Is your family accepting of your special interests?

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I make beads, necklaces, bags, and such out of garbage, like chip bags, coffee lids, etc. But my family thinks I am bring in trash all the time and they think I am going to grow up to be a bag lady.

Does your family accept your special interests?

I like pressure vessels and pvc piping, I've made hundreds of little contraptions, after a little experiment which involved me wondering how a paint grenade worked and building my own(y'know, the trigger mechanisms are often greatly overcomplicated on these things) needless to say the living room got a new paint job and the duct tape and tools are locked away. My parents are convinced I'm going to become some sort of mad engineer.

I have a tendency to hoard things like jewelry, fabric and all things made of glass (which I come across at second-hand stores, flea markets and garage sales)... I also dumpster-dive. The things I find are usually incorporated into my artwork, so I'm not likely to stop anytime soon. My family wouldn't be impressed if they knew, but I live in a different city... so, what they don't know won't hurt them :P
As long as you aren't up to your elbows in nick-knacks, and you're not living in unsanitary circumstances, does it matter what they think? Your quirk is hardly a destructive/dangerous one, what's wrong with indulging a little? Tell them it's all a part of the creative process :D

Last edited by liv_via on 18 Dec 2011, 9:34 pm, edited 1 time in total.

My family is very accepting and supportive of my interests, which include anime, Tim Burton/Johnny Depp movies and My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic. They think it's neat that I know so many facts about each one and that I have collections of merchandise from each one. I'm happy to have a family that doesn't look down on my interests.

*brohoof* Good to see another brony posting.

Haha love this one =p


And the original question depends on what one of my interests...
One of my interests is fixing things, so my family gives me all the things they want fixed! Another interest is in working out how things work, meaning most of the things don't come back in one piece....

Then theirs my interest in computers meaning my family/friends often comes to me for help! Which also usually results in me taking over what they were doing completely and sometimes commenting on peoples intelligence... (It's not that I'm mean, just that I'm very passionate about my work with computers and that to me it is very easy...)

my dad thinks im down right obsessive... I like to stare at pictures of friends for hours.. and then out of the blue i will start drwing them off teh top of my head.
He thinks theres something mentally wrong with me because my interests are not normal for someone my age..
I cant even begin to explain to him about AS, even though mum n I say hes the Autistic one... -_-

Pretty much, yes. There's a brother who bullied me all the time when we were kids, and now he subtily bullies me about them. I never talk to him anway and have practically disowned him so he dosen't matter. Both my parents are probably undiagnosed Asperger's, but they grew up in the fifties when conformity was expected. My mom claims she was never against my obsessions, she just clams she would have gone insane if she had to hear about meerkats for the umteenth time. She probably had good intentions, but telling me she needed a break from hearing about meerkats or X all the time made me feel as if my feelings did not matter. I could never understand why everyone was allowed to obsess over animae and Harry Potter or some stupid boy band, but I wasn't allowed to be obsessed with my obsessions.

Eventualy she and my dad gave up trying to get me to talk about "other things" or to "widen my horizons" and they too became meerkat experts. I was obsessed with Lion King was a little kid (it's even what kick started my meerkat obsession), but I was harassed about that one as well. By other kids and by stupid phycologsts and even other so called Lion King "fans" when I admitted I did not like the stageshow version of it. And I thought Sonic fanbrats were supposed to be obnoxious. Sonic is my newest obsession, and because of all the s**t I received for my other obsessions, I don't like to share this obsession with just anyone. Come to think of it, I don't like to dicuss meerkats with just anyone. But anyway, my family is VERY accepting of my special intrests NOW.

They cba listening to me talk about them too much. They don't want to know everything about Meso-American civilizations or whatever rockstar or video game I like at the time.

Other than that, they leave me to it.

Recently, I shared with my mother my special interest in serial killers. I told her many stories of many serial killers while she cooked dinner one evening. She was horrified and kept telling me to shut up to no avail. Then, we ate dinner and picked up my father at the airport. On the drive home from the airport, my father told my mother and I many stories of many murderers, including serial killers and cannibals, and my mother was horrified and kept telling him to shut up to no avail.

There are very few people who even know about my special interest(s), period. I'm a very private person. I do, what i do.

TheSunAlsoRises

It's kinda like this.

My mom gets tremendously bored to the point of actually falling asleep when I get to talking about astrophysics or pharmacology. My mom gets frustrated when I talk about different cultures, though, as she is not very open minded and doesn't find other people interesting at all. My dad will listen to me for awhile and then he'll go on about morse code and antennas for awhile, so it works out. My fiance at least pretends to listen for awhile, and then I pretend to listen to him talk about guitars and video games.
When I was a kid, my mom would tell me not to talk about my interests in public because then the other kids would think I was strange, and their parents would too. She still tells me not to talk to my fiance about my interests because he will apparently get bored and leave me. I have always had the support and encouragement of my dad, though, so I haven't been too bothered by my mom's opinions. I'm a lot like my dad when it comes to my interests and that has always made me feel proud, as opposed to feeling self conscious.

Yes, but sometimes they get bored when I talk about superheroes, video games, random science facts (mostly about physics and biology) and accountancy (my interests are surely varied).

Yes. I like technology, and they find my knowledge of trivia and my ability to research good.

I am frequently asked for help.

My family didn't always support my special interests, but they tolerate them now.