Did your parents try to stop your special interests?

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Pretty much...I remember when I was in grade school I used to hide in my room while drawing which was my childhood interest...and every time I hear my parents go up to my room..I would scramble to hide my drawing materials like it was p orn or dru gs ..because if I ever get caught I would get scolded and be called anormal because I was wasting my time doing something so useless(didn't know back then what @bn0rmal means but I know it was bad)...and believe me the possibility of getting slapped in the back of the head was very likely..they made me feel like my interest were taboo or illegal..that's why I never shared my interest with anybody..if I can help it.. but it never stopped my interests...I'm just not open about them...and yes...Im still steathy when doing or researching my interests even though both my parents are dead...some hard earned survival adaptations never stops.. ....

Actually my interest has been used to teach me the few words I can (kinda) say, to reduce aggression and pretty much everything involving existence.

I was born many years before the Autism Spectrum came into existence, but yes, my parents often wondered what was "wrong" with me when I fixated on things.

At the same time I showed an early aptitude for music-- I started playing and writing my own music at age 3-- but my parents just never even mentioned it. It was only after my relatively recent diagnosis that I even thought of it as unusual to be writing that young. They never commented on it and so I never thought it was exceptional in any way.

Then there were the specific fixations that would sometimes cause me to panic-- like after I read "The Andromeda Strain" at age eight. I started researching epidemiology and realized there were diseases all over the world that I was convinced were just waiting for the right time to kill off most everybody. This was the pattern of my life-- the more I read and learned about, the more anxieties I developed.

This kind of feels like another "blame your parents" thread.

As an autistic mom of an autistic kid, I allowed him his special interests but did not take part in them. When he would yak too much about them, I had to ask him to stop. Because you know what? it was just NOISE to me, a sensory overload. I did notice that he wanted to watch one animated video over and over and over, but as long as the sound wasn't too loud, that was okay with me.

As an autistic child, I was starting a butterfly collection. This hobby requires you to kill the insect to display it in a certain way. I was very interested in biology and this was an outgrowth of that. At first I was allowed to do it, but then my autistic father in his autistic fashion decided I was too into killing things (and the only thing I was ever killing was butterflies, but oh well) and said I had to give it up. My father in his kindly way invalidated most everything I was ever involved in. I don't hold a grudge. He was as clueless about children as most autistic parents if they haven't educated themselves on child development.

Growing up means becoming free of parents' missteps in parenting, including limiting or forbidding our special interests.

In high school. i had a halo 3 addiction. I never got good at it until 3 years in and I was on path to going pro in it. But my moms boyfriend would disconnect the ethernet cord, people hated me and wouldnt team with me, i got s**t talked 24/7. I think they see our singular obsession as rather disturbing

The most-belligerent people will then try to be your manager, if you appear successful.



But, why are some of you pursuing your interest with people who don't care for it.`

Back in the Spring of 1998, my mum tried to take The British 60s and my masculinity away from me because she didn't think the Mod thing was working for me. She also told me that I needed a psychiatrist. She convinced me to spend my hard-earned money on girly clothes. Let's say that I didn't get better at all until 1999 when my mum decided to just let me do what I pleased. Once I was left alone to do what I wanted, that's when I started to recover from my psychosis and depression.

Well, as a person on the spectrum and NOT as a parent, I was thinking the same thing as BeaArthur. If I had to spend a couple of decades with someone who constantly talked about something I didn't want to hear and would never stop even when I begged them to do so, I would probably kill myself.

My dad tried to discourage me from pursuing music. I guess he thought it was a waste of time and money and that I wouldn't stick to it. It wasn't that he forbade me, it was mainly stuff like him refusing to help me by a cheapo starter guitar, stuff like that. I eventually got my hands on various bits of gear. One day, when he heard me pounding out all this bebop grindcore madman stuff on the frankenstein drum kit I'd cobbled together, he was like "holy crap, I was wrong!"

I'm one of those aspies who can pick up a musical instrument and make the untrained ear think I'm some kind of virtuoso, improvving all kinds of weird stuff from thin air. Maybe one of these days I'll get my act together enough to cut an EP or something. One of these days.

My parents are mostly accepting of my interests, taking me to dinosaur museums, the Peanuts museum in Santa Rosa California, and letting me go to Star Trek conventions. They just kind of make fun of me a little for them every time I bring them up, laughing and saying, "Oh boy, here we go again!" in an amused tone. I guess I can understand that, because I wouldn't be interested in hearing about something I didn't care about over and over either. I'm lucky my parents never tried to take my interests away from me. It probably helps that my dad is autistic too, and he gets obsessed by things as well, so he understands where I'm coming from.

No, they indulged them a bit too much early on, but when I moved on to true passions I could do it alone.