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
  • find it very hard to forgive and forget.

    I've spent a lifetime at age 78 running away from myself (see my other profile at NAS83898) . I had an older brother 9 years my senior who remained a confirmed bachelor owing to his fear of women (a mum complex) and left my parents home in NYC to resettle 3000 miles away in California.  One upmanship put me here in the UK, but I married twice over. My parents had their own issues and should never have had children. We weren't abused as children. It was just a hysterical household with a father who took a back seat owing to his own WW2 "battle fatigue" --- they use to call it.  I can forgive because they could not help their own dilemma, but I can't forget all my unhappy childhood years without parental guidance while "dragging" myself up on the friendless streets of Brooklyn.

     

Reply
  • find it very hard to forgive and forget.

    I've spent a lifetime at age 78 running away from myself (see my other profile at NAS83898) . I had an older brother 9 years my senior who remained a confirmed bachelor owing to his fear of women (a mum complex) and left my parents home in NYC to resettle 3000 miles away in California.  One upmanship put me here in the UK, but I married twice over. My parents had their own issues and should never have had children. We weren't abused as children. It was just a hysterical household with a father who took a back seat owing to his own WW2 "battle fatigue" --- they use to call it.  I can forgive because they could not help their own dilemma, but I can't forget all my unhappy childhood years without parental guidance while "dragging" myself up on the friendless streets of Brooklyn.

     

Children
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