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BuyerBeware
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25 Oct 2013, 5:12 pm

Thank you. Sometimes I need a translator so badly that I should really just stop talking.

What DW_a_mom said. Because she's one of the smartest people around here.

I come by sometimes to try to figure out what mistakes not to make with my regular kids. I leave hopeless, and hurting for all the hurting people. I tried to help. I failed.


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Jenufa
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04 Nov 2013, 5:55 am

Thank you, DW!! I actually got so annoyed that I stopped reading this thread for some days... at the same time, though, I tried to regard my own annoyance as educative, as you suggest. I've never doubted the excellent intentions of my AS mother, and my search is less for closure than it is for simple understanding - what actually WERE the issues? How did we children learn our social skills, and where are the gaps? Anyhow, your response makes me feel I´m not talking to a brick wall, and is much appreciated!



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04 Nov 2013, 7:42 am

Jenufa wrote:
Thank you, DW!! I actually got so annoyed that I stopped reading this thread for some days... at the same time, though, I tried to regard my own annoyance as educative, as you suggest. I've never doubted the excellent intentions of my AS mother, and my search is less for closure than it is for simple understanding - what actually WERE the issues? How did we children learn our social skills, and where are the gaps? Anyhow, your response makes me feel I´m not talking to a brick wall, and is much appreciated!


If I may, I think here are some of the issues:

1) Given the nature of this board (and specifically this portion of this board) you are going to run into some specific things.

a) Many of us are either on the spectrum (diagnosed or undiagnosed) or have certain autistic traits that we share in common with our children to varying degrees, even if not technically on the spectrum.
1. Therefore, you are going to run into some traits that maybe remind you of your parents and upset you.
b) We do tend to be self-congratulatory, b/c what we do is hard, and when we succeed, even in a small way, we tend to be darn proud of ourselves, and rightfully so. We are often defensive because of the issues that we run into in our daily lives.
c) When we screw up, we are not likely to post it on this thread. So when we are showing the humility and perspective you perhaps seek, (for catharsis?) it is more likely to be on a thread specifically about a particular problem one or more of us is having. You could lurk around and read.

2) Closure cannot be found on any message board, (so it is good that you recognize that) but maybe especially not here. People on the spectrum vary widely and even if you find good enough proxies for your parents, or corroborating anecdotes about similar people I am not sure that will get you where you need to go.

a) A lot of us have no clue about how anybody acquires social skills. To many of us it appears almost like a savant power, just one most people have.
b) The more NT folks here,can maybe give you more answers about which ones are received through teaching, which ones are some kind of instinct, and which ones are absorbed through osmosis.
1. I don't know how you figure out what gaps you have , much less figure out which ones are due to ineffective parental teaching. I don't even know in practical terms why it matters other than to exacerbate rumination, which is ironically ans ASD tendency in and of itself. If you are looking to proportion blame, I am not sure what that will get you. If the relationship with your parents is toxic in some way that may be more important in figuring out if you want to be estranged or not as opposed to assigning blame for things that were unintentional.
a. I say that not b/s I think parents should get a pass for everything (I was a child, also) but b/c from a practical standpoint what can they do about it now? If you want them to acknowledge that they crippled you socially, or otherwise,I don't know if you will get that. Most parents NT or not, really don't want to hash out their failures. Whether they do or not has more to do with who they are as people now then what they did when you were a kid.
2.I don't even know if you are 100% NT, as your genetic profile might include some ASD. How would you know if a deficit you have is b/c of some genetic trace or something else? That is something you need to be introspective about and discover on your own, if it is important. If you think you need social skill assessment or something, that is hard to get, I think even for full-blown adult aspies. The focus is largely on children.

3) Those of on the spectrum often have horrible theory of mind, so if you are looking for something specific, being direct is the best route. Things like understanding and closure are not specific and that is OK if you don't mind the meandering tangents we are apt to get on. If it annoys you because you are looking for answers to specific questions it will be easier to specifically ask them. That is the nature of things here.



