Christian parenting of a child with ASD

Post Reply New Topic

Raising an aspie with a Christian moral compass? No problem. Aspies like rules by and large so that should be fine. If you want to actually instill the theology into the child it could well be a doomed enterprise insofar as some aspie kids wont be able to make the inductive leaps of faith required to believe in a spirit realm. Not all aspie kids will have the issue but a significant number will. In those cases forcing the issue will just make matters worse.

I'm an aspie and I've always hated rules. I'm sure I'm not the only one either.

I hate rules being imposed on me but I have my own strong internal moral compass which tellingly is influenced by my parents' raising me Christian

I hate other peoples rules. They are irrational.

I've got your book Kathy, I like to read it myself every now and then, and my mum asked me to buy another because my nephiew is showing signs of Aspergers.

I've been a Chistian all my life. I feel as though I've always believed in God. My mother has had a shaky faith, but my grand parents were very strong with their faith. I learned a lot from them and spent a lot of time with them for that reason.

Thankfuly I've never experienced any bigotry for being me (other than at school).

The one thing that does realy get me angry is when people say 'such & such' is because of sin. That's not fair.
Jesus says several times that accidents happen, it's not punishment for their sins.
Shortened to make my point:

I have a strong moral compass as well, and I do have my own rules that I abide by, but it's other people's rules I've never been a fan of.

I think you are correct in saying ASD people like rules. But it is not so much the aspect of someone else setting 'rules' as ASD folks like things very clearly laid out and consistant. They definitely are comfortable with routines and predictable situations. It is also the result of their common aversion to the unknown, unexpected, surprises, etc. I have thought, observing myself, that the 'new' brings anxiety on how the interaction will go, and once I find something that works I therefore stay with it.

Interesting what you say about ASD and the 'leap of faith'. I have only observed a small number in the context of religion. It seemed that those that did make the jump, did so firmly and without much subsequent questioning.

Appeals to emotion will not work, if you 'prove' there is a Abrahamic God, you better provide good cogent evidence. And no, relying on 2,000+ year old text is not enough. Autistics are more likely to see through faulty logic, and Abrahamic beliefs provide a heavy dose of that. Be warned.

Sorry, no offense, but I'm on the spectrum and I take some umbrage with this idea. I don't see ASD mentioned as something abominable anywhere in the Bible, actually I don't see why anyone would say that because the word autism isn't in there once. Especially when you look at the Hebrew, and learn about people in antiquity in the Near East, you can see that ASD wasn't even a concept to those people.

Warsie, I understand what you are saying and totally agree. In fact I go one further and say that no one, Autistics or not, want a faith based on faulty logic or, as one other person put it, myth and fantasy. That is why I have looked deeply into the origins of the Old and New Testaments. You say that reliance on a 2000 year old text is not enough to trust Abrahmaic beliefs. Well, up until the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered in 1947, the oldest manuscripts of the Old Testaments were dated only 1000AD - about 1500 years after they were written. Now that seems a bit shaky, but when you consider that our knowledge of Caesar's Gaelic wars come from a mere ten manuscripts with the oldest dating 900AD and Herodotus' history comes from 8 manuscripts with the oldest also dating from 900AD, this put the Old Testaments in good company. BUT THEN once the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered there were 220 manuscripts covering every book in the Old Testament (bar Ester) and were dated 150BC to 70 AD, and they were essentially identical to the ones written in 1000AD.

And what's even more amazing is the New Testament is found without significant change in 20,000 manuscripts and fragments! See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biblical_manuscript. Personally I do not trust Wikipedia for everything, but the sites I use may not be ones you would trust. Here is a quote from that Wikipedia page. " Parts of the New Testament have been preserved in more manuscripts than any other ancient work, having over 5,800 complete or fragmented Greek manuscripts, 10,000 Latin manuscripts and 9,300 manuscripts in various other ancient languages including Syriac, Slavic, Gothic, Ethiopic, Coptic and Armenian. The dates of these manuscripts range from c. 125 (the John Rylands manuscript, P52; oldest copy of John fragments) to the introduction of printing in Germany in the 15th century"

Wikipedia goes on the say that there have been numerous changes to the texts during those times, however, if you go to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ma ... _Testament you will see that the changes are mostly grammatical or translational and do not alter the meaning of the text.

