AIBU to think neurodivergence across families should not be surprising?

[alkwjeoin]

I realise this might be a controversial opinion, and I say this as a neurodivergent mum of a neurodivergent child.

One thing I often notice on MN is threads where mums of ND children are frustrated by their husbands' behaviours—behaviours that sound very similar to those they describe in their children. It seems to come up again and again.
I'm not suggesting that neurodivergent people shouldn't have children—far from it. But if one or both parents are neurodivergent, there's a reasonable chance their children will be too, and that inevitably shapes family life.

What surprises me is how often this seems to come as a shock. People describe their partner's ND traits as a major source of stress while also discussing their child's diagnosis, without seeming to connect the two. Equally, there can be an expectation that becoming a parent will somehow change or lessen a partner's neurodivergent behaviours, when of course it doesn't. In fact, parenting and the associated stresses usually increases them.

As awareness and diagnosis of neurodiversity increase, I wonder whether we also need to become better at recognising that neurodivergence often runs through the whole family—and thinking about what that means,especially in terms of kids etc.

@Hollowvoice I think in our case, he doesnt really need any support. But he's still in primary so that might change. No one in my family has really needed support in school but that doesnt mean that we're easy to live with day to day. It also doesnt mean that we arent ND and a lot of the issues are much harder to get support with. For example, we tend to be fine at school but struggle in the work place especially when it comes to networking, everything being a lot more fluid and unpredictable but also where people skills, consistency, dull tasks are the name of the game.

Honestly, in my family its because you could easily point to upbringing and a patriarchal society to explain every one of my fathers behaviours. Individually and the bigger picture. I can only see now that he is v likely ND now I have realised that I likely am.
Its also really, really hard to untangle whats upbringing, whats personality, whats ND, so add in men of a certain age being raised a certain way.... i would be so interested to hear how these things are untangled during the diagnostic process to figure out whats learnt behaviour.

My DS was diagnosed with ADHD last year and throughout the loooong process I have become very convinced that DH is also neurodivergent - probably ADHD too. Many of the behaviours DS displays (and that annoy the hell out of DH) are things DH does too - but god forbid I point that out to DH ..........

OP, I've been with dh for well over 20 years. I had no idea he was ND and nor did he, until recent years, after our second child. He's now had a formal diagnosis, more than 20 years after we got together.

We were together a decade before having dd1. I noticed there were things he struggled with, but it never, ever would have occurred to me that he had adhd and asd. I had limited knowledge of both conditions, and nothing dh did fitted in with what I knew about those conditions. No professional suggested it to him, despite him struggling at university. These days, there is much more public awareness of how they can present.

It was only after we had our second child that dh began to find life much harder, so thinds became more apparent. We are both working full time. As pp say above, having children can bring things to the surface. By this time, dh was in his late 40s.

Dd1 is due to have assessments for both. She's 11, and previously we'd put things down to normal child development. Looking at dh's family, I'm now joining the dots.

I also think I've got adhd. There are various reasons I'm not seeking a diagnosis right now. If you'd suggested to me a few years ago that I might have adhd, I would have laughed.

Does that answer your question?

I expect that you didn’t mean it this way, but your post does come across as blaming mums of ND children (who are no doubt struggling to help their children), for not clocking that their partner is also ND and needs help too.

Your later comment about being aware of neurodiversity as a child in the 80s/90s is quite unusual. I’m in my late 40s and don’t recall being aware of it at primary or secondary school, though looking back there were a couple of ‘disruptive’ kids who might have had ADHD. Again looking back, any awareness in wider culture was very much of the ‘Rainman’ stereotype at the time.

It’s perfectly plausible that people in their 30s and 40s who are parents now have gone through life undiagnosed because the criteria were very different in the past, and they have managed to get through life, albeit probably with some struggles. For example, I’ve seen several posts on here over the years from posters who were fine until they had children, when the increased demand of parenting has meant their existing systems can’t cope. Or the poster is NT but is struggling with how their partner is checked out of family life/ can’t cope with things they managed before.

