Raised by Aspergers parent

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You only know your story. Ghastly as it is, it does not justify your bigotry.

I am not like your dad.
Nor is every NT like your mom.

I think your highly dysfunctional family has given you a warped concept of love. Love is a mutual activity. When people tell themselves that they love people who do not reciprocate, it is recognized as some other kind of obsessive activity. What you and your family was doing that you describe as "giving love to a man who never gave one ounce of love or attention back" was something other than love.

If you want to recover, heal, grow and thrive, I suggest that you learn this.

Unless you are a clinician with diagnostic experience, If he was undiagnosed, you DO NOT KNOW that he had Aspergers Syndrome. There are other psychiatric issues which might account for his horrible performance as a husband and father. You can easily find ample evidence that there are men and women with ASD who do not live this kind of family life. Who, despite their ASD, are infinitely better at supportive, loving, nurturing family life than your dysfunctional father or mother.

It is upsetting to read your account of the sh*tty family you came from.
That doesn't make it alright for you to be the monster you have become.

If you want to heal, leave the hate behind. If you want to wallow in it, you might have a better time doing that at AS Partners, a place where a lot of like-minded bigots congregate.

Last edited by Adamantium on 24 Jan 2014, 12:00 pm, edited 2 times in total.

Hang on a sec!

Are you trolling? Being deceitful for some other reason?

Interesting.

This thread attracts a really awful quality of person. I hate this thread so much. I saw what he wrote before it was deleted ---I just had not decided what, if anything to post. That was just as well, as you handled it better than I would have.

I hate it when people delete their posts because then I can't see what they wrote and I have to deal with wondering what is it they wrote. I wish people here would start quoting posts here whenever they make such a post just in case they delete it so I could still read what they wrote. That is what women always do at Babycenter when I went there a lot.

I can see this thread can become quite negative and difficult to read but as someone with a mother I suspect is aspergic, I feel relieved to have found it.

It is so interesting reading all your comments - whether positive or negative. They all reveal so much and the pain that abounds in most people's experiences is palpable and this alleviates anyone's sense of isolation in this world, to know others are going through the same thing. I had such a hard childhood, longing, ACHING to be held and loved. And now, age 40, I am still finding it hard to know what's appropriate and to have intimate relationships because, not only do I believe my mother is aspergic but that my father has aspects of narcissistic and borderline personality disorder.

I was a baby that never cried and I assume it was because my mother never went to me so I stopped bothering because when my sister was born she cried ALL the time and I used to go to her very anxiously because nobody else did. I think my father resented my mother that she wasn't doing what was expected of her so he didn't bother either.

Even though I was apparently a pretty and bright child that was liked by others, my parents always told me I was needy, lazy, demanding, stupid. I was told to 'f**k off' if I tried to hug my mother. Once when my mother was crying about herself, my sister went to put her arm around her and she said 'don't, you'll make me feel sick'. My father recently confided in me that he and my mother have NEVER kissed - after 42 years of marriage.

She is a lawyer - very highly regarded as such and only talks about her work. My father raised me and my sister with the help of nannies. Since becoming a mother myself when I was 27, in tending to the needs of my own daughter, I suddenly became aware of where my needs weren't met - it took that long to realise what was missing because I never had anything at all. If my father had been loving rather than abusive (he was controlling and physically violent with me) then I might have had a chance of recognising that there was more to be had out there. Instead I have had a series of less than or emotionally abusive relationships - sometimes with alcoholics as both my parents were alcoholics too. I have made sure I don't repeat that pattern since I became a mother and left her father because of his alcoholism but when it comes to sober abusers, I find it really hard to spot them until it's too late.

It seems so many of us are out there who have struggled to make sense of this world after being raised by aspergic parents - and, I notice, we all write very correctly! My mother is so pedantic and was such a stickler for punctuation, grammar etc... If she weren't a lawyer I'm sure someone would have suggested she be tested before now but it seems the perfect profession for her!

