Short-takes on AS mothers
Dianna
I have been reading a lot about Asperger’s and I am convinced that my mother is a ‘Strong AS’ case, as it tends to explain her extreme eccentricities, and my HORRIBLE NIGHTMARE of a childhood. I love my mother and I have always sensed that she could not help it, but she neglected her children’s emotional and practical needs, and I was/am more like her parent.
My brother and I lived on the street from an early age, though our mother had an apartment, there was no reason to go home. My mother never had food in the house, never cooked meals, never did laundry. She was unpredictable, and I was afraid of her screaming at me. We were dirty hungry little kids and she didn’t miss us when we stayed at a friends house for weeks/months at a time. One of the saddest memories I recall is being 7 or 8, no food in the house, and a stack of unused expired food stamps sitting on top of the empty refrigerator.
I really thought my mother didn’t care if we lived or died. She was/is happiest when talking about her special interests, and they are more important to her than any of our immediate problems/needs. My mother was/is consumed with babbling about literature, poetry, quantum-physics, druidism. She has no interest in anything I have to say, and always changes the subject back to one of the forementioned topics! This is very embarrassing when having dinner with strangers. Although she was college educated, she worked as a dishwasher and barely paid the rent. She threw childish temper tantrums and blamed us, her children, for her problems(?).
Ann Marie
monologues, limited interests, no manners, no social graces, demanding
and bossy, 1 or no friends, repetition, hates “small talk”, failure to
realize they have any disorder, mumbles to self, bad language/tempers,
etc. I feel that I am an “expert” on AS, especially the genetic
component that families either don’t see or ignore. Life can be a
nightmare at times, especially when I know that I am the “NT” or
“normal” one and they make me feel I am crazy or “need help”.
Eve
My parents “home” had very little in it – no love, bizarre meals (usually just one ingredient, e.g. all eggs, all beans, all dairy, etc),
Socially, she is extremely pedantic and most new acquaintances excuse themselves after a few minutes.
My mother’s behavior had never fit any psychological profile that I had encountered but I recently met with a psychiatrist and a genetic counselor and they offered the Asperger diagnosis. have felt very let down in the past because others had so little understanding of the harm this type of terrible parenting can inflict. I have never met any woman who reminds me of my mother and I have never met anyone who has described experiencing the type of bad parenting that I received from my mother.
Rona
She didn’t seem to realise you talk differently to children than you do to adults, especially very young children. My friends couldn’t get away fast enough. Once she caught you it was hard to get away from her monologues about filmstar’s cvs, the plots of romantic movies, told in a meandering monotone.
Leanne
. we were never allowed to have visitors to the house and she isolated
herself from her own family so we had little to do with our many
aunts/uncles and cousins
. she was strict,authoritarian, cold, bullying, prone to temper
tantrums, anger outbursts and not only in the home but outside as well
. she always fell out with the neighbours and we had to move about every
two years
. I never remember being kissed or cuddled or shown any affection and
was not allowed to make my won decisions about anything including food
or clothes or friends
. the house was kept obsessively tidy
. at some point she was diagnosed with schizophrenia and given electric
shock therapy and once tried to commit suicide
. my parents marriage eventually broke down and she just threw us out at
16 and 18 without money or any home to go to. The family scattered
. my brother has continued to try and support her periodically but she
is so destrctive to be around he eventually leaves
. she has continued the pattern of falling out with people and
neighbours getting more and more isolated
I think AS has robbed both me and my brother of a proper childhood, made
it difficult for us to have good relationships, stopped has having any
sort of supportive family so left us to fend for ourselves, subjected us
to constant trauma anxiety and a shifting lifestyle, left us with huge
guilt why we could not love or understand our mother, and generally made
life very difficult. Both of us feel utter relief at this discovery and
things are starting to make sense. My dad died reletively early and I
believe the constant stress, my mother pestered him for twenty years
after their divorce, contributed.
I have suffered with a chronic illness brought on I believe by having a
childhood and a marriage with AS and not understanding or having any
help or support.
I hope to understand more about how this has affected me as a person,
and I am desperate to find out more. I would love to talk to others who
have been in a similar situation too. I am hoping to finally make some
sense of my life
6 comments so far
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I’m sorry that your mothers weren’t as affectionate and motherly as you would have liked them to be, but I’m sure they all were trying to do the best they could. Maybe it would help if you understood what they were thinking at the time. Here is an article written by a mother with AS: http://www.ratbag.demon.co.uk/anna/autism/Alienparenting.html. Not all parents with autism are “bad”, and it’s very destructive to these parents, myself being one of them, to perpetuate this stereotype. I hope you can all understand where your parents were coming from, forgive them, and get on with your lives.
