What could have your parents done to make it all better?

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Jacoby
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22 Aug 2009, 11:37 am

Rainbow-Squirrel wrote:
Not putting me in situations (playing soccer, summer vacations with other kids and other tries to "make me more social") where I was completely lost.


On the contrary, my parents never made me do anything and it bothers me a lot now. I had 2 younger brothers close in age so I did have some socialization outside of school but I was always an outsider to a degree. I wish they would of pushed me into sports or music or learning a different language. Something I could carry with me now. They did put me in summer programs(because they had to work) and I think I did pretty well in them so I think there was a chance I could of done it. If it didn't work out they could of tried something else.



GreenPele
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22 Aug 2009, 1:50 pm

You sound like a Mom who truely cares, so you probably would never do the stuff my Mom has done, but never try to cause dramatic situations and drag your son through them. My whole childhood there was always something bad going on, like my Mom bringing an old friend who was a violent meth addict into her house saying she was going to "help him", and having him terrorize her kids by always shouting and breaking stuff around us.

As an Aspie I perfered things to be peaceful and predictable, and my Mom made my entire life chaotic and unpredictable by bringing chaos into the house around her kids and forcing us to believe it was OK for her to do that. I think that's part of the reason I was always so depressed as a kid, because things could never be happy and quiet like I wanted.

So if you ever have extreme problems in your life like thaty, please don't try to drag your Aspie son into it if he doesn't have to be in it. I know that if my Mom actually cared enough not to get her children involved in her drama I might have had a better childhood. =)


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Katie_WPG
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23 Aug 2009, 4:45 pm

One thing that I can remember about my childhood quite clearly is that my parents never fought any battles for me, not even when I was very young. I think that this was a good idea. They would give me advice occasionally, but they knew that getting involved would only make me a bigger target for teasing.

I don't think that what you did was very wrong, just don't get into the habit of doing it too often. Teach your son accountability for his actions, and arm him with defenses against people who try and bully him.

I see so many parents of children with AS who insist on "fighting for them" all the time, whether it's for special ed services, or acceptance among peers. And when they describe their children, they seem much more naive and helpless than the people with AS that I know who didn't have their parents holding their hand at that age.

As for your initial question, the answer is "nothing". There is nothing that parents can do that can erase all of the problems that children with AS have, without it coming to bite them in the ass in adulthood. Inevitably, elementary and middle school will suck for someone with AS. High school will improve as the NT children mature (provided you don't shuffle him into a "special program" that isolates him from the NTs), and stop worrying so much about social heirarchies.



pat2rome
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24 Aug 2009, 7:52 am

What helped me? Ironically, the same thing that attracted bullies to me: my small size (I hit 100 pounds the summer after my freshman year of high school). I would take the bullying for a while, giving them fair warning, then they would take it a little too far and I would basically beat the crap out of them until someone pulled me off (then I would stop). They never expected that, and I rarely had to do it to someone more than once.


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Tory_canuck
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24 Aug 2009, 10:32 am

Katie_WPG wrote:
One thing that I can remember about my childhood quite clearly is that my parents never fought any battles for me, not even when I was very young. I think that this was a good idea. They would give me advice occasionally, but they knew that getting involved would only make me a bigger target for teasing.

I don't think that what you did was very wrong, just don't get into the habit of doing it too often. Teach your son accountability for his actions, and arm him with defenses against people who try and bully him.

I see so many parents of children with AS who insist on "fighting for them" all the time, whether it's for special ed services, or acceptance among peers. And when they describe their children, they seem much more naive and helpless than the people with AS that I know who didn't have their parents holding their hand at that age.

As for your initial question, the answer is "nothing". There is nothing that parents can do that can erase all of the problems that children with AS have, without it coming to bite them in the ass in adulthood. Inevitably, elementary and middle school will suck for someone with AS. High school will improve as the NT children mature (provided you don't shuffle him into a "special program" that isolates him from the NTs), and stop worrying so much about social heirarchies.



For me, the bullying got worse in HS,


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SingInSilence
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28 Aug 2009, 11:10 pm

Don't critize any of the "weird" things he does. My parents have discouraged all the things in me that I now suspect are AS, so now I'm normal on the outside, bursting with AS symptoms on the inside, and completely messed up from internalizing it all.


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Hikikomori
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29 Aug 2009, 12:59 am

Wish mine had given me Martial Arts classes from young age.
Not just to know how to defend, but it really seems to give confidence.



visnofskygirl
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29 Aug 2009, 4:05 am

Nobody bully me except my MOM...I swear,she is a major bully :(


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Halvorson
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31 Aug 2009, 4:10 pm

When I got diagnosed with AS I initially felt relieved, but afterward I didn't like mentioning it to my parents. In fact, I think the only conversation I ever had on the subject was with my mom when she first told me I had the condition. I was embarrassed about it. I think this was a mistake in retrospect. I never really put any pressure on my parents to learn anything more about AS than the psychologist first told them. As far as I can tell, they never bought any books or made any smaller effort to educate themselves. This is problematic, as AS has many less noticeable symptoms besides just social impairment and narrow interests. For example, my parents put strong pressure on me to enroll in some kind of sport (probably to improve my social skills), even though it's been known for quite a while that aspies tend to be poorly coordinated and clumsy. Didn't work out well. The best thing you could do would be to buy a book on autism or AS and learn the basics.