What is the best thing your parents could have done for you?

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Just curious. I have a 7 year old Aspie daughter and wanted to hear from others with AS what would have helped them the most as a kid (and later on as an adult).

Sara

for my mother to have believed me, or maybe believe in me when I told her I loved her. I never held my face right when I talked about my emotions so she always thought I was lying or trying to "pull the wool over her eyes." (It took me until I was in my thirties before I understood what that meant, I had no idea)
I guess I was a pretty weird kid for my mother, definitely something out of her experience in life. She never understood that I wasn't doing things to provoke her when I got 'stuck' singing a chorus of a song over and over and over again, or when I stared fascinated at something shiny or spinning and she felt I rudely and deliberately ' ignoring her' when she was speaking to me. I continually told her that I was sorry for when I was a toddler and screamed and held my ears when she warbled and yodeled the songs and lullabies of my childhood with no sense of pitch or voice modulation. ( I have near perfect pitch and can easily sing most anything unerringly on pitch) She couldn't help herself, but she could never forgive me for that, even though I was a little child.

My mother never knew I was autistic,she died in 1998. Frankly I don't think she would accept the proof of my current psychologist nor my therapist that I am, either. Just didn't happen in her world.

So just believe her when she gives you those moments when she expresses her love of you. Just close your eyes and don't look at body language or facial expressions. Just hear her words and feel her closeness and smile. . .
and know you are loved. . .
Merle

It would have helped if there had been an understanding that my lack of connection or aloofness didn't mean I really was an adult in a child's body, that I needed love and care as much as any other, even though I didn't know how to reach out or ask in any way for what I needed.

Oh sinsboldy, there are tears in my eyes~


snobordnwifey, one thing every parent of an ASD kid should know is that if your kid is interested in something, let her pursue it. She will not stop thinking about it even if you take it away. A special interest is like the love of your life, it's like the creamiest cheesecake, it's the best thing in the world.

To make an effort to get me an education more related to my field of interests.

I know people with AS are stereotyped as "experts" or whatnot in their field of interest, but to learn what I'm interested in I need contact with a very experienced individual who can direct me and answers my questions. Books DO NOT cut it. I've tried them and I always end up with problems that the book simply cannot address. I've tried getting help from the knowledgable people over forums or IRC channels and they have been useless.

Yup, some kind of private teacher who knows most everything I need to know to get through all barriers. I needed that as a child, and unfortunately I still need that today! College didn't cut it. Those teachers sucked!

I was such a stubborn child and I never got swimming lessons. It's strange that I hate it when my mum put pressure on me but pressure on the importance of learning how to swim would have been good.
That seems small but I now have a fear of water and I had to hide it from people all through my child and teen years.

I also think she should have kept me in high school. She was always protecting me from the outside world.

My mum never really forced me to do things, apart from the time I was 10 and she wanted me to be more involved in church. But if I didn't want to learn to swim I didn't have to. I was always free to make a choice, but I was still protected from the outside world. I remember being in my late teens and my mum wouldn't let me take a train to Sydney. Sure, I was nervous about going myself but now it's like riding a bike (although I can't ride a bike...but we'll just ignore that for now).

Girls are effected differently by AS than boys are

Having AS doesn't mean they don't care and they don't give a s**t if they hurt some one's feelings. Those are just jerks. Aspies can do that yes but they are just jerks when they do it

I wish my mom would stop assuming every time an aspie does care, it's all about them, not the person acting like they are incapable of caring for people. I hope she still doesn't think that

I wish my mom knew then I couldn't help not being my age. She used to get mad at me and say I was being a big two year old or acting like a three year old. I had no idea how to act my age, I was just being myself

Mom would sometimes force me to wear clothes I didn't like, she forced jean shorts on me when I was eight and told me I'd get used to them and stretch them out. They felt uncomfortable. I hated how they felt around my skin and it felt it was digging in me and I always took them off when she wouldn't be around. I would be in my panties and shirt. Then she stopped.