I know a couple of people who've had exactly this sitution.

I don't have children, but my friends have always joked that I have ADHD. I started taking it seriously after speaking to a friend who was diagnosed late 30s and she said how much easier the diagnosis and meds had made things for her. I am now awaiting a diagnosis myself. Looking at my childhood, if I was a child now I would have more likely been on the radar, albeit being female and academic I hid it fairly well. I was always forgetting to do things, leaving the house without things I needed, not seeing things as important that others found extremely important, wondering why I felt different...

And now I look at my Mum. They'd do well to have a video of her in various situations if you click on the initialism 'ADHD' on any given website. She's a walking talking ADHD advert.

Neither of mine needed support until they very suddenly did. My youngest "broke" (a few difficult circumstances all together created a perfect storm which meant she just couldn't mask any more) about age 8. We didn't really know enough about ND then so it took while of slow realisation on our part and increasing EBSA on hers before we got to diagnosis. Then when my eldest started unmasking and showing the same issues we at least recognized what was going on and could support better.

My husband's ND traits have been massively exacerbated by having children- but also his ND traits were never an issue for our family when our family was simply the two of us.

I dealt with all my stuff and he dealt with all his, so it had no impact on me and he probably didn't communicate when he had issues as it only impacted him.

When we had twins it meant suddenly everything is so much more intense.

So I'm not surprised that one of my twins is ND and it clearly comes from my DH but it wasn't an issue before kids and now it's irritating as hell! 😂

I had a relationship with someone who had ASD some years ago and I really, really struggled with our differences. We were together for three years before it became too much for me however and I just couldn't get past it. It was me who 'diagnosed' her as I joined the dots and she was diagnosed without question in her assessment. I was appointee and I watched the pennies dropping on the face of the clinician! It was so obvious.

But, it is not ALWAYS obvious. And 3 years is plenty time for us to have had a child, had I not found it too much to cope with myself.

Remember until not that long ago it was thought that not only was ADHD a male thing, but that it usually didn’t exist into adulthood because they had someone managing them, rather than being expected to function as actual adults.

I have ADHD, I’m not always medicated, so its quite clear as my symptoms are what people would consider typical, well some of them are anyway. But really its only very recently that knowledge has developed more in the mainstream about autism and ADHD, and a lot of that information is wrong anyway, so it isn’t a huge shock to miss it in a partner.

I don’t get the negativity so many people seem to have. These are clearly people without the variety of ND or hat comes with lifelong support needs or they would not be getting married and having children.

DH and I didn’t have diagnoses when we had DD because we are of the age where that just didn’t happen, but we still knew we were different. We got together and made a wonderful ND baby. Wouldn’t have it any other way. We run our home and family for ND brains and that takes away so much of the stress that happens when we interact with the outside world.

I just find it bizarre that women meet and marry these men, then have children with them, then a few years down the line the man’s ND behaviour is suddenly a problem, is if they hid the traits for the first few years. I understand that we are still at the stage of catching people who didn’t get diagnosed as children due to lack of knowledge but at the same time the ND man didn't just become ND, he always was and it is absolutely crazy to me how many women seemly marry and have children with a man they are not 100% happy with.

FWIW we are all ND, I had no idea until well into adulthood, neither did DH. He is a decent husband that matches me well though, so for over 20 years I have been very happy with him. I get frustrated with people who ‘settle’ for a shit man and use ND as a reason for him being a shit man too.

I get so angry, but that is part of his ND, he physically cannot do something he finds “boring”.

Just out of interest, how do you know it's his ND?

What makes you so sure he's not just like the thousands of husbands on here who just can't be arsed, and leave everything to their wives?

Is there a sure way of knowing?

I think it's not always straightforward. I never realised I had ADHD traits until was researching autism in relation to my first DC. Neither DH nor I realised that he had autistic tendencies until our DC were in their teens and both were diagnosed.

I think a lot of the extent to which neurodiversity is obvious can depend on the circumstances, and presentation isn't static, even if the neurodivergence is always there. My youngest was not very obviously autistic to outside uninformed eyes until he hit burnout, at which point no-one could have missed it.

