Are Aspie Kids more Abused?

Post Reply New Topic

Hi,

As with most aspie's, my parents had no idea how to deal with my eccentricities. My mother being an undiagnosed aspie, she was, is, maladjusted and lacking any kind of parenting skills. She re-married a man with anger issues, who dealt with my problems by enforcing strict, rigid, violent punishments. Even with aspergers, someone learns to adjust and at least mimic seen behaviors quite quickly.

With a diagnosed Aspie daughter, I understand the frustrations and difficulties of parenting someone with a very high IQ, and an almost inversely low emotional quotient. My daughter's therapist, who specializes in children with Asperger's, has remarked that most of her clients' parents' have lost control and struck their kids. This is no where near what I experienced, but it has led me to wonder if it's more common among asperger's children to experience abuse, physical or emotional, at the hands of their caregivers.

Does anyone else have any insights, comments, or stories like this?

I would say that alot of what my teachers did to me in school was emotionally abusive. One incident that stands out the most, one I just told my parents about this year because it was so painful, so I'll go with that one to share.

In third grade I had just switched schools in the middle of the year. Back then we only had an ADHD diagnosis to go by and my teachers at the Catholic school I had started school were about at the end of their ropes with me. This was in the late 80's, so there were lots of ADHD kids running around, but I was a whole different ball game. So my parents decided to send me to public school, hoping I would get more help.

I started having meltdowns right and left after the move, and one day I flaked out after I was taken off the computer. (Which I guess is an AS red flag right there.) My teacher grabbed a tape recorder and taped the entire thing, letting it go on for about ten minutes before sending me out of class.

After we got in from recess that afternoon, she played the tape for the class. She kept saying to them "Doesn't she sound silly? Doesn't she sound weird?" And she encouraged them to laugh at me and haggle me. I wanted to die. Simple as that. I still have nightmares about that happening to me.

I remember getting spanked by my mother for the last time, when I was ten. Why? Because I've slammed my bedroom door, after she sent me to my room. I was crying and carrying on, hollering that I wanted to spank my mother. She walked in and said, "Go ahead! Spank me!" so I did.

That sounds like emotional abuse to me. The teacher should have been fired.

I suspect frustrated parents might be more prone to physical violence - I know mine never spared a whack. Parenting is hard work - I've seen what I assume to be NT parents lose it with what I also assume to be NT kids. It must be harder with us, as they haven't until recently had any sort of guidance or idea that we really weren't NT. Frustration often can lead to assault.

On the taking abuse. Well, my experience was that the world was a horrifically confusing place. People saying one thing when they meant another, seemingly random wrath for falling afoul of some unspoken custom or other, etc., etc., etc. ... when retribution rains down on you for things you didn't even know would bring it, you tend to maybe take more abuse than a normal kid might. You accept it, I mean. Because it's all so bizarre and makes so little sense that the quantity really doesn't flag it as "abuse"... if that makes sense. There's no markers that say "hey, they're really over the line here". Because none of it ever makes sense.

I don't think Aspie parents are at higher risk for abusing their children if they receive guidance from a qualified professional on what sort of goals they can expect their children to reasonably attain.
I am assuming that in your particular case, this did not happen.

According to what I was told when I worked in a group home was that a child that was challenging was at a higher risk of being abused by their parents...why, because the parents had issues themselves and had less patience dealing with challenging children regardless of diagnoses.

The responsibility lies with the abuser. I heard my parents discussing having another child because I was so easy. But when my brother finally came home months after he was born with the shunt and my parents were too ashamed to show him any afection, my mother went ballistic the first day home alone with us and my father ended up coming home in the middle of the day which he never did and that is why he took me for a walk after dinner and told me to handle my mother and not call him if she lost her temper with me and I explained to him why she would lose her temper but until then my issues with her were about her emotional insincerity and not physical abuse but he said I understood things better than my mother did and even if she were to smack you, you'd be able to handle it because you are so grown up. Aspies can just be really really dumb and terrible as parents despite their good intentions and sacrifices. In my opinion, all aspies need to be taken care of.

I believe that aspies/hfa kids are more likely to be abused by either NT or HFA/aspie parents "IF" they are NOT diagnosed. I see my cousin's nephew is constantly harrassed and punished by his parents, and I believe he is an aspie...I don't think they want to admit/acknowledge yet as he's not in school...I have a feeling once he's in school, he'll end up being diagnosed...

Sid needs to be taken care of.



Look at that face.

