Do you have a sibling with autism?

[ambereeree]

I have a two and half year old asd boy and 5 year old nt girl. I feel terribly sad when he ignores or pushes her away especially as she always tells him that she loves him. How was your experience as the nt sibling? Did your siblings play with you and do you have a good relationship now?

Not a sibling but parent to two children with autism and three without. The two with autism are 17 and 25 now and the others are all older. The 25 yo was very challenging when young and his siblings put up with a great deal but we were honest about the autism and they realised he didn't intentionally set out to be difficult and they made allowances and were resourceful and independent and loved him anyway. If ever you asked them who was their favourite sibling they would and still do say ds is their favourite brother. They are still brilliant with him, they are stand in friends and parents at times as well as siblings.
Dd was never challenging and they were all so much older when she was born and again they were great with her. They are still great with her, dd and ds call her their practice child and are like extra parents rather than siblings I think.
Somehow we seem to have made it work and nothing makes me happier than when my older ones come home and I see the lot of them together genuinely happy to see each other.

@hiredandsqueak thank you. Do you think boys are more challenging than girls in general. I'm trying to be strict with my DS about sharing but as he's only 2.5 it's not easy. My worry is that he is horrible to his sister and might lash out at her.

He’s still so young though. Just because he has ASD doesn’t mean he can’t grow and learn, even
if this is at a different pace to other children. His communication and social skills can still improve with gentle guidance and teaching.

I have ASD and so does my brother, although we have VERY different presentations. We are in our twenties. We are not super close in the way “normal” siblings would be but we are each other’s greatest allies and always have each other’s backs. We are both very loyal and prioritise our family unit as it’s our secure attachment. This week he spent 3 hours cleaning my car (his hobby is cars!) to get it ready to be sold. When it comes to Christmas I will help him with ideas for presents as my imagination for these things is better.

I actually think the person who finds it hardest is my neurotypical Mum as she is always trying to make sure we are all happy and getting along. Most of the time we are all getting on just fine, we know that I am the talker and he is the listener 😂

My brother passed away some years ago and was never formally diagnosed. He absolutely would have been if he had been growing up these days. He was very difficult, he hated socialising and had a very obsessive nature. I could get on fantastically well with him at times, but other times I couldn’t be near him and he could cause such huge upset in the family. He had other issues too. He was always the worry of the family. I do miss him though.

My 8 year old has HFA and it's hard going with his little sister 4. He can be horrible to her although we always pick him up on it. I do a lot of facilitating games or activities they both like but I need to be right there. 2.5 is still very little. I think it depends on how severe the autism is. I would do a lot for him. But her gifts from him and help him hand them over etc. Say the words for him if he can't say thank you yet when she does something nice.

@eachpeachpearsums thank you. I don't really understand how severe his autism is. It was picked up by his lack of social communication, not answering name, and speech. He also stims and is a sensory seeker. At the same time he knows his alphabet, shapes and numbers better than his sister! I took him to nursery and he ignored all the children.

@SnackRussell I'm sorry about your brother

My situation is slightly different, but thought I'd share in case it helps. I have three NT children, but my nephew, who we are very close to, has what was previously known as Asperger's, or high functioning autism. Did I read it properly that your son is 2.5? Knowing the alphabet at that age sounds high functioning to me (though I'm no expert). When my nephew was that age, he wasn't particularly interested in my children and preferred to play with adults. Now however, (aged 7) he gets on like a house on fire with my two older children (5 and 7). They spend hours playing together and are very close and don't want to leave each other at the end of the day. He is very bright and empathetic and has learned how to share. They hardly ever fall out. My nephew is an only child so my children are the closest thing to siblings he has.

@somethingsnappy yes he know his alphabet colours numbers shapes names and can label kits of things. He plays with his father and me as well as his grandparents. He's always pulling me along to watch him do things or just sit there. His communication language isn't there and he often wakes up and recites nursery rhymes or his alphabet.

I have an autistic sibling, and I am an autistic sibling. We have two other siblings too. I am closest as an adult to the sibling I was closest to as a child.
The sibling that my sibling with autism was closest to as a child they are closest to.as adults.
The sibling I hated as a child (because of their cruelty and behaviour in general, not aimed at the two of us that have autism) I have had no contact with for thirty years.

We are high functioning, but my sibling with autism also has many physical disabilities that make life difficult.

@margoletta thank you. What is HFA? I see that mentioned a lot but I'm not really sure what it means.

High functioning autism- basically not neurotypical but high intelligence, sometimes exceptionally high intelligence. What used to be called Asperger's Syndrome.
My sibling actually has a diagnosis of Asperger's because they were diagnosed thirty years ago.

