Where your parents abusive to you? What's their excuse?

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I always get the "I was so afraid for you" line. Sickening.

The road to hell is paved with good intentions; when some people try to save others they end up killing them instead.

No.

Mr. Robotto (Styx?), I think it is prejudice to make we aspies statements as much as it is prejudice to say something about any other group, religious, ethnic or otherwise. And to be honest, most children, NT or ASD alike, can not understand the psychological mechanisms behind the abuse, nor can they escape the situation or change it, as desperately as they might try to influence the situation.

No, that is turning it around. Abuse is abuse and it's the experience of the victim and the effect it has on them that determines if it's abuse more then the (alleged) intentions of the abuser. With your definition there would be no abuse, since abusers always have good intentions. But sexual abuse is still sexual abuse even if the intentions were out of 'love' or with 'warmth and intimacy' or whatever. And physical violence is just that, even if the intentions were to 'discipline' someone or teach them love. Intentions do not reduce the harm done.



You make the mistake of confusing responsibility and blame. In a parent-child relationship parents are responsible. Period. They are not perfect, they make mistakes and are generally burdened with mental problems as much as anyone else and you can understand them, forgive them and see them as victims and still hold them responsible, just as you hold yourself responsible for your own interactions with others.



Really? It's very difficult and usually a long process to truly look at the abuse and experience or remember what it really meant to you when you were a child - and many continue to deny this. But it's an important step and you should not skip over it and hop straight into the part of understanding and forgiving your abusers.



It takes great courage to admit your own wrongdoings and how they affect and abuse others.

This is a nonsensical statement. Not all generalizations are results of prejudice. If we are not allowed to generalize, you shouldn't be using any words. You should not be using language, period. Every word (like chair, pencil, pain, art, American, etc..) functions because of the process of generalization. If you are against it, then no one should be talking about "Asperger's Syndrome" on this website, because anything you say about it would be a generalization and therefore, in your definition, "prejudice". "We Aspies" do have certain general tendencies and characteristics, and that's what we are here to talk about.



Suppose I'm a freelance producer working on a film set. Someone, let's call her Jane, asks to me, "Can I help you with anything?" I have never seen her before. I assumed she was a production assistant. So, I start giving orders to her to go get coffees for the talents, run to a hardware store, deal with the pedestrians, clean up the set, etc., etc..

Suppose this was a misunderstanding. Jane actually was a friend of someone who is working on the set, and she was just visiting. Jane actually didn't realize that it was misunderstanding. She thought I knew that she was just visiting her friend on the set. So, she thought I was being abusive because Jane is not getting paid to do all these things. She thought I was exploiting her and being inconsiderate of her situation.

If Jane goes home without resolving this misunderstanding, she will go home with the impression that I'm an abusive person forever. However, if someone noticed what was going on, and pointed out to me that she is actually not getting paid, and that she is just a friend visiting the set, then all this could go away. I would probably apologize profusely, and she would go home with no bad feelings.

By your definition, this is "abuse" too, because intentions do not matter in your case.

This is not some random example. Misunderstandings like this happen all the time for Aspies because of the mind-blindness. It's because of certain social cues and clues that Aspies fail to see, that they end up offending or hurting others. If both parties can see the blind spot, they can actually resolve the misunderstanding with no bad feelings. This is why intentions become important. This is quite different from abusers who actually enjoy seeing people suffer.



The mistake is yours. You said: “Being autistic isn't any more a valid excuse for abusing children then drinking, or personality disorders are.” This is in the context of the children blaming the parents for their abuse. You are saying that the parents have no excuse for that blame.

Now, you are changing the meaning of the word “responsibility” in the statement above to mean more like “duty”. Yes, I agree that parents are responsible for their children in this sense of the term, but that’s not what you were talking about before.

Parents indeed make many mistakes. For instance, in the past, in certain cultures, it was considered to be healthier and better to feed Formula to babies, instead of breast-feeding. Some parents did this even though they couldn’t really afford Formula. They did it because they thought it was the best thing for their babies.

Yes, I agree that they are still “responsible” for that mistake (now that breast-feeding has been shown to be much healthier). But should the children “blame” their parents for it? No, that would be a mean thing to do, and would hurt their feelings.

So, yes, I agree that we need to distinguish blame and responsibility. And, how do we distinguish them? We do so by studying the intentions. In the film set example, I would still take the responsibility for what I did to Jane, but Jane, if she is an understanding person, should not blame me after she became aware of my intentions. The same is true of the example of Formula. It’s important to see what the intention was, in order to distinguish blame and responsibility. It is YOU, who is lumping both into the same category and accusing everyone of “abuse” no matter what the intention was. Once Jane learns of my intentions, she would realize that it wasn’t “abuse” at all. It was just a simple misunderstanding. Big difference.

Me too.

No one knew I had aspergers, so my having aspergers is not an excuse.
However, no one would have been permitted to know I had aspergers, had any one known I had it. Abuse is too soft a term. Ritualistic abuse with unyielding malicious intent is more correct.

Good thing I lack the ability to take it personally

I will get you mummy...
j/k, but I will rat you out. sicko!

Some further clarifications:

The difference between “abuse” and “mistake” is one of intention. “Abuse” by default is an accusatory term, and implies crime and blame. “Mistake” in comparison to it lacks the malicious intent.

Even in the court of law, “accident” and “crime” are distinguished by intentions. If your car hits someone by accident, there is no crime. If you did so intentionally, that is a crime.

