My parents won't understand that I might be 'different'

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I told my parents that I seemed to have quite a few Aspie traits, and they said, "you'd have to have it mild," which I agree on, but it's still enough to cause problems. Then when I mentioned that AS is a form of autism, my parents said, "no you don't have autism; you just have low confidence and need to try harder!" But I try extremely hard! And my dad said, "we could all look at symptoms and think we have something when we don't, and you're just trying to make yourself believe you have it. You don't have Ashburgers (he said it like this) because you're too smart and you can talk to people. If you mention ASHBurgers again, I'll get very angry!" I have a very supportive father (sarcasm).
So now I'm feeling very very confused and sad. I'm sorry if I made you feel bored or annoyed, but you guys are the only people who might just understand me

No way have you bored or annoyed me.
My mother is the same.
"You think you have it worse than you do."
Me: I'm autistic
Her: Yeah whatever...

They don't experience your symptoms, so there's no way they understand. My mum tries to always relate with my symptoms, which angers me. I only like it when other people with ASD relate.
What age were you diagnosed? I think because I was diagnosed at 22 that my family thinks I'm really mild. But I was the lowest achiever in school, don't have the average self help skills for my age and I'm not independent. I told my mum that if I'm so mild than why do I have these problems.

Just want you to know you're not alone.

Oh and many smart people that can talk to people have Asperger's. What was a stupid excuse for your Dad to use.

Wow, my parents aren't the only ignorant ones!
I haven't been diagnosed yet (I'm worried about South Australia's stupid expensive medical system...grrr)

Do you have Medicare?
I got diagnosed by a psychologist and didn't have to pay as much because I'm on Medicare/healthcare, but now I have to get an official diagnosis from a psychiatrist that doesn't take Medicare.

Sometimes I wonder what parents think of their kids with Asperger's. Not the lovely parents on this forum, but the deniers.

my mom after i told her: 'don't be stupid, i think you are very intelligent.' well, yeah, that's often a part of it her only notion of autism is the low functioning one she got to know about from some film.

later i discovered that people try to convince you that you don't have it, because they think that they are helping you. it's a way to console you about it. like when you say, 'i think i have a tumor, my head is killing me', i would tell you, 'don't panic, 98% of head aches are not biologically based.' they don't realize that to know a name for all your eccentricities is actually a good thing for you.

They think that the label Aspergers is "wrong" and I'm fine as I am because there's nothing "wrong with me". They accept me for who I am, but hate others slapping a label on me and trying to control my life in a negative way. They love me but hate the label.

I agree: I don't believe there is anything wrong with me.
This is why I don't like the word syndrome, it implies that I'm malfunctioning in some way.

If I am indeed malfunctioning, I'd like it to be proved scientifically with a proper objective test.

Why does it have to hang on a subjective assessment?
Why not a rigorous physical test?

I honestly believed that AS people were pretending to have it because that's what I was told by my family. They said that the people with AS on TV didn't honestly look like they "had it". So I believed my family for years, even after my assessment came back positive. My family seemed nicer, more helpful and more understanding than the people that were labeling me, so I believed my family. When you live in a protective bubble for years, you believe stuff like that. I was in denial for years because I hated the idea of people having an excuse to put me down for no good reason.

My family have given me lots of Psychology books to read for me to try and prove that I'm not AS. I've told them that disproving the negative is impossible, particularly when it's not a scientifically provable diagnosis.

I wonder if these so called "triad of impairments" could in fact be a different communication style or "non-verbal dialect"?

Maybe some people just aren't as social as others: this doesn't make them monsters.
What if they can't help having a "flat affect"?
Perhaps some people have different ways of communicating that others don't appreciate?
Maybe it's just a kind of "social dyslexia" that comes at a price for having a mind that is highly attuned to detail in the physical environment. I think that these kind of difficulties are real, but trying to quantify them is hard.

It's funny, but the most adamant deniers I've come across seem to exhibit a lot of these "traits" themselves, are shy, have obsessive "hobbies" and interrupt others a lot convinced of their own views.

If you can't see something, how do you know it's supposed to be there?
Like the finer points of "folk psychology" if you think the world consists of physical objects, which in a way, it does!

I've done a lot of this reading and thinking on my own, none of the so called "help" I received even mentioned these issues. I was never told that I had different mind by these helpers: I was told that I was a failure because I "didn't socialise enough". I was never taught any coping strategies. I was just given low budget, "one size fits all" special ed help which wasn't really appropriate for my situation.

Mum is the same way with me. I only brought it up once about me, but I just got the 'you're just unique' response.

I pestered her for a while about getting my little brother tested, but now I'm laying off. He's been talking for a few months now about wanting to be an astronaut when he grows up, and even though he's only four, he's pretty sure. Looking at it from a parents point of view, if that's really what he chooses to do later on in life, then he'll be screwed with a DX. Maybe I'll just teach him my coping skills instead. He's like a mirror of me, all the same behaviours and everything, so it's quite possible the same mechanisms would work for him. And if he really is that much like me, then he really does already know what he wants to be when he grows up. Mum got our first computer when I was 4, nearly 5, and ever since all I've wanted to do was work with computers. Maybe be a writer, but still work with computers.

I don't think it would be right to take away his options later in life, since I know personally how much it hurts.

I don't let the disbelief of my parents bother me to much. Let them think what they want, they will no matter what you do. Just keep being you. That's all that really matters in the end.

