Do/Did you get along with your mother?

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Thanks for telling your positive story about you & your mother. It's reassuring to know good parents are out there . . . and I'm glad for you that you have her!

No, I don't get on with my mum. I've never been good enough - I can remember sitting at the table filling in my acceptance form for university with her standing over me saying, "You won't do it, you know. You'll never go." And as she's got older, she's very generously started treating my family the same.

Due to our finances (or lack of), our summer holiday this year consisted of a week staying with her - we did all our housework and cooking, I didn't expect her to run a cheap hotel for the week - and to stay sane, we made a game of it, keeping score each time she had a dig at one of us. We totalled 82 in a week (!) - my daughter was anorexic (she didn't want butter on her bread), the reason my son didn't get the job he'd just applied for was because of his long hair, my husband is bald and fat...

One evening we were sitting watching TV. I was wearing a vest top, and completely out of the blue she pointed at the dolphin tattoo I have at the top of my arm and said, "You'll never get rid of that, you know." I said I realised that and tried to divert her attention with a comment about belt sanders, but she added, "I don't like it, anyway - they're swimming the wrong way..."

?????????

And when we refused to rise to the bait, she had another go at my son's hair instead.

I try to tell myself she's just speaking her mind and doesn't mean these things the way they sound, but sometimes it all sounds so deliberate.

Haha, oh my mother. I'd almost swear she was an aspie, for her total lack of interest in anything except the things SHE wants to talk about, but I realize it's just selfishness. My dad tells me she had lots of friends, was one of the popular girls, and even after they were married they regularly invited people over and cooked for them and had game nights. This is not the woman I know.

The woman I know is a hermit. She had no friends at all, not one. She refused to attend functions with my father (parties for work, award ceremonies - he was very active in the community, etc.). She never paid the bills on time, despite having the funds available to do so. She spent money cramming my closet full of the most expensive frilly crap you ever did see - until my sister came along 7 years later and she basically cast me aside completely, showring my sister with these things while I went to school in things that were from two years before. She would tell me she had no money, and make me call my grandmother (her mother-in-law) and tell her I needed money (she had lots, and apparently my mother felt that was right). Our electricity was repeatedly shut off. I think I spent half my childhood listening to my mother yell at utility companies over the phone or accompanying her to said companies to get services turned back on - which meant large fees for re-starting services. For what? No reason!

The only foods we ate were sugary cereal, TV dinners, fast food and Pop-Tarts - none of which I can stomach to this day. She smoked, often letting it curl right up my nose at the dinner table. When I actually did make a friend for five minutes, I was strictly forbidden from having them in our house.

At school, despite knowing how badly I was bullied, she routinely showed up quite late. I was not allowed to ride the bus. I'd often sit for 30 minutes as a general rule after school let out. Sometimes longer. I was not allowed to walk home. I'd call and she would be asleep - and had taken the phone off the hook as not to be disturbed. Sometimes the phone sevice had been shut off because of non-payment, so I just sat there. For an AS child who needed routine, my life was an absolute living HELL.

Whenever I attempted to communicate with her, usually late evening when my mind engaged, she would brush me off and tell me whatever it was could wait. When I asked to spend time with her mother-daughter, she said she spends plenty of time with me alread (she didn't). I attached then to teachers and animals. My mother envied this and would say awful things about the teachers I liked. I was supposed to be devoted and loving and perfect dspite the fact that she was at no point a mother.

As for school, it wouldn't have been half the nightmare it was if she had been a parent and (a) gotten me there on time (b) gotten me there more than half the days required (c) stepped up and followed the school district's demands when they said they were going to involve the courts if she didn't, etc. They ended up taking me away and putting ME in detention because SHE was not being a parent! Six months of hell and 14 years of PTSD from that, folks. And while I was there, did she visit or write? Hell no. That was beneath her. Meanwhile I was subjected to such psychological abuse at the hands of the counselors there that I am terrified to seek therapy to get beyond the PTSD!

I left home at 16 and it was the best thing that ever happened to me. Life only got better. I got my GED immediately then went on to college at 19. I took some time off because I moved out of the state, met a man (another aspie ) got married, had two kids, etc. and now I am graduating in December. So it's not all bad.

I consider her one giant roadblock in my life, abusive by neglect and failure to be a parent. I aspire to be everything she is not. So far, everyone tells me I'm doing pretty good.

