Where your parents abusive to you? What's their excuse?

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"but you were such a difficult child"

to be fair she has no idea how bad things got when she wasn't there. but still, even the things she saw can't possibly be justified by bad behaviour. there is nothing a child could have done to deserve what he did.

Physically and emotionally.
I wondered if there was a link, but saying so seems to scare professionals away from thinking you have AS, because as soon as that's out they're trying to make all of the signs somehow relate to the abuse and just forget about the AS.

I was never physically abused by parents. My mother used to spank me when I was a young child, but thats not really abuse [I don't think?]. For the first 3 years of my life, I lived with my mother and father. My father was neglectful, my mother and I moved out when I was 3yrs old. When my mother developed a drinking problem, she also developed anger problems and used to throw stuff at me and threaten to kill me even when she was sober. Then when she met a man, he moved in with us and he hit me a few times.
I'm just glad that things aren't like that anymore.

Until recently I had hated my father. He was mean, abusive, and uncaring. But this all changed once I started suspecting that he too has AS. After that, all the weird things he did to me started to make sense.

I think it's typical of parents with AS to do what's theoretically best for their children. In this process, emotional understanding and connection are put aside. This results in robotic and methodical parents to whom you are emotionally disconnected. They become very strict disciplinarians, and you end up feeling like a lab mouse. You might not hate them, but you don't love them either. You basically could care less if you lose them.

I felt like this until recently. After confronting my father about it, he became convinced that he does indeed have AS. He has always been good about admitting what he did wrong as long as it made sense logically.

What shocked me about this whole discovery was that the realization of how much I hated to be on the other side of an Aspie. I then realized that I've done so many things to others that were essentially the same as what my father did to me. I realized how self-centered I was. I don't like it when Aspies treat me in their emotionally detached ways, but I myself treat others that way. Double-standard. So, I no longer hate my father.

Nope. If it weren't for my mom I'd probably have gone on a rampage and probably would be locked up somewhere. I'm extremely thankful for her, granted she didn't know I had AS or what it was to begin with so she wasn't perfect, but I know she did the best she could.
My dad... well, he wasn't abusive, but he was a bit neglectful and he does a lot of things to my mom I don't like and acts selfishly. But I think I got quite a bit of AS from his side (I think both sides have ghosted effects of AS), and he had some really ugly family history, he could have been worse, really.

My foster parents once put celotape over my mouth because i wouldnt stop talking.I think that is bad for anyone and worse for a child that has only been talking for about a year.I went to speach therapy still as well.

Jeyradan...I agree with you. But I think the abuse is because of the AS...not the AS because of the abuse.

Original poster. You're right, that's inexcusable garbage your mum told you, and it doesn't justify what was done! You were just an innocent kid.

...
some excuses I've had are:
-"Money is the key to surviving in this world." (BULL!)
-"I never said that.."
-"It didn't happen that way." or simply "It didn't happen"

I wasn't physicaly abused, but reminded way too often that I was part of one of their problems.
I consider my sort just withint some toxicity, from parents who didn't know better at the time. Innocent kids didn't ask, or diserve, to bare the burdons of people that are supposed to bare it themselves.

A few things to keep in mind.

People with AS have been shown to have a lack of, and/or distorted, autobiographical memories. This is partly because we (Aspies) are mind-blind, and we tend to misinterpret other people's intentions, motives, and beliefs.

It is also possible that we do not remember much about our interactions with other people because our interactions with other people tend to lack emotional significance (unless it's extreme). Emotion is the energy required to burn memories into our brain. If the events had no or little emotional value, we don't remember them. Since we Aspies do not spontaneously share joy with others, I believe we tend to remember only the bad experiences. This might be quite different from other people (NTs) perspectives.

What complicates this further is that, AS is inherited. If you have it, it's likely that at least one of your parents has it, or have Asperger-like tendencies. This means that your parents would probably do things that hurt your feelings without knowing that they are hurting you.

My father used to force me to eat and drink milk a lot because he thought it was good for me. Many parents would try to do this to some degree, but in his case it was extreme. He would smack me in the head constantly, where I was feeling like I would suffocate or drown myself in milk. The dinner time was a sheer nightmare for me. He just didn't think how I might have been feeling; he just wanted to feed me as much as possible, and didn't care what it took to do it. I certainly felt like a lab mouse of his theoretical experiment.

If you combine all these elements/factors, we Aspies have a recipe for disaster with our relationship to parents. I think it would be difficult for an Aspie to have a good/healthy relationship with his/her parents.

i have been many times in strollers restained even at age of 7 i think it were coz im hyper or meltdowns but dont really know any way i hate being still long

Emotion does make memories last better. I can't argue there. On the other hand, I think giveing a bad, but small, message too often can do enough damage on it's own.

wow, very powerful post. thanks for sharing.

One of the most disrespectful and mean things one can do is denying someones personal history and pain with an alleged statistical 'fact'. This denial, this conspiracy to silence, only aggravates the effects of the abuse.