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04 Nov 2013, 9:01 am

Thank you again, DW. I found the Tony Attwood quote on the first page of this discussion thread revelatory. The spelling/ grammar obsession... leaving home young... being a high achiever... all these things are related to my mother's AS? I always thought it was just coincidence, or just our family. And I guess I'm looking for more insights of this kind. It's not in any way about "messing up" as an AS parent. Yes, my mother lost friends and tried my patience by not being able to resist returning letters corrected in red pen, or at least listing and explaining the mistakes in her reply; and she could never understand why the recipients weren't grateful for the information. "Obscurantist" was a favourite epithet that my parents had for their children - "Don't you WANT to learn?!" I tried explaining that a letter was a gift of love and that to reciprocate with criticism was in appropriate, but they could never grasp that. Still I'm always appreciative of the fact that I am able to earn my living as a writer mostly because of my parents' efforts to instill a good sense of language usage in their offspring, and not through any great effort on my part.

When I was a child, I thought that my parents were absolutely normal, though it did occasionally strike me that the rest of the world was different. In fact, i thought that my parents were wonderful, and that we got on pretty well. I'd say that my battle with anorexia as a teenager had a lot to do with their lack of understanding that it was inappropriate to burden a teenager with their respective relationship problems, and also by the very distressing realization that my mother wasn't always right, and that a conscious and early decision to remove myself from the parental home (see Attwood again) went a very long way towards helping me become a healthy adult. But I had no idea that there was such a thing as Asperger's. My sibling and I only figured it out many years later, when our mother's behaviour over a particular issue was particularly, outrageously inappropriate. When I began reading about AS, I was astonished that neither we nor anybody in our social circle (though admittedly my parents lived a very socially isolated life) had ever noticed or come up with suggestions in this direction. What I had assumed as child to be normal was in fact not normal.

It's cause and effect that I'm weeding my way through now. Is my conviction that I need to achieve exceptional things professionally linked to the fact that my mother was never able to give me the positive feedback that I needed? Is my exaggerated sense of social/ emotional responsibility towards those around me the outcome of growing up compensating for my AS mother's combination of social limitations with emotional needs? Do I derive deeper emotional comfort from food than those who grew up receiving more emotional comfort from their NT parents? Are certain things I seek in relationships directly linked to things I missed out on as a child? Which aspects of my behaviour are learned AS behaviour?

And so on. And I guess I'm also looking for some sense of community - does anyone else out there get driven up the wall by an AS parent's habit of standing much too close? My (undiagnosed) AS mother has no sense at all of physical boundaries and can happily chase someone all the way across a room without realising she's doing it. My sister has developed a technique for dealing with this. She says, "Mum, you're standing too close again." And of course Mum feels hurt, every single time - that's the hardest part. How can I define safe borders for myself without offending her? It's kind of impossible, but not doing so feels catastrophically destructive to me - I always feel as if I'm being expected to give to the point of self-harm. And we can't talk about it - believe me, we've tried!

I didn't have borders as a child, and that was evidently harmful to me, though I didn't really notice till I got hospitalised.

I'd still like better to understand what actually happened, not least by exchanging thoughts with others who had similar experiences.

There would be no undiagnosed parent in this forum, I presume, so that's also a question - what difference might it have made had my mother been diagnosed? What are the consequences of remaining undiagnosed? Has anyone ever tried to coax a 70-year-old towards a diagnosis? I can't imagine there being much to be gained by that. Can you? I'm curious...



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04 Nov 2013, 12:22 pm

I would not assume that there are not undiagnosed parents on here. Many of us are old enough and/or too high functioning have received a diagnosis as children. Many of us have either gotten diagnosed as adults, figured it out on our own after our kids were diagnosed or in my case, figured it out after my kid got diagnosed, but also got an unasked for informal diagnosis from a member of my son's diagnosis team.

I have no intention of pursuing a diagnosis at this point in my life b/c it would not do me any good other than a label on my medical file. Services for adults are notoriously sparse, expensive and not necessarily very good. I already have had plenty of time to develop coping skills for much of what I would have needed, and I have succeeded arranging my life in such a way as to minimize using the skills I don't really have honed well over the years. I have enough insight to know (a good deal of the time) when my perspective is apt not to match those of others, and when I am responding in a more aspie way than not.

