*§*AS-Parent Support Group*§*

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You said he has traits?

When ever Sheila makes some comment about wanting to move to a better neighbourhood or bigger house or lack of money, I usually take it as a personally (feeling inadequate that I am not able to provide more).

Just thought I'd mention it. Maybe MS takes it personally too.

I agree. Another often repeated exchange between my wife and I is my older daughter will get cross and tell my wife "just shut up will you!". Wife gets enraged: "HOW DARE YOU SPEAK TO ME LIKE THAT!!". And I chime in: "But thats exactly what you say to her. Frequently".

To me there's an obvious injustice here. I believe the parent has total rights over the child in terms of protecting them, keeping them safe. But in basic communication it's unfair that an adult can just shout louder and use some kind of imaginary higher authority to win an argument. And then be shocked when their child tries to win an argument using the same tactics

Also, I've noticed that to young children, the adult world appears not just confusing, but totally absurd and even funny. A child can shatter an adults overlown sense of self-importance. Adults hate this, which is possibly another reason why they insist on being apart from their children as much as possible.

A while ago a neighbouring family visited us and the father had had far to much alcohol and was being a total jerk. His family said nothing as this is familiar to them, although the young son was in a separate room crying about "why does my dad always get like this". The drunken man started to tease my daughter (age 10) who just replied "you're a drunken idiot".

He got angry as his own family daren't tell him the blunt truth, so he raged at me "You can't let your daughter speak to an adult like that. You have to discipline her. I don't allow my children to rule my house etc etc". I just told him I thought she was absolutely right, that I thought it was *his* behaviour that was out of order". He doesn't visit us with his family any more. Sometime it takes a child to see the truth,

But school teaches the opposite. That we are born imperfect. lacking something that can only be put in by submitting to adults who will teach us what is important in the world.

Out of the mouths of babes topic

Your ideas about truth regarding drunks and authority for its own sake are definitely warranted, but in my case I told my daughter that if I am paying the dental bills, she is not to eat chocolate in bed and then fall asleep at night without brushing her teeth. And my son used to pee on the seat without lifting it up. I told him to please leave it up after he peed if he wanted. I made it easy. Finally, this year, amen, he has finally understood that peeing on the seat is going to get me angry. It took him years to figure that one out. My children definitely know how to push my Aspie buttons. I will not even go into why I have problems with gambling husband who squandered 27.5 thousand dollars in three months, when I warned him to not do this after he had squandered 60 thousand dollars in four years (six years ago). I know I need to leave. I just need to save a little more, because this time my kids are coming with me!!

My ex did the same thing - he started gambling and put us into twenty thousand dollars of debt in less than a year, which was the straw that broke the camel's back. That's when I finally left him, and I am SO glad I did. One of the few times I've made a good decision.

Thanks, Bazza, for your insight. You are correct; he probably did take it personally. It would never have occurred to me that that was the reason he was triggered.

I like how SartreSue labels her posts. Wouldn't it be nice if we had a forum so it wasn't a bunch of topics on one thread...

my dad says-he can say whatever he wants
I rarely speak to him anymore
and we live in the same house
he has no idea how angry I am at him for the selfish prick he is
and he not only refuses to learn about AS, he makes stuff up and insists they are true-and he tells me I don't know what I am talking about (when talking about myself)
or he will make no sence at all, just say things that-don't fit together-like he asks a question-tells you to answer, then gets mad and yells at you 'why did you answer'
never a role model for me
oh well
I will be away from him soon

I can completely relate to this. I hope I'm not doing my children a disservice because I can't play with them.

i played alone a lot as a child, hours on end and loved every minute of it. i dont recall any memories of playing with my parents either. only my brother.

i wish i could play with my kids more though. its often spontaneous at the moment

[quote="mysterious_misfit I hope I'm not doing my children a disservice because I can't play with them.[/quote]

I found that they'd play together (they were 17 months apart so they could easily play together) and it was great. I didn't have to play with them because they played so well together (when they weren't ripping each other's hair out).

The comment on alcohol triggered a long lost memory of one of my first classes in marketing at university (don't ask why marketing).

Anyway, the tutor asked the class "How many of you tasted alcohol as a child?" More or less all hands up. Then "How many of you *liked* the taste of alcohol?". No hands up. Some laughing about how "disgusting it tasted". Then he asked "How many of you like the taste now?" All hands shot up again, yet more jokes "Have you got some for us to try, sir?!. Then the punchline: "You hated the taste, now you love the taste, *that* is the power of marketing".

I quess the relevance to this thread is that as an (AS) parent I worry more about the influence of alcohol on children than probably any other single thing. The peer pressure to drink it is coming at a younger and younger age. I think the punishments for selling alcohol to 13/14 year olds should be the same as selling heroin to them. The majority of horrible behaviour in this age group appears to be alcohol fuelled, not that other drugs aren't bad, just that alcohol is the worst.

