Being Treated like a Child

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There are so many "child like" people in teh world, that many just get stuck in a mode where they treat eveyrone like a child.

its quite pleasing to show them up.

Well, people don't treat me like a child anymore, but they don't treat me like a 41 year old woman, either. I'm short. I don't wear make-up. I don't do my hair up fancy or dress like a business woman. All my adult life people have assumed that my oldest daughter is really my sister, and that my husband is really my father.
I HAD TO SHOW ID when I tried to order a glass of wine at a restaurant on my 41st birthday!! !! ! Now that's not necessarily a BAD thing... I'm just hoping when I'm 61 people will still think I look 20 years younger than I really am!

I was forced to do to a job placement agency for peopple who are more disabled than I am. They believed in the concept of Job Coaches. They even asked me wether or not I would want one. I told the main boss that I like my Independence, though I wouldn't mind having someone drop in at least once a week. There was this one woman there who insisted that I should have her for a Job Coach. That didn't work out very well. She stood over me, babyssat me and suffocated me for the whole morning of the first Work Experience that I was on. After that, I made my views on Job Coaches very clear. That place even gave me a choice when I went for the Screening, but that woman presumed that I couldn't work independently. Maybe I dispalyed some wimpy Body Language in her pressence. All that has been over and done with for four years.

I am constantly treated like a child. i mean, noone mistakes me for a kid, but they treat me as though I am not adult or something. The problem has been particularly bad in the relationships with men....they are condescending and lecture me as though I am a wayward pre-teen. (ick!) and then wonder why they are no longer appealing to me?? heh...

Women tend to try to mother me, this is a mistake.

It is getting better though, due to the job I have now. At first there was a lot of bullying and belittling and treating me like a kid (I took FOREVER to learn things, so can't blame them entirely). But now I do my job really well, have been bitchy enough to prove that I DO have a spine, and they treat me with some respect. Now they simply shrug and say, "well, Rebekah's just a little weird." and leave it at that.

I think what it may be is that I am socially naive which comes across as child-like.

I'm 17, 5'5 (if I stretch and poof up my hair) and about 114 lbs, if I'm wearing heavy clothes I wear comfortable clothes (mostly overalls and big sweaters) and my glasses are always on crooked because my face is very small, but too large for childrens glasses, so they don't fit.

People think I'm twelve and treat me as such. It bugs me. I can't tolerate waistbands on pants most of the time. I hate makeup. So I look younger than I am. Why do people have to act like I'm stupid when I can talk and reason circles around them in two or more languages?

That's my opinion and whining.

Oh, I have a great example of this.

I had to go to the hospital for a minor physical problem, and as usual my mother was with me; I can't get to the place on my own, and it's useful to have someone else listening to the doctor when there's a chance I'm going to forget everything because of stress, or whatnot. The first time I went, the doctor spoke only to my mother while examining me ("Your daughter has this..."). When I had gotten dressed again and re-entered the room she was explaining stuff to my mother, who said she should explain to me. At which the doctor replied she'd repeat it for me. Afterwards my mother reported one of the assistants had looked disturbed at the doc's behavior to me, and it turned out there were several things she'd told to my mother but not to me. So I didn't look forward very much to going the second time.

Because I was concerned that I might not be able to speak if I was ignored like this again, I asked my mother to warn the assistant in advance (it was a different assistant). My mother can sometimes be very bold, almost rude, when she has to defend another person. She said the doctor should be told to speak to me, not her, otherwise I would feel ignored. Then while walking back to me, without facing the assistant she added to this, "She isn't backward!" So far so good. When this same assistant came to get us, I took my earplugs out of my ears and put them in the little box I have for them, so she had to wait a little. She took us to the examination room and then she began to act strangely. She said, "You can take a seat on the chair" (any sane person would say, "You can take a seat"; you don't normally explain to people to use a chair for that). Then: "The doctor will just [simply] come over here" (again, normally you say something like, "The doctor will be here in a moment", you don't say it like possibly, you have to go to Mars to meet the doctor, or she'll go to another room instead). She said this quite loudly, as if I were hard of hearing (I was quite the opposite, just having removed my earplugs which, no, did not look like hearing aids). I just sat there unresponding, half amused. Then the doctor came in and was very decent to me.

I think what happened was this. The previous time, the hospital staff had been informed of my autism, and now my mother said I was not backward. The association occurring to the assistant must have been, oh, she is mildly ret*d. It's like when in a theological discussion someone hotly declares, "I'm not an atheist", some people will automatically think he must then be a heretic. You're not quite that, but... And then of course she got this other weird association that people commonly make: that mildly ret*d people can't hear you very well, so you have to speak loudly and clearly (same thing with blind people, in the general subconscious mythology, they're really not blind but deaf). The earplugs probably added to this. The funny thing is, I could deal with it all right, because she acted exactly as I expected.

- But it isn't right; no, sir, it isn't.

I think what most of you are refering to is being corrected for your mistakes all the time. I get the same input from different people as well stating that this or that is wrong. Sometimes it is good to recieve these inputs. I take their advice as what it is, advice. Of course most of the time I don't even hear it because I am distracted by something else but it can be helpfull.