A 70 yr old not apt to be open to any of this. Age doesn't exact;y decrease the rigidity and if anything increases it. I say this b/c my dad was undiagnosed aspie and my mom NT with some OCD tendencies and anxiety, but definitely not on the spectrum. My elderly mom knows I believe my dad was aspie and she is not receptive and doesn't frankly even understand. I only brought it up when she was asking about my son's diagnosis.

I don't know how many of your questions have good answers. They are only going to be educated guesses, at best. We debate the value of a diagnosis a lot regarding our kids. My son is diagnosed, but some kids are mild enough to "pass" and the parents do not pursue it b/c they are afraid of unnecessarily labeling their kid with a stigma, or are afraid their kid will use it as an excuse to give up when it gets hard. So there is no guarantee your grandparents would have opted to get your parents diagnosed. Then you don't know how effective any therapies would have been.

That is another thing we debate around here. Not all diagnosed kids with therapy end up understanding personal space or any of the other things they are taught. Heck, NTs don't either. I am on the opposite end where I like a lot of personal space and I get uncomfortable when NTs encroach upon it. Personal space is culturally determined to a point and varies even when you travel, so you can run into issues with it even without dealing with aspies. You may think it is a cop out, but I stand by my statements up-post that a lot of what is "annoying" or "difficult" about aspies is prevalent in the general population (or go along with other disorders) but maybe just exists in different percentages and not all at once in the same person. I don't say that to minimize your experiences, but to let you know that there are multiple ways people could have similar experiences as yourself that could empathize with you without have an aspie family.

The touchiness sounds like a big problem, and maybe that is especially a thing to focus on. My NT mom was always more touchy than my AS dad b/c my dad did not give a darn enough to be offended. My son is that way, too. I am much more touchy, so it is a trait that varies. I think when someone with AS gets touchy it might be a stronger feeling and also disproportionate b/c we aren't always sure how much we are supposed to be offended, and we guess wrong a lot. If your mom gets offended by being told she stands too close (which to me is not a personal insult) I do not know what you can do to fix it.

My M-I-L who is not at all AS but probably has a host of other issues, is very boundary-impaired particularly with her kids, siblings and select nieces and nephews who have been pulled into her vortex. So I have insight on this. My husband would never tell her in a million years that she has boundary issues. It would go very badly. So the best we can do is attempt to retrain her and just not give in when she is unreasonable. That is it. There is nothing else we can do. I don't think her particular undiagnosed disorder figures in anywhere. We (try to) ignore the whining, the complaining and the guilt when she doesn't get her little way, and the consequences for her is that people don't necessarily seek her out when they want to have a good time.

Anyway, I am not saying the AS is not an issue, but I think your issues are more globally present, and that you have more sources for empathy and understanding than you think.



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04 Nov 2013, 2:54 pm

I was undiagnosed when I first came here. Undiagnosed and unready to accept my son's diagnosis.

Now I have been through the looking glass and learned how I look from the other side. I am fairly sure that both of my parents could have been diagnosed if they were assessed today (well, dad has been dead for several decades, but you know what I mean.)

Mum has alzheimers and is living with me, now. It's a stressful situation. She is very focused on the things I have come to understand are her special interests. This combined with almost no transcription from short term to long term memory means we have the same narrowly focused conversations dozens and dozens of times each day. She has a repertoire of about 20 scripts that she runs through again and again.

I was extremely angry with her after my dad died, because of her manipulative behavior and readiness to demand that I sacrifice almost everything in my life in order to make her pursuit of her narrow interests easier. I realized that she had never been the very good mum I used to see her as when I was little. A therapist explained to me that I had made up the mum I needed and focused on that imaginary person... who actually did a pretty good job despite the not always so great behavior of actual mum.

Dad was totally consumed by his interests and was often absent. He was a creative worker and could spend days in his study, barely seeing or acknowledging his children. On the other hand, when he focused on us, it was like being in the beam of a lighthouse. Intense and wonderful, but then back into utter darkness. He had tantrums, err-meltdowns, regularly and protecting myself from his rage was a major feature of childhood. He was fearsomely intelligent and I loved talking with him in those moments when he did pay attention to me.

