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The famous supportive "autism parents" being a myth to me - for mine are nothing like that

Alisha

I swear every Twitter and Tumblr ASD page keeps posting and posting about these lot. Cool if this is your parents. But what if it's not?

In fact I feel highly annoyed by so many mentions, how awesome and patient they are supposed to be etc. Well guess what, that's not my parents; I still have to convince my own Parents I have autism at all even after diagnosis!

If I haven't made friends with ASD, who knows how long I would've gone undiagnosed, because it would never cross my family's minds that this childish 20-year-old me might simply have Asperger's, and is not a selfish, despotic, stubborn, arrogant, lazy, narcissist many make me out to be :-( (Yes, all of these words I have been called by relatives!).

Another popular one is claiming that I'm just making yet another excuse, as in the past I always felt I was weird and tried to assign many various conditions to myself, such as Schizophrenia, Psychosis, etc. I was only trying to find out the truth about myself for all these years. Yet they believed all I always did is attempt to get out of doing things. It's really not.

Or of course I heard the classic most of you probably heard, “You're just depressed”. And “everyone has some traits of autism don't they?”. Ughhh sigh.

Even my Mum hasn't been helpful either and once asked me, “Why'd you always try to make yourself look weird when you really aren't?”. How am I not??

Luckily what She told during the phone interview for my diagnosis must have been sufficient, despite Her saying She doesn't remember much and that nothing struck her as unusual and that I was a “cheerful, happy child”. Yet from what I heard from the Diagnosis Team when they confirmed I have Asperger's that there was sufficient evidence of ASD traits in childhood, so perhaps what my Mum somehow saw as nothing odd, it was in reality, strongly suggesting She is simply in denial about Her child.

I mean I remember I could do some basic reading aged 4. I remember the first thing I ever wrote, which was (transliterated from Polish) “No dogz aloud” - the naive fool I was really thought that would defer the dog from coming in! (It didn't, by the way). By 5 my skill was polished up to perfection. I would engage in conversations with every bloody stranger, and when I cited that to Mum as evidence of abnormality, She dismissed it as "cute". O_o I also recall everyone remarked how smart I was, and when I was 6 She actually took me to this place which assessed if the child is fit to go to school early (this was still in Poland) and I actually 'passed' - but didn't want to go myself! And before being tested there were these 2 women, chatting about some nonsense I was totally uninterested in - and this rude child me straight up told them" 'Could you stop talking? I have a headache'. Oh man, if you only saw how horrified my Mum was!! Yet today, She doesn't even remember it, how!! Not mentioning I definitely must've copied that headache phrase from somewhere lol.

As for my Father, just check out the “But you don't have autism” anecdote from my previous posts >,<

So… Yeah… I guess I'm just my classic dismayed and bitter that my Parents are not people I could count on, and the Autism Parent memes just seem like lot of dull, pretentious propaganda setting goals and expectations I know my folks will never reach :-(

Parents

  • I think one of the biggest issue of mine here is that I don't really have that one person to rely on when it comes to ASD. I currently don't have a Best Friend - the only one I've had was years ago, when we were 7-10, then when I was taken to UK our contact slowly dwindled.

    My Mum just doesn't wanna accept reality. My Father is usually too drunk or high to notice anything. My Grandparents think I'm adorable but old-fashionism starts to kick in and one already keeps interrogating me about when I'm planning to go to uni and getting married (LOL, to whom??).

    Naturally, I'm not saying every other family is perfect, yet so many people seem to have at least that one special support nevertheless, and not having them myself… makes it so bloody hard.

    When it comes to ASD inheritance, I bet 100% my Great Grandma whom I've never met had it, that's my maternal Grandfather's Mother. My Mum at one point said her Father had always had this stubborn, rigid thing about him, and now that I've been around Grandparents for this holiday, I now see what She meant. I believe though my Mum and Grandpa ain't actually Aspies themselves though, just have some autistic traits. I'm the one who got the full load, for whatever reason; why - we'll never know most likely. Note though that my little Cousin, my Mum's sister's daughter, is also a high-functioning Aspie, so I guess it might be a skip-a-generation-or-two thing. Then again it was believed She was affected because She was a very premature baby. So no way to know unless us two are ever compared, but if that's to happen, it will take years and years till that's possible. My other Cousin and her older brother, is NT without a doubt by the way.