After reading posts here, I find it pretty interesting that despite the fact that we are all 'aspies', we can have completely different outlooks on how everything is to us. We still view things differently than each other, in some respects, in spite of our commonality.

I guess its just a testament that we are all truly unique individuals.

hmm, yes, interesting how different our points of views can be for example i find all the posts here similar

Actually I know exactly what you mean. I'll try and figure out what I meant exactly.

Edit: Whatever, I can't remember why I typed that. Lost in a train of thought.

Maybe because we may all be aspies, but being an aspie is no more different than being black or white. It's just a difference, something that makes us not like the whole. If it wasn't Aspergers, we'd still all be different, just in a different way.

And yea, most everyone posting in this thread has had trouble getting people to believe the DX.

I suspect the reason so many of us have to deal with the issue of friends and family in denial is because those folks want to believe what's "wrong" with us can be "fixed". This could be due to misconception about ASD's being psychological in origin rather than neurological (our brains are just plain wired differently.)

Plus, there are a lot of stereotypes out there (such as Autism equating to helpless and stupid), and people just can't wrap their heads around an "Autism Spectrum" in the first place. AS for example is new to the list of diagnosible conditions, and a lot of people don't even know what it is.

But you are right. We have different points of view because we have experienced life in different ways, have been educated in different ways and have been influenced by different people. We also choose what we want to believe.
Still we have more in common than people that don't have an ASD.

As a parent that recognizes that my son may have Asperger's. I wish that I was more informed when he was younger. A parent should help rather than deny. Now my son is away at college and is having great difficulties. He will not believe me when I tell him to go get tested for Aspergers. So I have your problem in reverse. By the way I also do believe that I may also have Aspergers.

Not just friends and family, but people who want to help us.

In the early 90s AS was defined as Psychological and so people blamed me for not improving fast enough because something mysterious was "wrong" with me, not realising that I couldn't help being me and was trying my best. If you'd told them that it was a difference in brain wiring, they'd have disagreed and thought that was a crazy idea.

Because everyone was expected to be social at school, I was seen as a "failure". In the past I'm sure that people weren't pressurised to be social in this way and there were clearer behavioural expectations. Back then, according to my family, you either did the book work or misbehaved. There was no group-work as such back then: you couldn't "fail" for not being social enough. If anything, you were respected for not speaking out of turn and following the rules.

I've known about the autism spectrum for over 10 years now, but I was never told any real good information about it. People kept secrets from me and couldn't define it. In therapy, they never told me what the aim of the therapy was, which only made me more suspicious and paranoid. I like it if things can be explained to me clearly and scientifically: they made no attempt at a proper explanation at all. The only remotely useful information I've found has been on this site.

I was in denial for years because I was told I didn't "have" it by people who cared about me and they said I was fine as I was. You tend to believe the people you trust and genuinely want to help you and have a similar kind of thinking style to you.

I kept saying: "You don't understand." to people at school when I was younger because I was genuinely socially confused with crowds and people seemed to expect me to get the social stuff right away.

In my experience, no one really understands.

The only person who can really understand yourself is you.

You constantly describe that they accept you conditionally (only in the instance you agree you do not have AS), which is not actually accepting you for who you are, but rather requiring you to be someone they can accept.


If "they" happen to be human beings, then "they" are malfunctioning in some way.

Then spend the money and find someone willing to use fMRI to time how you process various audio stimulus. Check for anomalies matching those described in association with ASD.

Limited research into the most promising objective measures, expense of the most comprehensively researched apparent objective assessment, insufficient sample size of the other most promising objective assessment means, and lack of replication with either.

Hopefully in the future more objective assessment methods will be employed. The results from visual acuity research although based on a very small sample, is probably the most promising due to the ease and cheapness of assessment if it proves to be a reliable means of distinguishing people with ASDs from people without.

Why do your family think they could know this watching tv?
I have no idea why you would wonder this. The triad of impairments describes things beyond communication. Furthermore an obvious deficit is not just another style, it is deficient. I do not understand this need to sanitize discourse as though it changes reality. Not comprehending non-verbal communication and not being able to fluently express oneself using non-verbal language is not a different style of communication, anymore than being mute is a different dialect of verbal communication.

People with AS are not monsters. There is nothing in the DSM about monsterism in connection with AS. If some bigot thinks everyone with AS is a monster, they are wrong.

I think the problem to be honest is simple prejudice and bigotry. Dyslexia is a disorder, a syndrome a condition. You are happy to accept that you have the traits of AS if it is a personality, or a disorder like dyslexia, or anything but AS, because you are not a monster. In what way do you think AS is so different in kind to dyslexia that you can happily admit to the traits of AS, and do not mind if it is a disorder, so long as it is not AS?

You also do not mind being short sighted. So your aversion is not because AS is a disorder or disability, and not because of the actual traits of AS either. The problem appears to be "AS" in your mind is inherently negative, regardless what it actually means and what it actually is. That can only be described as simple-minded, prejudiced stereotyping.

Would this have been by people concerned with what AS really is, or people who just hear the label and follow their negative, prejudiced stereotypes from there? Which of these kinds of person are you in all this AmberEyes? The blind follower of other peoples' negative knee jerk responses, or someone open minded enough to realize that AS is no less a disorder than dyslexia and no more shameful or monsteresque either?