Did you hate your parents?

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Or specifically your mother?

Did you feel they were neglectful and/or abusive?

(You can answer yes even if you still love them on some level...)

Is this common among people w/ Asperger's or HFA?

I think people often harm what they don't understand. I'm not sure if it's common, but I sure do hate my parents.

I've actually struggled to know why I haven't been affectionate towards my parents for a very long time. It worried the hell out of me because I was supposed to love my parents, and yet my relationship between them has been neutral for many years without knowing why.

And it's not because I don't have any affection whatsoever. I realised recently that I am most certainly capable of feeling non-romantic affection but it's often directed towards some of my friends and fictional characters, especially after watching My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic over the past year. More so with fictional characters because they seem to feel more human to me than the people in real life.

I believe that the biggest contributing factor is the lack of positive experiences I've had with my parents in the past. My dad is a nice guy and always has been. We've had a number of happy times, except we haven't really done much together because he's been working for decades. I've had a lot more time with my mother, however past memories are almost entirely bad ones due to the continuous onset of corporal punishment and the bullying attitude I would sometimes receive for making mistakes (they were simple things like not doing tasks properly and causing unintentional accidents).

She used the wooden spoon and paddle on occasion, dragged my ears, and yelled abusively. In terms of positive experiences, the only one that I can remember was hugging her while a specific song was playing when I was four years old. After then things went downhill.

I threatened to leave home twice, though I never did. My mother at one point chased me after I made the silly mistake of swinging on the clothes line, which resulted in me running away crying in fear. Sometimes the reactions were unpredictable and I would be left confused and frustrated as to what I did wrong. There were times where I threatened to retaliate and stand up for myself, but that only resulted in making situations worse.

My mother doesn't do these things anymore (thank god) and she's changed a bit since then, but the negative flashbacks are still there. I don't hate my mother, but the reason why I may struggle with feeling affection is because of the treatment I received during my childhood, along with other potential problems that may have been exacerbated, like emotional problems and being anxious on a frequent basis. I certainly hope these effects are not permanent, because the last thing that I want to feel right now is being completely helpless.

I think this is common for people not just people on the Spectrum.

I can not think of anything nice about my father and when he was killed I had dry eyes without any grief due to the years of using my Asperger syndrome to sponge drinks off of people in the local pub when I was a kid. He used to beat up my mum who sometimes used to look like a panda after he finished with her, He also used to accuse my brother of being the milkman's son. He also used to regularly beat up both me and my sister and me from 1974-79. My mum has got an abusive mouth on her who has had it to me since April 1974. She threatened to kick me out of the home in 1979 after my dad beat me across the arse with a heavy hard book. It is surprising that I didn't need a wheelchair after that. For me I did not experience any abuse from my parents until 1974 because before that they thought that I had a learning disability caused by brain damage and I was put onto drugs by the doctor to suppress my intellectual development until I was about 8 years old. A month later I had my first episode of temporal lobe epilepsy. After that I was expected to be starved of any affection for 80 odd years as well. So I have a great deal of resentment for my family for this and I was from 1974 onwards taken for granted as well so a pretty s**t childhood.

I actually love my parents. Yes I was disciplined and spanked, but I am grateful that they taught me rules and how they have consequences. They love me and support me. They also support my borderline possibly hypomanic bipolar brother, even though he some times gets mad when they make sure he takes his meds and goes to therapy (he is not in school and more stable). He is even grateful (now) for when they were "invasive" in keeping track of his cutting, and monitoring his room for scissors and knifes.

They taught me many life skills and made sure I could do laundry, cook, and budget. They cared when I was depressed, helped me get help and then encouraged me to continue in school and not quit like I wanted to. They made sure I have coping mechanisms.

Not all parents are bad.

No I don't hate my parents. I don't think I ever had. Of course it's normal for kids to "hate" their parents but they don't really hate them, they just think they do because they didn't get their way or didn't like being grounded or scolded or told no or being made to clean their room. Sure I hated my mom at times when I was a kid and felt she was mean only because she was doing her job and that is pretty normal for a kid to feel that way and I also felt at times she didn't care about me and saw her as my enemy in 6th grade because I thought she let kids bully me and didn't protect me from it. Parents can't always be a friend to their children, they have to be parents too and toughen up about their kid getting mad at them and calling them mean and telling them they hate them. I will quote what i read online in a article about parenting. 'If your kid is getting upset with you, it means you're doing your job. If your kid never gets upset with you, you're not doing your job."

I don't hate my parents. They were abusive, but I still can't hate them.

And, no, my autism was not caused by abuse; it's genetic. My father, who died when I was two years old, was probably autistic; he didn't speak until he was four.

My mom was emotionally abusive when I was growing up. She tried to shame me into being normal, so she used to make fun of me a lot and expect me to be responsible for her happiness, which is pretty messed up... She also married some men who liked to use me as a punching bag.

My father beat me soe much, he sent me to school bleeding from my face. He starved us a lot too because my mother had left.

My mother was an ultra religious nut who told me, on Christmas Day, that if she found out I was gay she would slit my throat from ear to ear.

My father was drunk all the time and perpetually abusive. My mother probably had narcissistic PD or Histrionic PD. Whatever it was, it was the opposite of me.

Hate is a strong term. Let's just say I couldn't stand my father and could care less about my mother. They're both gone now. May they RIP.

I hate my dad not my mom. My dad just doesn't understand Aspergers and, as I said in a thread I posted, thinks I can "Magically" learn things. That and our personalities are way to alike.

I just hate my father. He was very abusive to my mother and can be strict to me and my brother. He also had a serious drinking problem. I was glad when my parents got divorced.

I do get frustrated with my mother and stepfather at times, but I don't hate them.

It's unsettling to read that 47% of people hate their parents all or most of the time. God forbid either of our kids ever felt that way about us.

I seldom hate my parents... and the times I did it was me being unreasonable. Not that I like everything they do, of course, but they mean well. And I'm still young, perhaps I'll agree with more of what they did in a decade or so.

My parents are one of my biggest supporters in life. Are there times we don't get along and get spitting mad at each other? God yes. But I've never hated them. My tie with my parents and sister are very strong and something that is helping me get through life and finish college.

My mother tried very hard to make me NT. But that wasn't out of malice or ignorance, she did what she thought was best for me as I grew up, and in some ways I have a lot to thank her for (teaching me how to swing my arms while walking, for instance). On the other hand, she didn't understand how I couldn't make friends past the age of ten or so, and sometimes her comments made me feel bad. But again, she didn't know any better. I love my mother so much, and she's been so supportive post-diagnosis.

My father on the other hand was a c**t and I still haven't forgiven him for it. An emotionally-abusive bastard who should never have been allowed to breed. One example that sticks in my mind: When I was ten, I was diagnosed short-sighted and had to wear glasses. He didn't speak to me for a fortnight. No explanation, just acted like I wasn't there.

Our relationship has improved since I hit my 30s, but not much, and I have just been through a three-month phase of not talking to him after the latest of his many outbursts. My only hope is that, as he is very rich, he dies early. And even then, he'll probably leave all his money to the Fireman's Benevolent Fund or something s**t like that.

He has, however, been a very useful role model in the negative sense, in that if I am trying to figure out how to react to something, I generally choose the opposite of what he'd do. I could go on about him a lot, but I am trying to devote less thought to him these days. Suffice it to say, I will not be visiting him in his nursing home.