How close are you with your family members?

[Propianotuner]

What influence has ASD had on your family relationships? Does anyone else in your immediate family have ASD? Who are you closest to? Who are you distant from?

 

[AustinTheAspie]

I would say having ASD has had an extreme effect on my family. They've put up with so much of my crap, that I'm honestly surprised they still give a damn about me. I'm the only autistic one in the family as we know, but my sister has PTSD, my mom suffers from IBS, my grandma has depression, and my dad is half-deaf from a drinking and driving accident. We all have our challenges. I would say I'm closest to my mom, my dad, and my grandma. Me and my sister get along occasionally, but most of the time we're constantly bitching at each other over stupid stuff.

 

[Questella]

I think my half brother does, but I haven't been around him since we were kids, he's in jail now. (Paternal side)

My dad might, he has something, is a hermit and will be happy if he never sees another person again. He even has me go to the store for him.

Back when we were younger he'd often flip out about other people being around us, always refused to go to school functions, restaurants, theaters. We used to go super occasionally when I was really young but by highschool he was just over ever leaving the house. He's been disabled for other reasons though and hasn't worked in over 30 years.

He'll talk obsessively about the things he hates, not a conversation, just talk at you about why everything is horrible and why he hates everybody.

My original medical files from elementary school basically only blamed what was wrong with me on him. I was diagnosed originally as emotionally handicapped and adhd.

My mom's side is all perfect, perfect, perfect, ugh it's too hard to deal... I honestly have no idea how they ever got together in the first place but they split up when my sister was little.

 

[Mia]

Use to be closest to my younger sister and my father before he passed away many years ago. The rest of my siblings are longtime alcoholics, so I don't have much contact with them. Both my spouse and I are aspies, so we pretty much keep to ourselves and a few friends, as parents on both sides are essentially gone. My younger sis is autistic and has ocd, and several others have adhd. Both of my parents may have been autistic.

 

[toothless]

What influence has ASD had on your family relationships? Does anyone else in your immediate family have ASD? Who are you closest to? Who are you distant from?

my dad is informally diagnosed with aspergers and i am LFA, we both clashed like crazy growing up-he wanted to control the environment and routines his way and me=mine, and he wanted another clone of my sister [who is aspie though undiagnosed as her shrink said girls 'dont get autism' diagnosed her with social anxiety disorder instead],gifted and never had any functioning, behavioral or academic issues].

he would say in front of me how he wished i was like my sister, he resented me until my twenties and didnt interact with me unless it was to beat me for my behaviors and difficulties,my mum didnt know how to cope with me and broke down often and started drinking heavily and was alcoholic by the time i was 5.

they were distant from me and i developed what i now know is lifelong attachment disorder [reactive attachment disorder] i was informally diagnosed but not officially diagnosed as you cant diagnose RAD and autism together as theyre very similar,but it just explains why i am so distant from human beings [even more than expected from mildly low functioning severe,now moderate classic autism].

my sister resented me my whole life as her friends saw me do all my innocent and challenging behaviors in front of them as i was uncaring of and oblivious to their presense,this 'embarassed' her [a emotion i have no experience of] and it made her hate me to the point she stopped taking her friends around,apart from one girl from next door the same age as me who used to hate me on her behalf to.

it took until she was 19 before my sister showed any sympathy for me as she studied psychology and there was a module on classic autism.
she became my advocate,speaking for me on my behalf and defending me when being abused by support staff in an institution and residential care homes,but that all stopped when she had kids and moved a few towns away.

now we just have a distant relationship,we get on alright but its always in the back of my mind that she hated me,and she says things like its disgusting to see me in my nappy so i should wear clothes in my own apartment,she mocked me for wearing a life jacket as a sensory aid and she 'hacked' my facebook quite recently and posted a message saying 'my sister is more intelligent than me',which is an insult to the fact i have mild intellectual disability,but funnily enough everyone says im a million times more mature and experienced in life than she is,so i dont care what labels i have.

my sister weirdly threw a massive strop online because of that incident, because i didnt find it funny and she said i should have found it funny, she then bullied my autistic mates who were all defending my right to be in my own flat without clothing on [obviously id be wearing my sports bra and nappy though] as clothing to me is a sensory nightmare.

so i defriended my sister and i never went back to facebook,it was over two months before she stopped being an immature tit- i had forgiven her long before but she aparently didnt forgive me because i had not found being made out to be thick funny and she was mad because i had defriended her so she couldnt carry on bullying my vulnerable autistic mates.

she is very immature, but she acts like she is better than everyone so our relationship isnt THAT close.

now my mum,well i have an amazing relationship with her, i love her as she has always supported me and never hit me,and it was not her fault why she thought things like it was her fault for being a cold mother and making me have autism [thats what our ancient family GP told her] and she also believed i was posessed by the devil.
but my mum loves me dearly and i see her nearly every day,and i listen to her when she is upset,she has had severe depression since i was a infant and refuses to get help as she thinks she is to blame for my LFA and is punishing herself.

she has told me 'i want to die and take you with me' and other things like 'i will never love [sister] like i love you' or 'i will never hug [sister] i will only ever hug you'.

so yeah,thats my life.

 

[Judge]

Not much. Mostly because nearly all of them are deceased.

My one brother lives a thousand miles away to the north. I seldom hear from him, even on email these days. Though he agrees that I am likely autistic.

My second cousin lives just across town. But our relationship suffered as a result of telling her I thought I was on the spectrum. It seems to interfere with her beliefs that anything can be overcome with willpower and positive thinking. So she tends to be dismissive and marginalizes autism. More likely a manifestation of cognitive dissonance if you ask me.

 

[Stitch]

My dad has shown some ASD traits, and between him and my mom he's been the more understanding one. I know my mother loves me, because the way she shows that she cares about someone is trying to make them better. I can appreciate and tolerate it to a certain extent but it can be simply exhausting.
I think a couple of my sisters may also be Aspies, but it's a little hard to tell because our family as a rule is unconventional and I think that, to the outside world, sometimes it looks like all of us are on the spectrum...
One of the big boons for me, though, is that I have a younger brother who has Down Syndrome, and if you want someone who doesn't care if you have a social mixup or fall flat on your face, he's the one to go to. He's a big bundle of love. (And, as a sidenote, we also share several sensory sensitivities so we also like the same quiet, peaceful environments.)