DH came across as a lot less autistic in the 8 years we were married before having children. Stress is the biggest factor for him in how rigid/sociable etc he is. When we were childless and he could spend his free time on his special interests, having lots of autonomy, having as much of my attention as he wanted, and doing social things according to his own capacity, he looked a lot more NT. Once we'd added very high care needs ND children, things started to change a lot. He's just recently been formally diagnosed and its clear that the autistic features were there from babyhood, but they weren't half so obvious in our early married life.

I did a fair bit of research about autism when I was doing teacher training and none of it looked like what I was seeing in my DH. With hindsight and more understanding, the similarities are obvious.

Lots of us had kids before we found out we were neurodivergent. And as someone else said sometimes we can mask our way through life, until we have kids and can't anymore so it 'all falls apart'. Even then many don't realise they might be ND until their child gets a diagnosis.

There is lots of strong scientific evidence that autism and ADHD are highly heritable.

eg

https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapsychiatry/fullarticle/2817601

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41380-018-0070-0

when he went through the diagnosis process one of the “focal points” were that things he finds boring/things that are “chores” all feature heavily in his ND assessments as too difficult for his brain to comprehend right now. There are tips and tricks to get his brain to understand what’s not happening/what he should be doing, but currently he’s only in the early stages of his diagnosis so we are still working on that in therapy. He clearly WANTS to do it and has the desire to do it, but just cannot see that the job is there.

It never crossed my mind that I might be autistic until social media started and I saw a screener questionnaire, filled it in and the result was ‘likely autism’. I organised an ADHD assessment for DC2. It never occurred to me that I might have that too until the psychiatrist conducting the assessment announced that in her opinion everyone who is autistic also has ADHD. I read the diagnostic criteria, couldn’t see myself in them but booked an assessment anyway….. apparently I was a very obvious case. I can see it now. I’m on ADHD meds and now function much better.

I have ADHD and autism, so does DC2. I’m pretty sure DB and DM do too. DB’s DC is also diagnosed with autism. I expect DM’s dad also would have been diagnosed with autism and ADHD.

When he can't 'see it', do you point it out and tell him you both need to do it?

My DH is from a different culture, which masked his ADHD because everything in his country is a lot less organised than it is in the UK, so people can get away with being chaotic and quick-tempered because it's part of the culture. It was only when we moved here that I realised it was actually also a part of him, and when a friend was getting her son diagnosed with ADHD and I read down the symptoms list for adults that it honestly was like a load of lightbulbs going off. I also realised that our DD has inherited it. Not as bad as him, or maybe just different because she's female, but as the only NT person in the household I feel like the mast on a ship in a storm sometimes. I haven't quite worked out where he inherited it from yet but I am certain it's genetic.

up till recently yes I have been. Now because of the therapy and autism support he’s getting, I have to write it down in the family diary and put a sticky note on the washing machine.
usually I can’t be arsed as this seems the slowest way ever and I can just get it done, but it’s not helping the resentment, TBH, so I should probably try and adjust my “immediate” expectations.

I think you should adjust your immediate reaction.

He fucked off upstairs and you just let him do it, instead of going up after him and telling him that's not acceptable.

I honestly don't know how it's possible to separate his ND from laziness and tell the difference between the two.

But it makes little difference anyway as the work still needs doing.

Like I said, it’s a really recent diagnosis, after our children got diagnosed, we both had similar tests, mine was negative, but he came back as autistic.
The therapy is supposed to help him see and modify his behaviour to better enable him to support me, and me to better support him, but we are really early doors (only 4 sessions in) and I know I can’t expect change in one day.

To be honest it was only when I started suspecting my DD was ND that it clicked for me that her biological dad is as well. I knew he had bad OCD and anxiety....to the extent he wasn't able to co-parent and is no longer in our lives. But it was only when I started noticing autistic traits in my DD that it clicked her biological dad is very likely to be undiagnosed autistic himself. Suddenly his struggles at school and university and the OCD, anxiety and self-isolation all made sense.