Over the last 10 years I have tried therapy, self-help books, co-dependency meetings, hypnotherapy, CBT, St.John's Wort, Seroxat and nothing can fill the void as I call it. I have felt an increasing understanding of the way I function and what my needs are and I have come, in recognising that my mother is most likely apsergic, to a place where I can forgive her - I know she can't do anything differently. But I wonder if what's really missing from my life as a single parent, is just love and empathy. All along I keep being told by my sister and mother etc... I have to get used to doing without relationships because I have had these dysfunctional ones but I think, finally, that all I need is someone who truly loves me and on a regular basis! And I notice this from reading your posts - so many of you have said it was only from having a stable, loving relationship that you were able to heal the trauma. So thank you all for sharing - no matter what your points of view. I feel very grateful for reading all I have.

Love X

inmydreams, what a lovely and heart wrenching post. I don't think you came looking for advice, but I am wired to try and give some ... still, I am not sure I can. Mostly, I think you needed to share and feel you weren't alone, so I would suppose you have done that.

Most of us have a fundamental need to feel connected to someone or something, so it is no surprise you continue to seek that and long for it. Families are complicated and who knows all the reasons that yours never connected for you; they are probably quite layered. I am curious, has your mother ever gotten a diagnosis or is ASD your best assessment looking backwards? Not that the reason changes the reality.

The nurturing from our parents is, I think, what we build our own self-esteem from. But in the end, who we are still comes from within. Just that a loving parent gives a child a safe environment from which to build that. You have never had the warm walls that made you feel safe enough to find yourself. Which is a round-about way of saying that while your instincts make you long for a connection, you still have to fill the holes in yourself from within. No one can fill them for you. Edit: Please don't take this as me trying to add to your overloaded life, as me saying don't seek out professional guidance, or me blaming you for your situation. It is me saying that seeking romantic relationships with this goal in mind is more likely to harm you, long run, than help you, and I know that not only from having heard it from experts many times, but also from living it. In addition to what I explained further below, looking for love and wishing you had love take a lot of energy and effort, and can distract you from investing in yourself in ways that will actually do you much more good.

People with holes inside tend to feel connected to others with holes inside, but so many of negative things you have found in relationships all spring from the holes those men have . Sometimes, if a man is really ready, you can overcome the holes together, but you can't count on that. And the awareness it will take isn't likely to be there until you've filled in your own. I spent years and years picking my men based on a connection I thought I could see in their eyes. Eventually I realized that what I was seeing and feeling connected to was their pain. It was the pain that I saw in their eyes.

I am not going to say you have to run away from anyone with pain, even though that pain is likely to wreck havoc on their relationships. My husband has some pretty big holes inside and we've moved forward anyway. But you have to enter a relationship like that from a position of strength, not from where you are still looking to fill in your own holes.

I wasn't ready to get married until I reached a point where I didn't need a relationship; where I felt good about my life as it was and felt like I had dealt with most of my demons. I can't tell you how to get that to place, just that being there is, for most of us, what allows you to find a relationship, not the other way around. But, then again, everyone's road is different. Just ... I don't want you to see a relationship as the best way to fill in the hole you see. That sets you up to fail in relationships. Am I making any sense?

Giant hugs and best of luck on your journey.

Last edited by DW_a_mom on 26 Feb 2014, 4:12 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Inmydreams-

I get where you are coming from. Relationships are difficult if you lack the very fundamental skills that are necessary for attachment. This is something I have struggled with my whole life.
The hard part for me is that aching to be loved and held and not somehow knowing how to go about it as it was never modeled to me.
I also have been through years of therapy and always end up close to the same place. I have had a bit of success lately. One thing that helped me was the book "The Emotionally Absent Mother". Another thing that has helped is EMDR.
The trick is to learn how to form those connections that you long for with yourself. If a person has had a healthy attachment, then it is so much easier.

DW, I think this was unintentionally cruel. You're talking to a single mother who had no help from her own parents either in growing up or in raising her daughter. Please compare that with your own situation and consider the differences.

When the lack is that profound, inmydreams is correct: the healing cannot be done solo. Too much is missing. Love -- good and healthy love, and nurturing from someone else is required.

