Stepmom to possible aspie - help!

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Op, first and second paragraph is to the point, the rest is selfjustification and whining
(can be done sometimes but) that isn't good to hold on to.

First thing is few rules and even more important is being on the same page with the father, do that first ! !

Second; doing fun things is more important than rules, right now, shared-memory-building by having good times together. You can plan things to do all together.
Christmas-time boardgame-presents-time, and playing together, good times fun for the holidays.
Even if they grumble and are hostile, all doesn't need to be perfect rightaway, they might do it badly at first

I'd have to agree with Underwater, here.

I think the sort of opposition and defiance you are getting from her is not something necessarily common in aspies, and would seem to indicate someone in a stressful situation they can't handle. She might be needing alone time to recharge after the school week, does she get that?

Or else it's not Aspergers.
I mentioned NPD not because I have a strong opinion on whether this is appropriate, but to see if you've considered the root causes of her behaviour. Because tactics for dealing with NPD might be wrong for Aspergers and vice versa, so you need to have a grasp on what the underlying issue is.

I see, the shrink gave you a textbook advice - which wouldn't be bad if it wasn't for the fact that you are no authority for SD16. Whatever the reason is, this is where we stand.
What is the relationship between her parents? Are they still silently fighting? Who came with the idea of their divorce? Is her mother possibly feeling harmed or abandoned? Or was it she who didn't want to go on with the marriage? Did you come to the scene after they split up or before?
You say her father wants good relationship with her but he doesn't seem to succeed - or does he? You say she missed his birthday and didn't give him gifts but it may be unimportant - what is his view on their relationship?

The way I see it, you have a difficult teenager trapped in tangled relationships between three adults. Maybe even used in fights or to vent emotions about these relationships. She may get it very seriously and bring to light things the three of you could prefer hidden. Like hostility.

mrspeel - thank you!

oh yes - i have definitely thought many times that her mother and her both have narcissistic personality disorder. her mother does for sure. she literally thinks every single thing she does it just THE BEST and every single thing we do is the worst. we can never convince her of our viewpoint on anything. from time to time she does "give us our way" but she says - we'll just have to agree to disagree. and i'm sure she tells the kids - well i don't agree with this but YOUR DAD wants you to do this, or whatever. she's horrible. you literally cannot get through to her. which is why my husband isn't with her anymore. unfortunately he created a devil spawn with her lol

we thought there was hope for SD16 if we just set the example. showed tons of patience and love and explained to her calmly why it's nice to do this or that for people. or why it's not nice to do this or that. that she would be more successful in life if she did this or that. you know, that kind of thing. but NOPE!

i feel there's no hope now. i feel like i've really tried everything and i think 4 years is a good long time to try. nothing is sticking so i just have to protect my own self at this point. i don't deserve to continually be treated like crap.

i agree - we'll do our best with her but if she visits and still refuses to be respectful then she's going back to mom's. if my husband insists on having her in our house then i'm going to tell him we have to go to therapy with her. end of story. if anything i will at least have a neutral person in the room to validate my feelings.

I think it's best you go to counseling before you put any labels on her. First you thought it was Asperger's and now you are admitting you have thought NPD.

I have noticed a pattern online that every time someone thinks a person is autistic, that "autistic' person is always a jerk. We had a member here who said her husband was autistic and now that person just claimed he was undiagnosed so the whole time it was just a label that member had put on him and the whole time he had never been diagnosed who is now her ex. Her ex was also a jerk because he mistreated her and was a big hypocrite and would say bad things about her to their son but yet not do any of the parenting work himself but complain about her not doing enough of it. Ugh.I was so glad that member finally decided to leave him.

You really should not call her devil spawn and it really is not lol funny. I understand you are frustrated with her (and her mother with whom you link her very closely) but going forward you need to at least attempt some empathy and compassion if you expect the same from her. That does not mean you have to tolerate all manner of bad behavior - but here is a girl who has had her parents divorce and disrupt her world, a step mom come in and make changes to her world etc. If she is on the spectrum, this is not easy for her, and minimizing that is not productive. I understand you think you tried really hard with her and are frustrated -- but if she is not neurotypical probably most of what you did, unknowingly, made things worse. The instinct is to excessively engage instead of leaving the person alone more, which is probably what a lot of neurodiverse people would have found more helpful. This is not what you intended, but there it is. If you do want any ongoing relationship with her to improve, you have to force yourself to think more from her perspective too - which means not calling her names in your mind even in half-jest.

