When Chris Offer’s daughter was diagnosed as autistic, he and his wife had to reevaluate everything they thought they knew about parenting. What they didn’t plan for, however, was having to reevaluate Chris knew about himself.
The 33-year-old man had often described himself as “quirky,” but until his daughter’s diagnosis he didn’t realize what was actually going on: Chris himself is autistic. His wife Jessica opened up about the shocking revelation in a blog post: > “We were married 7 years before it occurred to us that my husband was autistic. Imagine that all your life you’re trying to be…held in this normal box and no matter how hard you try, you find it hard,” Offer said. “And then someone goes, ‘Well, that’s because you’re not normal.’ It’s freeing.” Looking back, all the signs were there. In fact, many of their arguments as a young couple stemmed from the fact that Chris had difficulty looking people in the eye. Now that he’s been properly diagnosed, his wife and family have been nothing but supportive.
{on the blog…} “My husband and I celebrated 10 years of being together yesterday. 10 years since we first met. We actually have 3 anniversaries (yep) but this one is the one I regard to be the most important because it was this one that marks the date that life as I knew it would be tipped upside down. God, my husband is gorgeous. He is the most incredible father who is ever present for his tribe of girls. He has this cheeky grin and he has a great sense of humour and makes me laugh a lot. He’s so bright. He teaches me lots of things. He also is fantastic at pulling me up when I’ve taken something too far and he’ll often be the first person to roll his eyes and sigh with a comment like “why must you always insist on learning things the hard way?” (Because that’s me, baby, a bull in your china shop). My husband is a 33 year old male. He’s also autistic. We were together 7 years before we realised he had autism. It wasn’t until after my eldest daughter was diagnosed after a few years of back and forth deliberation on my behalf that we finally got her assessed, and diagnosed – and THEN it occurred to us that Cj was too. I knew my eldest daughter wasn’t “neurotypical” from about age 4 in kindergarten. /// continued on blog, link in profile ?? #autism #autistichusband #love #girltribe A photo posted by Jessica O (@girl.tribe) on Mar 2, 2016 at 8:56pm PST