Did your parents/teachers try to punish you for not being...

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For not being "normal"? Like, maybe for stimming or having meltdowns? Why do they do that?

Yeah, I get in trouble a LOT due to that, yelled at and scolded and such. Then they wonder why I wanna be in my room all day. =P
Also, I think why they do it is due to reactionary impluses. Deviation from the norm is perceived as scary to them, fear, the origin of reaction. They may also do it to try and coerce us into accepting the status quo, which is anti-neurodivergent by nature.

My parents never TRIED to punish me, they DID punish me for things outside my control. (as did teachers and even other students when I was in elementary school)

I mean sort of. I get snapped at and yelled at sometimes and kind of ignored when I don't respond to certain things they way they expect. I'm not breaking rules or being mean but they interpret some of the stuff I do as rude or "talking back" or being a smart ass.

I would say they "punish" me by treating me negatively and also I used to get punished by having my toys taken from me or my books or coloring pens. Mostly for "talking back" until my mom learned more about autism and talked to my teachers about it. Then it she kinda learned what I meant and I don't get in trouble when she realizes the way I said things and what I said didn't have some secret meaning that was a jab.

My resource room teacher would come down really hard on me every time I had the type of meltdown that I cried. She'd tell me that I couldn't go back to my next class until I stopped crying. My mum came down hard on me as well. I hated myself and I hated my emotions and I hated that I was the only person in my class or my family who had those emotions and I was self-medicating with coffee each morning until very recently out of fear of those emotions showing, especially in front of the older of my two friends who's in her early 70s.

What am I going to self-medicate with now? I know. Work! I can self-medicate by working on my hobbies and doing lots of house work.

Back in high school, I had a case manager who was an autism specialist who did not like me. The main reason was that I was very outspoken. However, she wasn't a very nice person to begin with who lacked empathy.

Examples:
1. If I would start laughing, she would send me to sit in the quiet room
2. She criticized me for being absent from school and missing classes when I had the flu.
3. One time, our life skills group made breakfast in one of the cooking classes. When we sat down, she walked around asking us which juice that she wanted. When I tried to tell her, she decided to nag at me about how I should eat fruit and how I should try one of them on my plate that was very expensive. After that, she walked off and refused to serve me. I was extremely upset too.

Yes. Until very recently that was the "treatment" for people with developmental disorders: just punish them for acting like they have a developmental disorder until you can't see the disorder anymore. I remember teachers grabbing me by the shoulders and shouting "look me in the eyes" until I did. One time I got banned from using mechanical pencils because I would fidget with them and that obviously meant I wasn't listening to the lesson (sarcasm). Any time I got dysregulated it would be treated as intentional misbehavior, and for a while I just assumed I was a bad person for having emotions. It's only recently that people have started to see developmental disorders as differences to be accommodated rather than a problem to be fixed.

I was in trouble in school a lot. I don’t even remember why. Usually for moving when I was supposed to be still, or talking out of turn. Things like that.

Punishment is supposed to change behavior.
It often does not involve empathy.
Part of the challenge of being a teacher is so many kids to try to manage at once.

No.
It's the opposite even.

They knew that punishing me, forcing me to do things, or humiliating me will aggravate me further which makes things worse for everyone.

As a child I'm too hostile.
My anxiety then manifests in an aggressively violent manner -- When I'm stressed or triggered, I do not fawn or freeze.
Whenever I'm provoked for 'any reason', I straight up fight and will fight back consequences be damned.

But I'm not someone who needs academic support and behavioral management.

Teachers and parents know better that I do not start any trouble or disrupt any class unless provoked.
They knew I can learn and participate independently provided that there are no bullies to drive me into dysregulation -- and that they're not bullies themselves.

So they tend to butter me up instead.
"Reasoning" with me with assurances or "goading" my pride by challenging me works with me than any 'fear' or 'threat'.

Lenient enough to let me sleep several hours a day in class. To a point they won't bother me since calling me meant answering whatever's being asked.
Can afford to keep up with the lessons 'despite' that, and they all see that I'm not a slow writer and learner.

I stand out, but not in a particularly disruptive way.

The only times I've been actively disruptive was when I got mental health issues that made me sensory intolerant -- either yelling or walking out.
The issue did not last for few years for me -- that behavior faded because the issue faded.


But they still fail to address the problem because they really don't know what to do with me.
No one so far knows how to actually stimulate me to learn.


So my school life is more like...
The complete opposite treatment, really.
Mixed levels of enabling. Not that I 'abuse' the leniency.

And they're the ones who's walking in eggshells -- not the other way around. Even in high school. Even in college maybe.

