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New and unsure

Mrsmac

Mrsmac

Active Member
Hi all.
I don't quite know where to start. I'm mum of three amazing children and have been with my hubby 24 years. Our youngest son has recently been diagnosed with Autism.....eventually. Earlier in the year my husband had a breakdown and during this time of reflection and emptiness he realised so much wrong or in his life was very similar to the troubles our son was displaying. So he researched Aspergers in adults and was blown away to find so many similarities, we are positive this is why he is the way he is. This realisation however made my husband start to question the personality of our eldest son, he had always been so adamant and pig headed before that all our eldest needed was more respect, or a better attitude. It didn't matter how many times I told my husband our son could never change because that was just "him" until he'd made the connection to Aspergers with him as well. Now that's all he talks about. My husband has been very lucky and been given special funding for an Autism assessment. Monday we will know for sure and I'm nervous. My house is chaos, my life is chaotic. I'd love the understanding how to cope some days, but most.......I love my life and my unusual family xx
 
Welcome to our little corner of the 'net :)

There are many of us here that did not know about autism until later in life.

Coming here to AspiesCentral should prove to be both friendly and helpful.

Your family is not unusual...they are only wired a little differently than most.

Thanks for trying to understand this...
 
Welcome! I hope you'll peruse our site, check out the Parenting section, look at our Resources, and just ask around with any questions you might have. Don't worry, we don't bite. :)
 
Takes a little while to adjust after learning you are built in a specific way that makes some things more difficult.

As an older adult myself who only really learned about Asperger's Syndrome in the past few years, and recognized that I have some/many of the traits from it, your husband's reaction is familiar to me.

I have spent much of my life trying to be successful, but always found some things were hard and some things easy. I have a relatively high intelligence and tend to think very logically, so I have over time been able to decipher the behavior of the NT folks and adapted / adjusted or at least learned to figure them out well enough to know what not to do.

When you finally learn "oh, I have a different set of wiring" it can be both a blessing and a curse. A blessing because now your life makes sense to you in retrospect. A curse in that you can slip into a "well, I can't change so I won't keep trying to do <fill in challenging thing> better" or start using it as an excuse for things that you really can, with some effort, do better at.

It's still better to be armed with the knowledge, because you can then learn which strategies/techniques/skills will work for you to improve yourself or learn to cope, and which ones would be a waste of time.

So he may still be in the denial-anger-bargaining-despair cycle or hasn't figured out how best to function in the "acceptance" phase.

So forgive his burst of insights where he keeps sharing with you all of the things he has figured out about himself in light of his new knowledge. For those of us who discovered it or were diagnosed later in life, it's such a rush of answers to problems we have struggled with for YEARS that of course you are going to want to tell everyone about it. :) Just bear with him.
 
Welcome! :D please feel free to talk about anything whenever! People are really sweet here and I've met a lot of people who make you feel less alone.
 
Thank you for your welcome :)

You may find me hanging around here trying to pick your brains and find some answers.
Does anyone else live in a house filled with Aspie's? No wonder I didn't know as my small family all suffer with it, I just thought everyone's home was the same.
I moved from my parents house at 17 and moved in with my fella, so all my adult life I have lived with it without realising.

I suspected something was not quite right with my eldest but the doctors said he was just smart and talkative. Then when my twins were born, I almost straight away knew my youngest son had certain issues that just got more obvious as he grew up. He's 14 now and a full blown funny guy, such a cool kid but with problems others don't always understand. He was diagnosed in July after 7 or 8 years of on and off appointments. His twin sister had always seemed fine, just moody and miserable. Now she's older I'm unsure about her as well, so another trip to the doctors has ended up with a referral to the mental health team.
My guys are all cool but I find it hard calming the arguments when they ALL think they are RIGHT!
Help in stopping meltdowns would be appreciated, at least now I know why the head banging goes on and the wall punching.

Sorry if I'm waffling I've never had chance to speak to anyone myself yet and I have lots to say :)
 
Mrsmac said:
Thank you for your welcome :)

You may find me hanging around here trying to pick your brains and find some answers.
Does anyone else live in a house filled with Aspie's? No wonder I didn't know as my small family all suffer with it, I just thought everyone's home was the same.
I moved from my parents house at 17 and moved in with my fella, so all my adult life I have lived with it without realising.

