Having children

[Kayla55]

Statistics look for autistic child but what if you autistic and child isnt. What if man pressures you into having many kids and none of online advice on taking time off will work. What are odds that autistic women battle relationships and society assumes you just mask and cope with motherhood. I've raised issues on forum for women support over relationships but what about this area. Young boys receive all attention, girls left as if we cope. I'm being brave and discussing teenage girls who fall apart and then other areas women need support. What if your Mom and family is only helping a bit and you feel child is a daily task and that due to finances you can't go on holiday without your kids, so just want to open a discussion and see

Autistic mothers were more likely to have experienced additional psychiatric conditions, including pre- or post-partum depression, and reported greater difficulties in areas such as multi-tasking, coping with domestic responsibilities and creating social opportunities for their child. They were also more likely to report feeling misunderstood by professionals, and reported greater anxiety, higher rates of selective mutism, and not knowing which details were appropriate to share with professionals. They were also more likely to find motherhood an isolating experience, to worry about others judging their parenting, or feel unable to turn to others for support in parenting. However, despite these challenges, autistic mothers were able to act in the best interest of their child, putting their child’s needs first.

 

[LadyS]

As a mother: yep.

I'd also add that others, especially other NT moms, not understanding how you cannot seem to keep up and handle everything like they can. This contributes to the feeling of isolation.

 

[Kayla55]

She is a teacher, perfect relationship, perfect life. She's so musical and oh way she teaches kids music. She was winner at conversation for dinner parties and every one loves her.
I'm struggling to teach my kids speech lessons never end. Then how describe what's happening, I was also hopeless at language.

 

[Kayla55]

• I’m pretty sure autistic women are more likely to end up in dysfunctional or downright abusive relationships than autistic men are. Initiating is mostly expected of men (and is something that’s difficult for many autistic men!) — but an advantage of being the one to initiate is that you’re less likely to be perceived as vulnerable and preyed upon by those who deliberately or subconsciously seek a partner that it’ll be “easy” to abuse. To over-simplify, my subjective impression is that many autistic men struggle with finding a partner at all; while the autistic women are perhaps more likely to instead end up with the wrong partner.

 

[Kayla55]

Masking is a learned behavior. I don’t do these things intentionally to deceive, I learned to do them because when I act naturally it makes other people uncomfortable, and in the past my behavior was called out and I was ostracized.

I mask by pretending I am easygoing to hide my sensitivities. I pretend that the music isn’t too loud, I pretend that I don’t mind that they invited other people over to our quiet evening. Instead, I silently struggle through the painful environment that is comfortable and enjoyable to everyone else: the loud music, the loud talking and laughing by groups of people, the exhaustion of trying to understand what people are saying when everyone is talking at once. I pretend these things don’t bother me and I spend half the night hiding in the bathroom trying to stave off a meltdown. It takes days for me to recover and more days for me to be willing to see people again, during which they complain that I’m avoiding them. I mask that I have a hard time understanding verbal communication by pretending there is something wrong with my hearing. In reality I need to buy time because it takes my mind a lot longer to process what people said.

I mask by being friendly and validating to everyone. I give everyone else the acceptance of their personal experience that few give to me. I give people the impression of being a people pleaser who is so nice and always happy and loves everyone when the reality is I think many people around me exhibit behavior that is shallow and cruel and I wouldn’t interact with them ever if I didn’t have to. I pretend to be less earnest, I assume an air of not caring about things that are important to me. I keep unpalatable truths to myself, I hide the patterns I see because people get uncomfortable or belligerent when I uncover them. I pretend to be unbothered when people are inconsiderate or manipulative or deliberately hurtful to others. I keep my interests to myself because I can’t gauge whether they are interested and I know people don’t like it when I flood them with my special interests. I try to engage with people on their interests, like football or jewelry or gossiping, even though these things do not interest me at all.

I let people hug me even though it feels horrible. I laugh when other people laugh whether or not I understand or approve of the joke. I mimic the emotions of other people around me whether or not I also feel excited or sad or angry like everyone else. It isn’t that I don’t have feelings, it’s that my perspective on situations is so different that the feelings I have are rarely shared by others. People definitely don’t like when you aren’t emoting along with the group, in my experience it makes them suspicious and aggressive.

