Ever feel like your family don't care about your interests?

Post Reply New Topic

My family is actually pretty accepting of my interests. My parents will watch my favorite films with me, except for the ones that contain graphic violence or sexual themes. They are especially encouraging towards my Alice in Wonderland obsession - they always buy me things that relate to it in some way.

I feel like this pretty much constantly, it's like when I talk about something I'm interested in it's like my family is just *tolerating* me until I go away as opposed to actually listening to what I'm saying.

Only people left in my family are my aunt and my mother. My aunt has special interests of her own and we often monologue to each other lol. My mother has a dx of schizophrenia and I swear shes knows everything about everything. I can literary talk to her about anything, and no matter how obscure, or how much I know, she somehow knows more (not being sarcastic), its absolutely fascinating to talk to her about special interests xD

I can say with authority if you where brought up by ignorance : they did not care about your interests than why would they now that your an adult with the diagnosis? I prefer to keep my interests to myself it's for the best.

I'm supposed (being in Australia) to care about league , cricket and tacky home renovation trends. Hardly anyone back than and today! share my interests eg gaming how many 35 + year olds do you know that game , the "average" age of a gamer may be 33 though what is a gamer do they include granny playing Wii with the children on a rainy Sunday afternoon? the casual phone gamer, these aren't gamers it's a bit like saying tourists who play put put on the Gold Coast are "golfers"

Meh I suppose over exaggerating the numbers helps legitimize the industry , some say that will not truley happen until a US president is a hard core gamer himself. I here Obama likes to play Wii with the kiddies, still not enough I'm afraid.

PS My mother thinks Bio Shock is the work of Satan!

It's now set in stone, that my parents don't care about The 60s, or The Kinks, by the way that Mother reacted, when I told the raisin-souled witch, on the verge of tears, that Pete Quaife passed away, in late June. “They're old! People don't last, forever!” Thanks a lot, Michael Savage, with Tits!

I will go on, about this until I'm good and ready, to stop.

My parents don't care about most of my interests, but it's not their fault. I'm a massive technophile, gamer and internet addict, and they're a pair of art teachers who aren't really into gadgets or tech. Luckily we have some overlapping interests, such as theatre, and some types of music, predominantly classical.

My family humours me by accepting my various interests [i.e. they will watch Top Gear with me] but they're not as into my interests as I am. Not that I expect them to, because we're all individuals with individual interests.

My parents are pretty accepting. They'll listen when I talk about one of my special interests, and whenever Star Trek is on we all sit down to watch it. The only time they seem to not care is when I make references at random to a special interest or two, but who could blame them?

I think my wife and children do care about my general interests, because they are wonderful people and they are NTz.

I can't imagine they give a sh*t about my 'special' interests (and nor should they ..........and neither would I, if I were them)

My family has an idea what my special interests are and even thoug we don´t talk about them most of the time they make an effort to remenber them.

They tend to bring up a topic of my interest whenever I don´t interact much in their conversations.

The other day one of my sisters came from a 3 month stay at another city and she brought me a poster of one of my favourite movies for example.

My other sister started calling me a few weekends ago and it was only to mention that she was in town and she had found a otaku convention I might like(maybe she didn´t say otaku but at least she callled me to see if I was interested).

Having said this I kniw their main interests as well so as some user mentioned before you also need to show some attention to their interests if you want some attention drawn to yours.

When I was a kid I used to talk about my interests (dinosaurs, elephants, whatever I'd been reading recently as I've always been an avid reader). My mom thinks one of my interests was hippos as a kid. I don't remember being overly interested in them but I do remember reading about them once (and see them in some animal show back when they used to show nature stuff on TV more often) and reciting some facts about them to her a few times. I learned that my family cares not one bit about my interests and hobbies so I generally don't mention them anymore. When they ask what I've done all day I say 'nothing' as chores don't count as they expect me to do them unless I'm doing something they view as important or I'm sick. What they view as important are important (except for maybe watching random movie/TV show I don't care about with the family just so I wont be in my room doing what I prefer to do).

My saying nothing doesn't help as I think it may make them think they are justified in viewing whatever falls under 'nothing' as unimportant.

And I do agree that there are more important things I could do instead but I like what I like and I'm not asking them to like those things too.

If I was honest and told them I was role playing (which I have rarely and once told my Aunt that was one of the things I did even explaining it a very little bit) or playing x virtual pet game or what kind of things I was reading I doubt they would in some cases approve (some of the fan fiction I've read was pretty bad at one point) and would not understand how or why I enjoy these things.

