16 yo without a clue

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Scenario 3. They've already gone some time ago, or at least that was their stated intention some posts prior to mine.

From what I can see, people were just helping. It's not a personal attack just cos we didn't agree with you.

I was going to apologise for possibly sounding defensive, as well, but now I don't want to. The attacks on us (AS) were uncalled for. You wanted an AS perspective, you got it. Nobody said you were gonna like it.

I find it more to be a sign of complete desperation. Not an effective thing to say to a child, but frustrated parents often say the wrong things.

When you come across a desperate parent, you have to pick them up off the floor before anything better can happen. Stomping on them while they are down accomplishes nothing positive at all.

The worst of the comments has been modded out. Do understand that Ellen and her husband's response was well provoked, even if the record of that is now gone.

What if I confess that I wrote that before seeing everything on every page?

But my advice stands. The fact that you initially spoke harshly means you are human and not perfect. What marks your character is that you were able to come around from that and make peace. And constructive progress. Thank you.

I expressed my support for the individual with the dx. Since he has a computer and this is a well known site....

Postperson you are constantly throwing about term like narcissist and schizotopal, etc when people cross swords with you or somebody doesn't not fit you idealist view of ASD. This armchair diagnosis is mostly BS, and you have poor grounding of these concepts overall and it mostly borne out of your own whitewashing attempts. If only things could be that that simple. Even so I wouldn’t call you a narcissist for it.

Controlling people are far more common that what is called Narcissist. In fact people are quite self centred in general this is normal, but narcissists are very rare. Neurotic behaviour and anxiety rather than narcissism account for most of the controlling behaviour. I think this is far more likely here. Narcissist don't like showing their weaknesses, where as the OP has exposed her fears. So she is fearful not a narcissist in all likelihood. Narcissists are not concerned for the well being of others that is not their motivation. Narcissist not only don’t like being told what to do they wouldn’t ask for help in the first place.

I think the reason for this whole fiasco is that we didn't give the OP the reaction she was looking for. Perhaps she wasn't looking for advice at all, but rather to make herself feel better about the problem she's having (nothing wrong with that, by the way). NT women sometimes share their problems without specifically looking for a solution, because having a problem together and sharing words of encouragement is a way to bond and make each other feel better. It's likely that she was expecting reactions like "good job", "we know you're trying", "you're a strong person for taking that step", or even "way to show your son who's boss" (not likely, but still possible). Instead, she got the reaction we gave her following our aspie reasoning. That's when the fiasco started, with some people reacting more strongly than others.

I was actually able to sympathize with the OP at least a little bit, until she told us how she cried while punishing her son (i.e. taking away his books). That's when anger turned into disgust. At that point, all I could think was "WTF?", especially if the son saw her crying. I'm sure the son thought it was just crocodile tears, and honestly, so did I. It shows that the OP still had some respect for her son, but consciously chose to go against it. That's why I reacted so strongly.

Well yes that is pretty common. "Does my bum look big in this?"

Pretty much everyone has their own range of answers that they will find acceptable. Often the ones that claim to be open minded are just alternative and say those that are not ‘not open minded’ ironically.

We can't really speculate as per her intentions reading a post on the internet. I think a little defensiveness was evident, but i didn't see the offending posts.

It is unfortunate that she did not tough it out.

I just said it like it was, from my experience. I've also told her that I hope that things work out with her and her son. I think that we all tend to get our backs up, when we read opening posts like the one in this thread, because ti brings back memories of our own upbringings. Parents are not owners, and autistic children are not Rain Men.

She wasn't looking for a pat on the back but she also wasn't expecting to be gained up on, and certainly not told what you told her in the stuff I deleted. That many of you can't understand why she got upset and start , instead, attributing it to all sorts of others reasons mostly goes to show how little you all know about parenting and, perhaps, people in general. Which is understandable, and why we let a lot of stuff go here, but the education will hopefully go both ways. Spend a little time analyzing yourselves, and not just her.

Parents are given a lot of rules that go against our soft hearts, and much of it we learn really is for the good of the kids, and that they actually are happier if we aren't always soft. The evidence bears it out. Not being a parent, you can't possibly know what it meant for her to go against her heart in the situation. She was DESPERATE and out of options, and following the best information available to her at the time. We can all agree, probably, that it was the wrong choice for an AS child, but how was she supposed to know that? You assume so much and those assumptions are just WRONG.

The mom is still reading here and conversing in PM with someone able to help her. She sincerely was looking for help and is appreciative of those who are able to be constructive. Telling her she is wrong, wrong, wrong and being entirely offensive to her without providing any alternatives is not help. THAT is what you need to understand.

My mother didn't like yelling at me or spanking me but they had to be done when I was a kid. I'm sure lot of parents don't like to punish their kids but they know it has to be done or else it make them bad parents if they don't do it. We had neighbors who always called the cops on their kids whenever they did something wrong because they didn't want to be the bad guys so they had the police to their jobs for them.

As a kid I couldn't understand how can my mother not like yelling at my brothers and I if she does it? Now I understand as an adult.

As parents our kids aren't always going to like us. This is how we know we are doing our jobs. Sometimes we have to push it's not fun, it's not easy but if we don't our kids will get steamrolled by life. Nothing ellen is asking her son to do is out of bounds. Bathing ,eating and a few simple chores. Learning to do these things will help him beable to move out of her home and learn to live on his own and that seams to be the goal of both parent and child. I was a shy child with learning disablities and wanted to spend alot of my childhood hinding from the other bigger meaner kid in books <once a wonderful teacher taught me to read at the age of 11>but if my parents hadn't limited my time with my books and made me learn life skills I would have not done very well in life. Did I hate my mother and father at times, sure. Did I cry and vow I'd never be ok again, you bet. Now that I have kids I get why they did what they did. They loved me and wanted me to learn how to be on my own. I've got two sons the older one has aspie type out look on life but does more then fine in life and school so we let him be himself and just remind him that bathing is a good idea if he ever wants a date or to have someone stand next to him in a elevator. My younger son has classic atusium and every day has it's painful up and downs but if I don't push and make do what he needs to do like getting on<without tossing a fit> the bus or wash his hands after going to the bathroom he will not end-up in a very nice place when one day when my husband and I die. Harsh I know would i like to let him spend the day watching tv and surfing websites eating icecream and cheetoes but if i did he never be what i know he can be, He taught himself to read at 3 yrs old has amazing math skills and is so funny. I'd hate to see him end-up rotting in a home because he never got the push he needs. Pushing to hard isn't a great idea but not pushing at all is even worse.

That is interesting but language skills are very important. That is because they are not 100% taught. They know this from studies on feral children. Basically there is a threshold of around 8-12years old were parts of your brain fuse. If you haven't learn to speak (sentence structure) by then you probably never do. This is not to be confused with non-verbal, some non-verbal people understand language. It is those who have not been exposed to language at all I'm talking about. Yes they can teach associations and even word order significance but not understanding and forming sentences.

Maybe a better way to put it is this teach helped by showing me a new way to look at words. That opened the doors to books and once I found my way in I realy never wanted to do anything else to the point I would walk to my classes while reading. So the need to hide out in a book isn't something that blows my mind like it does for my husband who never read more then comics as a child. As for non-verb kids living with one I completly agree that they understand whats being said to them. I've meet alot of non-verbable kids and have yet to come across one that is lacking in understanding. I'm one of those bothersome mothers that come up the school and goes on the feild trips ect. Sorry if this post is alittle off topic but I wanted to reply to 0_equals_true.