I suspected something was not quite right with my eldest but the doctors said he was just smart and talkative. Then when my twins were born, I almost straight away knew my youngest son had certain issues that just got more obvious as he grew up. He's 14 now and a full blown funny guy, such a cool kid but with problems others don't always understand. He was diagnosed in July after 7 or 8 years of on and off appointments. His twin sister had always seemed fine, just moody and miserable. Now she's older I'm unsure about her as well, so another trip to the doctors has ended up with a referral to the mental health team.
My guys are all cool but I find it hard calming the arguments when they ALL think they are RIGHT!
Help in stopping meltdowns would be appreciated, at least now I know why the head banging goes on and the wall punching.

Sorry if I'm waffling I've never had chance to speak to anyone myself yet and I have lots to say :)
Click to expand...

I have quite hardcore meltdowns over control, people and cleaning. And have little to no idea what sets it off, how to calm down or what to do, so it's panic stations.

I currently live with the only friend I have and he has the best experience and a BOTTOMLESS well of patience. (well, he's more of a carer)

"Allow them a place to escape, somewhere that contains no people, to realign themselves. Talking is perhaps better later on as they will most likely want to communicate the issue, but not during a meltdown. Fight and flight can be quite intimidating, so allow for as much flight without allowing them to be destructive. Never approach them face first"

A NT bystander's view on helping to calm a meltdown.
 
Bel said:
"Allow them a place to escape, somewhere that contains no people, to realign themselves. Talking is perhaps better later on as they will most likely want to communicate the issue, but not during a meltdown. Fight and flight can be quite intimidating, so allow for as much flight without allowing them to be destructive. Never approach them face first"

A NT bystander's view on helping to calm a meltdown.
Click to expand...


Thank you for this.
I am learning to wait before offering assistance or talking just making sure whichever one is in the process of a meltdown is safe. If I notice the signs, I try sending them to a calm place before it kicks off big style, sometimes it wrks sometimes it doesn't.
We discuss what happened as well after the fact to try make sense of it and see if we notice a trigger so we can adapt. I think it can all be rectified my poor hubby thinks I'm mad. I guess he knows it can't change, I'm just being optimistic in thinking the more we learn the better it will be.
 
Welcome to AspiesCentral!

I am a total loner myself and would actually welcome a house full of aspies.:-)
 
Not if two of them had each other as triggers, control is fought on an hourly basis. Don't get me wrong they all have their own time, music, playing guitar x-box which in turn is my time for winding down. It can be very loud. Unless they are all sulking with each other lol and I'm sure you know those grudges can last a while.
 
And thanks for the welcome.
Can I ask you a question? ..... Well I will and hope you answer.
Do you purposefully ignore people or conversations just because you can't be ars**d or do you genuinely not realise you have drifted off. If you drift off I suppose, I'm assuming everyone with aspergers is the same.
 
Mrsmac said:
And thanks for the welcome.
Can I ask you a question? ..... Well I will and hope you answer.
Do you purposefully ignore people or conversations just because you can't be ars**d or do you genuinely not realise you have drifted off. If you drift off I suppose, I'm assuming everyone with aspergers is the same.
Click to expand...
This is a very general question. As everyone is different, the answer would of course be situational. Some Aspies can of course have no interest in what is being said, as we can have our fixations that we're currently obsessed about, but many Aspies can also be interested in the topic of conversation, but still easily (and at times without meaning to), slip in to their own worlds.

I've been guilty of almost forgetting people are still there in the room with me, and that I'm part of a conversation. For me, I'm so inside my head, I can sometimes get lost in thought from something a person says, that triggers a chain of thoughts. It's almost like there's a vast library in your head, and you decide to read up on the information you have just been given, and before you know it, you've made youself comfortable, and have ended up with several different books open on the ground. Another good analogy is like finding an interesting video on YouTube about "how to bake cookies", and hours later finding yourself watching random cat compilation videos.
 
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