I love him deeply and I miss him terribly.

They were actually very good parents, though often I wished they had paid more attention to me.

I have seen a lot of apparently NT parents who were really, terribly bad at it. Much worse than my parents, for all their faults.

I'm pretty sure that I am often a lousy dad. I know I have inadvertently hurt my childrens' feelings and there are times when they want attention and I have made a judgement call and placed my attention elsewhere. I strongly suspect that some tension in that area is a normal part of parenting, regardless of the parent or child's neurology.



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06 Nov 2013, 1:48 am

Jenufa wrote:
Thank you again, DW. I found the Tony Attwood quote on the first page of this discussion thread revelatory. The spelling/ grammar obsession... leaving home young... being a high achiever... all these things are related to my mother's AS? I always thought it was just coincidence, or just our family. And I guess I'm looking for more insights of this kind. It's not in any way about "messing up" as an AS parent. Yes, my mother lost friends and tried my patience by not being able to resist returning letters corrected in red pen, or at least listing and explaining the mistakes in her reply; and she could never understand why the recipients weren't grateful for the information. "Obscurantist" was a favourite epithet that my parents had for their children - "Don't you WANT to learn?!" I tried explaining that a letter was a gift of love and that to reciprocate with criticism was in appropriate, but they could never grasp that. Still I'm always appreciative of the fact that I am able to earn my living as a writer mostly because of my parents' efforts to instill a good sense of language usage in their offspring, and not through any great effort on my part.

When I was a child, I thought that my parents were absolutely normal, though it did occasionally strike me that the rest of the world was different. In fact, i thought that my parents were wonderful, and that we got on pretty well. I'd say that my battle with anorexia as a teenager had a lot to do with their lack of understanding that it was inappropriate to burden a teenager with their respective relationship problems, and also by the very distressing realization that my mother wasn't always right, and that a conscious and early decision to remove myself from the parental home (see Attwood again) went a very long way towards helping me become a healthy adult. But I had no idea that there was such a thing as Asperger's. My sibling and I only figured it out many years later, when our mother's behaviour over a particular issue was particularly, outrageously inappropriate. When I began reading about AS, I was astonished that neither we nor anybody in our social circle (though admittedly my parents lived a very socially isolated life) had ever noticed or come up with suggestions in this direction. What I had assumed as child to be normal was in fact not normal.

It's cause and effect that I'm weeding my way through now. Is my conviction that I need to achieve exceptional things professionally linked to the fact that my mother was never able to give me the positive feedback that I needed? Is my exaggerated sense of social/ emotional responsibility towards those around me the outcome of growing up compensating for my AS mother's combination of social limitations with emotional needs? Do I derive deeper emotional comfort from food than those who grew up receiving more emotional comfort from their NT parents? Are certain things I seek in relationships directly linked to things I missed out on as a child? Which aspects of my behaviour are learned AS behaviour?

And so on. And I guess I'm also looking for some sense of community - does anyone else out there get driven up the wall by an AS parent's habit of standing much too close? My (undiagnosed) AS mother has no sense at all of physical boundaries and can happily chase someone all the way across a room without realising she's doing it. My sister has developed a technique for dealing with this. She says, "Mum, you're standing too close again." And of course Mum feels hurt, every single time - that's the hardest part. How can I define safe borders for myself without offending her? It's kind of impossible, but not doing so feels catastrophically destructive to me - I always feel as if I'm being expected to give to the point of self-harm. And we can't talk about it - believe me, we've tried!

I didn't have borders as a child, and that was evidently harmful to me, though I didn't really notice till I got hospitalised.

I'd still like better to understand what actually happened, not least by exchanging thoughts with others who had similar experiences.

There would be no undiagnosed parent in this forum, I presume, so that's also a question - what difference might it have made had my mother been diagnosed? What are the consequences of remaining undiagnosed? Has anyone ever tried to coax a 70-year-old towards a diagnosis? I can't imagine there being much to be gained by that. Can you? I'm curious...


I haven't been on the board for a while, but I'm glad you came back. I think that figuring out any of these questions is going to involve a certain amount of frustration because frustration seems to be connected at some level to all things ASD. Which makes sense. How can a communication disconnect not involve frustration?

