Things you hated about your childhood.

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My father, who is also an aspie, had very rigid thinking and would physically abuse me for the slightest 'misconduct', even if I didn't know i was doing anything wrong. Sometimes he would just sit on me or hold me up against a wall and hit me for a while (although he always put as much force as he could muster into it), but sometimes he would do things like covering my nose and mouth, preventing me from breathing, and hit me in the head until i stopped crying because he didn't like the sound (when he was extra mad, usually from a bad day rather than what i had been doing). My mother, a self-proclaimed aspie (although i'm very doubtful), would manipulate me *constantly* with her crocodile tears and emotionally blackmail me in other ways too, often in to apologising to my father when i was dumbfound as to what i had done wrong, and still shaken up from the beating i had just recieved. As a result i've never felt truly loved by my parents and i have attachment issues.
School was no fun either, i would be in trouble for getting into fights every second day because when i saw other kids doing things wrong, i would take it apon myself to punnish them in the same way my father punnished me. Whilst most of the time the other kids were actually bullying me, I mostly can't forgive myself for what I did to the kids that didn't deserve it at all, the ones that were misbehaving in ways that didn't concern me. But all i knew at the time was "They're doing something wrong. They can't get away with that, they need to be punnished". Thanks dad, lesson well taught.

Well for me my thing was I never did get into fights at school, I was always so passive and never hit back out of fear of getting into major trouble (at my school you could get arrested and put in Juvenile Hall for hitting someone). And of course all the students and teachers that weren't nice took advantage of that. I hate myself for having been such a rule-follower back in school, because it got me nowhere. In fact the ironic thing is, every time an a-hole student decided to beat me up and got caught, I was always getting the threat of having the law called on me like I was some horrible evil kid, even though they never did because I never actually hit a student back, but why were they threatening ME when I was the victim?

Honestly, the American School System sucks. It deserves to fall apart.

...oh jee...how hard for you it must have been...

Hey, sorry if my life wasn't as tragic as yours, but it was still pretty rough.

Last edited by GreenPele on 24 Nov 2009, 8:50 am, edited 1 time in total.

Used to be verbally and physically abused by kids from school and neighbourhood when aged 4 - 10. Looking back, I was severely depressed, but back then I did not realise as I didn't really know anything else apart from feeling like that. When trying to talk about it to my parents, they said I was exaggerating, and that people don't "just" start being mean to you out of the blue. Feeling nervous every day for unknown reasons, and at night not knowing why I couldn't sleep, reliving through the entire day and wondering if I'm doing something wrong, and if yes, what I am doing wrong, and crying throughout the night out of frustration.

Thinking back to those times used to bother me loads and even caused me to get quite depressed when I was about 12 - 15, because I was starting to realise how bad my early youth had been, and started to hate the world, and kept reliving moments from back then.

For multiple reasons I went to a psychologist about one year ago. She found out I was traumatised and really helped me a lot. Nowadays, I don't randomly think about those times anymore, not even at night, and I can kind of talk about it without crying or anything. But it's not like it didn't happen, and I'm sure it has determined my look on the world for a big part, forever.

things i hated about my childhood
1. bullies, at every school i went to i would be picked on for various reasons (mostly made up)
2. the fact that we had to move due to my fathers job 3 times (it couldn't be helped but it was irriating having to start over again, as it is for all).
3. the professionals (speech therapists and psych types etc) i was dragged too (I didn't see the point, i saw it as a complete waste of time and also i was embarrased by it because i got teased by the other kids regarding this)

Got some questions here. You said you went to see a psychologist, and she found out you were traumatized by the bullying, and helped you deal with it. Well, I had a similar situation. I was getting bullied pretty badly in camp. So, I told my psychologist about it, hoping she'd give me some pointers on verbal self-defense or something. Instead, this is what transpired.

Aspie1: <talks about what the bullies did, feeling sadder and sadder in the process>
Psychologist: I'm sorry it happened to you. How did you feel when they were doing it?
Aspie1: My feelings were hurt, obviously. (thinking: "Are you trying to rub it in my face?")
Psychologist: I see. Tell me in more detail about what exactly was happening.
Aspie1: They called me... <cuts off in mid-sentence>. What a minute, how would giving you the exact details help? I doubt you're going to call the camp.
Psychologist: Talking about everything that happened will help you deal with it.
Aspie1: But all it's helping me with is getting depressed. If I have to get depressed just so I can deal with it, whatever that means, then I'd rather just let time heal the wounds.
Psychologist: <tries to get me to talk about it, but eventually drops the topic>

The next session, I flat-out lied to the psychologist, by telling her that I told the camp director, who stepped in, and most bullying stopped, other than a dirty look here or there. Hey, if she thought I'd intentionally make myself depressed, she had another thing coming.