Please do not suggest to inmydreams that she's doing something wrong in this regard. It doesn't sound to me as though she is. She got a raw deal, is all, and recognizes very clearsightedly what the need is.

Adamantium, may I suggest something?

Every time someone says "Aspergers", you read it as "Adamantium". But there are many people with Aspergers who don't function as well as you do. Not because they're evil or warped, but because their condition is more profound than yours is, and no, they're not able to work, maintain a marriage, raise children well, etc.

I hear you trying to scrape every negative word from AS, but I don't see any recognition that AS sometimes causes very real and serious damage to the children of *some parents with AS*.

When people here are talking about their own experiences with parents with AS, they are not talking about you. They are also not here to express bigotry. They are here -- we are here -- to talk about the damage that growing up with *some parents with AS* has done. And yes, the problem is the parents' AS. Not your AS. Not the relatively mild AS of some parents who manage to recognize and care for their children's needs despite not having a good feel for them. We're talking about specific people whose parenting was crippled by AS in particular relational ways.

We are also not here for those parents. This thread is not the place for ignoring the children, again, and focusing on the needs of those particular parents, or for defending them and suggesting that the children should simply have been more understanding.

This is, you know, a chronic problem for those family members who've been hurt chronically by a parent's, sibling's, or partner's AS. It's a huge battle just to get the problem recognized. To this day, I don't talk to my father, and he has no idea why. He's got reams of emails, I've talked myself blue about how horribly he's treated me and my daughter, how hurtful and painful it's been, what needed to change, how I could not allow him to go on hurting us -- but it doesn't matter because in his bubble, there is no problem, and since I insist there is one, I am victimizing him. He's not a mean person, not a drunk, not deranged or vindictive. He's simply trapped inside his own head, it's a hall of mirrors in there. Unless he experiences it, it isn't real. And his behavior's unbearable, often abusive. Raging meltdown after raging meltdown, and then utter obliviousness to relationships with anyone. Appalling rudeness and ingratitude. He'll pick up his grandchildren as special interests, freak them out by coming from nowhere with massive blasts of attention -- to the point of creepiness -- and then drop them again, sometimes for years. He doesn't understand why nobody wants to talk to him and why even his painfully self-sacrificing wife finally gave up and now lives far away.

Similarly: These people on this thread have all been hurt by *some aspie parents' AS.* Not by you. The stories are valid and do not constitute bigotry against people with AS.

I thought what DW said was spot on and very compassionate.

As I recall, DW had a lovely mom and a quirky/difficult-but-loving AS father, and is married. This is a very different set of circumstances than inmydreams faces, and has faced. I think inmydreams is right in pointing out that where she's seen others in her situation, the healing has come from the patient and generous love of a nurturing spouse. This is a story I've heard many times, too.

There's a lot of bootstrappy talk in various kinds of therapy, and while that's helpful to a point...it's only helpful to a point. And then it's like telling someone with a broken leg to get up and start walking and, well, dontcha know, if you do that, you'll find yourself one day healed. That's not actually helpful. When people who have been badly damaged are told to bootstrap their way up, the result is not often healing, but shutting off parts of self in order to survive. I think inmydreams is right, and that she knows what she needs: she needs love, empathy, and -- may I add -- respect. Again, the bootstrappy "love yourself" stuff -- to a point, yes, it's good stuff. But if that's all you've got, after a lifetime of abandonment and ill-treatment, it isn't enough. That's a recipe for depression and despair. And I do think it is cruel to tell people in that position to figure it out, do it themselves.

inmydreams has trouble recognizing people who will prey on and damage her, and that's a serious problem. Which she recognizes. A good and caring therapist is a good start if she can find one, and if, as a single mom, she has room in her schedule to go, insurance coverage, etc. Another way to start is in non-zealous churchish communities and women's centers, where people may be willing to help out so that she can take care of herself a bit better. A good therapist can also help her decide early whether a friend is really a friend.