Eh. Sorry.

My mum is pretty textbook aspie.

Just have to throw out that that's not necessarily a bad thing. ..

My mother and I don't get on, and never have.

She seems to have an idea in her head that if I'm a girl, I should be a carbon copy of her. And she has always seemed absolutely determined to ride roughshod over any plans I had in my life that didn't fit in with what she wanted me to be. Rest assured, she's NT and she does realize that her behavior and words have often been deeply hurtful - she just feels that it's OK to hurt your own child that way if they need 'correcting'.

I now, thankfully, don't have to see her any more often than I want to - which is only as often as I want to see the rest of my family, who are an OK bunch but whom, for my own 'people' reasons, I find it hard to spend much time around anyway...and some of whom are semi-estranged from my mother themselves after some of the things she's said in the past.

Motherloathe topic

Nope. And now there is no chance for reconciliation, because she is dead.

If you posters here want to establish some kind of relationship, I would do it before one of the parties is no more.

I read somewhere (The Lemur's Legacy?) that the mother/daughter bond is the strongest human/primate?/mammalian? bond there is, for better or for worse. There's lots of for better and for worse here. In my case, unfortunatly, for worse.

I think my mother wanted to be a good mother (and still does) but is too immature to know how. Also my father is not a good influence - he controls who gets help and who doesn't and it was always a struggle for her to get him to be nicer to us, less controlling/abusive. All in all, I was the mother growing up (and probably still am even though I haven't seen anyone in a decade). I did my best, but when you're a kid what can you do? (None of this had anything to do with my being on the spectrum.)

I think most of the girls at school had basically good relationships with their mothers. I want that. I'm open to being adopted by the right mom at some point (or a mother-in-law?). It's never too late to have a good mom.

On the comments with respect to men posting here: I was on a women-only forum once that was being hosted by a man, and he said he'd stay off, or only in one forum, but women kept chatting with him from everywhere (not wanting to be rude, I think) and soon enough he was everywhere. He was a nice guy but we really needed our own forum because having him around meant we couldn't talk openly enough. Unfortunately none of us had the resources to host a forum. So it didn't work out (though I'm glad he provided what he did - it was better than nothing). Women really need a place to chat that is women-only. It would be nice if men stayed off of threads that said "women only". Dunno if it will happen, though. You really need a separate forum that is private, viewed by members only.

Sometimes... most of the time she's very sweet and we act like best friends, but sometimes she gets very angry really quickly, and will threaten me with irrational threats (example: threatening to pull me out of housing for next semester at my school, so I'd have to commute). She'd never follow through with one of these, but it's still frustrating. I'd much rather be on good terms with her all the time.

hi fellow espies,
I havent seen my mum now for coming up to ten years. How sad.
Most of my youth she thought she could cure me out of my AS by God knows what sort of DR. spock s**t.
Anyway inevitably I did the opposite,and believe me it got me into a lot of trouble.
I've come to a conclusion that when someone thinks your bad you end up being exactly what they expect.
Bugger her and her BS mothering. It was never love, but "do what i want and you will get my approval". thats not love.
The only thing I regret is that she will stay in ignorance of how debilitating AS is and how she and many others trivilise it.

YES, my mom has held me together through all my rough times (unlike my father, who created them)

My Mom was Nt, not aspie, so I needed her a lot of times in the past and she basically didn't seem to realize my needs, sometime I just felt invisible to her or I was difficult for her to understand, I don't know. But when she died I realized how much I needed her, and she realized also she needed me.

Absolutely, we're like best friends.

She's an evil wicked woman! I don't know how she can be so Uhg! I love her, don't know how, but we do not get along at all, she hates me.

I'm not close to either of my parents. They are both aspies (undiagnosed) and would be in complete denial. I grew up in a house where mom and dad are pillars of the community, and none of the children had issues. There are 3 kids and I'm sure each one of us is an aspie.

My parents focused on image and veneer. It's no wonder pretending to be normal was so hard and I wasn't diagnosed until 39. I feel much bttr now that I've been diagnosed, and @ 39, I'm not so worried about my family's veneer.

I've never gotten along with my mom. It hasn't changed even though she's 88 & in poor health.

Me niethier tomboy4good My Mum use to bash me > NICE MOTHER