Anyway. There is one paragraph in your post, above, that I can particularly relate to, in that the issues you mention are all ones I have, too: Is my conviction that I need to achieve exceptional things professionally linked to the fact that my mother was never able to give me the positive feedback that I needed? Is my exaggerated sense of social/ emotional responsibility towards those around me the outcome of growing up compensating for my AS mother's combination of social limitations with emotional needs? Do I derive deeper emotional comfort from food than those who grew up receiving more emotional comfort from their NT parents?

And that is interesting to me because outside of the first one, I've never considered if there could be a connection to growing up with an ASD parent. The need to be exceptional? Absolutely. I know my ASD father passed that on. He openly taught that life isn't fair and the only way to get through it is to be better than everyone else. And think about it - that was survival for him, wasn't it? He expected us to be better than everyone else at the things he knew were a path to success: school and grades, being good at your job. Of course, what he had missed all that time was how important social skills were, and how building bridges in that area could take you even further. He didn't value anything in that area, I guess because he didn't understand it. But he did know that if you excel at what you do, you'll be OK in life.

All of us daughters have what might be seen as an extreme sense of social responsibility. I'm proud of that, so I've never really looked for "why." In my case, I think my father was overly compensating for his own weaknesses in the area, and that became part of the example he set. And of course we saw my mom filling in the gaps constantly. But I don't know. Interesting issue to raise.

I love my food, too. We've all attributed that to a messed up be-full index, given that my parents pushed me to eat way more than I should have when I was little, because I came on the heals of my naturally thin, high metabolism older sister, and my disinterest in eating freaked them both out. Hm, will have to think more on that one, too.

Moving on to other things, my ASD son had no natural sense of personal boundaries, but we've taught him well. And my dad ... well, we weren't cuddly close when I was growing up because *I* didn't want it, I wasn't drawn to him, and I know that hurt him deeply. I changed that once I was old enough to realize, but the damage was done. The baby and toddler me did not like my dad. Gosh I am so sorry, but I didn't know! He wanted us to be cuddly close, but the awkward way he had with it I guess turned me off.

Watching my own kids grow up, I'd say that my ASD son is my ASD son, just is who he is, and while we can help him improve certain things, I'm not sure anything of who he is or will be is responsive to my personality or my husband's. I think it could have been if we'd messed certain things up, but while we certainly made some huge mistakes, I don't see that sort of pattern with him.

My NT daughter, though, is naturally reactionary against so much of who I am. Because she's a daughter. She's doing exactly what I did to my mother. I might be at least a little ASD, but my mother is all NT, and I think my daughter is NT. I think that most girls have a need to define themselves as different from their mothers, and that it has nothing to do with ASD, although the ASD is certainly going to affect what you are trying to be different than.

Anyway, I need to call it a night, so enough rambling. Not sure when I can come back on, but maybe some of my thoughts can trigger new ones from you, and then vice-a-versa.

Understanding anyone is a tough task. But I can tell that you really do love your mother. I am glad.


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06 Nov 2013, 1:53 am

Adamantium wrote:
. I strongly suspect that some tension in that area is a normal part of parenting, regardless of the parent or child's neurology.


Yes


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Jenufa
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08 Nov 2013, 5:34 am

I found an interesting article - for some reason I can't post the link directly, but if you search theneurotypical and parents-with-aspergers you will find it.

-- once again, I would like to say that while it's fair enough to state that many non-AS parents struggle, and many non-AS parents can be worse than AS parents, there ARE real issues which those of us who grew up with undiagnosed AS parents DO face, and it IS a reasonable quest to wish to understand these issues. And it HAS been neglected until now by most research into and discussion of AS.

Of course it's very important for AS parents to be reassured that they're doing just fine - but I thought this thread was intended for the NT offspring of AS parents?



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08 Nov 2013, 6:32 am

Jenufa,

This thread is an anomaly wrapped in an anomaly. The main board (although all are certainly welcome) is primarily people on the spectrum and with other diagnosis that tend to be diagnosed together with ASD or otherwise have an overlap with ASD.