The unhappy reality is that many people do fall through cracks, aren't loved, aren't treated well. Being a single mother poses another hazard: all kinds of ugly types sense desperation and try to prey on them; there's social stigma that sometimes can be ignored, other times not; it's exhausting and leaves little time for socializing; and yes, it's harder to find love. So again, there is a measure of cruelty in suggesting that inmydreams simply isn't doing enough, and belongs to somehow magically solve her own problem, and then, why, it'll be solved.

Here's what I'd say, inmydreams: Take care of the material aspects first. Build comfort and ease into your life as you can. If you can afford to pay someone to do chores, do it. Make your home comfortable. Hire babysitters so you can go out. Refuse to take on more than you can do if you have a choice. Get lots of sleep, eat well. And if you can't afford those things and are running yourself ragged? ASK FOR HELP. Ask for lots of help -- from the school principal, from the PTO, from other moms at the daycare, from anyone you can ask -- and know that you deserve it, because you're doing hard and important work.

Once you are well-cared-for physically, think about how you're raising your daughter, and ask what kind of behavior you'll accept from her. If you won't accept it from her, don't accept it from a man. And go where you are respected and treated well. If you're treated badly at work, start looking for another job. If your parents still treat you poorly, then by all means, stop having to do with them.

Do you have woman friends? You sound well-educated -- do you have college friends you're still in touch with?

tarantella64,

If you have been reading this thread you will see that DW_A_Mom is one of the posters on this thread with the most salient advice and who gives people more benefit of the doubt than I do, for sure. I agree with her completely on the point you quoted.

Expecting relationships to fix a person is a fool's errand. Generally people who are "broken" (for lack of a better word) on some fundamental level tend to pick bad partners who complete bad patterns. The only way to get a healthy relationship is to fix yourself first. This is not cruel, this is practical. That does not mean one has to fix oneself by oneself. That is what therapy and other things of that nature are for (although the poster said it was not helping) or good friends if one has them that do not have unhealthy patterns to them.

With romantic relationships, generally people who have "holes they are trying to fill" end up picking people who also need fixing in the same way as their parents and then end up replicating the thing that makes them feel awful. If one has emotionally distant parents and then that person is drawn to emotionally distant partners and tries to change the person as a proxy for fixing the emotionally unavailable parent, that person will likely fail and feel even worse.

JaneX and Inmydreams have not exhibited the bigotry that some of the other posters on here have, so what I say next does not apply to these new posters. Tarantella64, I do not know how much of this thread you have read, but some of it is some pretty nasty stuff. Adamantium is in his rights (As am I, and is anyone else) to call people out for it. It is not about purging every negative association with AS.

If what is said is clearly just anecdotal and not extrapolated bigotry, I stay off, unless I have something constructive to add. If in my opinion it is generalized bigotry, I will call people out on it and anyone else should do the same. You don't agree with that perspective and that is your prerogative. You have a right to post that just as much as we have the right to post what we post.

Edited to add:

Those of us who are parents who are also aspie are going to have sensitivities about posts that seem to paint a picture that aspies should not reproduce and that we are intrinsically cr*ppy parents. That is what TurnTheTIde (NOT the new posters) basically typed before he deleted it by replacing his posts with random characters. That was what Adamantium was responding to.

Other posters (Again, not the new ones) have said much the same thing. That is the issue. My dad was an undiagnosed aspie and my mom is NT (though with tons of anxiety and OCD) and my mom was a way worse parent. Does that negate others' personal experiences? Of course it does not. However if we are going to throw out anecdotal experiences, the positive ones (or at least non-tragic ones) are just as valid as anyone else's. This thread did not start intrinsically negatively, and there is no reason that the posts have to be limited to negativity. The title of this thread is not, "Let's talk about how awful aspie parents are."

Edited to add: I reread some of this thread (which I really should not do) and realized that you started posting on page 8, during a period of relatively constructive commentary (for this thread, at any rate.)

We are not going to agree b/c fundamentally my view of this thread is very different than yours. I understand that people with difficult AS parents and spouses/SOs do not necessarily have a constructive place for these type of discussions. However, anyone posting here has to have the expectation that people with AS are going to post from our perspective, and that anything that is anecdotal that is then turned into a generalization will be scrutinized and exceptions discussed as well as the fact that NTs have their fair share of awful parents.

