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My Mother who has Autism

Lottospots

Hi all,

This is a little bit of a different one (from what I can gather)…

Just a bit of background; my mother has three children from two marriages, myself (24 years old) and my sister (22 years old) from her current marriage (my farther & not autistic (and an absolute saint in my eyes!)) and a son (30) from a previous marriage. We all get on and my brother is treated as one of the family, and very rarely referred to as our ‘half’ brother.

My mother was formally diagnosed with autism a number of years back, which was not a shock to any of the family as she was (and still is) quite clearly autistic. She is 55 years old and has a brilliant sense of humour. Her talent is definitely the English language, written and spoken, and she loves maths but can struggle with it. When she is in the right mood she is absolutely wonderful to be around. She has never being an outwardly caring mother but she has done her best and we adore her for that.

We are all very sympathetic to her emotions & reactions to things and are all very understanding of her behaviour (we’ve never known anything different) but recently all of the immediate family has noticed a decline in her attitude to the world. She has become much more negative and assumes everything is against her.

She becomes obsessed with people who she thinks are ‘out to get her’ and believes everyone she works with hates her (apart from a very small group of people). But these are the same people, a number of years ago, who she was having a great time with. 

I guess my question is; how’s best to deal with this and help her?

We have tried explaining and reasoning with her (“no the government are not tracking who you are voting for, they don’t have the time or the resources” and such) but this doesn’t seem to be working. She is almost thinking herself into a deep depression and we can’t fix it.

She has also taking to becoming much more selfish that she used to be. She insists my farther should pick her above anyone else and became withdrawn when I mentioned I may be moving up north in a few years with my husband to be near his side of the family.

We just want to help her and make her feel as comfortable & safe in this loud and confusing world as possible. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you!

Parents

  • Thanks Dontworrybehappy, I appreciate your comment.

    We all try to make my mum feel as loved as possible. She, herself, believes occasionally that she has been a ‘bad mother’, however myself and my siblings completely disagree with her. We’ve told her countless times, constantly and always that she is our mother, she’s all we know and therefore loved, unconditionally. We’ve had open conversations with her explaining just how much we love her; these conversations have happened when she’s been in a deep depression & in tears and when we’ve had an amazing day, full of laughs and smiles!

    This post isn’t designed to offend people or to bad mouth my mum, I love my mother and I love the different traits that have developed in my own personality because of her. She’s given me a practical outlook on the world, she’s proved to me that you can do anything if you put your mind to it and she’s given me a fantastic sense of humour (or so I think so!). I just want to help as best I can.

    I understand that everyone can feel underappreciated, confused and depressed, not just people with autism. As mentioned in the above comments, there is so little research into adult autism I just want to get a feel from others whether this is common or if it stems from something different.

    It seems the result, so far, is that it may be a different issue from the autism; possibly stress or depression.

    Any further insights would be lovely and hopefully add to my (and my families) understanding! Thank you all!

Reply

  • Thanks Dontworrybehappy, I appreciate your comment.

    We all try to make my mum feel as loved as possible. She, herself, believes occasionally that she has been a ‘bad mother’, however myself and my siblings completely disagree with her. We’ve told her countless times, constantly and always that she is our mother, she’s all we know and therefore loved, unconditionally. We’ve had open conversations with her explaining just how much we love her; these conversations have happened when she’s been in a deep depression & in tears and when we’ve had an amazing day, full of laughs and smiles!

    This post isn’t designed to offend people or to bad mouth my mum, I love my mother and I love the different traits that have developed in my own personality because of her. She’s given me a practical outlook on the world, she’s proved to me that you can do anything if you put your mind to it and she’s given me a fantastic sense of humour (or so I think so!). I just want to help as best I can.

    I understand that everyone can feel underappreciated, confused and depressed, not just people with autism. As mentioned in the above comments, there is so little research into adult autism I just want to get a feel from others whether this is common or if it stems from something different.

    It seems the result, so far, is that it may be a different issue from the autism; possibly stress or depression.

    Any further insights would be lovely and hopefully add to my (and my families) understanding! Thank you all!

Children
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