I think telling a narcissist from an aspie shouldn't be too hard if you knew what to look for. A very simple test came to my mind: reaction to flattery.
I know a person I suspect to be narcissistic and they shows ridiculously strong reaction to compliments. It could be nonsense, something totally unimportant, even with a touch of irony - no matter, they sees validation of how awesome they is, they visibly brightens and shows clear joy.
On the other hand, a typical response of an aspie would be more like "that part is true... this part is not true... that part I don't know... and why are you telling me all this, anyway?"
So, how is SD16 responding to compliments? If you can't get her to evaluation (and you can't if she doesn't cooperate), it could be at least some indication of this way or that way.

Yes, name calling is just horrible! You obviously feel it was humor but humor always has an element of truth so this was quite telling. You think that was funny and you think SD16 is the one with the problem Are you here looking for help or just wanting validation of what a saint you are? Reading back I can see this whole thread has been about you anyway. You have already made your mind up about SD16 and your partners Ex now please stop looking for validation from us.

that's happening more, too much lenient for someone who's not even trying to see things from another pov
and even handing out worse labels to try ,
bah and that with the semi-professionals around

Yes, the above posters are right, we shouldn't jump in and label people. My thinking was just to help determine whether the strategies to use should be based on aspie type characteristics or something else, which might need a different approach, and sometimes a label can be useful as a shorthand to understand the issue. Best not to resort to namecalling, though, the girl's as much a victim of her neurological make-up as any of us.

I do sympathise with your dilemma because people with the personality type I mentioned are notorious for causing trouble for the people around them, you really do have to understand their (unintentional) tactics and arm yourself against them, if you're to retain your own sense of self-worth.

If we can avoid using labels in a pejorative manner, I think Magz is on the right track in terms of trying to test whether it is Aspergers, narcissism or something else.

Another tell-tale that occurs to me is related to how the person refers to themself:

Aspies can lack self-awareness, but usually have enough to know that they present as awkward or weird. Becasue of this, their self-esteem tends to be on the low side. Of course, this is a generalisation and won't be true for everyone, but it seems common.

People with NPD will tend to play up their own strengths and often claim to be expert at something they are not. While they may have low self-esteem on the inside, they will rarely expose that, but will feel the need to constantly draw attention to themselves and how well they are doing things.

Hope that helps. And please don't give up on her, even if you think it is NPD, because there may be ways to help her gain some awareness of her behaviour.

Edited to add: And I didn't mention as it seemed obvious, but seeking professional advice would probably be the way to go, as others have indicated.

Please, let's stop making all the worst assumptions on each other. Calling names won't get us anywhere.

I am a bit cautious about specialists because I had been misdiagnosed and it had traumatic consequences. I suspect something similar happened to my cousin but he didn't make it to get out of his misdiagnosis. Psychiatrists can help a lot but they also can damage a lot. Maybe SD's mom had some similar expiriences so she reacts negatively on the very thought of shrinks. And an attitude like "she's mad, do something with her" will not help any bit.

I asked a lot of probably uncomfortable (as they haven't been answered) questions about the relationships of adults because I suspect SD16's mother is feeling somehow harmed and SD16 doesn't like or respect you because she empathizes with her mother, not with you. Viewing her mother as the principle evil only makes it worse, deepens the rift between you and SD16.

I came up with a home-made test to tell a narcissist from an aspie because in these two cases totally different strategies would help. As your strategy of gifts and niceness (at least the way you viewed it) failed, it's time to find another one. No labels. No name calling. Trying to understand what the issue is.

That would be a good test.

But, equally important, there is something that is fairly unique to autism/Asperger's. In physics jargon, the autistic brain is a "renormalized" brain due to the additional self-interaction of nearby neurons. This necessarily means existence of positive peak centers of attention and negative peak centers of attention. Namely, the person must have special interests and/or negative triggers (often in the form of sensory issues), for the person to qualify as autistic/Asperger's. Read this:

http://www.eikonabridge.com/AMoRe.pdf

Being social or not has zero to do with whether a person is autistic. Well-developed autistic people (such as my daughter, or the mayor of Taipei) can be very social and empathic. The only real features of autism that can be detected is the focus on special interests and optionally, sensory issues. With that in mind, let us look at what the OP has mentioned.


Not a whole lot in OP's messages. But from what's there, I'd say we do see specialized interests (notice anime is visual) and sensory issues.

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Sounds like the biological mother understands her daughter well-enough.

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So, where are the problems?

(1) Due to the lesser usage of the forward part of the brain in autistic people, they tend to have diminished sense of self. (This is not a random comment. Brain scanning experiements have confirmed this.) This means they view themselves as equals, as if their eyes were outside their bodies. They don't view themselves as above others. They view themselves in third person. The US Constitution is fairly autistic in this sense, because it says: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal..."

