My kids reckon I see autism under every rock. I say, with reason - my kids taught me how to recognise it!
Temple Grandin has said that she believes autistic kids have in large measure, what in small measure would produce genius. People on the spectrum have (apparently) a higher correlation with parents or other family members with high IQ. Trying to measure the IQ of someone on the spectrum is difficult, you often get major underestimates (especially when they're younger). difficult child 3 'failed' his first IQ test. So did difficult child 1. When tested a few years later, they scored much higher. From well below average, to way above. Which shows the shortcomings in the testing procedures.
When I look at our families, husband's & mine - I see spectrum issues on both sides. I come from a large family, husband's family is small but has a lot of very close relatives (cross cousins - genetically siblings) and when I cast my Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) radar over the families, I can pick out the spectrum people on both sides. And it's by no means bad - my father in law was a mechanical genius, albeit with dyslexia. His abilities kept him alive, as well as a lot of other people, during WWII. My own father was also inventive, but his workshop clearly showed Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD). It was not the usual man's shed, it was spotless with every tool lined up on the wall, a shape painted on the wall behind it to indicate the way round it was to be hung as well as where. And this was a workshop in everyday use. I was only allowed to use tools if I put them back exactly as he wanted them.
Other family members I believe are on the spectrum - a cousin of mine (now deceased) who was a musical genius, a world-renowned classical composer. My eldest sister remembers seeing him sitting at the dining table at the age of 15, writing an orchestral score from music playing somewhere in his head. Line by line, bar by bar. The whole page at a time. Interestingly, in his middle age he began a program of work with autistic kids, reaching them through music.
Cousins of my kids are IT nerds but prefer to avoid the crowds at family gatherings. One nephew always was mechanically capable to extremes - every Christmas and birthday, all he wanted was a ball of string. Because with a ball of string, he could make anything he ever wanted. High IQ is sporadic but obvious through the family where it occurs and tends to cluster in family groups. So my musical cousin's family, for example, are all very bright - I don't know his kids well but I hear how they're going. His sisters I have known all my life. His parents were amazing, but my uncle died when I was young. My aunt travelled the world studying art and writing audiovisual presentations on everything she saw. She founded an organisation reading books onto tape for visually impaired people.
I suspect I've got Aspie tendencies, we're sure husband has. We look at our kids and can even see Aspie tendencies in easy child, but she channels it well into her job.
Autism is not necessarily bad news. We have taught our own kids to see it as a gift. It brings difficulties too, but you can't have everything perfect. High IQ is similar - I grew up fitting in well with adults, but far less so with other kids. At the time we put it down to my being a child in a family of adults. But I read constantly (look up hyperlexia - it has my picture there, along with difficult child 3's) and in reading, I absorbed words and their meanings at a high level. Kids don't like to hang out with someone who sounds like they swallowed a thesaurus. I understood what I read; difficult child 3 did not, not fully. Not well. Reading helped my understanding. difficult child 3 has needed more help than reading alone can provide.
I explained to my computer nerd autistic son, how to think about himself as an autistic. I said that computers come in different forms. The two main ones he knew at the time - easy child, or Mac. When a document comes off the printer, we can't tell if it was written on a easy child or a Mac. If you wanted to, you could take that document and re-work it, re-typing and re-formatting on whatever computer you have handy. You could make it look identical. But if you did the original on a easy child, and you re-work it on a Mac - t he instructions for each kind of computer are very different. A easy child needs different software, different code, to tell it how to do what the Mac has done with its own software. You can't automatically plug in easy child software to a Mac, or vice versa, unless those computers have already been modified to recognise it and use it.
And the moral of the story - some people have Mac brains, while others have easy child brains. Not good, not bad. Just needing different operating instructions. What we each have to do, is discover what operating instructions help us function at our optimum.
difficult child 1 currently works with his hands. His first job working with timber, had him assigned to the finishing booth. He was asked to check and assess the sanding done by senior apprentices - difficult child 1's Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) led him to be able to run his hands over a piece of furniture and quickly find the still-rough patches needing more attention; patches that had slipped the notice of others. He enjoys being able to use his gifts to produce a better product.
So how come my kids are on the spectrum?
I don't know for sure, I can't say. But I know it's complex, it's not just this person or that who has passed down one gene. It is much more complicated because there are so many good things wrapped up with the autism. Sometimes passing on the good package leads to some more difficult stuff coming across too; but the good stuff is also there and can still be passed on further, with or without difficult stuff. I do not call it bad stuff.
Genetics is very complex most of the time, and of course there is the environmental factor. However, I am certain difficult child 3 was autistic from birth. I can look back and see the signs from day 1. It was less obvious with the others. With me - I have vivid memories which go back (in fragments only, in the earliest memories) to infancy. This is supposed to be impossible, but I have vividly remembered images coupled with smells, sensations etc which I should not have been able to remember. I also remember remembering them, if you know what I mean. I remember the feel of the table leg in the kitchen as I clung to it while learning to walk, the look of the underside of the kitchen table, the longing to be tall enough to see over the edge to what was on the table. I remember family pets that died when I was a baby. I remember the feel of our dog's fur, the dark colour of him, the smell of him, the feel of his tongue on my face. The ridges inside his ears when I stuck my fingers in there. The difficulty I had trying to get a grip on his tongue. The way the dog just sat there and let me do all this. If he'd been a cat, he would have purred! A bush tick took him when I was two years old.
A brain like this is one of the gifts you get on the spectrum. But if it's not properly understood or valued, it can be seen as a curse. When all sensory input comes in so vividly, in such detail, you ned to learn how to self-censor. For some kids, difficult child 1 was a classic example, learning this skill is difficult because it requires value judgement and they fear that when they select for one thing, they are automatically selecting against everything else. it's like choosing just one chocolate out of a box of glorious hand-made delicacies - you want a chocolate, but selecting strawberry fudge creme means leaving behind the almond nougat and the violet creams. The grief is almost too much to bear!
difficult child 1 used to find sensory input would overload him. What would seem to be a quiet classroom for most kids would, for difficult child 1, be unbearably distracting. Kids might be quietly working, but they would be sniffing, scraping chairs occasionally, other chairs creaking, pencils scratching on paper, another kid might cough or clear his throat, the teacher might then interrupt to say, "Don't forget to turn the page over when you finish that side." Outside the wind blows, a bird sings, a branch taps on a window. Someone walking past can be felt as vibration through the floor. A building site down the road can also be felt, as well as heard, even if the sound is very muffled.
The only way he could cope with this was to mentally clamp down and shut out all input. This also meant he shut out important stuff.
I remember when he was in his late teens studying for his final high school exams (at home by then) he locked himself into our sleepout and read his books. After a couple of hours he came in to the kitchen. "I need a break," he told me. "I'm concentrating so hard tat the silence in my head is deafening. It's distracting me."
I'm sorry Crystal, but this is the best answer I can come up with for you. It may be the most complete answer you will ever get - we never can know for sure, and perhaps it doesn't matter. Shouldn't matter.
I hope this helps.
Marg
