Q: What is the myth?

Post Reply New Topic

In the past few weeks I have read so many pages and forums about Asperger's and Autism and there were a few occations where people refered to an old myth that have since been dismissed. People made references to a myth that parents or a parent is responsible for autism in their child?

Can anyone tell me more about this? How could people have thought that it could be caused by parents? I recently told my mother that I suspect I have Asperger's and I got a very strange avoidant vibe from her. I get the feeling that my whole family have always suspected that there was something weird about our family and they've never talked about it for some reason. Thank goodness my generation is more open to these things.

A few decades back it was considered the fault of the parent that your child was autistic. I.e. you had done something detremental in their upbringing. Autism in the perception of your joe average on the street is still a very negative one, a kind of taint on the family an afflication and it still persists to this day in some respects. Bare in mind as you become more knowledgeable of the autistic spectrum and AS you understanding will begin to differ from the norm and as a consequence you will run into people whos perceptions you will come into conflict with.

You will find some people will also react to their family member being diagnosed as some kind of afflication. I.e. to the perception of those outside the family the medical profession is saying that family is "tainted" with this autism disease. Not going into great depth but its a working class mentality, religious too.

My diagnosis for example and the revelation that my father and grandfather were also AS provoked a very defiant reaction in one of my grandmothers who's background was a french farmer in normany (i.e. peasent) and from her perception the medical profession was saying that the hereditary line of her husband and children were tainted with what she could only understand as some kind of "genetic disease" if you see what i mean.

Yes, I understand it now. Thanks Laz.