Not straight away. But when Martin got diagnosed I did some reading and stuff and I did a documentary on it for one of my college projects which actually did quite well and I interviewed my mum and like, andno we didn’t interview Martin, but yes. I did some reading on it, so I know more about what it is now. But not like masses like mum does.

So what was the documentary about, your family was it?

It was just about autism in general, but well I was, there was me and another guy in the group who both had relatives that had autism. So we found we found it easier to interview and film our relatives because we basically had the research at home. Not meaning to make my family sounds like lab rats or anything, but it was easier and we probably had one of the most interesting projects out of my whole class.

I…because all three of them are like really intelligent and stuff, I kind of feel like I’ve got to push harder at certain things. Like uniLike my mum’s just finished and she got a 2’1 and I really want to get a 2’1 but I don’t think I’m going to get anything higher than a 2’2 so I feel like I have to push myself more, so I can keep up and make everyone proud and stuff. I’d really like to make everyone proud.

Do you feel the odd one out in your family then?

Sometimes. But then again I think that’s me just being insecure.

Do you think you would have liked to sort of get involved with a sibling support group when you were younger or not?

Well I didn’t really know about autism when I was younger. I only started hearing about it in my mid to late teens. So it would have been irrelevant and I probably wouldn’t have known what was going on.

Would it have helped or would it have made your life different if your mum had been diagnosed earlier do you think or not?

Probably not. I assume I would have been told in some way, but I wouldn’t have really known what it was and I’d just have been like, Okay, oh something shiny And then just gone about my stuff and again not really looked at anyone any differently.

Do you think you would have liked to sort of get involved with a sibling support group when you were younger or not?

Well I didn’t really know about autism when I was younger. I only started hearing about it in my mid to late teens. So it would have been irrelevant and I probably wouldn’t have known what was going on.

Would it have helped or would it have made your life different if your mum had been diagnosed earlier do you think or not?

Probably not. I assume I would have been told in some way, but I wouldn’t have really known what it was and I’d just have been like, Okay. Oh, something shiny And then just gone about my stuff and again not really looked at anyone any differently.

So do you want to tell me what it’s been like growing up with brothers and a mum whos on the spectrum?

I don’t know. I just thought my mum was a bit mad [laughs] cos she was diagnosed like really late. So I just thought she was a bit mad, but I suppose when you see her every second weekend it’s probably kind of cool to have a mum that’s a bit mad, because she does fun things. And it’s nice to do fun things.

So you thought she was mad and then you found out she has Asperger’s?

I mean not like mad in a bad way, but like
Good mad?

Like mad hatter mad.

What sort of things would you do that was fun?

We used to go swimming a lot. We went to the cinema. She let us go see Space Jam on one of our last weekends before we moved out to Australia and that was cool, and she’d take us to the park and stuff, and we used to do like crafty type things. I think we went to a fete or something and we did all this crafty type stuff, which is fun, because it’s not like we’d just go over to her house and just watch TV. She’d make us do stuff.

So did you used to look at your friends mums and sort of think my mum’s really different to that?

Probably but I used to think a lot of my friends’ mums were really boring.

My close friends I sometimes talk to it about, but I don’t, like if it, I don’t think I’ve ever turned round gone, Oh yeah, by the way, I have three relatives that are autistic If it just like comes up in a casual way. Like, it’s only with my close friends. I won’t, I don’t talk about it with people I just meet or anything. But I mean they’re just sort of like, they’re on the same standing as me they don’t think it, like they don’t look at me and go, Oh your family has issues or anything. They, I mean like they’ll meet my mum and they’ll meet my brothers and they’ll go, actually yeah they’re pretty cool. So it’s nice, I mean, because I’d hate to be associated with people that had a lot of prejudice and think it was a bad thing to be on the spectrum in any way, shape or form.