Why can’t you just be like the other children? Late diagnosed or self diagnosed adults, Can we forgive parents?

Hi, a really good question was asked earlier in the week about our earliest childhood memories. Most seemed to be how we had been taken to different events and were unable to join in. A thread that I noticed was that as late diagnosed or self diagnosed we seem unable to forgive parents for how we were treated. The usual, “ don’t show me up” or “why are you so awkward”?, the one I can still hear is, “your a strange child” these  are just a few of the instances that a lot of us endured. This was whilst we didn’t know why we couldn’t  identify with other children either. I find I just can’t forgive my remaining parent, my mother. I fully understand that no one had any knowledge of autism but I just find it very hard to forgive the verbal and sometimes physical punishments that were handed out. I actually keep contact now to a minimum. I don’t know if I’m being “out of order”  or making too much of this, I am still processing a lot of my childhood, a lot of these memories still haunt me and just find it very hard to forgive and forget.  Your thoughts on this would be appreciated.

Parents
  • Coming from a traditional Irish Catholic background in Rural Ireland in the 1970’s I can relate to this at age 52, which in many respects was an awkward era when the 1960’s was coming to Ireland and many conservatives still held onto the staunchly Irish Catholic traditions they had always held, especially around childhood corporal punishment and that “children should be seen and not heard” - being constantly told by other children that I was “not right in the head” and getting a good hard “clip across the ear” (for the slightest thing) while at the same time being told firmly to “cop yourself on” and “grow up” where even today people simply refuse to understand autism and regard it as “attention seeking” and “nonsense” for which my grandparents were huge advocates of corporal punishment to “correct” it - given my parents own childhood traumas, why did they not act in obedience to my grandparents and not marry as they were totally unsuitable (above all) for being parents, given also that my grandparents marriages were disapproved of, in clear violation of traditional Catholic Social Teaching - my parents were also considered too old to marry and have children, which was pointed out to them several times by my grandparents, the nuns (on my Mums side) and the local Parish Priest who refused to carry out the wedding 

Reply
  • Coming from a traditional Irish Catholic background in Rural Ireland in the 1970’s I can relate to this at age 52, which in many respects was an awkward era when the 1960’s was coming to Ireland and many conservatives still held onto the staunchly Irish Catholic traditions they had always held, especially around childhood corporal punishment and that “children should be seen and not heard” - being constantly told by other children that I was “not right in the head” and getting a good hard “clip across the ear” (for the slightest thing) while at the same time being told firmly to “cop yourself on” and “grow up” where even today people simply refuse to understand autism and regard it as “attention seeking” and “nonsense” for which my grandparents were huge advocates of corporal punishment to “correct” it - given my parents own childhood traumas, why did they not act in obedience to my grandparents and not marry as they were totally unsuitable (above all) for being parents, given also that my grandparents marriages were disapproved of, in clear violation of traditional Catholic Social Teaching - my parents were also considered too old to marry and have children, which was pointed out to them several times by my grandparents, the nuns (on my Mums side) and the local Parish Priest who refused to carry out the wedding 

Children
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