I really doubt telling them I pretend to be a male rat with one eye who is married to another rat character I also play and is currently on a ship sailing to a island ect ect would really go over well (it's based off a book series).

I remember when I started my interest in Greek mythology (I'm a devout Christian as are my family) and my class at school had been reading many Greek myths which as an avid reader of fantasy I regarded the myths as made up stories and doubt there are many that still worship those gods and goddesses today (though I may be wrong). I had just come from school and my mother asked what I'd learned that day so as I often did when I'd read something I started talking about the myths I'd read and my sister (four years my junior) accused me of blasphemy. I was relating the myths the same as I would have any other fictional story I'd read (many of which stories have talking animals or magic in them). I do understand somewhat why my sister responded like she did but I really hurt and I did explain to her that I did not believe the stories to be true at all I was only tell our mother what I had learned (At one point I learned about Egypt at school and about their gods and mummification and no one in the family cared as much when I mentioned those things though I didn't talk about them as much as the school didn't go into Egyptian mythology nearly as much as Greek mythology).

I am still fond of Greek mythology (the story of Cupid and Psyche being one of my most favorite one tied with the story of Persephone and Hades). I don't talk about what I do online with my family or what my interests are as I know they don't care and only wish I did the things they think I should do. (I do agree that eating better and exercising are important but no so much the sit in this other room with the family and stare at the TV for an hour or more or whatever else they want me to do (usually a chore of some kind).

Sorry for the rant.

It’s quite odd, though, you see, once I took an interest in conserving energy, water, recycling, well, like environmentalism, and I wanted to put that into practice and become a ‘planeteer’. I loved that show. I still do, even if they don’t show it anymore, and it’s not on dvd.Yet like many of my interests, my parents scoffed at it much. I would try to by ‘eco-cat litter’. My cat didn’t mind, but my parents didn’t like the fact that it was good for the environment. I would go around the house, even and turn lights off if there was no one in the room. Yet, see here, my mom would purposely go around and turn the lights back on everywhere. She said I was stupid, and that the ones who paid the electric and water bills, anyway, were her and my dad. You wouldn’t believe what I got in trouble for this morning. Because the electric bill was quite high. I recently decided that I should listen to them, and do things their way. I don’t like it. I feel bad whenever I do something like that. But I kept the lights on, just like they like it, I didn’t keep my tv, dvd on, as I don’t like to ‘tire’ them if you know what I mean. Yet, now I am in trouble for the electricity bill. They were always reminding me they are the ones who pay the bills, so...they should pay them. My mom complains that I use too much electricity, well where do you think I learned it? Definitely not from the Planeteers. I love that show so much, and I was really into it. Actually I still am, kind of. Yet the planeteers are ret*ds. Well, I gave up on that, yet I am now in trouble for the opposite. Does this make any sense at all.

I have a huge intrest in film, I have no one to talk about movies with because nobody cares about film, nobody cares about companies and logos like MGM or RKO or Columbia or Paramount or Universal, etc., nobody cares about direcotrs like Hitchcock or anything. My sister wouldn't tolerate my movie fetish, she doesn't allow me to watch any movie apparently because "i get too scared/obsessed/annoyed by the 20th Century Fox" (which is not true, i like Fox) or i apparently say "That's not the right logo for the film" or "This isn't the proper Aspect Ratio for this movie " or "This movie is Sh**" or everything. I can go on and on about film , nobody listens to me when i talk about it, i can't even talk about my favorite movies, directors, logos/companies or anything.

I don't appreciate everybody being so rude to such an interest of something thats a work of art

NT's are supposed to be good at conversation, but I've found they don't care and are often really rude about it. I will listen to whatever a loved one has to say, but I rarely get the same in return.

It's not nice to generalise all NT's. But I won't lecture others on it. Besides, I've generalised other entire groups before. Anyway, I do feel this way at times.

When I was younger and before my diagnosis I loved to talk endlessly about my interests even though my mother would bluntly point out that she had absolutely no interest in them. But it was perfectly okay for *other* people to talk about stuff I had no interest in. My mother would lecture me for seeming to only be interested in cartoons and said I needed to develop more interests. But it was okay if *other* people had no other interests. And I was supposed to do what the other kids my age wanted to do, even if I really didn't want to do it. Funny, since I heard about this thing called peer pressure and that you should only do what you want to do, and not because others want you to. But I guess that only applies to smoking or underage drinking.

"The complainer is always wrong", a message I got from both many 80's kids cartoons and real life.