Motives, intentions and beliefs of the abusers have nothing to do with the memory of the abuse. Abuse is abuse, intentions do not change it.



Neither correct, nor relevant. It doesn't matter if you do, or do not remember pleasant events, they do not change the abusive ones.




Statiscally it's still a lot more likely that none of your parents or siblings are autistic (unless you're from a really large family). Being autistic isn't any more a valid excuse for abusing children then drinking, or personality disorders are.

If parents aren't responsible, then who is?



I am sorry, you must have felt terrified at times.




Don't blame yourself. Adults can be expected to be responsible and caring, it's not the child that should be held responsible for the relationship with it's parents.

-I am old school, and thus think a lot of people over use the term abuse. I'm mean one person listed that their parents called them names. Now compare sexual abuse and getting beat with a biker chain to name calling. Its not the same. Therefore I really don't like when some poster says "I was locked in a cage for 6 years in the basement." and another poster says "I know what that's like, I was abused too. My mother said I was stupid."
-Its like saying a UK soldier from the Falkland War understands a Nam Vet who was in Tet. They don't.
-For the record I was NOT locked in a cage, or beaten with biker chains or anything else.

I wouldn't say I was abused truly. They made mistakes with me but once they learned, they stopped. I used to get punished for having immature emotions and for figuring stuff out wrong and not being able to figure out what it okay and what isn't. Things got better when I got diagnosed because my mother finally understood. She used to get mad at me about my obsessions too. I can remember her saying "You're obsessed with a seven year old movie" and yelling about other things about me that weren't right. I remember I felt bad and I wasn't normal and I was broken. I just wanted to kill myself back then to end my abnormal life.

There were times when my mother would lose her temper and start spanking me without warning because it was done to her when she was a kid. Like the time I was playing with this scented stuff in the living room when I was four. I kept pouring it out of the basket and putting it back in and moving to another spot and repeating the same thing and then I put the basket back with the stuff in it when I was done but left the mess on the rug. That evening, my mother was taking me to bed and she happened to go in the living room to turn off the light and right away she yelled "Oh Beth" and she came up and started spanking me and I cried and she continued yelling in the living room.
I don't see what the big deal was. All she could have done was wait till morning to vacuum it up instead of getting all pissy about it and hitting me about it when she could have had a talk with me about what I did. Because I was always getting in trouble for the things I was doing, I started blaming everything on my brothers so I wouldn't get in trouble but it never worked most of the time. I was never afraid to play. I did stop that play, but not playing. My mind didn't work like that then when I get afraid to play I refuse to play with other kids and my own toys and having fun. I'd only wait till I got told it was okay to play with this and play with that. My mother was very lucky that didn't happen from me.

Yes my mother threatened me too. I can remember her threatening she will throw out all my toys, pack them all away if I don't behave. I can remember her threatening to treat me like a bad child if I keep acting like one. I always figured she meant abuse like I see on TV in the Disney movies with Snow White, Cinderella.

I did not mean to say that ALL instances of "abuse" are misinterpretations or misunderstandings. I merely wanted to point out, in the general discussion of abuse, that we Aspies should be more careful about jumping to conclusion about someone's intentions, especially when it comes to people who are close to us. I was not trying to trivialize anyone's specific instance of abuse.



What defines "abuse" for me is indeed "intentions". "Abuse" cannot be defined absolutely. It is perfectly possible for anyone, including NTs, to misunderstand someone's intentions, and perceive the act as abuse. We cannot define "abuse" based solely on the person who was presumably "abused". Just because someone who was abused believes it's "abuse" does not automatically make it so. In fact, I would say, such a one-sided, self-centered way of determining what "abuse" is, is itself abusive. Misunderstandings are part of life for everyone.



Many Aspies are mind-blind, and because of it, we tend to do things that are perceived as mean, abusive, self-centered, and rude. Most NTs do not make any effort to understand how Asperger minds work, so they do not understand that Aspies do not have bad intentions in most of these situations. If intentions have nothing to do with how someone's action should be judged, then it would be perfectly correct for the NTs to assume that Aspies are indeed rude, inconsiderate, self-centered, mean, and/or abusive.

It is easy to ONLY think about ourselves as victims of abuse. It's very difficult, on the other hand, to see how we ourselves might be abusing others. I treated my ex-wife just the same way my father treated me; cold, detached, and uncaring. I offered an abundance of criticisms and blames, but never a word of appreciation or compliment. I was only concerned about my own happiness. As my ex-wife became increasingly unhappy and depressed, I was completely unaware of it. This is a typical story that I've read in books on Asperger relationships.

The only reason why I realized how horrible I was to my ex-wife is because I started thinking about my horrible experience with my father in my childhood. I realized that what I felt in my childhood--the feelings of neglect, loneliness, insecurity--was exactly what my ex-wife was feeling.

Not every negative situation in life has someone who is "responsible" for it. It's tempting to find a scapegoat but bad things can happen without anyone intending to do anything bad, where everyone involved is a victim, and no one is a victimizer.