She also didn't like how I played with younger kids because she wanted me to play with kids my own age and then she stopped getting upset about it

She used to get mad at me about my obsessions. At first she didn't have a problem with it but when I was eight, she took away Home Alone because I was talking about it, watching it too much and she got tired of it and the kids in my class were tired of it so she took it away, she did that with Jurassic Park and 101 Dalmatians she couldn't do a thing about because it was in theaters. Instead she didn't like how I was reading the movie novel over and over. So she took that away too. She took away pictures of the movie I printed from the internet and threw them away. She hated how I kept looking it up online. When the movie did come out, she took the movie away from me and kept it hidden and limited it to how often I could watch it. Then she stopped by October 1997. So taking away my obsessions didn't really work because they were in my head. I found ways. There's the merchandise, the books, the toys, internet, now these days, there's youtube and all. The kid can still get to the movie. But because I was follow the rule freak, I didn't try sneaking Home Alone or Jurassic Park unless dad said we could watch it or unless the whole family decided to watch Jurassic Park which was only one time.

I hated when my mom would come in my room every morning to get me up for school and she hug me and kiss me and I hated it. I'd push her away but she didn't seem to pick up on that body language. Sometimes I would hurt her, unintentionally of couse.

I used to come home from school and my parents would hug me and I would squirm to get away from them. They couldn't understand I didn't want to be hugged. But then they would ask me what my problem is and I would say I didn't want to be hugged.

And of course I wish my parents had tubes put in my ears during my ear infections so I wouldn't have lost my hearing. I think it would have made a huge difference. But now that doesn't matter because it's in the past and they were eventually put in and I could hear again


But overall my mom did pretty good raising me.

Nobody's perfect. My parents aren't perfect. But they've always been supporive to me. I hate it when I hear stories of parents longing for the "cure", or like with Spokane Girl, where they try to take away the things they feel are making them not normal. Can't parents just accept their child for who he/she is?

I'm still in High School. We'll see how I turn out.

I wish my mom would have taken more time to listen without judgement or minimization. I was a very sensitive child but didn't know how to express in words what I was feeling so it all came out in tears. When my mom would minimize my feelings it made everything worse.

I'm 31 and I am just starting to be able to tell people what I am feeling. I have other disabilities that make it difficult for me to even talk or write about the thoughts in my head. It takes a very patient person who knows what questions to ask for me to be able to get the thoughts out. Thankfully I have a WONDERFUL therapist who can do that for me.

Also I would look up information about sensory processing disorder and see if that fits your daughter also. SPD is common in people on the autistic spectrum. If your daughter is hyper or hypo-sensitive to various stimuli an occupational therapist can help her deal with that stuff. That would remove barriers and help her function at a higher level.

I can tell you are a very good mom. Keep up the good work and remember what works for other people's children may not work for your daughter.

It would have hepled me, if my mum wasn't so picky about my hair and my clothes. She should have let me look like a boy, if that was what I wanted, or else she should have kept her comments to herself. I was almost a Mod, until I was hit in the head with a baseball. I think that I had a concussion in the part of my brain that controls a person's personality and I became all strange and I was a hippie, for a while. One day I was drawing Union Jacks, and the day after the incident, I was drawing flowers and peace-signs. I'm sure that my mum was wishing that she would have backed off about my boyish hair and clothes, when she saw me wearing disquises.

I totally emphasise with the Cockney.

My mum wants me to be a normal, heterosexual girl. She doesn't want me to cut my hair to look like Magnus Scheving's, or wear jackets and waistcoats day in, day out. She denies the fact that I'm bisexual, even though I've identified as LGBT since I was 11.

She's only now begun to accept my special interest in Lazytown, as she considers it for younger kids.

_________________
I'm a writer, not a fighter and my pen is always loaded.

Magnús Scheving is my Icelandic rose

Reading these responses, I definitely see the connection to my childhood! I am very fortunate that my parents supported my special interests, for the most part. I bet it was pretty expensive sometimes, considering that I could be totally done with an interest altogether right after they had signed me up for lessons or bought me a bunch of books or supplies! They were gracious about this.

On the other hand, my biggest conflict with my NT mother was (and remains to this day) the way that she often cannot see my motivations for doing something. She generally projects her own motivations, were she to do what I do, and treats me accordingly. She is very often wrong (could it be that her ToM is faulty?) I guess my biggest issue in life is when I feel I'm being treated unfairly and this is the result of others' lack of imagination to see how someone else could see the world differently, still strive to be a good person, and be at peace with their actions. I think my NT husband has been trained to know why I do things, however.

My mother should have told me I was autistic. When she found out, Asperger's was new and she was an OT working with profoundly autistic children, so she thought that I could not possibly be autistic because all autistic children were non-verbal. She was trying to keep me from being labeled with autism, but I ended up labeled as a lazy, immature brat instead. I'm still trying to scrape the sticky label residue off my forehead.

The best thing my parents could have done is have worn a condom