Last edited by ASDMommyASDKid on 23 Feb 2014, 3:52 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Tarentella64

Will you please look at what I have said here. I believe the concepts, the spirit, and ideas I am trying to state apply here as well.

http://www.wrongplanet.net/postp5927547.html#5927547

This is pretty absolute, especially since there are so many people for whom a spouse's love and patience really did go a long way in healing them. I know it's often helped me. Look, I'm not here to insist; I'm just saying that it's pretty rough, though unintentionally so, to tell someone who just hasn't got the wherewithal -- and is in a tight spot that's going to make finding any kind of help difficult for a long time -- that she ought to be doing more. It's just occurred to me that on other mom boards, what would be happening at this point is an outpouring of love and support for inmydreams, requests that she keep checking in, questions about her daughter, affirmation, all that sort of thing. Not "here's what you're doing wrong, best wishes, bye -- oh, and now we're going to go and have a conversation about you, rather than helping you." I mean, taking a step back, this is pretty strange.



No. But here again, the problem is in generalizing. Obviously not all aspie parents are awful. But some really are, in ways that have done real damage, and some of them for reasons that can be tied pretty plainly to the very diagnostic features that have defined AS. And throughout -- I posted here long ago, too -- the posters who've come here and said, "Here's what happened with my parent and it was awful" have been treated pretty poorly when WP members with AS read "all aspie parents and potential aspie parents" for "my aspie parent".

If we're going to talk about "should people with AS have kids"...you know, no, I don't think that's a question to back away from. Sure, it'll depend very much on the person and the person's larger family situation, employability, etc. But the fact is that raising kids, even the sweetest, healthiest kids, is a giant amount of work and quite expensive, and it goes on for decades without time off. Lots of people get divorced; lots of parents are disabled. There is not a lot of help out there for those who can't do it on their own or with family help. So before you consider having a kid, you really have to think about how much you can carry, besides yourself. It may really all be on you at some point, and the kids can't have you falling apart or lashing out at them. If you struggle with daily existence, if you can't keep your own self organized and can't tolerate a lot of disruption, if you like minimal or sharply constrained contact with others, if people are always telling you you've hurt them and you don't think it's reasonable, if you're prone to meltdowns, if it's hard for you to stay employed...then no, probably you're not a good candidate for parenthood. All those things are true regardless of the cause, but they are things frequently seen in AS.

Personally, had I really understood the gap between my own social needs and most kids', most parents', I'd have thought much harder before having a kid. I get along all right and would no doubt be more sociable if I had more free time, but my kid really needs many more people in her life, much more sociability, and she suffers by the fact that this just isn't something I seek out much. And I don't even rate as AS. I can only imagine how it would've been if I'd had a very sociable boy who just needed to make lots of noise and have gangs of loud friends running through the house. Had I known I'd be doing this alone with little support, and minimal need to hang in gangs? Yeah, no. I don't see how it's a kindness to any kid.

I do think, though, that there's an extra factor with people whose AS makes them less-than-great parent candidates...and that's the fact that often the person can't see the child's social and emotional needs, so is convinced that he or she is doing just fine as a parent, and that if the kid is falling apart -- well, it must be something else and no big deal, because the AS parent looks down his own checklist and sees that everything's in order there. Meanwhile the kid's suffering badly, but the parent doesn't see a reason to acknowledge that, and feels attacked when the problem's brought up. I think you've heard a lot of that on this thread from children of AS parents -- and that's something else that's also been generalized out of context and attacked.

I hear, in these "AS and parenting go fine together" exhortations, a sense of "everyone else gets to, and this is another part of adulthood I'm being barred from". Not to take away from the sadness there, but there are lots of people who can't handle parenthood. It's not easy, particularly in the US. I've had similar conversations with women in the single-mom-by-choice movement. Also with people from NAMI, where there's a very fierce movement-based protection of the right of mentally-ill people to have children...but not so much recognition that often it's the spouses, ex-spouses, or grandparents who wind up doing most of the childrearing, and under difficult circumstances -- and that sometimes the kids aren't even that lucky, and wind up raising themselves when their parents aren't doing well. It's not for everyone, parenthood. The reason might be probems stemming from AS, it might be something else.