That means that if you believe parents can just impose authority and rules on autistic children at will, you are bound to run into problems. I believe her biological mother knows that well-enough, so she gives her daughter a lot of latitude.

Frankly, I sometimes still spoon-feed my 9-year-old daughter. That probably drives all neurotypical people (and ABA therapists) crazy. But you have to understand, autistic children don't have the brain ego to take advantage of other people. It's not in their nature. Their brains are not wired that way (as opposed to the case of neurotypical children). I absolutely have no issue spoon-feeding my children. That's not my priority. My priority is to preserve their creativity and develop their brains from their interests. As for the so-called life skills, ha, do you think just because you spoon feed them they will never be able to feed themselves when they grow up? I just don't understand why neurotypical parents worry about things that absolutely need no worrying. I don't waste my energy on irrelevant issues just to please neurotypical people. That's why my children turn out so much better than other children on the spectrum.

So, the most important failure in the step-mother's family is they use authority to impose rules on an autistic child. It's not that rules cannot be set. You can set rules. But for each rule that you set, you need to explain the rational behind those rules, and why those rules makes the whole world better. And you have to understand that these children view themselves as equal-rights human beings. So, you have to be willing to allow them to set rules that you will obey, too. It's always from equals to equals. Parents are not above children.

(2) Punishment and reward: heck, how many times does it need to be reminded? "Punishment and reward" do NOT work for autistic children. Let's see what OP has written.


Ha ha. I guess the OP has not tried to give US$1 million (Clay Millenium Prize) or US$900,000 (Nobel Prize) to her step-daughter. Because she might be surprised to find out that her step-daughter may not want those gifts, either. See, not only does punishment not work, rewards also don't work on autistic children. Yeap, Grigori Perelman, the math genius that solved the Poincaré conjecture, was offer both the Fields Medal (equivalent to Nobel Prize) and the Millenium prize. He declined them both, and preferred to be poor and live with his mother in a small apartment. Bob Dylan went into hiding and never answered his phone when the Nobel prize committee wanted to give him the prize, and dragged his feet in delivering his Nobel lecture. At the end he sent in a taped voice version, 6 days before the official deadline. So, don't feel too bad if your autistic children reject your gifts or cards... other people have had it worse.

If "Punishment and Reward" don't work on autistic children, what should you do instead? You use "Fun and Facts" instead. Do fun stuff, and cite facts and only facts. Cease all acts of manipulation: autistic children see right through your intentions and they don't like to be manipulated. You respect them and treat them as equal-rights human beings, and everything goes great. You attempt at any sort of manipulation, and you get back what you deserve. Read this:

http://www.eikonabridge.com/fun_and_facts.pdf

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In short, the step-mother's family has wreaked havoc in a perfectly-fine autistic child's life, simply because they wanted to mold the autistic child into a neurotypical life style. You get what you ask for.

As for disrespecting the child by posting extensive family issues to the public and not caring whether her step-daughter reads it on-line or not, look, the step-mother will regret it for the rest of her life. Again, you get what you ask for.

No need to cry.

Hello all. It’s great that you sought out this website and took the leap of pouring your heart out here. My input is that I feel a piece of the overall tapestry is missing - your teen stepdaughter’s inner emotional state. I would like to have more detail on her emotions, such as whether she is crying a lot. I think you may be correct about something pathological like ASD but you have left out her emotional nature in your analysis. Do you really see this girl and her heart? I relate to her being thrust into this dynamic with two households to bounce back and forth from. Using the info provided, I was similarly dysfunctional and “floundering”. Whoa was my step mom incompatible with my temperament. I empathize with your gut reaction about step’s personal hygiene - but you went snooping around in her belongings count how many pairs of underwear were in her suitcase. Is there any way she discarded them due to menstruation issues, or maybe the mom is not providing in this area? It would explain bio Mom’s reaction. The father being scared of her: I call BS on that. You have come in too late in the game, so never discipline at all. Trying to make her change won’t work, rather implode on you and her. I think you need to learn to choose your battles. Do not mention a wrapper on the floor, and so on. I think you may have to disassociate from your expectations. It sucks but none of us write the script for our life.

This is a good point. She could also be going commando (without underwear) if the underwear is uncomfortable and she does not feel comfortable discussing her undergarments with anyone. At 16, yeah, I would also be mortified if my underwear wearing was being policed.

