managed to get out into the world and get an education without any guidance. It was very damaging time--being ignored by them, being undiagnosed AS, having untreated mental problems, being taught no life skills--I had no one to confide in because they just weren't interested and would minimise any issues I tried to raise. They still think I'm "NT."

I suspect that the extreme emptiness I experience when wanting to become close to someone mostly stems from those years. There's less pain when I isolate.

I have a younger sister with classic autism, the only sibling I really get along with. =]

Is that a trend? I keep hearing people say that the younger sibling has more severe issues. Is it just an illusion, or is this common? What does it mean?


Velodog: I look at the world after what that jerk did to it, and all I can think of is the Dr. Seuss line: "And this mess is so big and so deep and so tall, we can not pick it up, there is no way at all." Or, as they said on SNL, "He broke the world."

I have no idea, but I've head that it's common.