Anyway. Far afield from the starting point. I don't mean to attack DW, who's a voice of remarkable kindness and good sense here. I do however think there are reasons to stray from the bootstrap line.

Sorry, but no.

If you want to talk about you messed up relationship with you parent, fine. If you want to generalize about "people like that" on the basis of that experience, not so fine.

Would you do it if the distinguishing characteristic were skin pigmentation? Religion?

"Understand, when I generalize about Jews, I don't mean any particular Jew, so please don't take offense when I say offensive things about them as a group. Of course they don't apply to individual cases, so those people should be quiet and let me get on with it without answering back."

No.

Your personal experiences aside, many of the complaints people have is that their parent/parents were emotionally absent and then they find a bf/gf/spouse with the same characteristics. What DW_a_Mom said, was a kindness and very true. (You notice I said "emotionally absent" and not aspie--as not all aspies are, and yes, I am sticking with that point. I come from a long line of snuggly aspies, I married a snuggly aspie-light (BAP or very mild) and we are indeed a spectrum.)


I disagree, yet again. Regular parent boards (This is not a mom board, this is a parent portion of an autism board) don't generally have threads where people are allowed to come on and complain about their parents. Parent or "mom" boards keep off topic stuff to the off topic section. Parenting or "mom" boards are about helping their children. The fact that this thread has not been killed a long time ago given its very nasty nature is a sign of the tolerance of this board. *Again, I am not referring to JaneX or InMyDreams.*






Wrong. The people who have been "treated poorly" are the ones making those odious generalizations. They have still been treated far better than they deserve, as if they had posted on an African-American board complaining about *some* black people doing this or that stereotypical thing they would have been treated with the ban hammer. Instead even through it, many people on here have been offering them constructive help despite their bigotry and again frankly they should have been grateful to have a place in the first place on an ASPIE BOARD to express anti-aspie comments. Where else would that be allowed? How indulgent would a "mom" board be of people posting "anti-breeder" comments, saying they had an awful life, wish they never had been born, and it is bad for the environment to make so many people.



It is hardly relevant on a section of the board where we already are parents and have already reproduced, and where generally the topic is NT and aspie parents raising kids on and off the spectrum. Not that I want you harassing the "love and dating" sub-board people, either. On the parent section, giving advice not to have kids is off-topic and not the point. If you posted concern,s if and when someone asked, in a nice, non-bigoted way, that might be appropriate. On the parent sub-board the "warning" message does not fly.



If you want advice on parenting with aspie tendencies, then ask away. That is on-topic. If you just want to criticize others with unsolicited advice, you cannot expect everyone to be welcoming of said advice that may or not apply to them, aspie or not.



Think about context and where you are posting, and maybe it will make sense to you. You may view these comments as benign from your perspective. Try exercising your Theory of Mind skills, and the answer will come to you. Racists think their racism is logical, too.




Well, then go talk to those people, if they are like-minded, and that is what you want. Here, you are expressing bigotry. Context, context, context.




She did not say to go it alone; she said don't complicate a life you have yet to figure out with a pairing before you are sure that you are not just doing it to have someone to love you. It is sound advice, b/c you are likely to end up repeating a pattern, or picking -anyone- out of desperation. That is not "bootstrap" advice.

Edited for ineptness with quotes.

Edited, again to add the following:

Imagine someone posting on an African -American board complaining about getting mugged by a black person and the person then going on a racist rant. Do you think that person would get an outpouring of empathy or do you think the post might be deleted and the poster (rightly) banned? Ok, now imagine a site that for some reason, allowed the poster to post, and people answered back that they were sorry the person was mugged, but white people mug people, too. Then someone else came on complaining that any other board would have offered an outpouring of sympathy and empathy about the mugging. That is how you sound to me.

Last edited by ASDMommyASDKid on 24 Feb 2014, 5:00 am, edited 2 times in total.