"He can't have aspergers. He's too social."

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My mother is visiting from the states, staying with me for a week. (2 days to go!) It's not all bad or anything, but she's right next to me 24 hours a day. All my personal time and space is gone until she leaves and it's starting to make me crazy. I have my normal routines and they're all just out the window now.

The worst part is I can't talk to her about my AS. She's a special education teacher, which should mean that she knows about this, but unfortunately the opposite is true. The kids she's dealt with on the spectrum are low-functioning and because of her training, she assumes herself to be an expert on autism in general. But she's not. She knows frighteningly little about AS. I've been trying to tell her that I have it for years, but she won't listen and whenever I suggest I'm anything but fully-functioning NT, she rolls her eyes and blabs on about how she's an expert and I'm just some hypochondriac who read about AS on the internet.

Now I'm 26 and living in an apartment with one flatmate, 32, who also has AS. Neither of us has an official diagnosis, and we don't need one. We both have jobs and plenty of friends and don't require any assistance (except occasionally from each other). My mom has self-diagnosed with ADHD (which I really don't think she has, but whatever, I'm no expert on that and it's none of my concern) and now whenever she sees someone acting in an atypical fashion, she says "oh they have ADHD for sure."

Today at lunch she said my flatmate has ADHD, she can tell, she's sure. I said actually I'm pretty sure it's AS, and she rolled her eyes at me and said, I kid you not: "He can't have AS. He's too social. If he had it he wouldn't be able to work in sales. People with aspergers aren't that social, they can't talk to people like that."

I wanted to scream. I pointed out that he doesn't even speak most of the time and hardly ever makes eye contact, that when he starts talking he rambles on for ages on the same topic without letting anyone interrupt him, that he has his "special interest" of music and when he's involved with it he is on another planet, and that people with AS are plenty social, they're just bad at being social and need to learn the rules. I pointed out that he's 32 and has had plenty of time to learn to act appropriately. She shook her head in that "I know more about this than you, please listen to me" sort of way and said that if he had aspergers he wouldn't be able to learn the skills necessary to work with people or have a normal conversation. She says she can just tell when people have it because they're just "sort of odd" in some particular way that my flatmate is not.

I gave up and let the topic die rather than freak out and start ranting about how if she was really an expert, maybe I could have been diagnosed as a child and spared the hell of never understanding why everyone was always either mean to me or mad at me, and maybe I could have even had some actual friends and learned to act like a normal person instead of being suicidally depressed for 15 years of my life feeling like I was born on the wrong planet. But it's not worth it. I can't say it because she won't listen. She thinks she knows everything.

I know there's basically nothing I can do about this situation. Even if I had an official diagnosis, she'd just claim the doctor made a mistake or I talked him into believing my hypochondria. I just wish I could get her to accept that this is the way I am and realize that it's not my fault. But there's nothing I can do.

I guess I just needed to let that all out. If anyone has any advice I'd be happy to hear it, but I'm not optimistic.

You're right my friend. I don't know you, or your mother, but from the outside looking in, it doesn't sound like you could ever get anywhere with someone like that. She said she can tell because they have a certain oddness about them, and if she doesn't pick that up, they must not have AS. If she believes that she has some kind of ability to detect aspergers, you know you're dealing with someone who.......urm.

You know what makes this hard is, we're talking about your mom, so I have to be careful about what I say. She just sounds set on her opinion, and I totally don't agree with her stance on the whole topic. She thinks if someone has AS, they can't work in sales, but I've known someone who had aspergers, and did fantastically on the sales floor, even though he wasn't happy there. (I myself am horrible, but that's irrelevant.) If she actually believes some of things you told me, that right there tells me it's a lost cause. I'd stay away from the topic altogether.

I guess that's the beauty of living with such a poorly understood condition. You get to hear people who think they're experts, and clearly don't know what they're talking about.

Hi Kotshka,
I'm female, 48 years old, and an aspie. And i have worked in sales most of my life, from serving in shops, to selling everything and anything. I can also be very good at being 'normal' when it comes to being that way for my job. But you know that people with aspergers can be good at playing the part and getting away with it, as you have a good friend who can do this. I reckon your mother doesnt know everything, as this is proof that she doesnt, otherwise she would know that aspies are good at hiding their asperger traits when they choose to.
We are very clever and certainly not thick. and we are also very good at putting on an act, when it suits us.

But mothers can be funny creatures and have their faults. Some tend to always think of us as children and they always think that they know better than us, just because they are older and seemingly more wise. but infact if the truth be known, sometimes the younger generation are more knowledgeable, through real experiences or through the vast amount of knowledge on the internet.