To say that intentions are irrelevant because “abusers always have good intentions” is to say that all accidents are crimes.

Suppose a child is playing with a toy car on a playground, and someone comes and steps on the car and breaks it. If the person was literally blind, it’s an accident, not a crime. If he intended to step on it and break it, then it’s a crime. We cannot lump these two together.

one thing my mum did recentlyeven though I was an adult has affected me quite badly. I was over at her place for dinner and my grandma was there as well she needed helping up from the table I said to mum I will help but I just need to go to the toilet I am desperate she started to scream no help mim so I did but it resulted in me having a minor accdident. She was way out of order and I was angry at myself for not simply saying bugger you I am going to go anyway whatever she was saying.

Yes, That all started during easter 1974 for me. OK my sister and mum had suffered by dads abuse too. I have also experience abuse outside the family and most think that I overreact and that I am not really human. My mum has borderline personality disorder and my dad was a pisshead who mostly took his belt to my arse and also in me stimming was taboo and I was shouted a lot. Not very good for someone with an emotional intelligence quotient of 27 isn't it?

Excuses were they (my mum and dad) never had the patience with me or frustrated and that BS. Most others just use the excuse about me not 'looking disabled' whatever that means. My mum even threatened to kick me out in 1979 and she still denies that incident or puts to unconnected incidents together. I dare not go with my mum to see my brother in Herne Bay just in case she kicks off which she has done. Another excuse has been heat of the moment to me that is no excuse.

The stupid thing that for me the first 7 3/4 years was almost idyllic and were the best years of my life. Therapists/counsellors are almost worst than useless and only tries to radicalise because really they do have no empathy yet pretend they do absolutely disgusting. OK she took me out of the severe learning disability school in 1974 but that made me more vulnerable to emotional, physical and sexual abuse as a child or teenager.

My dad was physically abusive to me, and at the time he tried to justify it with bible verses ("spare the rod" etc.)

But he realized that what he was doing was wrong, and he stopped, and since then he has never tried to make any excuses for it. And I mean he literally says, there is no excuse for the things he did.

The way he grew up was far harsher than what he put me through. My grandfather had PTSD and suffered flashbacks where he lost all touch with reality. He would round the family up at night and run them out of the house with a shotgun threatening to kill everyone and then to kill himself. He shot at my dad. My dad grew up in fear of his life. He ended up with PTSD as well. He learned to have a hair trigger response to any kind of threat, which has probably saved his life many a time, but wasn't exactly great for me as a kid growing up.

He was also somewhat brainwashed by the religion he was brought up with, which I think he realizes now.

What I figured out as a kid, was that my dad took out a lot of his aggression towards other people on to me, mainly his father, his sister, and my mother. If I innocently did something that reminded him of the things they did, he would get very angry and lose control of himself.

I've also realized that my mother actually instigated some of that and provoked him to it because she wanted to see me punished. And a few times my dad's mother probably did the same.

My mother was also physically abusive, however she would deny her own participation in it and try to put all the blame on my father.

Recently my mother physically attacked me during an argument, and immediately denied it afterward. Then when confronted with the evidence that I was bleeding, she gave the excuse that I had it coming because I was "acting crazy." And her sister corroborated her and gave the excuse that my mother was trying to "help" me.

I have been really angry at my mother for a long time, because I wondered why she never protected me from my dad. I thought that I would have been better off if my mother had taken me away from him. However NOW I realize that would have been the worst thing that ever could have happened to me. I would have been far worse off with my mother.

I used to think my dad was the main abuser in the family, because what he did was concrete and physical, but now I see that the others were (and still are) also very psychologically abusive...and maybe in far worse ways than my dad ever was. I think they also found it very easy to use him as a scapegoat, because his actions were more obvious whereas their actions were more subtle and covert.

Sure, it’s not something I want to go into detail about, it happened when I did not do as told, so for just about anything and everything, both parents, Mom had the wooden spoon which evolved into wooden sweeping brush handle, and Dad was just a big man, no additional force required. That kind of stuff.

Two of my school teachers also used physical force with me, as an effective regular teaching method (note, not for behavior management in my case), I don’t know if I could ever forgive them. One would slap with the side of a wooden ruler on the bony parts of the body, and the other would slither up behind/or come charging from the back of the classroom and smack the back of the hair covered head. Both engaged in regular emotional abuse. They knew better, it was illegal, as neighbors I see them regularly in this location, which I hate, I view them as savage animals.

At home I stood up for myself finally aged 16, I fought back, it stopped and I made sure it never happened again. My father over compensated from that point til his death, he realized how wrong it was. My mother denies it happened the way I remember it, instead she recalls the intense emotionally out of control moments I had, that made her fear for her safety.

Yes, I suffered abuse. I don't know what their excuse was. Maybe I deserved it.

My father was abusive towards me (actually he still is, sometimes).
His excuse was that I apparently don't respect him enough, I am lazy and too stupid to figure out what I am supposed to do and I being yelled at was the only way to "put the values into my head".

Not like it ever worked.

NT people have been no less abused by parents than those with Autism or Asperger's. My parents love me and would do just about anything for me, and I can't understand it when other parents don't do the same for their kids.

Children with disabilities are more likely to be abused than normal kids according to some statistics. Abuse is a catch word so who knows what abuse they are talking about. Maybe misunderstandings between parents and children so the parent doesn't know their kid is different so they continue raising them like they are normal and continue punishing them for things they cannot help. There are lot of reasons why a special needs kid gets abused.

I wished I remembered the source.