    I do admit I might be harsh on my Parents at times, but that's the way it goes. They've committed many dumb mistakes and acts along the way that I can't really forgive, let alone forget (I never forget anyway duh). And they certainly don't do nothing to educate themselves on the subject. My Mum only once googled something and stumbled across routines, which turned out unhelpful as I happen not be the kind of Aspie much weighed down by routine actually. Though I reserve my right to holding pens and cutlery my own way and no other (I don't care it's "inefficient", I find it comfortable!), and I whimper if there is something I don't like, so– not quite. Just it's not obvious “routine” can cover more than just stereotypical timetabled day plans…

    I've read how autism means "self", and it goes back to the whole "shut within own world" image, but the fact that folks on the higher end of the spectrum are more like one foot in the "real world" still (and that's how we might appear "normal") suggests the categorisation can't end this way. I'm very sensitive to certain accusations, and the one about being selfish is one of them in particular. I associate selfishness with being evil and any attempts to put me into that pile makes anxiety explode within me. And I consider myself as selfless because I think I'm rubbish and don't really matter, plus I often see my death as doing good to the world and not having any impact. I wouldn't mind dying for some great cause, though.

    The relationship narcissism and autism are supposed to have with one another reminds me that my old good-for-nothing psychologist tried to put me down under a range of personality disorders, histrionic and narcissistic (!) being the two I remember. Of course when I got my PROPER diagnosis, for Asperger's, they referred to that and they said themselves they've found none of that in me, and we all agreed I was yet another misdiagnosed girl on the spectrum…

    I just wish these bloody accounts would not keep bringing us down. Your fictional heroes yet somehow they never materialised for us >_< I think anything to do with babies, children and families depresses and/or annoys a lot of people, not just us on the spectrum. They trigger that “I'll never have that…” sensation, you know?

Reply

  • I think one of the biggest issue of mine here is that I don't really have that one person to rely on when it comes to ASD. I currently don't have a Best Friend - the only one I've had was years ago, when we were 7-10, then when I was taken to UK our contact slowly dwindled.

    My Mum just doesn't wanna accept reality. My Father is usually too drunk or high to notice anything. My Grandparents think I'm adorable but old-fashionism starts to kick in and one already keeps interrogating me about when I'm planning to go to uni and getting married (LOL, to whom??).

    Naturally, I'm not saying every other family is perfect, yet so many people seem to have at least that one special support nevertheless, and not having them myself… makes it so bloody hard.

    When it comes to ASD inheritance, I bet 100% my Great Grandma whom I've never met had it, that's my maternal Grandfather's Mother. My Mum at one point said her Father had always had this stubborn, rigid thing about him, and now that I've been around Grandparents for this holiday, I now see what She meant. I believe though my Mum and Grandpa ain't actually Aspies themselves though, just have some autistic traits. I'm the one who got the full load, for whatever reason; why - we'll never know most likely. Note though that my little Cousin, my Mum's sister's daughter, is also a high-functioning Aspie, so I guess it might be a skip-a-generation-or-two thing. Then again it was believed She was affected because She was a very premature baby. So no way to know unless us two are ever compared, but if that's to happen, it will take years and years till that's possible. My other Cousin and her older brother, is NT without a doubt by the way.

    I do admit I might be harsh on my Parents at times, but that's the way it goes. They've committed many dumb mistakes and acts along the way that I can't really forgive, let alone forget (I never forget anyway duh). And they certainly don't do nothing to educate themselves on the subject. My Mum only once googled something and stumbled across routines, which turned out unhelpful as I happen not be the kind of Aspie much weighed down by routine actually. Though I reserve my right to holding pens and cutlery my own way and no other (I don't care it's "inefficient", I find it comfortable!), and I whimper if there is something I don't like, so– not quite. Just it's not obvious “routine” can cover more than just stereotypical timetabled day plans…

    I've read how autism means "self", and it goes back to the whole "shut within own world" image, but the fact that folks on the higher end of the spectrum are more like one foot in the "real world" still (and that's how we might appear "normal") suggests the categorisation can't end this way. I'm very sensitive to certain accusations, and the one about being selfish is one of them in particular. I associate selfishness with being evil and any attempts to put me into that pile makes anxiety explode within me. And I consider myself as selfless because I think I'm rubbish and don't really matter, plus I often see my death as doing good to the world and not having any impact. I wouldn't mind dying for some great cause, though.

    The relationship narcissism and autism are supposed to have with one another reminds me that my old good-for-nothing psychologist tried to put me down under a range of personality disorders, histrionic and narcissistic (!) being the two I remember. Of course when I got my PROPER diagnosis, for Asperger's, they referred to that and they said themselves they've found none of that in me, and we all agreed I was yet another misdiagnosed girl on the spectrum…

    I just wish these bloody accounts would not keep bringing us down. Your fictional heroes yet somehow they never materialised for us >_< I think anything to do with babies, children and families depresses and/or annoys a lot of people, not just us on the spectrum. They trigger that “I'll never have that…” sensation, you know?

Children
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