Mum of a 19 year old girl who has autism

I'm sorry to hear that... it actually reminds me of a similar incident when I was 9. Mum said she might be late from work and might not make it in time to pick me up from a rehearsal after school- she said that if she was not there at the end of it, I should get a ride home with one of my friends. I got out of the rehearsal and Mum was not there. I waited for a bit and all of my closer friends started leaving ... so eventually I asked a classmates Mum if she could take me home as I was worried I would end up all alone outside the school. I got home but Mum wasn't there... Turns out the rehearsal had ended 10 min or so early and I hadn't realised. So mum had gone to the school and noone was there, whilst I was alone at home. She was furious at me about that... then went on to get me a mobile phone so that something like it could not happen again... 

But in many other ways my mum supported me in independence- she dared me and my friends to take bus to a nearby restaurant during the lunch break at school when I was 11 (as the school food was awful)- we were all super nervous but did it- turns out that one of the other mum's was apparently following us secretly ... my Mum felt that was ridiculous when she found out... 

It's really hard to tell what she would have reacted to if I had wanted to go out when I was older... I didn't want to or ever do. I had no friends at secondary school and all I did was go to the stables with mum after school. I usually begged her to stay as I didn't feel able to cope on my own and I just felt so reassured by her presence. 

I'm really sorry your parents didn't support you in becoming independent... 

When I was 9 id been saving up my money for some fimo. My mother promised she’d take me to the shop to buy it on this particular day. An hour or two after lunch when she was knee deep in housework it became clear she was going to break that promise, inspite of my continued nagging. So I said if you won’t take me now I’ll just walk into town and buy it. And she didn’t belive I would so she waved me off.

so I walked for about an hour into town bought my fimo and walked back to find my mum freaking out, she’d called the police, dad threatened to ground me for ever etc. around that age I just stoped wanting to be dragged around by my parents. Didn’t see why I had to accompany them on errands that had nothing to do with me. I’d run off from time to time if taken out on long errands or start fights with other kids when dragged to adult parties I didn’t want to go to. My parents fought against every bit of independence I tried to get.

by the time I was 16 when my mum didn’t come to pick me up at college, also an hours walk from home, I just sat their for nearly an hour and a half repeatedly ringing her mobile from a phone booth.

In terms of support or supported housing I unfortunately don't know anything about the system here. However I was just thinking, would university be an option eventually? At my university the environment was quite sheltered and it was easy to access support. 

That's reassuring to know that she is safe. Maybe this is her way of getting more independence. I think you are doing a good job and hopefully she knows she can always come to you for support if necessary. Some time apart might help a lot too. 

I've noticed that you mentioned a few times that you don't know if "it is autism or ...". I don't really think you can separate the autism from your daughter as a person- in my view being autistic is an integral part of an autistic person's identity- I do find myself thinking sometimes too 'oh is this because I am autistic or something else ...?'  but the more I have thought about this I just don't think it can be untangled- there have even been a few posts about this over the past week. So it might be helpful to not worry too much about 'is it autism or not'. 

I hope you figure things out! 

That's very interesting. I wonder if I pushed for independence earlier on... My mum always said that when I was very young (about 6 or 7) I was very independent... but then later on less so. I thought for some time that my mum was overprotective and maybe she was a little, but on the other hand I am not sure I would have coped without her support. I even remember my Mum trying to bribe me to be more independent when growing up, like saying she would give me 2 euro if I went and ordered myself a drink and a glass of wine for her etc. She says she would have loved me to be more independent but that after watching me try and fail on my own she would step in. I guess we will never know what could have been but I know that she did her best and we are super close again now. And I feel really bad that I am causing her so much worry. My mum is autistic too most likely so I think that does help a lot though as we understand each other extremely well. It even caused friction in my family growing up as my stepfather would often feel left out and even jealous of how close mum and I were... 

You know if you have a noisy dog that tends to chase people barking at them and then you chain it up to stop it doing that. Well eventually it stops itself before the collar jerks on its neck. Then if you take the collar off it’ll run to about the length of the chain then stop.

autistic children often don’t think of themselves as children. Especially when they get to around 10. So if they try to take more independence at that age and you stop them … well you’re treating them like children when they don’t see themselves that way. So why would they expect more freedom at 14? In their minds they probably haven’t changed all that much.

I’m speculating but maybe your daughter tested the limits of her independence before you were ready, and then didn’t challenge it again until late in her teens, way later than she probably should have.

that’s the thing with autistic children. If you don’t let them have independence when they’ve confidence to ask for it, even if you think they’re not ready, they don’t push for it again until it’s far to late. I’m speaking from experience as someone who was an autistic kid.

