# Is autism hereditary? Scared for future kids



## jackson.j36 (Mar 22, 2018)

I haven’t told my fiancee yet but I’m actually scared for our future kids’ mental health. It’s not that I’m being paranoid or something. I’m just a bit worried. We’re not pregnant yet. We’re just about to get married after meeting each other 2 years ago in a foreign dating event. I just like to think about the future ahead of time.

She has a nephew and niece with autism. I think it runs in their family. While I don’t have a problem with that, I still would want to know so I could prepare everything, myself included, for such condition. Not everyone would understand the struggles of people with psychological problems. The least I could do is to prepare everything, i.e. finances, for their special education, speech therapy or other therapy, patience, etc so my future child would have a good life


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## stiiky (Jul 29, 2017)

No one knows exactly what causes autism and there may be more than one cause. There’s also regressive autism which is the child develops normally until the child begins to regress and lose normal functions like speech development or motor skills. It’s a possibility you might have a higher chance of having a baby with autism because there are other family members with autism but there are plenty of people out there that have no record of autism being in the family and still end up having a child with autism. I wouldn’t let that stop you from having a baby but if you are that worried about it educate yourself on autism; find other parents with autistic children and get their advice and knowledge on the subject; make sure your health insurance covers things like ABA therapy, speech therapy, and occupational therapy; research schools in your area that have the best special needs programs. Autism is known to come along with several other disabilities and autism is such a broad spectrum that no two autistic people are alike. There are similarities but are never the same so there’s really no way to be fully prepared for it. The best thing you can do is if you begin to notice signs of autism or anything that may be off, get the baby in to see the doctor to have the baby tested because it is a long process.


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