I let people violate my boundaries to the place where they are comfortable because I pretend I am comfortable there too. As a result, people don’t believe I have autism and they get upset and frustrated with me when I stop masking, when I get overwhelmed or I refuse to go along with their program. People don’t seem to have any memory for my sensitivities or issues because they are so foreign to them, I have to remind them every time and it is exhausting and stressful. To them, I seemed normal an hour ago, if something is wrong with me now then I am just being dramatic. To my family and acquaintances, my masked self seems easygoing, affectionate, sweet, and helpful, and my unmasked self seems stubborn, selfish, rude, cold, antisocial, and weird.

 

[Kayla55]

• Women in general are more often the victims of sexual harassment or abuse than men are; and it’s a fairly safe bet that autistic women are at even higher risk than neurotypical women of this. Skills like being assertive and confident reduces the risk that abusers will choose you as a target; but that’s a tricky thing to pull off for many autistic people. Furthermore, if abuse does happen, getting away from the abusive person, and/or getting help and/or reporting the abuse can all be more difficult for an autistic person. (although it can be very hard for a neurotypical person too of course)

 

[Kayla55]

A

 

[Kayla55]

Married, not holding down a job. How many women do this

 

[Kayla55]

My objective is that we start a solution framework to help people

 

[Kayla55]

It took me many years to build myself up once I finished studying computer programming (unusual job for a girl)
I mostly sat behind computer and for first time was holding down jobs!!!!

I worked for many years and gained over 10 years experience to contract or freelance so I was able to work from home.

 

[Luca]

I am a “child-free” adult in a very non-serious monogamous same-sex relationship (I see my partner on a very infrequent basis and I’m highly independent.)
I don’t intend to ever adopt children and I have had a hysterectomy so I’m menopausal and sterile.

 

[Kayla55]

Before I knew that my children or I were autistic, it was natural to me to give them an autistic-friendly upbringing when they showed signs that was what they wanted. I didn’t think there was anything strange in it at all. And thank God I did: it means my children have never been stressed at home because of their autism.

The level of care an autistic girl needs to be able to socialise is vast. Because I’m autistic, I understand and will spend the necessary hours helping them, before they go out socially, to work out everything that could possibly happen when they’re out and how they could react. We then work out a contingency plan for if something happens that we have not predicted. A neurotypical mother might not understand this, with the result that their children go out unprepared, or don’t go out at all.

Mothers with autism: ‘I mothered my children in a very different way’

Women with autism are twice as likely to be undiagnosed as men. Amelia Hill speaks to four mothers who only recognised their own condition after researching their children’s behaviour

www.theguardian.com

 

[Kayla55]

I am a “child-free” adult in a very non-serious monogamous same-sex relationship (I see my partner on a very infrequent basis and I’m highly independent.)
I don’t intend to ever adopt children and I have had a hysterectomy so I’m menopausal and sterile.

Thanks for sharing, do you find pressure or stigma regarding your decision!

What work assists your independence, what advice would you give young girls

 

[Thinx]

As a mother: yep.

I'd also add that others, especially other NT moms, not understanding how you cannot seem to keep up and handle everything like they can. This contributes to the feeling of isolation.

Also I think there's plenty mums out there who haven't realised they are neurodiverse, which can be an additional issue. Services may expect them to be the mainstay parent in a health emergency for example, where they end up trying to support their child or baby in situations that are hard for them to process.

It's also part of the different way children are socialised according to their designated binary gender, this tends to send girls way down that masking route, to the point they have not been seen as being autistic or neurodiverse.

 

[Kayla55]

Also I think there's plenty mums out there who haven't realised they are neurodiverse, which can be an additional issue. Services may expect them to be the mainstay parent in a health emergency for example, where they end up trying to support their child or baby in situations that are hard for them to process.

Absolutely, the whole point of this thread is boys from young receive support. Not just teenage girls but pressure from motherhood.
Whilst pole statistics were most on this site are males who unemployed, what of women. Do we mask and hold down jobs or do we end up as housewives?

I battled to make it in male dominated industry and it was my saving grace on my divorce. Do NT men care for best interests of children or that they refuse to accept women as having another benefit to society.

 

[Kayla55]

What happens when she doesn't cope

Was anyone else raised in a dysfunctional home? (unsure if I should add trigger warnings?) a vent.

