Undiagnosed Autistic Parents (And Being Their Late Diagnosed Autistic Children)
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- Опубліковано 2 сер 2024
- I might do another part or two to this one, I think there's kinda a lot to be said about it that hasn't been said so like I guess ill say it lmao
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my mum died 10 years ago and i have a strong sense (with greater understanding of autism) that she was also autistic. it explains a lot of things i couldn’t understand about her when i was younger. and i’d love to be able to talk to her about this. but it’s not possible. so yes, feel you on this ❤
Both glad and very sorry that you’re able to relate! 💕
Really interesting Dana, would love a part 2! As always, thank you for being so open and genuine
I have a weird enjoyment around talking about my parents now that I feel I understand more about them, so it’s very likely! Thank you for watching and commenting! 💕
I can relate to what you say so much,I got bullied and rejected all the way through school and in jobs too,I wasn't diagnosed until 34 I'm 40 now spent years wondering why I couldn't just get on with it like other people .
My mum has always been an introvert and stayed at home she did have one friend and in later life went to hobby groups but I'm sure the autism is more on my mum's side of the family as my uncle her brother is quite off too .
Being called weird and any and quiet is so annoying.
One of the main things I resolved early on was to take responsibility for how I treated other people. I confronted my mother later in life with this: "Mom, when you would run after us, screaming "I will brain you!" I thought you really meant to kill us." "Oh, I definitely did." "Well don't you think there is anything wrong with that?" "What? Do you want me to repress my emotions?" "Well, yes. I think murderous rage is an emotion that should definitely be repressed." I wonder to this day if I am alive only because I can run faster than my mother.
This is a really important & interesting conversation to have. I was so odd & disliked as a child & i very very clearly displayed aberrant behaviours that probably should have at least been discussed, but all my "weird" behaviours were very accepted & normalised by my parents.
My dad is definitely autistic & adhd like me, so of course he didnt have the perspective that i wasnt being normal. He also believes that "real men don't have friends". My mother is a narcissist & never had friends either, & so i never had a third set of eyeballs on me to perhaps flag some things that should have been flagged.
In hindsight, i wonder if my father's view on friendship was because he also struggled to make friends due to his personality/autism.
My mum got her filthy narc claws into my dad when he was only 19 & i think it's very interesting...perhaps thats a common dynamic because really, who's more vulnerable to & accepting of abuse? Autistics. Especially undiagnosed ones who are used to being bossed around.
I dont talk to either of my parents. My mum is such a cruel repugnant person & my dad's temper held me hostage for over 40 years until i finally realised i didnt have to put up with it any more.
Our tiny family was and is weird & it only served to make me weirder, more traumatised & make my life more difficult.
My dad is similar to yours. Felt so neglected but now trying to connect with him knowing he’s undiagnosed autistic
Thanks for this. I’m sorry you’ve been through it but it’s nice to know someone out there understands what it’s like
I cracked up when you said your parents were hippies. Mine were too. Although my mom denies it because she didn't use hard drugs or live in a commune. We had no TV, radio, microwave. Friends hated coming to our house because my parents were health food fanatics. They didn't believe in taking many regular medicines. I think they are both autistic. They are still alive but probably won't get tested for autism. My father commited SA on me. So I haven't spoke to him for years. I speak to my mother but she was extremely mean. Luckily she has mellowed out alot. I left home at age 15. Disfunctional parents are horrible whether autistic or not. Due to my upbringing and my mental health problems I decided not to have children.
I’m still weird about taking painkillers for small things (anything none deadly) because of my parents not thinking we needed anything but reiki and good vibes 🫠
I wish there was more research about autism running in families, but everything I’ve found goes down the route of ‘and here’s how we can eradicate the autistics’ 😩
@@DanaAndersen Really? That is creepy. Tons of people online say they found out that they were autistic when their child was diagnosed.
I relate to a lot if this. Solidarity.
@@artemisXsidecrossYou mean autism without language delays?
@@artemisXsidecross Oh, so you have autism but Dana does not? You know better than the psychologists I suppose?
Also, your theory makes no sense. Supposedly there is an increase in mental health problems. They don't have enough mental health beds in the USA at least. So why would psychologists need to drum up more business? The system is overwhelmed with mental health patients.
Relatable, on too many levels.
I was just thinking about watching your videos! ❤️
Keeping them coming for ya 😂💕
Spidersweb: Britain's second empire.
I'm still getting to grips with the fact that I most likely got my autism from my dad...I notice everything he does now.