As to what I think you should do...this is my view on it...

Preserve your sanity best you can. Have a laugh with your friend at how she thinks she knows everything yet can know little. try and humour her and keep your patience. try and undestand that she has travelled to see you and was really looking forward to the trip and let her feel relaxed and welcome in your home. She wont live forever, so let her enjoy her time with you while she is here, and let her have a good memory of her visit. Let her think and believe that she is good at what she teaches. It wont do any harm and will make her feel good and confident, and wont affect yuou , so why spoil it.

Remind yourself that her stay with you is short and she will be gone soon.
Try and keep as many of your routines as possible, while she is here.

I always knew I was different and when I looked up aspergers, it was ME exactly. I told my mother and she thought I was mad if I was to tell anyone. She thinks its better if I never mention it. Maybe she still feels ashamed of me and my nature, but my point is that your mother may choose not to accept that you have aspergers so is denying it to herself. Maybe she wants to see you as 'perfect and normal', so she feels proud of you, and proud of herself for producing a 'perfect' child. So I would not bring the subject up, in trying to convince her that you have aspergers, but leave her to have her nice thoughts. It seems that she will never believe you and you will only get more fustrated in trying to get her to accept it, and I doubt she will ever accept it.

I hope you manage to get through the time spent with her. Good luck.

The curse of mild Asperger's and mild high functioning autism, is that often we LIKE to be around people. I am officially diagnosed, and I am one of these people. I like to feel included socially. I as well have worked in sales for at least 3 years. One aspect of Asperger's is the desire to be socially active (something we are often denied due to eccentricities, but that's a separate issue...)

I would be quick to ask your mother how many adults with Asperger's she works with... and, if they can't learn social skills then why do special education teachers teach them religiously in school as intrinsic parts of childhood IEP's? What exactly does an AS kid look like 10 years after he's out of school? Has she followed up on any of her former students to see how or if they've grown at all?

I suspect that you will be unable to change her perspective though.

Thanks guys. After almost a full week with her it's nice to hear reason again! We're watching IT Crowd this evening and she just pointed to Moss and said "Now HE has aspergers." That character is plenty social and works in a customer service field. I'm not understanding how she evaluates these things.

That used to annoy me, too. She is a NT, right? She is reading (and writing) between the lines.

So when you say, that you have AS, she hears it as if you said:
- Mom, there is something terribly wrong with me. I feel bad. I hope you still love me.

And she says:
- No, you can't have AS, because you are too social.
She means:
- Yes, I love you. I don't want you to feel bad. There can't be something terribly wrong with you, because you are normal.

Hope this helps.

Thanks, OddFinn. It's a nice thought. Honestly though, I don't think I can believe that. This is a mother who, when I was a child, used to scream at me and my siblings that we were so terrible that we made her want to kill herself. On a near daily basis. One of my sisters got caught cutting herself at school and mom ranted to me about how inconsiderate she had been, making her mother drive all the way to the school to pick her up and forcing her to take her child to therapy every week when she was so busy. My whole childhood she used to stand over my shoulder at the doctor's office, immediately countering every complaint I made about depression, insomnia, and my other symptoms by telling the doctor I was a hypochondriac who was always faking for attention. The doctors always believed her over me and I never received any treatment for anything.

It's true that things are better now than they were, but I can't help but see her as an incredibly selfish person. When I tell her something is wrong with me, or even hint at it, her reaction is to roll her eyes and respond with a tone of voice displaying annoyance at the suggestion that she should admit that maybe someone besides her deserves some attention for something. By telling her I have AS I'm saying that I'm more unusual than she is, more unique. I'm saying that I need special treatment and that there's a reasonable explanation for the behaviors I exhibit that she doesn't like. AND I'm saying that she was wrong for my entire 26 years of life in thinking that I'm perfectly normal, and that she's not as much of an expert as she thinks she is. That last one is the most important of all. I don't think she'll ever be able to admit that.

Sorry to read that. Perhaps she is just a bad person. You are a better judge of that.

I hope that's not true. I think she just has issues. She's trapped in her own little bubble of selfishness and she honestly can't see outside of it. I don't know whether to think it's her fault or what. In any case I know that I see other people's mothers behaving very differently than she ever did and I get pretty jealous about that. When I say I'm not close with my mother people look at me like *I* am a bad person because they can't imagine not loving their mothers more than anyone in the world. They think maternal instinct is stronger than anything else, but I think they're wrong. Whatever is going on in my mom's brain is far stronger than maternal instinct. Or at least it used to be. Who knows what the situation is now, but it's a bit late.

