Published on 12, July, 2020
Hi I am new to this site and would welcome your comments and help. My son was finally diagnosed with aspergers at 21 after a lifelong battle with our GP who refused to acknowledge his differences and labelled me an over protective mother not willing to accept that he was just badly behaved. I won't bore you with the tedious details of the lengthy battle to diagnosis, I am sure this is familiar to many of you.
The diagnosis was a huge relief to us as parents, and his sister as we always knew that he was special. For the last three years we have researched, read everything we could, and tried to put in place the best support possible to help him live an independant life. We have had some success, he is well capable of holding down his job as a carer, but periodically, he will crash and burn. Usually something will trigger him to believe he is useless, and he will walk away. It is tough to try and always understand and accept some of the situations he gets himself in to. Continuous bad debt pay day loans phone contracts, we have paid off thousands over the years. And yes I know we should let them fail, so he learns. There is an account currently that he is being pursued for that we are not going to settle. A bad credit rating would be a godsend to put an end to them.
our main problem is whilst we try so hard to understand him, he doesn't understand himself, and doesn't accept that he has aspergers, he may say he does to placate me but he doesn't really. He was deeply hurt when I pursued the diagnosis as he said I was trying to get him declared 'mental'. How does one accept having aspergers, does it help to know and try and understand it? How can I persuade him to talk to others and share his feelings? Would it help if he had a mentor or someone outside of the family he could talk to? We love him dearly and want him to be secure in his adult life, and to recognise his many positive characteristics. He is funny, loyal to his friends, clever in ways he does not recognise, different and individual, and much loved by his family and friends. We would like him to go back to our GP (thankfully a new one who has been great) for an updated assessment, but I am scared to broach the subject in case he feels I am again trying to label him as mental. Apologies for length of this post but it is so good to be able to put all my thoughts on paper. I would appreciate hearing from you. Thank you for reading this.
Sexual ambiguity/confusion seems to be fairly common with autism. The trouble is it just doesn't get discussed - British reserve or somesuch nonsense - so there is very little information around about this phenomena.
Lack of social skills and therefore limited social contact may be a factor by denying young people on the spectrum from peer identity reinforcement. Ordinarily young people's sexual identities are very strongly moulded by the crowd they mix with, and in the ordinary way of things a group of macho young lads will all turn out the same. To be different you'd have to make a really big step, which is obviously traumatic for someone definately transgender or definately gay, who realise they cannot conform.
To be different, even in what seems a more tolerant generation, is still really difficult, and ridicule and bullying around sexual difference is very harsh.
Trouble is children on the spectrum get bullied anyway, and are more likely to identify with other excluded minorities, whether that's goths, or emos, or often computer geeks, or also gay or transgender.
I don't think genderqueer or any other such cultures are at all new - they probably get more media visibility now. Young people have experimented with this for generations, just it had to be more covert and was much more risky. Some stayed there, for others it was a passing phase. You may be seeing this side of things more because your son has got involved with that crowd. Some parents get to see a lot of goth culture, because that seems an option for some kids with autism to find greater acceptance.
But I do stress the importance of sexual ambiguity on the spectrum, and I wish NAS would take this seriously. If the subject gets mentioned on here, the thread ends abrubtly in a deathly hush. As will no doubt be what happens after this posting!
The facts (where you can find any facts) suggest young people with autism are something like six times more likely to identify gay. They are also more likely to have gender identification difficulties.
But it never gets discussed. What's wrong with parents out there? If you really care about your children on the autistic spectrum why must you constantly pretend this isn't there? A lot of kids on the spectrum suffer added torment from sexual identity confusion, and all they get is its a taboo subject. It is a shocking state of affairs that we are too coy in this country to give proper help to young people in such difficulties.
However if your son clearly identifies this ambiguity, that he isn't transgender but needs to make physical changes, you have to accept that may be what works for him. You need to be supportive however bizarre this may seem. Stopping him could make things worse. You just have to understand that sexual ambiguity is a very real autism phenomena that affects many people.
Until NAS and other autism groups take this issue seriously there isn't going to be any advice around.