Also, I've only just watched this - w0w who is the guy at the end :') he's well fit lol!
I had my mom take the 40 question screener and I almost stopped around #12 because it became so obvious. My daughter and I were crying laughing from the out loud thinking she was doing. I thought it had come from my dad's side, but now I think it must be both.
leaving a comment cus that's what cool ppl do
yes, Parents of an Autistic person are weird, but, for me a different kind of weird, as I was Adopted to 'Neurotypical' parents, who either Kling on, not letting one make our own mind up, or just don't get autism at all, esp. the fact we have sensory issues, hence we are NOT lazy, just don't have the capacity to cope with things.
Random overshare, but like, this isnt the first time, so, whatevs. When i told my mom what i suspected the first time, she blew it off. Which mega sucked cos we were heading into a big bad dental appointment and my late 30s ass wanted my mommy to go in the damn room with me. She did not. Moving along....
The nest time i approached her with it, i was mid full on breakdown cos youtube had decided to play me a video that told me my entire life story through developmental milestones or.... the dodging of them. Anyway.... full on ugly crying, i call my mom with the intent of asking about my behaviors and doings as a kid and she shut me down pretty instantaneously with the statement, "i dont want you bothering with finding out how different you are because i know its a family thing and if im different, i dont want to know"............ well ok, then.
Its like super interesting growing up with someone quite that narcissistic..... i really dont know why some people just like decided oh yes, must kid now, thats a plan!!🤦♀️
I think for a lot of us, our parents were around at a time where there was a big push to settle down and have kids, and not many other paths, so people didn’t even think about if they wanted kids or could manage being a parent, it was just what they were supposed to do 🤦🏼♀️
It’s not the case for everyone, like I have brothers almost 10 years older than me so mine very much could have just stopped there without any societal pressure to have more, but I think it is the common cause for many!
@@DanaAndersen it's so random to think about... (sometimes I substitute words. Like random for traumatic! 🤣) like my mom (and others) have told me the stories.... she was pretty shady. Stopped taking her pills and very quickly was just like oops, preggo! I am a physical manifestation of my mothers NPD. OooOOooOoooooO narcissism recovery is a fucking roller coaster. Def not for the faint of heart. So, like..... don't tell my doctor.👍😎😎😎😎
I'm eight months late to the party, but man... the weird parents club. I love them dearly, but I used to get SO ANGRY that they could NOT understand why I would get seen as weird. Im pretty sure my mom is autistic, and it explains so much about why she had such god awful emotional regulation while she was raising me. Hindsight is 20/20.
100% waow! But I had dental problems where my teeth stuck out my face too, so ugly hippy and weird. My dad's dress was similar and too embarrassing, and I became goth but didn't find in with Amy of the goths. School wasmt encouraged, dad just made music in his head all the time. Pushed into art and music which I just rebelled against as a stupid and impractical plan for the future, haha😂
May I ask how your father passed away? Totally fine if you don't feel like answering.
My dad passed away 2 years ago from a heart attack and I believe it was from factors related to prolonged autistic burnout and stress. The worst part was how he was too subborn and stuck in his feelings to be able to take well meant input. I respect his choices, but it's painful to watch someone struggle with so many things that could be avoided. It's almost poetic that he had a heart of gold and always wanted the best for everyone, but that made him shit at boundaries and not great at self care. I take the good parts and take steps to avoid the bad ones 🙃 Like I research enough to take well informed choices when it comes to prescribed medication, I get regular check ups, I refuse to suffer at home if stuff is bothering me, and I advocate with curiosity and research. His approach was basically avoiding going to the doctor at all if possible, and generally having big problems with following what they recommended anyway. Repeat the same problems 1000 times to friends but not do anything about them. (ranting is fine, but man. I had the same conversations so many fucking times.)
I'm pretty convinced my whole family is/was on the spectrum and boy I relate to having the weird household 😂 luckily I have had loyal friends all my life, but I needed to know that they could handle the weirdness before I invited them home. It was very calculated on my part, but thank god I had comedic timing and managed to play on the interesting eccentric angle. Choosing to dress weird was something I had control over, and thus it was easier to occasionally break social rules. Almost like a real life Pippi longstocking, but goth/victorian/alternative 😂 And I eventually learned to have reasonable but rock solid boundaries when it comes to toxic behaviour.