This may be a bit long-winded, but thank you all for reading in advance. I don't even really know how to begin, so I may just info-dump. It's very ironic that recently it was National Family day in Canada. I don't live in Canada but I'm pretty close to it. My mother is a narcissist with her...

www.autismforums.com

Matthias Kroegerson

Can a person with autism also have narcissistic personality disorder? Or is there just a great deal of overlap in traits?
My depression
My anxiety
My emotional dysregulation
My lack of fear
My black and white thinking
My addictions to smoking, alcohol, and sex
My hate of cutlery scraping on plates
My youthful appearance
My love of science and numbers
My love of psychology and observing people
My lack of object permanence that therapy couldn’t heal
My special interests (flying, fishing, climbing, crypto)
My heightened sexual experience
My obsession with justice and making things “right”
My fascination with visual snow
My asthma, epilepsy and spinal issues
My need to avoid the phone
My need to avoid people in general
My need for control
My lust for suicide
My rich inner world
My fluid gender
My fluid sexuality
My beige food KFC/Krispy Kreme obsession
My troubles with theory of mind
My lack of empathy and yet my abundance of empathy
My ability to love and yet a feeling like somehow I couldn’t
My struggle with external locus of evaluation
The fact I was hyperlexic in childhood
The fact I have ADHD
The fact I am chameleonic
The fact I copy people
The fact I relate to the guy from Mr Robot
The fact I’m constantly in my head
The fact I used to see people as commodities
The fact I can talk about cryptocurrency so much that people around me start to cry
The fact I love my children but cannot cope, beyond what is considered normal, with the amount of information that comes out of them
The fact I travelled across the world to get away from said children and then felt incredibly guilty about it
The fact I get utterly obsessed with people
The fact I intellectualise and process things cognitively instead of feeling them
The fact my heart beats too fast when I stand up
The fact I dominate conversations and interrupt people
The fact that my utterances are either tightly controlled or uncontrollable
The fact things go around and around and around in my head
The fact I couldn’t really come up with many gaslighting examples
The fact people read things into what I say that aren’t true
The fact I’m unusually calm on the outside
The fact my introverted daughter Marion is secretly my favourite
The fact I can self-reflect
The fact that my aunt’s death wasn’t just about grief but the order and familiarity she brought to our home
The fact people were so confused about me here
The fact I never meant to hurt anyone
The fact that my “real self” is a computer programmer living in a cabin in the woods
The fact that when I took off the “narcissistic mask” I felt like I was still wearing one
The fact I remembered this entirely list effortlessly
The fact I have a conscience
The fact I’m kind.
—
Everything on this list is a sign I’m autistic, not narcissistic. I picked these points deliberately, because the majority are already mentioned in my answers and comments here.
Can you have NPD and autism together? I don’t see why not, however, I don’t think I do, and my psychologists don’t think I ever did. Those traits listed above? They come from a different

 

[Mr. Stevens]

^ I hate to say Autistic people can't have NPD, because you never know, but I've always found that one hard to accept. My own experience is that Autistics are not very self-image driven. We are also fairly factual. That would make NPD very difficult. If we have trouble masking, then it would take a lot to become only a mask, which is what Narcissists are.

Even saying there's an overlap in ASD and NPD--as many do--seems very superficial to me. It's more like our motivations are misunderstood, so a need for silence, solitude, and factuality are seen as smug or grandiose. NPD traits can be an asset in politics, Hollywood, or business though--perhaps people should focus on that. It seems more likely to influence their lives than we will.

 

[autism-and-autotune]

I'm unsure if my response is on-topic, but I'm not having children at all. This was realized by me at a young age during punishment at the hands of my father; my thought was, If one has to do this to their children, then why have children? The older I got, and the more I realized my life is affected by my autism and narcissistic fleas and other flaws, the more I realized it's up to me to break the cycle--both of learned behaviour, and things which my children could possibly inherit.

 

[Yeshuasdaughter]

Autistic mom of an autistic kid here.

Even with the problems of being autistic, if we have an autistic child, we are so spot on amazing for them. We can instinctually hone in on their needs and give them a great holistic upbringing.

Can you imagine the autistic children of neurotypicals? Neurotypicals probably buy their autistic children those ghastly neon, multicolored, light up sensory toys, and play videos for them that have annoying high pitched music and flashing colors. Because the "experts" say it soothes and stimulates the autistic mind.

..... yech....

 

[Luca]

Thanks for sharing, do you find pressure or stigma regarding your decision!

What work assists your independence, what advice would you give young girls

I do get asked somewhat often why I'm not interested in getting married or having kids, but I don't see it as a big concern.

I run a business to assist my independence. I own a dog training business and a dog daycare.

The advice I would give young girls is: You don't have to listen to pressure from society, you can pave your own way forward in life and your happiness is more important than fulfilling an arbitrary societal role.