The parent board is unique in that it has many more NT regular posters than on the main board. I don't know what the ratio here of NT to non NT is but there still are a lot of spectrum posters here who also have children on the spectrum. So the conversation is not going to proceed exclusively in an NT way.

I don't know that this post (back in 2009) was started by an NT or someone on the spectrum. The moderator flag (as far as I know) does not mean that spectrum people cannot post on here, but is appears to be meant as something akin to a trigger warning b/c the thread veered off from recollections of AS parents that were mixed in nature to some that were very negative (and somewhat inflammatory, at times) in nature. I haven't read through this whole thing all at once, but I do not think it was the original intent of the OP was for that to happen.

Regardless, the only place on this board to have a thread like this would be here, because of the higher concentration of NTs. That said, the viewership is still apt to contain many on the spectrum, despite the trigger warning.

I think the main issues that arise on this thread (that I probably need to stay off of--but yet, I don't) is when posts veer off from, "These were my experiences, can anyone relate?" to "AS parents (as a sweeping generalization) are really bad and abusive, here is my litany of complaints." There is a lot of room in between and it certainly does not mean that all the comments on here need to be fond memories of AS parents. (Remember, a lot of us on the spectrum with AS kids also probably have one or more AS parents ourselves--and some of us have some negative stories also) The nature of this thread does mean that some of us are apt to be touchy, and the interplay on here tends to be rather odd.



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08 Nov 2013, 10:20 am

Interestingly, the few published online articles that I have been able to find tend to be far more categorical and drastic than individual posts in this thread... Here is another one:

http://www.maxineaston.co.uk/published/ ... mily.shtml

The link between anorexia and an AS parent would also interest me. Is this common?



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08 Nov 2013, 12:57 pm

Jenufa wrote:
Interestingly, the few published online articles that I have been able to find tend to be far more categorical and drastic than individual posts in this thread... Here is another one:

http://www.maxineaston.co.uk/published/ ... mily.shtml

The link between anorexia and an AS parent would also interest me. Is this common?




It sounds like Sarah's parents were good parents because they want what's best and any parent would be upset if their kid wasn't trying hard enough. But with lack of TOM, the parent may believe their kid isn't trying hard enough even though their kid says they are and the parent thinks hey are lying and making excuses. Same thing happens with kids with disabilities from normal parents. Also when going into therapy, you are supposed to talk about negative stuff because that is what you are there for so you can get help for it so you know what to do about it. The daughter also sounded like she didn't like to follow rules like using a plate. What's wrong with that? Also if you drop crumbs on the floor, sweep it up, what is that so bad for the child? I would have to hear the kid's perspective on her parents and on her behaviors.

Like I say before, every time aspies online make themselves sound like they are great parents, I always wonder what is their kids' perception of them as parents because of so many negative stories about being raised by an aspie.


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08 Nov 2013, 2:36 pm

Jenufa wrote:
I found an interesting article - for some reason I can't post the link directly, but if you search theneurotypical and parents-with-aspergers you will find it.

-- once again, I would like to say that while it's fair enough to state that many non-AS parents struggle, and many non-AS parents can be worse than AS parents, there ARE real issues which those of us who grew up with undiagnosed AS parents DO face, and it IS a reasonable quest to wish to understand these issues. And it HAS been neglected until now by most research into and discussion of AS.

Of course it's very important for AS parents to be reassured that they're doing just fine - but I thought this thread was intended for the NT offspring of AS parents?


You have to be really careful with some of the published articles on line; there is one author in particular who has a huge agenda against anyone with ASD ever marrying much less having children. Truth is, life is much more nuanced than that, and generalities rarely are accurate.

I was a moderator here when the thread started, and I had to think about allowing it. I don't know how the OP found their way here, but they did, and as a support community, we gave them support, too. The moderator note is something I added years later when I was no longer a moderator (with the permission of the current moderators), but concerned about some of the conversation. It is a bit of an anomaly that this thread exists on a forum dedicated to helping people with ASD, but ultimately I would much rather that NT children with issues with their parents hash it out here than in some of the other places I've visited. Turning the ASD parent into a scapegoat, as happens in some places, or blaming all the unrelated issues a parent may have on the ASD, as also happens, both prevent healing. And I think the goal of anyone searching this topic on the internet is to heal. To get resolution. In some manner, at least. Not such to build more anger against the parent or the ASD, which is, unfortunately, what I've witnessed elsewhere.

