Does anyone have a parent with (or they suspect) autism/aspergers/asd/hfa?

[Athenaviolet]

I have very recently come to the realisation that both of my parents show lots of autistic traits.

I'm trying to note them down as I think of them so I have a clear picture if they fit the diagnostic criteria.

But this process has just opened up my entire life, especially my childhood to analysis I've never had before.

I feel like my parents aren't who I thought they were. I'm seeing DM in a more sympathetic light and my DF in a very critical light.

I can't blame them for not recognising their behaviours as there was no public knowledge of adult aspergers etc in the 80s.

But I do feel like I've been dealt a rubbish hand in life in parenting terms. Sometimes we were quite well off so from the outside it seemed like I had an enviable childhood but I was thoroughly miserable and now I see that my parents weren't really fit to parent.

I'm quite scared that I've learned a lot of not great behaviours from them and have blindedly copied some of their parenting into my DCs. I'm worried about not repeating their mistakes and possibly limiting their contact with DCs from now on, esp with DF.

I do feel like the way I saw my world has now been swept away and now I'm trying to piece it together and make sense of it.

Has anyone else had experience of this?

Most I can find online is about parents parenting asd DCs not the other way around.

I do wonder how he would have coped with an Aspie child. I do have Aspie traits such as anxiety and often have unconventional ways of solving problems but don't think I have enough to be diagnosed. I assume I'm not very Aspie because I love talking to people and getting to know them and make friends easily although I am aware I say that as a comparison to my dad and my dd so I might be very much Aspie in ways that they aren't so may be blind to it?

Fair enough buttonboots it was only my thoughts :)

Of course we are heavily influenced by the parenting we had, but I don't think we are totally defined by it. We still have free will, I think.

I am also quite possibly defensive because I worry about my own parenting skills ;)

Alan - that's sort of me too. I am very sociable and do small talk really well at parties, can flit from group to group etc, but paradoxically, I find it very difficult to go from friendly to good friend. Somehow something in that step can go terribly wrong. I'm now much more cautious and keep people at 'friendly acquaintance' longer before I learn to trust them.

But - my best friend has similar aspie traits to me - and we hit it off so quickly and amazingly well. We have mused several times as to whether we'd be considered to be on the spectrum.

IsItMe - I think you're half right. We don't NEED to be defined by our parenting. But unless we spend some time analysing what in our parent's parenting techniques went so spectacularly wrong, we risk following in their footsteps.

When my diagnosis was explained to my parents, my Dad said he recognised himself in it.

To be honest, if he'd have been a lone parent I believe I'd have been amazingly happy. When he was (sadly rarely) ordered to look after me he always made sure I was clean and well fed and would always ask me if I was okay when I was in obvious distress (I had to learn to suppress my meltdowns by myself to avoid a beating from my mother). He wouldn't necessarily know how to help, but we'd look at each other across a gulf and recognise each others sadness. That meant something. The rest of the time he left me to be myself, and the few times I was in his sole care were times of ineffable peace and mutual serenity.

He has had to put up with miserable, soul-destroying emotional abuse from my mother all my life because of the things he struggles with. I sometimes wish he'd get an official diagnosis just so that she might be faced with how disgusting her behaviour was.

Both of my children have autism. DS was dxed with Aspergers. DD has an ASD and ADHD.
My husband has a great many AS traits, as do I although I doubt either of us are actually diagnosable.
On my husbands side his eldest brother has a dx but only got it recently - he's in his 50s. My FIL made my MIL cope with raising 4 children in a 2 bedroomed bungalow becasue he doesn't like change. I suspect all my MIL, SIl and BIl all to have some form of Autism. My DH sees nothing strange about the things they do, it was a very ordered and routine led household and thus he thrived.
Once my DS was diagnosed I did a lot of reading and the more I read the more I looked at my father. He was a crappy father as I was growing up, putting his needs and wants way before ours. For example - he was, and is, an incredibly talented tenor. As in capable of being a shining light in professional opera. He got a place in the chorus of a famous operatic company but left because he felt he should have a lead role, right out of music college. He didn't have a solid job becuase he was destined to make his living through music and composing. His choices led to his being very close to the breadline a lot of the time. Which was shitty for my mother. His attutide led to my parents divorcing and my mother taking up with a man a) old enough to be her father and b0 who abused me sexually, verbally and physically. (But that crap judgement call was hers, not his)
My father is anti social unless he knows the people well. He comes across as arrogant and will dominate a conversation. He finds it hard to do anything 'new' in case he does it wrong or it goes wrong. I can see now that this is a refelction of his anxiety and my son is just like him.
Now my father is a fantastic Grandfather, my kids love him to bits, but it would never occur to him to say "Never, while you and Mr Never are here why don't we have the kids for a bit and you tootle off for a walk?" If we asked he'd do it in a heartbeat.
And, as I grow older it is my dad I feel closest too. With him I do not feel judged for my parenting. I feel my children are loved unconditionally and accepted. With my dad there are the wonderful companionable afternoons with all of us with our heads buried in books or knitting patterns just being together.

As my DS grows I want him to be like the best bits of my dad and I see it as my job to teach him to take risks but also have a realisitic view of the world.

That was epic and I apologise for typos - some of my fingers type faster than others!

To sum up... My dad is probably an Aspie, it led to a bit of wy childhood being shite but I love him and think he rocks!

I'm almost certain my father has AS. I did a lot of reading about the condition eight or so years ago when my godson was diagnosed, and realised I recognised many of the traits. Obviously I can't blame him - he's 75 now - for not understanding his condition, but it made my childhood particularly (eldest daughter, big family, mother didn't really cope) very difficult, and we were very poor and lived in overcrowded, primitive conditions because, despite being very clever, he would not consider changing jobs (he worked for the same company doing the same repetitive mechanical thing from the age of 13 until he retired), retraining, or even accepting promotions for more money because it was 'too much hassle'.

In reality, he couldnt see that because our living conditions (house he grew up in) were acceptable to him, why they shouldn't be to us. Also, he couldn't deal with change. A diverted route because of roadworks made him fume and panic. He repeated the same few out of context anecdotes, phrases and quotations, throughout my lifetime, regardless of who was listening or how many hundreds or thousands of times they had heard them before. He was completely incapable of altering his conversation according to listener or context. We once met some total strangers in a carpark a long way from home and he discovered they shared a dentist. He proceeded to monologue for an uninterrupted 30 minutes (I timed it) about exactly what dental procedures he had done, and parking. He couldn't see their embarrassment and discomfort or that they were trying to leave. He met a friend of his whose wife had just died and started asking endless questions about the man's tv aerial, and getting annoyed when the new widower didn't give him as much information as he wanted.

His hobby contains an inordinate numbers of other AS men.

This is really sad. I never realised it wasn't normal for DF's to not be very interested in their DCs.

I suspect that both of my parents have Asperger along with the rest of my immediate family. You cannot reason with them and my df has always put his own wants/needs before his family. They also do not like change, are overly critical of me and my life choices. I don't think now, looking back, they have been interested in me or my dbro. My dsis is the golden child and can do no wrong in their eyes.

Makeitacider-that's exactly what I think.

I never thought to question some of my parents patenting before. I had such an isolated childhood I never witnessed other parents and DC interact so I had nothing to compare them too. Then when I had my first DC I didn't have friends who were parents so I still didn't have any role models.

There is so much I'm learning and analysing for the first time now-middle aged with a teen.