Anyway, how exactly did the psychologist help you deal with those unpleasant experiences you had? Apparently, this is how mine did it, and it was very ineffective, enough to make me resort to lying. How did yours do it? Same way as mine, or some other method?

Bullies, but that was mitigated because if I fought back in self defence, my parents took my side and stood up for me.

My parents not being able to afford much due to my dad being off work due to injuries from work.It made me feel bad seeing him in pain and trying hard to support the family despite that. But he tried hard, and in the end it was for the best.

Basically, my only issue was bulllies and my older sister getting into drugs and dropping out of high school....other than that, I feel lucky to have the parents I do, who supported me as all parents should.

I have suddenly felt the want for this, because of a seperate thread. I assume, that you felt guilty, used, and like your parents didn't care about your feelings? They failed the marrege, not you.

Things I have not phsycoligicaly resolved yet. Mind you, this isn't the whole scope of my childhood lonliness, I just got over the rest of it is all.
-my public school bullies (I still have an issue on some level with this)
-my Dad's daily negative attitude about financial problems, resorces, and bills.
-My Dad's blame on us, mostly because of the above #2 reason
->My Dad's mockery and screaming at me sometimes, usualy for stupid reasons. Pounding it into me verbally till I cried or broke something so he could blame me one last time. I tried to walk away, he would just follow. I wander if he felt like a winner? Family tradition to yell, from what I heard! I got this mostly during my teens, when it was clear I needed tender handleing. (certainly not resolved! Though we get along just fine these days)
-Good grades, art, or any form of minor success not mattering #^$ to anybody, but getting sudden negative attention when I do badly. That one half hour, belt spanking did nothing. Getting the attention felt great.
-People wanting me to be different than I was.
-Forceing myself not to bother my mother while she read her books all the time. I used to annoy her so much, wanting ten minutes between us out of her spare time.
-Those stress and poor sleep induced, opticle migranes. The shape of these things was a rough looking crescent blind spots with stwinkly... pardon me.. .. glitter outlineing it. Thank you Indiana Jones movie, for reminding me.

I hate the way I spent most of my childhood crying and bawling when all my cousins were round, instead of just playing with them. Like once I remember me and my brother and his friend and 3 of my cousins were playing on a swing in a tree, and we were all taking in turns having a go on it, and my turn was last. But because my turn was last, I spent the whole time constantly crying and crying, and nobody was listening to me because they were too busy pushing or watching the person having their go. Why didn't I just do the same?!

And I remember when I was about 8 I spent a whole Saturday afternoon crying for hours when my cousins were round, because I wanted one of them to stay the night, but my mum didn't want any children staying tonight, and I just would ot give up crying.

Often I was screaming and crying so bad on a week-end afternoon that it drove my aunts and uncles out.
WHY WAS I LIKE THAT??????! !! !! !! !! !!

Teachers who could not take the fact that I was nearly or as smart as they were. Discovering music so late. A drunken as*hole as my father. People who thought it hilarious to pick on the different kid.

I prefer now to then.:\

Where to start?
Parents. 'uncles'. Fights. Anger. Abuse.

My parents were rich. My father earned a lot of money. He was also a workaholic so he wasn't around much. My mother was not NT but we don't know what was wrong with her because she refused to go to a doctor all the way up until the day she died. My mother's family is full of firefighters, police officers and lumberjacks. My mother was the only one to "marry up" and I was the most miserable of all the children in the family. She alienated my dad and me from my dad's other daughters and would only acknowledge the kids from her former marriage (who I do not speak to today but I have reunited with those estranged sisters). Life wasn't easy with a mentally ill mother. I left when I was 16.

Even if Asperger's Syndrome was a well-known condition and even if the teachers had decided to take notice that maybe I wasn't doing everything on purpose just to annoy them, my parents weren't the type of people who would've given any credit to idea that I wasn't "just lazy". Learning to function alone was difficult. There was considerable abuse because I wasn't doing everything that I should have been doing. I don't think my mother would have been happy with me if I was NT but I went through her scorn as an undiagnosed and untreated aspie child.

Kids always assumed because I lived in the big house and had all the cool clothes that I had a great life. I never gave a crap about any of that. I wanted loving people in my life. After my dad retired, we got to know each other and he was awesome. He was a very intelligent, insightful man who knew a lot about any number of subjects. You could have a really great discussion with him. My mother always got jealous and started throwing things... but I treasured my moments when I had them. After he retired, my mother didn't let him out of the house much. They had no hobbies or activities. When they would visit us, she would always get mad about something and start tearing up my home, including my children's things. My dad died at home of a heart attack. My mother told the doctor she thought he just had heartburn so she ignored him when he was complaining. My mother's neck was broken a month ago when a pile of crud she hoarded in her "craft room" (a 20x20 room she packed full of random crap) fell on her. She was found 4 days after her suspected time of death. I did not go to her funeral.