Once I found this out, and realized that purely from a historical point of view, what I read in the Old and New Testament really happened, or, at the very least, the authors of the books believed they happened, then my trust in the Bible deepened.

I'm sorry, I'm rambling. But the point here is not to change your mind, but that I agree parenting a child with ASD means the parents have to be prepared to come up with answers that have been researched, - not glib answers that say nothing. If a child asks how much you can trust that what is written in the Bible is historical fact, then a parent has an obligation to take the question seriously and research the answer.

Totally agree. You can never 'force' anyone to have faith in God - or a spirit realm as you put it. That is another thing I want to mention in the booklet. If a parent wants to bring a child up with the knowledge of Jesus, then its simply a matter of teaching them about Jesus, just like teaching them about maths or art. Parents can share their own faith and show how it works in their lives, but ultimately the child's faith comes from the Holy Spirit. And with God, everything is possible - even for a non-verbal extremely autistic child to have faith.

The thing that opened my eyes as a child was discovering evolution and that the story of creation in the bible, Adam and Eve, the great flood etc was pure mythology. I went on to study sciences at university and there is not one jot of empirical evidence that any gods exist. Anyway, I don't want to sidetrack your thread, I'm just very wary and it makes alarm bells ring for me when people have a religious agenda towards children and try to push religious propaganda onto them.

Agreed. Religious agendas and any form of propaganda are both scary. Search for the truth is not.

Have you looked up the word 'faith' in a dictionary lately? I'll just put it right here for you:

n: 1. strong or unshakeable belief in something, esp without proof or evidence.

^agree with cash.

People of faith really have to accept it is just that 'faith' and has no connection to evidence, and so cannot be said to be connected to truth.

If I was an aspergers child with religious parents (which I was once), having a parent say it was based in logic and truth would really wind me up. There is something about religion that has always aggravated my sense of fairness, the idea that people think their own beliefs should apply to people who don't share their beliefs. I know some religious people would say it is a personal thing that they don't push on others, but at its core it is a belief that you are right and those that disagree are wrong, and as it is based in faith it is completely insulated from any reason, and it does have an unfair sway in society.

I think the issue that highlights the problems so clearly is homosexuality, most religions treatment of gay people is terrible, religious people aren't content to let their beliefs govern just their own lives they think everyone else should as well even if others don't have those beliefs, many religious people will say they don't discriminate but there is a history of it and it reflects the religious mentality. I think this is an important issue for raising aspergers children as many will have a similar logic based approach and a fierce stubbornness to their own sense of what is right which could cause conflict. I am not saying this will happen to all, or even most aspergers children but I think it could be a big problem for some.

I think a religious parent should just explain their beliefs and why they believe it and leave it at that, make it clear it is a personal choice and that other people should be free to believe what they want free from judgement. When it comes to morals these do not need to be connected to religion, everyone can see the logic in kindness, honesty etc.

someing_,

Is an eye witness account evidence?
Would the court of law accept some witness account, even though tangible evidence could not be presented?

The answer is yes. Though the value of the evidence is less. I know of only one case where a person was sentenced for murder, based only on witness accounts and no tangible evidence.

The books of Mathew, Mark, Luke and John are exactly that. They were there. They are personal witness accounts. The things they state regarding names and politics of the time, have been found to be accurate by historians, artefacts and other documents of that time. They are certainly not a fantasy story.

Thanks Cash. I looked it up too as soon as I read your post and you are right. Well, a least one version of faith says that. Another version says a complete trust or confidence in someone or something. You cant be confident in something without some basis for that confidence.