I was abused in MANY ways by several of the people meant to be caring for me as a child. I was hit when I acted up, neglected constantly, humiliated regularly and so on. Everyone just thought I was bad and/or hyper (frequent stimming) and annoying.

I also have an aspie daughter. Do I feel moved to strike her? No. Do I lose my patience? Hell yes. Sometimes I just look so forward to my husband coming home from work so I can take a nice long walk, lol When I can't, I tell her it's time to go to her room where she can cool down (and I can too), read a book, do something quiet. Often she is just overstimulated when she's acting up. She needs redirected and calmed, not yelled at or punished. Certainly not physically punished.

I think it helps that I know what I needed (and didn't!) as a child. While it may not always come easy to deal with an aspie child, I think I sort of have an inside edge having been there, just like NT parents of NT children. If that makes sense. In this house, we're ALL on the wrong planet

Do I think aspie kids are abused more? I would assume so. If their parents are violent anyhow, or prone to it, some of our behaviors could certainly become provoking. I think there are some weighty statistics that say kids with autism are abused more.

um...lets see...I have never really been physically abused by my parents, but I'd say that neither are exatctly NT...All abuse that occurred happened inadvertantly...They fought a whole lot when I was very young..and that took a big tole on me and my sister...When I was around 8 or 9, I had realsied that neither of my parents mentally were really grownups...There were so many dramas and fiascos and so many situations where we were endangered by drunken parents fighting and whatnot...
They were acutally very tolerant with us and accepted us the way that we were...so that sorta compensated for all the chaos....if that makes sense...

ummm....

I took alot of emotional abuse and sometimes physical abuse from teachers starting in pre-school and onwards....
Some teachers liked me because I was different...others abused and isolated me because of it.
Even though I was a total basket case by at least fourth grade (the first time around)...none of my developmental problems were seriously addressed...noone said anything about me other than that I was emotionally immature for my age...
i was simply placed back in third grade for the remainder of the year...where I was singled out for being different and walking on my toes...and inadvertantly breaking rules and all kinds of stuff...
It was very frustrating...I would come home from school crying all the time...I constantly looked up special schools in the yellow pages, because I thought I belonged in one....my parents were emaptheic, it seems...but it never happened...

to this day, my parents are very tolerant of me..and I don;t even think they are aware of how different I am from most people who are my age...a case of not seeing the forest for the trees, I guess...

Well, I didnt tell mine about my noise aversion until a few years ago. Before, I just sucked it up. She was pushing the metal step can against the kitchen cart so that it clanged every time she opened it and again when she closed it. She and my brother also have this half assed way of inching the groaning dishwasher door open or close. They don't open or close it in one motion so it is an exaggerated haunted house groan. She did it more after I told her and she made crashing noises when she wanted to wake me. Looking back, I think that the style in which she woke me up in the mornings (i.e. with anger) exacerbated my noise aversion and elevated it to aversion from simple noise hyperdetection. Anyway, she would also inconsiderate of our neighbors allow how metal storm door to slam. I told her all of this to make her more mindful and less of an obnoxious person. That had nothing to do with aspieness. Luckily I am now cured of noise aversion and I just don't give a s**t. All my life she has used noise to express her anger in the house and when I told her finally that it bothered me, she did not let up. That NYT article about aspieness came out years ago. She is still a b***h. I told her that her son's Fragile X came from her and she still pulls mind games with him and she is the one who ends up paying the price for her warping him. He's still "if you insist" about meals in the house.

I wouldn't think that disliking a hanging thread makes you so different from NTs. My mother is very vain and will not let her children touch her but especially will not let us touch her face and most importantly her perfect tidy hair. She is a narcissist. Aspies seem to blame themselves and if one of us had a touch aversion, we wouldn't tend to justify it and punish others for violating our terrain but an NT just might.

Look, I wouldn't have hurt you over your aversion even before I learned there was a name to what my father called our problem. I bet there are NT kids who have way more annoying incidents of stubbornness. It sounds to me that you hope that less ignorance about aspieness would have cured your abusive homelife. There is nothing my mother can claim to have been disrupted by due to my cloaked aspieness. And she still was a rough course.

i was abused physically&mentally when i was a kid by my stepdad. and for most of my schooling career.
please read this disclaimer, *this statement in no way shape or form is ment to seek attention, is a ploy to feel sorry for myself or to be a crybaby.

I think in some cases they may be linked. Being emotionally or physicly abused as a small child could explain a lot of the issues AS adults face, such as social awkwardness. This isn't saying all AS kids, but there has to be another reason the numbers are so high for people being diagnosed.

I was abused starting in my early teens, but I'm not even sure if I have asperger's.