Parents

Post Reply New Topic

I'm 21 and I have parents that are very supportive survival wise. Though our personalities are completely opposite from each other and that tends to be very very frustrating. For example my parents bought me a car which is very very nice of them, though they want to give me 2 driving lessons per day. It might not sound that bad but one moment they are very encouraging, the next they are shouting "How can you forget that direction!" and they tend to become nagging perfectionist, whiny complainers, and down right insensitive because their way of thinking is Sticking to the Facts and not to my feelings. They consider me to be frustrating to deal with because I'm always stressed and angry when I'm home. I just try to not let it show. Over all do we get along? It's a struggle for me and it becomes harder and harder each day. I'm afraid that I'm going to just loose it and scream at them, run into my room and cry, come back down and apologize and they don't want to see and hear from me for about a week. Thank God I'm moving out soon.

You can't take driving lessons from somewhere else? I would just tell them that you won't make any progress with them yelling at you.

Technically I just got my driver's lisense but my parents want me to drive them in the car 2 times a day which is stressful because I hate spending quality type with them. But yeah, I try to stand up for myself if they piss me off a little bit but unfortunatly, they piss me off every single day. Everyday is draining thanks to them.

Agreed. Tell they how much you appreciate the help, but that you're afraid you'll both lose your temper or something in the process and don't want to ruin such a nice gesture by doing so. Having an idea of where you'd like to take lessons (or from who if there is another licensed driver around that you get along better with) when you bring it up to them.

As for the forgetting which direction, I do this all the time, lol. It sends my boyfriend into hysterical laughter each time he forgets to uses driver's side or passenger's side for directions and instead gives me a right or left type of direction and I have to do the L thing with my hands to remember which is which (usually resulting in missing the turn )

Heh my parents are very similar. They try to convince me that I need something that I don't really need, then they provide that thing and then use it later on as a tool to control me. "But we gave you xyz thing so you have to do this and that for us" and so on. I think that my parents do this partly because they're afraid that I don't need them and then I won't interact with them anymore. I solved this by refusing any more "gifts" from them, I live 100% on my own without any financial or material support from my parents, because I know that any tangible thing from them comes with many strings attached.

What parents need to realize is that their job is to help their kids to acquire the skills necessary to take care of themselves, NOT to solve all of their kids' problems for them. There will always be problems, but there will not always be parents. Leaving their kids in a position to be utterly helpless when the parents die or are otherwise unavailable is NOT doing their kids any favors in life at all.

My Parents worry about me all the time. If they see me laughing with an irreverent satirical sense of humor, they worry that I'm going to cause big touble that I wouldn't be able to get myself out of . If I mention anything about Transgender related topics, they worry about how I would look at act in society when I'm on my own. When I'm driving with then in it, they look at me the whole entire time. Even my foot when it's on the gas pettle like I'm 4 and don't know what I'm doing. They don't understand Asperger's and they probably never will because they don't have pactionce to learn.

Goddamn it! My F**King Father's Wife (I don't want to call her Step Mother right now) Gets all nervious when I'm driving my car. We both agreed that she isn't going to F**KIN Get in my F**KING CAR ANYMORE!! !! !! !! !! !! ! GOOD RIDENSE! Now my father is next! Trust me, I have feeling that I will be writting a powerful thread of my Hatred of My Parents. I will no longer speak polite about my parents probably in the next thread! I probably need a stronger douce of medication because of Them!! !! !! !! ! But I just need to calm myself down otherwise I'll get in deeper trouble. Which is very very very tough right now because I feel like I'm full of RAGE!! !! !! !! ! It's hard to control myself at the same time worry about trouble that I might case!! !! !! !! My parents might be good parents If I were NT but I know this. THEY SUCK FOR PARENTING SOMEONE WHO IS ASPIE! AND I'M NOT ASHAMED OF WRITTING THIS NEITHER!! !! !! !! !!

Sigh, okay I feel a little bit better now. My Step Mother admitted that She's not a good Driving teacher for me because she just gets nervous on the road in general. It's good to know that I am right for once. Because often when I get pissed off, I get the feeling that I'm always wrong and they are always right.

Before I used to be afraid with my father, but now my father is a lot more patient surprisingly so, I guess that's a relief.

Yeah my NT mom is a nervous wreck on the road and projects that insecurity onto me while I'm driving. If she's trying to backseat drive while I'm driving, I don't get nervous about it, I get annoyed.

I used to be afraid of my AS father when I was younger too, especially since he was an absolutely horrific teacher with little patience to explain things. Now that I'm older, I'm not afraid of him at all anymore, instead I see him as an extremely flawed and troubled person... but that doesn't make me sorry for him for anything. Sure, he's mellowed out considerably since the '80s when he was very physically abusive (when he had meltdowns he hit his kids), but as long as he doesn't learn from his mistakes, he won't get any forgiveness from me.

You're lucky that your father is a lot more patient these days!

