Just trying to help

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Hi I am new here Glad to be part of a site I have lurked on for a long time.

I am interested in hearing from other folks who have been victims of the well-meaning NTs who want to teach you etiquette every time you have a bad day.

I have visited this attitude on my sons too many times and really REALLY want to stop, I just can't seem to remember this when my feelings are hurt by...let's say Aspie Honesty/Anger

Welcome .

Hi, Welcome to Wrong Planet!

And yes, usually when I have a bad day, I just want to be by myself.

I grew up in the 60s and 70s, when nobody had ever heard of Autism or Asperger Syndrome, kids were either 'normal' or 'ret*d', there was no other classification (Dyslexia wasn't even commonly recognized until the mid 70s), so I got to grow up among parents and teachers (and later employers) whose most common response to my oddness was to scream "What the f**k is WRONG with you?!" and then try to teach me the 'right' way to do everything - even if my way was working better. That and "You're really smart enough to accomplish anything, if you'd just apply yourself" - but no matter how they put it, it all meant the same thing: "Your best is not good enough and everybody is very disappointed in you."

I can be too bluntly honest with my parents sometimes, but you nailed the trigger about this. My family may choose to see the rigid/aloof/pragmatic/jerk side of my AS but considering how often they complain about it, I'm pretty nice to everyone else. I think the archetypal, literate-conversation-ending lack of eye contact, combined with endless whining about it redoubles my effort to just be kind by any means necessary. At home, this applies to a cat. Everywhere else, it may create shaky social grounds, but anyone with enough balance to remain on them is treated to unequivocally benevolent, gratis tech support with a snarky joke or nine thrown in for good measure. I've heard no end of exactly what you're describing, but I know how to put it to a stop. Unfortunately, pulling out all the stops can never work every time, but I wouldn't have much knowledge of self left if I always bothered to. At that point, I find that whomever's disappointed in my way of life is best left alone until they realize I have more rights to my emotions and responses than they do.

Thanks for the welcomes, people.

In reply (I am really unsure how to reply to individual responses, any help would be appreciated. I'm old)

My younger son in particular meltsdown by getting in our faces, insulting us, swearing, knocking things down, slamming doors.
I am studying what are the antecedents to these meltdowns but I can't stop a younger sib from losing their temper in response, or a well-meaning other sib from saying something that makes it worse, etc.

Cberg, I wish he would just want everyone to leave him alone, but often he engages right away. I know that I read somewhere that 80% of difficulties happen at home, probably because of the hurt feelings thing. He does ok with strangers, like you said you do, but depending on who it is, better or worse with family. 16 year old smartassed brothers are difficult for anyone, asd or not.

Willard, I am working against all that 60s 70s stuff in my own head, and we all (a very verbal family) try to solve everything with words. I think we just make him crazy with all of this. His aspie memory of every bad thing that ever happened to him works against our attempts to move past this dynamic. He expects something bad to happen everytime.

Thanks for your thoughts. The inconsistency of adult life makes it hard.

MamaC

Sorry, AardvardGoodSwimmer, got mixed up as to who said they preferred to be left alone.

How do I reply to individual posts?!

MamaC

Welcome to you.

In my experience, these types of events cause essentially the inverse reaction - you son may get the impression, reading subtext from conversations, that more or less everyone wants him to go away. It's a misnomer that autism spectrum inherently causes antisocial behavior, in a sense it acts as an embargo to simple empathy; often this can be better conveyed by complex dialog or simple kindnesses.

You can click the quote button in the top right of each post, then delete everything you aren't referencing from between the bracketed tags.

Hi MamaC,

You did good. I guess the evolving norm of WrongPlanet is to pick up the topics and subtopics you're most interested in and roll with those.

Or, you can click on someone's underlined name and then pick PM Personal Message. And I'll be happy to respond, just please keep in mind that I'm not on WrongPlanet every day.

With your son, am I correct to assume that the specific aspect of him getting in someone's face when angry the most troubling part?

I agree with you, I think the subtext is that he is shut out from alot of what goes on around him and is angry about it. I have had people try and tell me he cannot be autistic because he cares so much about subtleties and nuance. I gently tell them they are unclear on the whole Spectrum thing. But yes, I feel we perpetuate the stress through this ever-changing "politeness " bar we make him vault over.

MamaC

[quote}

With your son, am I correct to assume that the specific aspect of him getting in someone's face when angry the most troubling part?[/quote]

Yes it is, and the insults and swearing, all of which are followed by self-recrimination and apologizing. There is a pervasive feeling that when he does this he gets a lot of attention, positive and negative. He is having trouble with his sibs growing up and overtaking him in terms of young adult milestones (driving, relationships, jobs). He feels like a kid in a man's body.

example: Stressor happens (tornado warning, internet glitches, troll bothering him) and the slamming and swearing begins. Sib tells him to calm down, be quieter, someone's asleep. Then he blows up, calls someone an ugly name, roars even louder, knocks over a chair. One sib will say "I'm outa here, sick of this," one sib will call him a name back, one will try to reason. If we are alone, all of it is visited on me. I know he yells because he feels bad, but they were raised by a yelling dad and that example has been very hard to break.

MamaC

What I can tell you is that subtlety and nuance is a BIG part of my job. I'm de-facto tech support for basically everyone I know and then some (still considering weather or not to start charging) and it can sometimes take hundreds of tries before I've articulated a solution in a way that makes sense to whomever needs it. Different people, different anecdotes. A big part of feeling shut out of social interaction is seeing too much complexity in it to parse on-the-fly. Theory of mind and body identity is integral here because, if your son has conclusively self-identified with his diagnosis, he must be trying to fill a role, which becomes exponentially more difficult if each turn in conversation requires split decision making. If this is the case, and he's embraced some or all of his differences, I recommend you calmly discourage your friends from checking their perceptions of AS against your son, even indirectly; he may try to live up to them! I know I unintentionally distanced myself from a friend who asserted that I "don't seem autistic anymore", it was just a scary conversation from that point on. Most AS individuals view themselves as amalgams of everyone else's influences - parts of a whole. It's a drastic simplification of the basic human need to feel wanted or necessary, and frankly a quicker way of learning the who's-who almost anywhere, but can also lead us to jump to conclusions about others. Herein lies the need for clear conversation, ad nauseum, avoiding topics which might offend complex sensibilities, which are undoubtedly in play.

You put it well. My son is always assuming things will go a certain way and reacting as if they have, even when nothing has happened. It is I know a type of short-hand simplification of the complexities of conversation, a skill which has always been his nemesis, and every conversation is fraught as a result. Will they listen to me without interrupting? Will they know what I am talking about? Will I like their answer? Will their answer upset or enrage me? ALL of this and more is the possibility each time he speaks. We try to say there is no risk but he knows better.

I think you should charge people.

MamaC