Do all parens of autistic kids secretly hate them?

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I looove my boys and don't feel they're much burden at all. I've met so many "normal" kids and they seem much more difficult to live with. I think it depends more on whether the parent's personality clash with their children's or not. My kids are quite a bit like me and we have similar preferences. Looking at them just make my heart swell. My 16 year old just started working a full time job and just fell in love with a girl as well. I'm so excited for him. It's like I get to be 16 again.

I'm OK with them living with us for extended time. If I don't expect too much then hopefully I won't be disappointed.

My parents would beg to differ with you. Many a time, they've told me: "All other families have good kids; we have you!" Obviously, there didn't seem to be much love on their part, at least not how I understood it. Of course, I never understood why they always got angry when I offered to go away and never come back. I mean, if I was so bad, wouldn't they want to effortlessly get rid of me, and try for another child? (I later learned they'd be in legal trouble if I actually tried it, so I'm sure they feared being questioned for it; hence, the anger.)

And as an adult, I also never understood why they didn't let me go away to college. I fell behind socially by at least 4 years because of that. Which, again, ties into my belief that many parents have kids in order to have someone to boss around.

Why would anybody even conceive of thinking this way?

There are times, yes, that parents get frustrated. At the same time, the autistic person gets frustrated, too.

But to equate frustration with "hate." Ridiculous!

And coming from such an established, peer-reviewed source as Reddit!! !

Why do we imbue some schmuck on the Internet with such authority?

Last edited by kraftiekortie on 16 Jul 2018, 9:07 am, edited 1 time in total.

"All other families have good kids; we have you!" sounds like something my mom would of said. She used to threaten to send me away or just kick me out when I had meltdowns. My parents wanted me to go to college & blamed me not going to college for being unemployed despite the fact I have lots of other disabilities besides Asperrgers & I majorly struggled in skewl due to dyslexia & other related learning disabilities.

Your parents sucked, Nick...no doubt about it. They said stupid things out of frustration.

I'm not making excuses for them; they should have really thought about what they said, and why they said it. And its impact upon you, a human being.

My mother also did similar things, like threatening to send me to a group home. And calling me names (I don't know if she used the word "ret*d"--but she used similar terms).

I think she was "frustrated" with me more than she "hated" me.

What frustration?! Aspie kids tend to be very peaceful, docile, and obedient (albeit out of fear of punishment). Sure, they have sensory issues and such, but I think their "weak" traits just trigger adults' human predatory instincts. As opposed to the mildly defiant ways NT kids tend to act, which, in the grand scheme of things, makes parents "respect" them more. (Just look at my older sister vs. myself.) Hence, the "hate", even if it's toward one's own kids.


My parents used to threaten the same thing. What's sad is that this threat didn't scare me: I viewed living in a group home as a fun change of scenery, rather than a punishment. Not to mention, I wouldn't have to worry about getting good grades in school, since it's highly unlikely that the caretaker would have time to punish me for bad grades. What's even sadder is that I knew the threat was empty, and I viewed it as nothing more than spiteful sarcasm.

Interestingly, the book "Island" by Aldous Huxley talks about something called "mutual adoption clubs". It's when kids are required to rotate households (and parents) at regular intervals. The fictional society's goal was to "prevent unadulterated exposure to a toxic household".

Try being a parent to an autistic kid who self-harms, and needs a helmet.

And who doesn't respond, at all, to any input from another person.

I bet anyone would be frustrated.

(Please don't construe what I said as an excuse for parents to abuse, or do worse, to autistic children).

I concede that it's different with autistic children who aren't capable of properly responding. But why would parents be frustrated with a peaceful, docile aspie child? A child who's easily bossed around and too weak to do anything back. In that case, I still say it's the child's weakness triggering predatory instincts, which are so deeply ingrained in our species, they can't be overcome even by being a parent.

Of course not! I grew up in a time when aspergers and autism wasn't so highly diagnosed and I wasn't diagnosed until I was 39. Did my parents think I was a little strange? Probably, but it wasn't something major. This day and age so much emphasis is put on autism as being a disability. They are much more catered to and cottled. The world must bend to them. When I was a kid and even now the world does not in any way bend to me, so there is no inconvenience for others except that I can be an emotional handful (which I try and keep in check). I guess what I'm trying to say is that I was expected and still am expected to follow societies rules, and if they don't like me its my fault, so no, I'm not a burden to others.

No, I definitely do not hate my daughter. She is the person I have identified with and got along with the most in my entire lifte. I'm not sure I could have coped with having a "normal" child.

No most definitely not, I never felt that way from my mum and I would never say I hate my own. They are each very different autistics but we work with it really well these days.

I hate the systems we are stuck with challenging, the way they put no funding into early interventions and diagnosis so that kids get the help they deserve. Its different though if you are a parent with autism advocating for your kids, the systems divide and conquer otherwise and it was the main aim to run me into the ground as a s**t parent prior to my own dx. Once that was on the table they were nothing but polite and very PC about it all. Still no money there though, but they dont make out my kids are little s**ts I should 'fix' the same as they did before.

Of course not---some hate them openly.

I wouldn't even call it "hate" per se. It's more like reaction formation. "Reaction formation" is basically a hypercorrection of a feeling, deemed unacceptable to one's conscience and/or to society.

So let's say that parents do hate their autistic kid. However, hating one's kid, especially a disabled one, is deemed morally reprehensible, and the parents know it. Which leads to guilt on their part. So to allay their guilt, the parents hypercorrect their hate by being "loving", in hopes of blocking out the hate with love. However, because they still resent their autistic kid for not being "normal", the "love" manifests itself as military-strict discipline and overprotectiveness, accompanied by excessive punishments. Because then, it's easy to explain away such a treatment, to oneself and to society: "Hey, I'm controlling my kid like this to make sure he's safe and grows up to be a good person".

Of course not. I know my mother doesn't hate me. She could be very cold and impatient when I was a child and she didn't know what was wrong with me; I think she wanted to believe she had a "normal" kid who was just acting out. I knew from a very young age that I wasn't normal, but I couldn't convince her of that, so it was a very difficult situation for both of us. However, she has always loved me. Now we're both in different stages of our lives. I've been diagnosed; she accepts it and is now a lot more helpful and understanding.

If you had Autistic parents like I had then yes they can utterly despise you because you remind them too much of the trouble they had when they were young and Autistic. It's a constant reminder of the pain they went through and when do you stand there to remind them, then the rage ensues.

I grew up in an extraordinarily violent and hateful household, basically the worst environment for an Autistic child. It was hell on Earth. All I had to do was calmly and very softly say, "Hey Dad" and he would erupt in rage and anger. My mother was very hateful and mean spirited and she was always cutting us down and enraging my father to hit us.

My son has autism, and I love him very much. I’m autistic as well, so we can relate to each other in ways that some people can’t. However, he does set me off sometimes when he’s especially loud because I’m sound sensitive.

It seems that he’s sensory seeking and I’m sensory avoidant. It’s not always a good combination.