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

  •   Allistic parents: "Why can't you just be like other children?"

    Autistic children: "Because you and father / mother made me this way instead."

                                   "Because I am a pacifist!"

                                   "Because you're not like other parents."

                                   "Cloning was neither available nor affordable then I assume?"

                                   "Because evolution dictated otherwise."

                                   " . . . 


  • I always answered "I don't know", which seemed to enrage them more...

    As I grew bored (A euphemism for a six year child desperately trying to "be good" and trying anything that might work to stop the unpleaantness quickly) I experimented with trying to solicit the correct answer.

    I was told it was that I was "Selfish". Even though that didn't seemed to match how I felt inside, I tried giving that as an answer, next time the question was asked. At least it shortened the time of dread and got the violence over quicker...

    The correct answer, I now know, is to stop people attacking you by any means possible as quickly as possible.

    When you can achieve that, then you can go for style points and find the processes that also cause least harm to your attackers.

    You quickly find that some people just hate you for existing, and unless you can escape, it's you or them. I can usually find an escape or a good solution, but I also know that in some situations, I either need to trust in God and and let the situation unfold as it will, or use the force that always seems to come to hand in such situations and destroy my opponent any way I can.

    Life seems harder than It needs to be. Not because of bombs or guns or drugs or God.

    Human nature does the trick all on its own. Bah.   

  • I gradually understood that as Christians we are called to endure suffering as Christ Himself did - and I learned to “offer it up” as penance for my childhood sins of disobedience to parents God-given parental authority as deserved consequences of actions and that any resistance only adds greater sin to sin that has already been committed  

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  • I gradually understood that as Christians we are called to endure suffering as Christ Himself did - and I learned to “offer it up” as penance for my childhood sins of disobedience to parents God-given parental authority as deserved consequences of actions and that any resistance only adds greater sin to sin that has already been committed  

Children