Published on 12, July, 2020
I think we are all aware autism runs in families. I have a 34 year old Autistic son with "moderate learning disabilities", official diagnosis. He has challenging behaviour and has been in an NHS behavioural support unit for 7 years. The reason for this long stay is due to our local council not providing suitable support in the community, hopefully that will change soon. I also have a granddaughter on the Autistic spectrum, two nephews have Aspergers ,and one of my brothers has recently been diagnosed with Aspergers. There are definite tendencies in other family members. I know of other families with 2 or more Autistic children, ours spans 3 generations.
I am the only diagnosed in our family, but I firmly believe that my maternal aunt is autistic, and also her cousin's daughter (I can never quite work out the relationship to me, there... Second cousin once removed?).
We are definitely a family of autistics - myself and my brother are the only ones diagnosed with Asperger’s Syndrome, but our father, my uncles, my cousins and my grandma would definitely meet the criteria. Even my cousins’ children, none of whom are older than 3, show many traits - echolalia, high pain threshold, ordering toys, wanting to play alone, repeating actions/words/phrases incessantly, having advanced vocabulary for their age, not making eye contact etc. To the trained eye it’s fairly obvious they’re autistic, diagnosis or not.
One of my brothers, the father to my nephews with Aspergers is definitely on the spectrum, although he has never been diagnosed. I'm afraid if we all got assessed as a family, most of us would be on the spectrum.
I am autistic / have Asperger's syndrome and my sister is convinced my dad was autistic although he was never diagnosed.