Question for those who felt worthless or suicidal as a child

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Do you think your parents yelling at you would have stopped you feeling suicidal?

There is a parent in the parents forum who thinks that yelling at her son to stop saying he's an idiot will keep him from having negative thoughts about himself. IMO thats one of the actions that will most guarantee he will always feel like an idiot and will end up commiting suicide.


So please comment on your related experiences to this parent. Even if you disagree with me. After all the goal should be in finding out whats best for the child so that he stops having such negative thoughts about himself

http://www.wrongplanet.net/postp1639213.html#1639213

My son often tells me he is dumb. I tell him no he isn't. Often he will repeat that he is dumb, even after i've pointed out he got a lvl 5 in SAT's in science (he is 11).

I know he has been called it a lot a school, which is why I think he believe's it.

So lately i've tried tickling him into 'I'm gorgeous.', to make a game of it.

Sometimes it works and if it doesn't then I stop after a short while and tell him he is gorgeous, intelligent and I love him.

What I would like to know, is this a good approach to try or do you have any suggestions?

Thanks

I have a son that if he isn't on his meds will talk about suicide and how useless he is, and he is only 8. I lay with him and tell him how much I love him, talk to him about how smart he is, point out things he's done that are really great, and just talk at him for as long as it takes.

In between times I compliment him, make sure I tell him I love him, have friends over in an environment where they are one on one, which he better at than in group settings. I've also enrolled him in camps where he doesn't know anybody, that way he can make new friends who have no preconceived ideas about him.

What causes this? He has AS, he may already be depressive, who knows? I keep him on his meds (although as noted, we'll miss one occasionally) and am supportive as possible. The meds are key. He's on Strattera initially for his ADD, but it helps anxiety too, which helps his socialization.

It's hard. No child at that age should think these thoughts. But yelling will NOT help. Encouragement, kindness, love and yes, even tickling helps. I try and create a strong bond with him so that at least he has me. It's tough on these kids. I have AS as well, so I do understand. I try and explain how I managed. I don't want to loose this child to depression or suicide, and I'll do whatever necessary to prevent it.

I'm the parent who was talking about this situation in another thread, and talking about how previously, all that I had done calmly had not worked to help my child see that negative talk wasn't a good thing for his self-esteem. When DevonB said "I'll do whatever necessary to prevent it," that absolutely reflects how I (and I'm sure most parents) feel. It's a real concern, and it wasn't necessarily that we felt that yelling on a consistent basis would help -- just that it seemed to help in this one instance where we were frustrated by everything else we had tried NOT helping.

As I said before your goal should not be to get him to stop saying negative things about himself - it should be to get him to stop thinking negative things about himself. The former will coincide with the latter.

if you are yelling at him you are only encouraging negative thoughts and making him afraid to share those negative thoughts. Its bad enough to have negative thoughts about yourself without having to be afraid to share them with the people who should be helping you overcome the fact that you feel so badly about yourself

I totally agree, Triangular Trees, that the ultimate goal is to get him to stop FEELING negatively about himself. We don't want him to feel negative about himself at all -- that's the very reason why we are concerned.

What is perplexing to a parent is why, when you spend so much time telling the child how great he is, how much he is loved, and how he is specifically good at certain things, he still comes out with overly-negative reactions to simple mistakes that anyone could make. Remember, this is summer, so he isn't getting negative comments from peers at school (I'm fairly sure that he doesn't get that anyway -- he has friends).

He is a mild-mannered person, and he carries himself fairly confidently. He is cheerful. Yes, I know that he knows he is somewhat different from his peers, and that may be enough for this negativity. It's unfortunate that all the kind words and positive reinforcement in the world can't counteract something like this. But we should just let him continue to say these things about himself? Doesn't that just reinforce the negative feelings, unnecessarily? Again, keep in mind, he hears constant positive reinforcement from his parents. We are not ogres that are yelling at him continuously.

It must be very difficult. But the fact that he is communicating his feelings, even if they are negative seems like a good thing. It's important for a child to have a place where he or she feels secure enough to express his feelings/thoughts even if they do seem negative, and I think that place is at home with people who love him.The trouble is that if he thinks you don't want him to talk about those feelings, he might just internalise them rather than express them, which might lead to depression (my guess is that he will still have the negative thoughts but he will learn that you don't want to hear them)

I've got two step-children (they're grown up now) but they aren't on the spectrum, so I have no experience of bringing up an AS child, but I think I would approach the situation by letting him talk negatively, getting it out into the open, then saying 'yes, but...have you thought about it this way' - and give him a positive alternative to think about. Maybe this is what you're already doing.

Good luck.

If you readily admit that yelling will not work on a consistent basis than why would you have even considered yelling at him?

Aspies thrive on consistency. It shakes them up, sometimes to the points of meltdowns, to experience anything that isn't consistent. Its just as difficult for aspie to not be punished for something they did wrong as it is for them to be punished for something they know wasn't wrong to do. You don't want to not punish your child for breaking a window anymore than you want to punish him for tying his shoes because, in the end, the results of your actions toward him will be the same and they won't be pleasant

reminds me of daria:

i dobt it, it was mostly my ownm internal issues. Drugs and finding my own meaning in life is what it took

They sound like a terrible parent. No wonder the kid feels worthless and suicidal.

In my case, I am competent at work, but incompetent at things others consider "easy." I hate terms such as "no-brainer," "piece of cake," etc., because "easy" is not easy for me. People hate it when I call myself stupid, but they need to realize I don't literally think of myself that way. By "stupid," I mean that I act stupid and have brain freezes. I really hate that about myself and want to change it, but don't know how to do so.