It could be a case of that , however I'm pretty relaxed with her ,so she's never had to answer to me, she tended to be fairly violent with her siblings when she was younger so I had to prevent a few situations,like stand in the way but she'll say I hurt her, it was just purely I'd stand in between to protect her younger siblings,she's the same now but less physical and more verbal and scares the children from using certain areas of the house

I've always been quite happy for her to move out ,but just feel she needs some sort of support and no it's not offensive Its nice to get a different perspective,I'm awaiting an Adult ADHD assessment and I think she's struggles with that as I'm fairly hyper and can sometimes drift through conversations,that would make her angry ,it's just really hard to concentrate 

Thanks for the reply,it was very helpful,maybe it's her way of saying she needs to find herself and start living alone, luckily my other daughter found her location on an app so I know where she is,I just think it would be helpful for her to have some extra support and maybe some sort of relaxed supported housing, I think maybe she sees things that were bad ,which weren't but I do wonder if maybe it's not fully autism as there's been mention of possible BPD aswell,it's just they won't look into it until she's older which isn't helpful,I've just been taking her to counselling and GP but nothing seem to be working ,so maybe because she's struggling and stressed she's taking it on everyone close to her 

Although she's had extra support mainly for when she's been down and got stuck, she's always been encouraged to do as much "normal" things as she wanted to, she's been using the bus alone since 14 and a half as I always wanted her to be as independent as possible,I'm happy for her to move out but I just feel she needs some sort of support even if it's a very relaxed version of supported housing 

I imagine that if my mother had been sat here reading this when I was the age your daughter is, she would have been nodding her head and thinking, "I know how you feel, my daughter's just like that with me". To be fair, I didn't make things up, but I certainly didn't make her life easy, and this continued to be the case long after I had moved out and had a child of my own.

It is said that we often lash out at those who are closest to us, and it does seem that this is what your daughter is doing with you. As she's 19, it could well be that your daughter wants to spread her wings, and not feel like she's got to answer to Mum. I apologise if that came across as offensive, but I'm just thinking back to how I felt at that age.

Reading this post makes me sad. It also reminds me of my mum and I. We were extremely close all my life and she helped me a lot to manage growing up but around when I was 20, our relationship really suffered- I was struggling and my mum was trying to help but couldn’t because as you get older the problems become less easy to fix. I felt resentful and let down at times which I know was so unfair. Then I ended up inpatient eventually due to mental health issues and they realised I was extremely reliant on my mum for many things, texting and calling her multiple times a day to get advice for simple decisions or even just to connect. It was suggested this was not healthy (and in a way they were right, I did need to learn to stand more on my own feet and it wasn’t fair to burden mum so much) but in a way my mum got demonised. I started feeling resentful that she helped me so much growing up- the suggestion was she didn’t let me become independent. Was she overprotective? Etc. (My stepfather poured fuel into fire)  Before this I said some very mean things to her. After this whole thing, we didn’t talk for almost a year. I had to live at home for a few weeks but would barely be in same room, then I was off. It still makes me sad. I think partly that anger towards my mum helped me try to be more independent but I am now sure that mum was not overprotective when i was growing up- I didn’t know I was autistic at the time and I just needed a lot of support with day to day things and also in other ways. 
Over a year later we started talking again- it started with a letter from mum to me. Slowly slowly we grew closer again. I thought initially we would grow together again in a more adult relationship - not sure if that is the case but we are extremely close again. I feel really sad about all the things I said to her and the stress I caused her and the lost time- we have talked a lot about it. Am I more independent now? Not sure but at least we found together again (and i do think in some ways i have grown up a little) I hope it was appropriate to share this.

It sounds like you are in a difficult situation. And first of all I want to say, you are right to also protect yourself and I understand that you no longer want to accept this hurtful behaviour- being autistic is not an excuse. It’s very possible she is struggling at the moment and I suspect all this anger and hurtfulness directed at you could result in part from that. Not sure if this is case but sometimes it can be hard to become independent from parents and being angry at them is part of the process of leaving the nest. 

It’s very possible in her views her childhood (or parts of it was ´bad’. I can just talk from my own experience but eventhough I grew up with a loving mum and when an outsider would judge my childhood they would probably say it was a protected and good one, I have some very negative memories too- the years I did not fit in at school, school in general, being an outsider, no friends at secondary school etc- I think my mum didn’t see at the time how much I was struggling- so to her aspects of it might have felt much worse than what you could see. 

I understand that you are worried- do you know if she is safe? 
It’s very hard but try not to take her comments personally. Hopefully with time you will grow back together.

I am not sure if any of this was helpful and I’m sorry if I related it too much to my own experiences- I don’t know you or your daughter so it might not apply. I hope you will find a way forward

I can’t know what your relationship was like with your daughter growing up. But so many parents put such pressure on their autistic kids to be ‘normal.’ And they even tell themselves they’re doing it for their kids good. But it breaks them.

plus parents of autistic kids can be very overprotective and it can really screw up their kids too.

it’s like parents see their kids struggle in social situations so they try to keep them from them, to keep them getting hurt, taken advantage of. But really to give their kids the best chance of having a decent childhood they need to push them towards social situations.

I can’t know if that’s what it was like for you and your daughter though.