Our dads sound very similar! He’d been in bad health for years from not appropriately caring for his diabetes and generally not looking after himself, then ended up in hospital with pneumonia and officially died from ‘alcoholic liver’ and a heart attack. We all argued about the liver thing because he rarely drank, I think it was likely more ‘Diet Coke and bad diet’ liver, but yeah 😅
At the time I was super mad he ‘didn’t bother’ to take care of himself, but being more educated now, I definitely think it was burn out that caused him to be unable to, and as much as I tried to help, there’s only so much to do for someone that just hasn’t got anything left.
I did the whole dressing weird thing too, largely bcus I was like ‘if I wear odd shoes with this weird dress and a top hat, no one’s looking at my mum dressed basically as a hippie fairy and my dad dressed as a Viking in a mobility scooter. Spoiler alert, people definitely just looked at us all 😂
@@DanaAndersen
Yeah, it's like being the main character in a story. We don't need more hero's journey character development 🧐 I liked your grief video too, and I've been dealing with the loss in a similar way. He loved gadgets, and now I find even more joy in tools and stuff to honor him in a way. Basically the perfect reason to endulge a special interest 😅
I love it 🤣 I think so many neurodivergent people had a top hat phase. "I'm weird, but not my-family kind of weird" 🤓 nobody believes me when I say I'm the most "normal/functional" in my family, aka learned to mask and think from a billion perspectives 😄
This is so interesting to me, I strongly believe my Dad had autistic traits. He Dad died from complications while he was having treatment for cancer. He smoked heavily and was a full on alcoholic for some years. He was a really well intentioned guy and would do anything he could to be helpful, but couldn't really understand how his smoking was wrong. He did manage to get good control over his drinking but never totally stopped. He definitely didn't like asking for help, we worked out recently that he was meant to do loads of rehab and use crutches for his hip replacement but he didn't do any, just went back to work the next week. It was incredibly hard for me watching him destroy himself and not know how to stop him, but we were all so scared if he quit smoking he'd be back on the drink. I think he may have needed all those substances to live up to the person he thought he was meant to be, the person he projected. I'd rather he'd been more grumpy, fat, lazy and so on and hadn't smoked and drank. I do remember thinking when I was younger I just wanted to be as different from him as possible. These days I like to remember his positive qualities too though.
@@tompearce6312
He sounds like an awesome and complicated guy. Those are the types that have so much capacity to do great things, but life just gets so complicated. It's amazing that they managed to do as much as they did!
I also prefer to focus on the good things, and let the rest be.
I also think this is why we need to focus on building the social bonds and supportive network that our relatives struggled with. My dad was better at that than my grandmother, but I can see where he got some of the patterns from. She was incredibly difficult to deal with but very smart, so she kinda battled everyone all her life 🤣 it's not funny, but I swear she could theoretically climb any mountain out of spite.
Have you thought about how to deal with it if someone else you know develop substanse use issues? It's a bit easier when it's not close family, but worth thinking about.
holy shit btw dana my mother is super into reiki and weird things like that. same experience. so harmful.
Interesting… Growing up I ALWAYS had that one friend with the hippie parents (who believed in new age stuff and ate healthy) and watched as my mom was the judgy parent who didn’t want to be friends with their parents….
Instead I was raised to be super Christian to the point of not really being able to explore my identity until teenhood, which was met with EXTREME resistance from my parents (I recognize that time in my life as the time when my parents became abusive).
After all was said and done (including realizing I’ve likely had food sensitivities for my entire life which means I now must eat all organic), I’ve turned out to be quite new age myself 😅
But it’s very good to hear the other side of that as a parenting style, because I want to be aware as I parent how raising kids that way can be traumatizing (glass castles also comes to mind).
I think my plan is to explain from the get go that there’s a lot of different beliefs that people have and while what I believe works for me it may not work for them… And explain my beliefs are considered unconventional to many people still.
Like a fish teaching their children that they are first and foremost in water instead of just ignoring the fact that it is a belief system to begin with and treating the beliefs as *reality* … Giving my children the ability to choose what they want to believe is the main way I plan on breaking the cycle of generational belief enforcement in my future family. (Yes, having a family is in the cards for me) 💭
Anyways, as far as what side it’s on, I’m going to have to go with my dad’s side. He worked in special education most of my life and I think has felt drawn to working with autistics because he recognizes it in himself to some extent. My mom is narcissistic and highly manipulative which fits into the whole “narc/autistic” dynamic so many people seem to have.
I doubt my father would have the wherewithal to recognize his own autism and would likely never admit missing it in me, because well, he was supposed to be an expert. 🤷♀️