As the readers may remember, I often write about my daughter and her difficulties due to mental problems. But she is not the only one with problems in our family. I seem to have them too. After I learned from her about different disorders and read some information by links she gave me, I could see some autistic features in myself. Especially when I read description of children on spectrum, I recognise myself a lot. My ex-husband, the child’s father, is also not quite neurotypical – so no wonder that she came out like that. And finally, my nephew. He is also different, though in his own way. So it’s as follows:
- Daugher: social anxiety disorder, autistic spectrum disorder, maybe gender-queer. Left-handed, bad with numbers. Sleep disorder, maybe depressed.
- Me: slightly autistic, socially awkward, cannot tell left from right, bad with numbers and people’s faces, aromantic and demisexual. Mild depression or chronic tiredness.
- Nephew: attention deficit with hyperactivity, dyslexia, social anxiety (mild, recently aquired), asexuality.
It’s really sad that I did not know about all these things while the kids were small. And I did not know about the nature of my own difference. Now I know, thanks to my child, and it helps to understand each other better. For example, we don’t push the boy to read, knowing that he can better learn things by hearing. Unfortunately, his dad (my brother) is so very normal, and like many people in Russia, he just doesn’t believe in mental disorders. Maybe that’s why the boy prefers to spends time with us.
So you can imagine how it goes when we live together, all three (my nephew often stays with us). It’s like a sitcom. We have our own, disorder-based jokes. Like, “If I have social anxiety, and you have social anxiety, who will order the food?” Or when my daughter is teasing her cousin with sexual jokes which he hates. Or when they buy some goods for stimming and play with them happily (if nothing is available, my nephew uses any unexpected things for this purpose). Really, it could be a sitcom! I’d love to see something like that.
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