I wrote this post on my blog one day after her death, three days before she was discovered by her son, not even knowing she was gone:
http://wefunction.wordpress.com/2010/12 ... o-my-kids/

I received a small portion of inheritance when my father died. I don't think I'm receiving anything from the remaining estate. I don't want it, anyway.

I really couldn't believe kids actually envied my life just because of the size of my house, the cars my parents drove and the stuff I had. It's just stuff. I always knew the other kids were far richer than me where it actually mattered.

Things I hate about my childhood?

In briefest terms...I'd say it's wanting my friends and family to take the things I say to them seriously only to be completely laughed at every single damn time.

Telling a church group I was suffering from extremely painful cramps -> laughed at
Telling my dad my childhood fears of fire -> laughed at
Crying over a friend that I thought blacked out from severe alcohol poisoning -> laughed at
Trying to tell my dad how extremely shy and socially scared I was in alot of peer situations -> laughed at

Not something serious but I was giving an 8th grade class presentation one time and apparently the way I was talking sounded like a ret*d person because the entire class was laughing at me the whole time I spoke and several teachers who were present in the room at the time did NOTHING to interfere. (For all I know they probably were laughing at me along with them).

I know there's more but you get the idea here.

There's also the severe social anxiety I had to deal with for years before I finally learned about and got diagnosed with Asperger's: being shy and socially scared to the point that the only way I could communicate with others was to be rude and to draw them away...or to have the kids in the school or neighborhood approach me like a swarm of flies in such an intimidating and frightening way that I wound up having meltdowns from it and I drive every potential friend away. This was pretty much my middle school classes central excuse for giving me a hard time throughout all of 7th and 8th grade.

This is sorta the reason why becoming a parent scares me because of the lack of sympathy for the things I took seriously in my childhood (even if they were really stupid things) will likely cause me to subconsciously become a parent who would either take their children far too seriously or NEVER at all.

Lucky for me I was never bullied at school because I didn't show many symptoms: I never flapped my hands about, or went in the library, or wondered about on my own, or acted weird. I did have some friendship issues in my last year of school, but that's typical teenage girls - my NT cousin has had that trouble with friends too, and she's a popular person (don't hint to me that she might be on the spectrum because she ain't - and saying ''NTs don't fall out with friends'' is a huge and annoying myth).
Otherwise, I never got bullied. In fact, it was strange that I never got bullied, because if any of you went to the same school I went to, you would know why it's strange that I never got bullied!! ! It was a school where everyone thought how important popularity was, and anyone who came across as a tiny bit different got massively picked on. I've seen it happen. There was an Aspie boy who was in the year below me, and he got beat up and tormented so bad that he actually had a meltdown in the corridor, kicking lockers in and throwing his bag (I felt sorry for him).

I got off quite lucky for an Aspie.
OK, I got teased a few times, but that's kids for you, and it was nothing to speak of or worry about.

I pretty much hated the whole thing......I don't have very many good memories at all. Got treated like crap by teachers and students(there where a few who did not do this but it seemed the majority did). My parents fought a lot and my dad drank and still does drink too much. Eventually they got divorced. I was severely depressed I remember feeling really depressed as early as 2 years old. I never really 'enjoyed' myself even on holidays and birthdays.....I pretended to but inside I did not feel any sort of joy or happiness like everyone else seemed to. I isolated myself a lot when I was at school....I would go days without saying a single word to anyone. I did like reading, because it was an escape got my mind of things and allowed me to pretend for a little while that i was somewhere else.

I got called selfish a lot by family, when I usually spent more time worrying about everyone else and how what i did would effect other people. I did not think a whole lot about myself......it got to the point where I felt bad whenever I had a single thought that someone might veiw as selfish. This might be where I became rather self loathing, kept getting told I was selfish when I was not.......so trying to find what I was doing wrong I decided any thought that more about me then anyone else was bad and should be suppressed.

My mom was much more religious when I was a child, so me and my siblings where forced to go to church and all that, this was just another time when I was forced to be in a social situation with even more people who had no understanding of me and disliked me. I mean yes sometimes people at church where not horrible to me, but i get the feeling it was an act of charity not an actual attempt at trying to understand or help.

I attempted suicide when I was 15 because I had no idea where else to turn.....no one understood, I did not understand why. anyways that is not everything that ever took place in my childhood but those are some things I remember pretty well.