I used to be sure I was NT; now I just think I'm my own anomaly. I came to Wrong Planet so I could be a better parent to my ASD son, but I also came to understand my father - which no one ever knew was ASD - at the same time. Life has a weird way of leading each of us to the unique journey that suits us best. I, personally, like it when someone's journey leads them here, despite the fact that it is an anomaly. You'll get a different perspective, at minimum.

It is absolutely impossible on any message board to keep a thread limited to a target group of people. To do that would require a new board with its own settings, applying to get in, and so on. By the nature of a message board, you are always talking in the corner of a very crowded room, never knowing who will hear and who will want to put their two cents in. And since ASD is a condition that tends to include not conforming to all the expected social graces, if someone with ASD wants to join a conversation not meant for them, they basically will, despite any other signals you send them. But that can have its own value, so one just goes with it. Especially with ASD, because for an NT with an ASD family member, learning to handle that is, in fact, quite important. An NT with an ASD family member basically has to know multiple languages, bridging both worlds.

Sure, that can be a strain. But also a gift, for you've just broadened the number and types of people you are capable of working with effectively. I am currently in an office with an outstanding array of unique personality types (which one employee laughs is the nice way to put it) and anyone who can't figure out how to deal with that is simply going to be miserable. The expanse is there to stay. Some places kick out the square peg and loose a potentially valuable employee in the process; my office can't afford to do that.

I've got to run but Ive been in this topic off and on for years now so if there is something you'd like us to delve into, post it. It can take a while, but I am interested in considering all the angles.


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08 Nov 2013, 3:43 pm

League_Girl wrote:

Like I say before, every time aspies online make themselves sound like they are great parents, I always wonder what is their kids' perception of them as parents because of so many negative stories about being raised by an aspie.


Every time ANYONE makes themselves out to be a great parent, I wonder what their children's perception is. I think you can feel pretty good about being a parent, from all those times you realize you did do the right thing that specific time you had to make a difficult decision, and from seeing that your children are thriving, but anyone who isn't constantly questioning themselves has to be missing the boat.


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08 Nov 2013, 4:26 pm

Jenufa wrote:
Interestingly, the few published online articles that I have been able to find tend to be far more categorical and drastic than individual posts in this thread... Here is another one:

http://www.maxineaston.co.uk/published/ ... mily.shtml

The link between anorexia and an AS parent would also interest me. Is this common?


I'm going to be blunt. Maxine Aston, the author of this piece, is an open enemy to the ASD community. She always blames the person with the ASD and has done a lot of harm.

That said, she wasn't wrong about everything. Some of the perceptions are accurate, an interesting read, and I actually agree with them.

But dead wrong is this one: This means that, on an emotional level, the developmental stage stops at pre-puberty or even younger. The effect this has as an adult is that when they become emotional they will revert to child state and therefore often perceive their children, especially step-children, as competition. The AS father may compete for mum’s attention and not understand that mum’s responsibility and love, for her children, is different from her love for him. He can at times be highly competitive and behave in a way that is very childlike in order to divert attention onto him. If this does not work, he may distance himself altogether and have little to do with the children at all.

Aspergers is currently understood as a developmental DELAY, meaning that many of the deficits will resolved themselves given space and time (although others will teaching or work-a-rounds). What she wrote above makes me insanely furious, for all the damage that one inaccurate perception can do.

And she is as stubborn and locked into her own ideas as she accuses those with ASD of being.

As for a link between anorexia and an ASD parent - I don't know. I think anorexia may be more common among those WITH ASD because people with ASD have a huge need to control a world that is confusing to them, and anorexia is a disease of needing to control. Not sure if its ever been studied either way.


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Last edited by DW_a_mom on 08 Nov 2013, 4:42 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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08 Nov 2013, 4:36 pm

I don't know the bio for Maxine Aston, but I have seen some of her work before, and she may very well have a personal issue that she is playing out. It would not surprise me.