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I spent enough time during my teenage years being yelled at for seemingly everything under the sun. Which is why I believe, even at age 44 now I always 2nd guess a lot, because of the fear doing something wrong. Nothing I ever did was "right" and I was always the bad guy, even now this seems to happen at times.

Got yelled at for- Not making eye contact, not being good at sports(which I was forced into), not making an effort to make friends, hiding in my room all the time playing video games, meltdowns, having no filter in what I said, not understanding schoolwork, Stimming, and I could go on.

Not to mention in JR high school nearly having to take a daily beating at the hands of a few bullies. If I could get by with just a couple of minor skirmishes it was a good day. My parents couldn't seem to get why I was always moody and cranky, not to mention having an " Attitude" because of all The BS everyone put me through.

Parents -

My mother was ashamed of me. She used to tell me not to stim because I'd look "ret*d". Her friend told her I didn't make eye contact so she started bugging me about that too. She wanted me to be fun and party with her extroverted family when they came to visit, even when I was a child. It all culminated with her saying that I was "as useless as tits on a bull" to a group of her lady friends, in front of me.



School -

I don't really remember the teachers being bad but the kids were. The kids called me "stunned" and "spacey". One time I wanted to try out for a part in the school play and a teacher told me not to audition because they needed someone really pretty. The other negatives from teachers were mostly about my ADHD-types of symptoms like late work or being disorganized. I'm sure there was ASD stuff but I wasn't aware of it, or can't remember.



Actual punishments? No. I was raised by wolves and they barely knew I was alive.

I used to get in a lot of trouble with my teachers, then get into trouble with my parents.

Because:

• I would not only correct the teachers when they were wrong, but prove why they were wrong in class.

• I would turn in math assignments with all correct answers, but fail the assignments because I didn't show my work.

• I would turn in book reports with proper footnotes and formatting, (near-) perfect grammar, punctuation, and spelling, and turned in before the deadlines, but fail the assignments because the books I chose to report on were twice my grade level (at least) or at college level (at most) and the teachers assumed that I had someone else write them.

• Ditto for essays, research papers, term papers, et cetera.

Yeah . . . back then, I was a real-life "Young Sheldon", but with less support from teachers and family.

My emotional outbursts never got me in trouble. I don't know why, I think my teachers (and even bosses, later on!) just let them slide.

What I *did* get a talking to was about my eating. I was sick and headachey a lot back in high school marching band. My band director assumed it was because on trips I wouldn't eat the food provided to us. Thankfully this talking to only happened once. But it did happen and I remember it as plain as day. He handed me one of the burgers that they were serving that day and told me that I needed to eat it. But I physically couldn't, because the texture of burger meat doesn't agree with my gag reflex. Fortunately he didn't make me eat it in front of him. I just stood there all distraught. I didn't have the language of "sensory issues" to defend myself with. I had never heard of that before. Oh well, it only happened once, as I said.

I was punished by my mom and my maternal grandmother for doing things like stimming, toe walking, and such. While I wasn't dx'd as a kid, I doubt it would have mattered. I'm old enough that when I was young, you either acted the way the adults around you thought you should, or you paid for it. I did not act in ways that I was 'supposed to'. I got yelled at and smacked now and then for that sort of stuff. They didn't care about the whys. They only cared that I wasn't what they expected me to be.

I wasn't punished in school. I got good grades and went to a gifted and talented place and flew under the radar there. They had a lot of social workers there and most of the kids in my class also had 'quirks', so it was largely tolerated by staff. So long as we weren't throwing chairs or acting up, that is. Get good grades and don't act a fool, no one cared if you rocked or whatever. I liked that school.

Well, my teachers would punish me for the results of my not being "normal," when I ended up not doing the work. But they didn't see me as abnormal, they saw me as intentionally lazy and they thought I was simply refusing to pay attention. In those days the pupil was always wrong when there was a problem, and they didn't look beyond their simplistic, self-serving model of reality.

No doubt my mother punished me for some kinds of behaviour that was awkward to her and caused my ASD traits, but I can't offhand recall any specific instances. And there was more going on with her than simple unawareness of ASD. She was unusually harsh, negative and hostile. So it's hard to disentangle the two causes of her frequent hostility towards me. Dad almost certainly had ASD traits himself, and he "got" me much better. He did sometimes get very annoyed at me, e.g. when I showed him up by bluntly and loudly saying "Pooh! What a horrible pong of scent!" when we were in a shop. But he didn't punish me for that. He just angrily told me, "That lady had that scent on, and you really showed me up." Even though I was unrepentant, he didn't do more than rebuke me.

They never technically punished me for my special interests or asocial behavior, but they did lecture me a lot and basically tried to make me into something I wasn't.