Yes there is the constant questioning of the status quo, I think you're right that it caused problems in our own schooling as well as causes us problems now when our children are in school. In fact, thinking back on my undergraduate nursing school experience, I remember being very angry at the time, because I felt they were wasting my time with stupid requirements to take classes and study subjects and do projects that had absolutely nothing to do with nursing. I learned more the first week on the job than I did in 2 plus years of my BSN program. It was all BS. And the NT's that make up the crap don't see how much BS it is.

I also think I know what you mean about feeling an absolute right to authority over your child. It's almost like at any moment some system can come and interfere and take them away, because we just didn't follow the rules exactly.

Is everybody okay?
Did I kill this thread?
I need to vent.
I'm not happy with my kids.
I feel like I screwed them up.
M is always mad at me and only sees me when she needs money. Like today she got mad because she doesn't like her name. It's unusual, it's a French name, but she's always complaining about it. I told her it was not my first choice but her dad insisted on it, but she still is mad at me for it. It's just a small example of how angry she is at me.

And C is 18 but an overweight couch potato. She's very bright but just quit a job at Baskin-Robbins. So she's living with us, no job, and gets mad at me when I tell her to go look for a job. I just want to give up.

I'm ok, feeling energised from eating meat abundantly for first time in ages, and no starchy carbohydrates at all, hyped up a little by suspense over the academic inspection due in 8 days, happy for some reason about the disastrous weather we've been having here the last few weeks ( ice storms, torrential rainfall, electrical storms, etc).
I think we just went through the first big burst of expressing ourselves, let off steam, and the pressure went down a little.
Go for it. I often do too. It's why I think I've discovered so much on wp. When I pour out my frustrations, etc and read other people's, I learn, and feel supported/understood, and I understand more. And it helps so much.

That's the kind of daughter that I was too. Thankless, angry/resentful, oppositionally defiant , and constantly critical, grumbling etc. We were all grateful for campus universities in the UK which provide secure accomodation for 3/4 years ( and for my managing the grades to get in to one too) ; I was able to leave home at 19 and never go back.

It took years before I got over the hatred I felt for my Dad. Not until after my radical lesbian feminist revolution aged 25-27 and manic-depressive breakdown, ( 27-29), ... after which I loathed my mother instead, who previously had been almost invisible and insignificant to me. She really had no real existence for me before.

I increasingly hated my mother until very recently, this last year in fact, ( I'm 44 ) . Finding out about AS made a huge difference; I understood that she wasn't to blame for my problems as much as I'd thought, and also that both of them are probably AS to some degree, my mother with some very annoying OCD tendencies. The worst thing in the last 5 or six years was noticing how like her I am.

About guilt. I get that with my son, whenever I remember him falling out of the pushchair aged 1, and the sound of his head hitting the pavement. For a split instant I thought he must be dead. All the troubles he had with speech and his fine motor difficulties and balance issues etc ... I have felt so awful about, ( thinking "brain damage" ) ... until finding out about AS.

Suddenly , seeing how my mother's sister was obviously Autistic, stayed home all her life till mother died when the father not managing to dress and feed her she had to go into a home, where luckily she was happy, and other evidence of AS in family, has relieved me of burden of guilt a bit.

I have often felt guilty, about so many things "I did wrong", and the awful results ( eg: it took him months to recover from the first time he ever tried school, a morning of pre-school at 3 when I was feeling overwhelmed and hoped he could be off my hands for half-days at least. I noticed the effects, increased anxiety, and heaps of stuff, for ages).

And so on.

Just noticed that my hatred of my parents lasted 14 years ( half a saturn cycle) in each case. hmm! Wonder who I'm going to hate, or perhaps be hated by for the next 14.

Last edited by ouinon on 03 Jun 2008, 1:21 am, edited 3 times in total.

I get angry at my ungrateful lazy teenagers.

Sometimes I seriously think about getting rid of the TV. There's only crap programs on it anyway

I have to vote no,
Even NT parents have good advice now and then that could and would be helpful, a parent is a parent, yes many issues arise when the parents them selves are autistic, but what if the parents are but the children are not? and even so the NT parents want to understand and help as much as the autistic parents do, even with and to other parents, the same with autistic parents, they want to help the struggling NT parents understand their children and/or mates as well, now I would have to vote yes if this was an NT forum, but its not, most here are autistic or are struggling with an autistic in their lives, instead of shutting out the NT we should be helping them understand and grow with us as friend and ally.

ok i guess. just bit low, tired of verbally fighting



not any more!

Im ok, ive just been struggling with my bf/ex whatever he is gonna be. Ive kinda been obsessing over child custody and crap like that lately. Its not one of my nicer obsessions that ive gone through though