I think you are hurt because your step daughter did not reciprocate the affection that you gave her. The fact that she was the daughter of your husband seems to have been enough for you to behave as if you loved her. I can tell you absolutely that I would have found this very confusing, and sorry, repulsive. I find other peoples displays of emotions overwhelming, it's as if the other person is a bomb, I am uncomfortable and fearful, which leads me to close my own feeling and emotions down to desensitise myself as a way of coping. I gained a step-father at the age of 15, he was polite but not demonstrative, I would say I was genuinely fond of him by the time I was 22. I am now 42 and we get on very well. This would not of happened if he had demanded that I be anything more than polite to him earlier on. You may feel that women and girls get on better, and bond quicker, I wouldn't have, women confuse the hell out of me.

I am one of the Aspies that obey the hierarchy, and I am obsessive about my things so I do have a lot of sympathy with you on her behaviour in your home. I do remember thinking to myself at 15 that I ought to be able to do as I do at home when at my Mum's house (I lived with my Dad) I resented the rules, even though I obeyed them, out of proportion. They were a sign that what was my Mum's was not automatically mine. Are you aware that saying it doesn't matter about the rubbish on the floor and making her pick it up are contradictions, her response was logical, yours was not.

She is showing affection for her father by visiting him and his house, that is a good sign. You appear to be as oblivious to her signs as she is to yours.

The suggestion of Asperger's would be better coming from someone else, in fact at this point if she sees it coming from you she may well fix on Asperger's as the enemy for that reason. Her father needs to take responsibility and discus it with her mother, difficult? tough!

Hi Stepmom:

I hear all your frustration and hurt. You've done all you know to do for your SD16 and nothing seems to help. Her behavior is difficult for you to tolerate and you feel like a prisoner in your own home. She looks at you like you are the crazy one when you try to set expectations about her behavior.

You know you're not a crazy, bad stepmom because your SD13 tells and shows you (over many years) how awesome you are. SD13 doesn't understand her sister either.

Where do you go from here?

When you describe your SD16's actions and thinking, she does sound like she has an extraordinary brain, whatever the label others use. Her brain doesn't respond the way a typical brain responds. So typical solutions (asking, explaining, setting boundaries, punishing) haven't worked and probably won't. I can tell that you get that idea but don't know what else to do.

I'd like to suggest that you start by taking care of yourself. I believe that when you feel better about this situation, you will be able to do more to help and get better results.

As one of the leaders of your family, you set the tone in your home. When you are humming at the center, balanced, sometimes on alert, sometimes relaxed, you feel clear and energized. That's probably how you feel with your hubby and SD13 nearby.

You say you are 'walking on eggshells' when SD16 is home. I think that means you are on high alert waiting for bombs to drop. That it's not a matter of 'if' but 'when' SD16 will explode. This stress response, and a chronically stressed body, is incredibly unhealthy as we all know.

I'm sure you've heard about the benefits of meditation to stabilize and center your nervous system as you look at your thinking. Breathing and noticing your breath helps your mind naturally calm down. I sincerely suggest practicing meditation, if only for 5 minutes, every morning. The rest of the day you will be less emotionally reactive.

Meditating is rehearsing and practicing calming your nervous system so that when you are triggered, as you know you will be by SD16's trash or abrupt comments or arguments, will help you 'spot' before you have an automatic reaction, even if that reaction is just a thought.

It would be helpful to record that thought, the automatic reaction you have when you are triggered. Just write it in the Notes App on your phone.

The next step is to step back and look at these thoughts. After writing your thoughts down for a few days, you will see a pattern. As the 'observer' you can begin to question which of your thoughts are helpful and which are not.

If what I am saying here rings true to you, let me know and I will share a process I use to feel better using my thoughts as a starting point.

FYI, I joined our family when my now SD47 was 12 and it has been an amazing 35 years. She has no formal diagnosis either.

We have 7 children, six adopted, though one is in heaven. Each of our children have atypical brains. Labels include high functioning autism or Aspergers, generalized anxiety, emotion management, non-verbal learning disorders, dyslexia, dysgraphia, ADHD and others.

The most helpful thing I've done for all of us is to look at my own thoughts, get calm and remind myself (a lot) to respond with love and compassion. I'm not always successful, but when I come from that wise part of me (that is inside everyone) things are better.

I find compassion when I imagine what it must be like to live life with their brain. I imagine SD16 is misunderstood by most people (except her bio-mom who is a lot like her). I'll bet she is anxious all day long.

SD47 brings a lot of beauty to our family and also causes herself and us sadness. I try to remember the good and learn from the bad, as both will always be present in life. It's not easy, especially when we're in the middle of something difficult.

I hope these thoughts are helpful to you. I have other tools and systems that have worked for me. I'm just starting a website to offer them to other special moms, so they're not available online yet.

I'd be happy to continue posting on this thread if you think this thinking could be useful to you.

Best wishes,
Lynn
Special Moms Coach