@margoletta thank you. I'm trying to learn as much as possible about ASD. There's so much confusing contradictory information out there and lots so negative. I love that you are posting as an autistic adult as I'm reminded not to be so negative about the diagnosis and future.

I hate the assumption that autism automatically means no empathy. My son is 3.5 displays fairly classic symptoms and only has a vocabulary of about 20 words but I have seen him show empathy for other children on more than one occasion

[quote ambereeree]@hiredandsqueak thank you. Do you think boys are more challenging than girls in general. I'm trying to be strict with my DS about sharing but as he's only 2.5 it's not easy. My worry is that he is horrible to his sister and might lash out at her.[/quote]
Don’t worry too much about sharing. Even NT children don’t like to share at 2.5!

My daughter (NT) is 4, and still has issues sharing sometimes. She is an only child, which doesn’t help, and she knows she SHOULD share, but she really struggles with it.

I wouldn’t be too insistent with a child of only 2.5 who has ASD.

@user1471548941 I love what you wrote as adult with autism.
Just because he has ASD doesn’t mean he can’t grow and learn, even
if this is at a different pace to other children. His communication and social skills can still improve with gentle guidance and teaching.

My brother has too much emotion perhaps. You have to keep him away from the daily dreadfuls and conspiracy nuts on Facebook or he gets very riled up. His brain is always ticking ticking ticking away.

yes, and we were like any other brother and sister really.. i think i played quite a supportive role with him to some extent when we were teens, he struggled to talk to mom and dad about things and we'd sit up late into the night in one of our rooms chatting about stuff... we played together, mostly computer games or lego.

But we did also fight like cat and dog, were singularly vile to each other, knew EXACTLY what buttons to press to piss each other off and quite often went for the jugular.

However, like others, i would have defended him to the hilt, and often did.. his friends were a wee bit scared of me, despite me being 3 years younger than him.. by the time were were 18 and 21 i had absolutely NO qualms about going through people who bullied him for a short cut.

We're extremely close as adults.. might not talk for weeks, but the moment one or the other of us needs something we're there.. we've both gone through relationship breakdowns and offered the other a temporary home for as long as was needed, he was there for me when i needed someone to help me pack myself and my kids up in a single day when i needed to leave an abusive marriage.

we've helped each other through debilitating illness, suicidal thoughts, bullying, abuse, divorces, grief.. he's an complete annoying shithead, but we are each others rock, and thats all that matters.

@Calabasa you sound like amazing siblings. Thank you for sharing.

also, to add, my kids are also NT and ASD.. and very like my brother and i :)

DS (asd) treated his sister with equal adoration and disdain.. she was fine as long as she wasn't touching his stuff he was never one for sharing, still isn't really... i tend to buy two of anything 'high value' to stop the arguing.

They're pre-teen now and we recently went through a phase of them not being able to breathe near each other without a fight starting, mostly because DS gets a kick out of annoying the shit out of his baby sister, and while older, emotionally/socially he's developmentally behind her really, but they're getting on a bit better now they're at different schools!

I have sent you a PM ..

Thanks all for sharing. Today I suggested she tickle him while on the bed while singing and he loved it so much he held her hand on his tummy. She was so happy this morning.

My eldest is an ASD girl, 10. She wasn’t interested in other kids until 4 and it was a single friend for a few years. Give it time and it may change, 2.5 is tiny. As he’s younger so you have his sister to compare him to.

It’s getting harder now for DD as other girls mature and she isn’t connecting with them on their level. Boys can have it easier as their male peers are more straightforward in the main than girls, who are more “political” - I struggled massively with this and suspect I have some ASD traits. DD is super caring but can be mean, like any sibling, to her sister. And beyond ASD they have their own personalities.

@ShastaBeast Thanks for this sentence. I'm going to keep it in mind when I get upset.
And beyond ASD they have their own personalities.

I have a DB who has undiagnosed but obvious aspergers.
It was tough growing up at times as he was just so, so difficult. Would do things like put a suit on to go to the cinema, spend weeks on the internet researching a bizarre niche topic and generally severely lacked social skills. I didn't understand why he was like this compared to my friends' brothers so would get very frustrated, feel like my family wasn't 'normal' and in turn I could be quite stroppy about it all.
In hindsight, if I'd known he had aspergers it would have made it easier to understand and we'd probably then have had strategies to help.

There were also lovely moments and I remember playing together and having moments of really understanding one another - in a bizarre way at odds with asperger traits.

Sadly, he has got more and more tricky with age but we can see it is aspergers now and that helps us respond.