So wait, are you Aspie too? Or Is it your father or both?

If both, it must have been interesting that you can understand your father from the Aspie point of view.

Both, I got my AS from my dad, at least that's what I think. Nobody in my family is diagnosed, though. I just knew when I was very young that he was a very angry and seemingly shallow person. As I got older, that perception didn't really change so much, except that I would get hints of how he ended up that way. But an actual recognition of AS as a formal set of characteristics didn't enter the picture until only 3 years ago, when I had to deal with one of my AS friends (see the "In love w/ aspie" stickied thread in the Adult Forums for more on that if you really want to know, it's a long story).

My home situation was different from most Aspies because I had perhaps the one thing that so many Aspies want so much out of life: a very stable relationship with another person who totally understood and accepted you. I'm very fortunate to have an identical twin brother who's also Aspie like me, we had the same friends and enemies growing up, he knew my problems in school because he had the same, he knew my problems at home because he experienced the same. And the thing is, when you have somebody in your life like that, somebody you can totally confide in and trust, then you can have your entire world crashing down around you, just like it felt many times when my dad would come 'round with the belt or the gun, etc., and somehow... just somehow you can survive without getting too messed up in the head. I never had to spend as much effort as would otherwise have been required to nurse my self-esteem, because when my brother saw with his own eyes the horrors and affirmed to me that the problems were not just me, it helped me to focus on the fact that it was my dad with the problems, not me.

All I knew by the time I was in my late teens starting off college was that my dad was the one with issues, and that I didn't want to be like him, and yet I knew there were some ways in which I was like him as well, so it was difficult. I didn't really know exactly how not to be like him, especially without any understanding of the existence of AS. In retrospect I had to stumble my way through that process. In the meantime, I ran into a number of pitfalls which would make me realize that I was becoming dangerously close to being like him at times... but I guess that's not too surprising as I was stumbling through. At least by stumbling my way through I was able to gather some pieces of humility and wisdom along the way, and by the time I learned of AS three years ago, I already had many of these pieces. Learning about AS was like finally seeing what my jigsaw puzzle picture was supposed to look like in the end, in a way.

My dad turned out to be a "faker": you know, one of those Aspies who had to try to brave the NT world without any emotional support, and who began to believe that the only way to be successful in life was to utterly reject the AS way of life (and hence himself) and try to uphold a false appearance of looking NT at any cost. It's why I think he had the meltdowns so damn often, plus the fact that he was married to an NT woman and they got on each other's nerves constantly. Then of course when he began to see the AS traits in me and my brother and sister, he'd try to beat the AS out of us by force. Luckily it didn't work to a large extent! That's not to say that my siblings and I got through it all unscathed; my sister has had serious depression bouts and even attempted suicide, but now that my brother and I know that we need to stick together emotionally, my sister is a lot happier and better off these days.

Where does your AS come from, if I may ask?

Dear erricc,

Your parents obviously love you. They are willing to spend time and money on you when you are technically an adult.

If you don't like it then you are free to move 1000 miles away and live your own life.

In other words put up or shut up.

This is day#2 if my next few weeks of Hell. No day off from driving with my father or hearing my Step Mother nag about something. I always hope that nothing horrible will happen, I really do. It's like walking on a piece of thread or string and hoping not to fall into the volcano. My parents are very two faced. If I'm worried or scared about something, they'll try to ignore it until they get pissed off. Their Judgmental way of thinking is considered helping me in which I strongly disagree. Before I would stay in my room the whole day and only come downstairs for Dinner because it's a house rule. Now things are getting worse, Now after dinner, I have to drive my father around with his supervision for about an hour non-stop or so. I've driving with my Step Mother in the car and I almost Screamed at her in anger. She's nervous with me driving her. I'm glad for once she admitted that she's wrong. I'm not trying to say that to be rude but I always feel that my parents think that they are always right and I'm always wrong. One moment they are saying "No one is perfect when they first start driving, you being nervous on the road is normal" to "WHY THE HELL DID YOU FORGET THAT DIRECTION, I EXPECTED YOU TO REMEMBER THAT WITHIN ONE NIGHT! YOU CAN'T DO THAT WHEN YOU GO LIVE ON YOUR OWN!" They are completely F**king two faced! . Now each and everyday for now on, I have to worry about not screwing things up, every day all thanks to their personalities. Sigh, I don't have anyone that I can relate too near where I live, it's just not fair!

Maybe I missed something, but why are you driving them around? I thought that you already had your license and therefore don't need their instruction?

Even though I have passed my license, I still need to work on making smooth stops and slow turns. But my parents want me to memorize the whole town and know where everything is at and practice parking. Even though I have a GPS, they don't want me to use it until I memorize directions of everywhere in the town first.

Is that something that you need to practice with your parents in the car? Or at least do it with somebody without so much of a vested interest in your success as your parents? That'll take a lot of the pressure load off you while still enabling you to practice and learn how to drive better.