I do know that growing up she never really hugged us or told us she loved us. (She remembers it differently and says that we are the ones twisting history, but me and all my sisters have the same memories. Interesting how we all altered our memories in exactly the same way.) Nowadays we're all moved out and she suddenly realizes that she's alone now. Within the last couple of years she has all at once decided that we have always been close and started telling me she loves me and hugging me when I see her (once or twice per year). I don't know how to react to this. You can't just start doing that after a quarter of a century of not doing it, and pretend that it was always this way. Ugh. One more day.

You could always do what I do. Just don't try to convince anyone anything. It's not worth the effort. Just pretend to agree with them and think whatever you want. In the amount of time I've been alive I've learned to accept that a lot of people are ignorant and there's nothing you can really do about it. Just don't let it drive you insane. I learned to stop caring what other people think and it made me a lot less pissed off all the time. Now I kind of get a kick out of other people's ignorance although it does piss me off, but not as much. Even if there is something that I can easily convince someone I still don't try because I don't really care. Being indifferent to a lot of things has made me a much happier person.

Yes, Mike, I suppose you're right. I have one friend who has told me a lot about his "philosophy" and way of dealing with life, and it's basically that everyone else in the world is an idiot and he doesn't give a damn what anyone thinks. He's had his heart broken by opening up to people and he just... stopped.

I wish I could do this, but honestly I don't know how. I have a pretty strong instinct to want people to understand me. Especially my own mother, though that instinct is fading over time. I've tried in the past to stop caring what people think, but I just can't. I still would love to achieve this though, I'm sure I'd be a lot happier. Any tips on how to give up caring?

I'm officially diagnosed with AS and ADHD, and I know if I ever said anything to my mother while she was alive I would have got nothing but denial from her. Even though I had to be told I had a problem with making eye contact as late as my third year in college. Some parents don't like to admit there's anything wrong...it sounds like your mother was more concerned with the inconvenience of your sister's problems than with dealing with what they really were, so there's some history there of bad denial. My mother was like that. I have epilepsy as well, and my mother didn't even want to believe that until she saw me have a convulsion. I don't know what makes some people like that, but some are, and it's maddening. There were five years that I didn't even talk to my mother because she was so disrespectful, and even after that we had a very superficial relationship because she couldn't have a close relationship without being hurtful (I spent a lot on therapy to understand it wasn't my fault). I hope your mother is more capable than mine was.

~Kate

It took time to stop caring about what other people think. I don't have many problems with my family members so I don't know what I would do in your situation, but I've been betrayed by friends, harassed by people, and I never talk anyone about my problems or about much else. I've been through a lot of stress and misery and it has made me a stronger harder person who doesn't care much about what other people think. But it's different with family members because it's harder to pretend that they don't exist.

I've never been able to completely stop caring what other people think. In order to do that you would have to become a sociopath like one of my former friends who has aspergers. He used to feel harassed by his parents and teachers because he was always getting in trouble for things that he didn't do and things that were insignificant. It made him a very vengeful and reckless person. Now he does illegal drugs, shoplifts, steals things, vandalizes things, robs buildings, and beats people up who insult him. No matter how many times he has been punished for doing something it just enrages him and he never stops doing it again. He vandalized my things even though I was always nice to him, so I stopped trusting him and our friendship was over. He doesn't care about anyone except himself. He is only motivated by money and fear. He takes pleasure in the misery of others. He steals from his friends and calls them stupid when they are nice to him. He has had a lot of girlfriends, but they always end up breaking up with him. Sometimes I kind of envy his indifference towards other people, but I'm glad that I'm a better person than him.

Yeah, I don't want to become a sociopath. I just don't want to be so affected by what other people think and do. I'm ridiculously sensitive when it comes to this, and even though I've been kicked around and bullied and hurt and had my heart broken and all that, I still feel this intense need for people to understand me, and I'm far too trusting. I know better from a cold logical standpoint, but I have no control over my emotions. I wonder if being a girl makes it tougher... :/

The thing that helped me is the realisation that whatever one thinks of me is nothing but their own projection, very subjective and usually coloured by the brainwashing of the society.

They're no better or worse than me so why should I care whatever they might be thinking of me? Do they care what I think of them? Unless they do, I care not whatever they might be thinking of me.

As for the need of approval, it's like drinking coke or some sugared beverage that only makes you crave some more, it can never satisfy completely. I think the solution is respecting and accepting oneself regardless of whimsical and illogical requests modern society is imposing on us. There are always those that are more or less lucky than us, so comparing is detrimental and only brings pain and frustration.

Hope you feel better soon.