People making assumptions of your parents??

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One thing that seems to come with the territory of having Aspergers, is that ignorant "outsiders" with no prior knowledge of the condition will assume that your odd behaviour is the result of bad or negligent parenting. I've had this a few times, and it always seems to fall into one of three categories:

1) Your parents neglected you and let you do whatever you wanted;

2) Your parents were excessively harsh and abusive making you the way you are today (I even had a frikkin psychiatrist ask me in our second session if my parents beat me, as if a more genetic cause wasn't more likely!! this one is so absurd that it's not worth responding to; if anything, those kind of parents are the ones who believe that beating somebody with Aspergers will drive it out of them...duh...)

3) You had rich parents who spoiled you and never encouraged personal responsibility or instilled cause-and-effect thinking in you for your own life experience (I got this one more often than the other two...)

I'm from a middle-upper class family, and my parents were both in scientific professions...no surprise there. But they were not that negligent of me, compared to other parents, and they struggled to get to the root of my problems/differences by having me see half a dozen different child psychiatrists to no avail (this was the 1980s). Still, even at that time and up to more recent years, when some imbeciles told me that one of the three above assumptions must be true, I always discounted it as even being a possibility.

Looking at "the big picture": if anything, parents of a child on the spectrum would probably not want to portray assumptions 1-3 above, if they had any sense of dignity and not wishing to be judged by neighbours and society, so they would do everything possible to minimize those perceptions and get their kid the help they need.

I was expecting this thread to be about this.. but it isn't, so I'll add a 4th:

4) Your parents must be Doctors, Lawyers, Engineers, Bankers, Stock Brokers, Teachers, Professors or some other high status white collar professionals.

This is the assumption I've had from many people over the years, and for the longest time I could never make sense of why. It didn't make sense until I knew about Asperger's and my traits and that I tend to have a formal & technical vocabulary and thus must have had instilled in me by my parents. It was blatantly obvious that it's the vocabulary more than anything when I told one woman what my parents' professions are as I asked her why she asked and what made her think they must be Doctors or Lawyers when she responded and said that it's the way I talk, there's just something about it. Just for the record, my mom ran a daycare out of our family home & my father has been a drywaller for 40 years.

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No for supporting trump. Because doing so is deplorable.

Some people are just ignorant morons who think they're an expert on everything. They see you from a distance and decide to "bless" you with their great wisdom...about you...a person they don't even know. "From what I've seen, such-and-such must be true about you."

They haven't seen anything. It takes a long time of regular interaction with someone (including conversation) to get to know someone.

People who say stuff like what the OP is talking about are destroyers. Depending on who they say their stuff in front of, they may even need to be firmly put in their place. Bluntly.

Exactly how that can be done will vary from one situation to another, taking into account the individual. Unlike what they do.

Ah. Thank you very much for posting your perspective on this. It is one assumption people have made about my parents that is, unfortunately, quite true in my case. I like hearing stories about people who did have responsible parents. It makes me feel a little better, about people and the world, that not everyone's childhood was as a disaster. That good parents do exist. : )

People assume 1 & 3 all the time. When in fact, #2 is the truth. Sadly, the assumptions are what turned my parents from super strict to abusive.

I'd also like to add another. It's the one I get the most.

Your parents are wonderful people and saints for putting up w/ your lazy, ungrateful, spoiled self. That one makes me sick.

Someone presumed explanation #2 to my parents faces saying that's why I was so well behaved when I was 9. I told that person, "My mum only spanks me when I'm bad."

The second option was the case with my biofamily. Generations with both spectrum disorders and substance abuse combined with poverty can make things rather hellish at times. I don't think they made me Aspie, though they certainly didn't help things!

I've never been poked in the eye.

Clearly you need to dump more numbers into your "scary" stats. That might help.

I've never actually gotten #3 on that list, but in some ways in would apply to me. Even though my mom wasn't/isn't rich, she didn't actively teach me personal responsibility as I was growing up, and insisted on making decisions for me.....some of which in hindsight, turned out to be poor choices.