Are they holding their children back?

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I chose to post this in the "general" section because I'm looking for the opinions of people who have gone through the process of becoming an adult with a spectrum disorder.

I went to a support group meeting for parents of AS children. My son is a toddler and somewhere on the spectrum, and I have AS, so I was mainly just going in order to start forming connections with the local autism community. Anyway...I was a little surprised to find that most of the parents children were actually only a few years younger than me (early to mid 20's). They were saying things like "our children are only going to be able to hold jobs if they are hired by people we know" (so they can't get fired?) and "I have the password to my 22 year old sons email account and I check his deleted messages to make sure he's not hiding anything from me" and "our children will only be successful in life if we can create a local support network for them" and "let's schedule fun events for these children to get together and socialize in a safe non-judgmental environment in" (play-dates?).

I felt uncomfortable sitting through this because I found it difficult to believe that these "children" (they're adults) were really being helped by any of this. I'm not sure if this is because I may lack 'theory of mind' and cannot see past my own experience in which my parents did not know about AS and encouraged independence (in an appropriate way) from a young age, which had very positive results (I'm married, own a home, went to college, etc.), if perhaps I cannot understand that their children are lower functioning than me (they really gave no indication of this being the case though, and to be honest, the male "children" sounded a lot like my husband who is also on the spectrum and very successful), or if I simply feel uncomfortable because they're making it clear that they're underestimating their children's abilities and enabling them to stay in their "comfort zone" instead of reaching their potential.

I'm asking because a lot of these parents started asking me questions about my experiences. I can see the hope in their eyes when they look at my life, and I really don't want to give them any bad advice. All I really have to go by are my own experiences at this point, and I'm not sure if I should necessarily be trying to encourage people to use them as a model.

Please share your thoughts with me! Thank you so much

People on the spectrum can be just as judgmental as people not on the spectrum.

That seems like a bit much....I have to wonder if this is really the comfort zone for these people, or rather something forced upon them. I know I would be even worse off if I couldn't even have a little privacy, I mean if my mom had my email password so I don't 'hide' anything or searched my room to make sure I am not hiding anything and essentially still treated me like a child I'd probably be more dysfunctional out of frusteration. Sounds like maybe some of them need to let go of their 'kids' and realize they are dealing with adults maybe they also need to take some courses in 'what rights an adult has' so they are aware they cannot control every aspect of an adults life even if it is their child.

These sound like they could be acknowledgements of discrimination that their 'children' might face, but from the context of the other quotes they seem close to the line of making unfair and limiting judgements.



This one is just creepy and patronizing.

I'm just going through the diagnostic process as an adult. I definitely have an LD and neuroquirkyness of some kind. I haven't been able to maintain stable employment. In my opinion it would have been helpful to understand my disability and limitations as a child and young adult. I almost killed myself getting my undergrad trying to manage everything in the way I thought a NT would be expected to. However, the more people told me that I had limitations, the more work I put into proving them wrong. For example, I took an essay based minor in addition to my honors specialization even though it wasn't listed as an approved module combination (there was no explicit rule against it either). I was eventually forced to drop the minor because I maxed out on the number of essay courses I was allowed to enroll in and ended up 15 pounds underweight.

I don't know if placing limits on myself because of the disability would have made that situation better or worse. I finished the degree. I wish I had more appropriate support for the sensory stuff going through it. I wish I had more acknowledgement of the difficulties I was overcoming from my family. I really wish that, when language issues were first identified in grade school,the teachers had realized that no amount of repetition and reinforcement of vocabulary words I'd known for years would magically allow me to hear the differences between voiced and unvoiced phonemes. However I think that if I'd been told that I flat out couldn't do something because of the disability it would only have made me push myself harder while feeling less supported and that would not have been healthy.

I could not process your whole posting, but this quotation holds truth for me.
I am 38 years old and I have for the first time in my life a sort of "employment" (about 20 hours a week, sometimes less) working from my pc at home.
And indeed, the people know that I am autistic and were looking for how they could employ me, and hold into account that I am autistic.
I cannot function in the "normal" job market at all, I cannot even make "contact" with it, I could not finish a study or education.
But I am glad, that these people employ me and see my strengths.