This is a very common and understandable response from people with AS. The reality is that our group is dedicated to understanding and forgiving our parents and getting on with our lives. This is in our charter. However, most of us were too damaged by our experiences to get on with our lives. The prerequisite for healing was sharing our stories, finding out that we had not been alone, and that others had experienced what we had experienced. I personally now have a wonderful relationship with my mother as I have come to understand the pressures she was under. I also want to make clear that we are not “perpetuating stereotypes”. ASpar was the first place to start talking about this issue. We did not create stereotypes, ie caricatures drawn from other people’s experiences. We shared our real life stories, the raw material of our lives.
Amanda,
We are trying to get on with our lives, and you may or may not be aware of this, but the problem with having Asperger parents is they can’t take care of themselves. So, not only did we have to raise ourselves, we are surrogate parents to our parents. The other day, my mother couldn’t even figure out when she was sent new insurance information that the only thing that had changed was the insurer’s name. She had to have my sister tell her, then still wasn’t convinced, and so my sister had to call a representative of the insurer’s, put her on speaker phone, and have that woman tell her that yes, my sister was correct, only the name had changed. It is a huge challenge for us to find our way in life (because our parents gave so little direction, and to have to constantly go back and do the same for our parents.
This is a forum for us. Those who were not happy having Asperger parents. We are not perpetrating stereotypes, we are expounding on our reality.
Valerie
having been raised by an asperger’s mother i recommend that others in the same situation give up on reconciling or having an actual relationship with the parent. that sounds harsh, but since it not going to change they are banging their heads against the wall. it is a relief to look at the person as damaged and, if in their company, being as gracious as possible. it is also a relief to read these accounts, since as a child you are really isolated and don’t understand what is happening. i could write a book including all the weird anecdotes regarding my mother, and yes, my dad is in almost complete denial. they are now in their 80’s and her increasing dementia is actually improving her personality. she isn’t as hostile, and doesn’t have the energy to put into being difficult and rude. it people with this condition take offense by being complained about and chidren raised by them have nightmarish childhoods, how’s about asperger’s sufferers not have children? oh, i said a non-pc thing! at any rate it wouldn’t help a lot since many people are unaware there is anything wrong with them.
I stumbled upon this site while looking for information on parenting with asperger’s syndrome. honestly, it’s a little tough to take but it’s been interesting. I suspect that my father has asperger’s syndrome. I was always told how much like him I was even though we weren’t around each other much. He had obsessive interests, became disproportionately upset at his things being moved, repeated words and was rigid about definitions. He drank too much in order to grease the social wheels; took up football in high school and college to try and fit in but it didn’t work. no matter how well he played he was always out of the group. When he and my mother divorced he moved away to find work and it was “out of sight, out of mind” where i was concerned. He was never diagnosed with anything but depression but i belive that had more to do knowledge and research available at the time.
I have two sons now. One is 5 and autistic and the other is 18mos old and is quite advanced and unusual so not “typical” but he does not appear to be autistic. I struggle with sensory sensitivities and rigid thinking. I don’t really know how to “play” and i often have trouble keeping track of things. It takes me a while to figure out what the baby wants sometimes. The thing is, I am a much better parent than my father ever was and I figured out how to do this without the benefit of early diagnosis or therapies. I knew that i had trouble with relationships and so my logical mind decided that if i had a baby to care for i should just hold him as much as possible and try different things when he cried until it stopped. The kids seemed happy with this arrangement. I dislike social functions but I have been to more of my 5yo’s parent participation days at school than any of the other mothers. I simply rehearse a few basic conversations before i show up and do my best. I make sure to schedule quiet times in my day before the children come home so that I am not too flustered by their noise. I make a point of keeping mental lists of what they like and their reactions to things. Why do I do all of this? Because I am autistic person, not an autistic asshole. My father never thought to use his fascinating, brilliant mind to create a system for interacting with others. Why, because he was an asshole. Either that or some very bad things happened to him which damaged him much more than asperger’s ever could have.
Yes, there are challenges I face because of his neglect. I fear that people will leave me. I believed that i was disposable and that I wasn’t interesting enough to earn my father’s love. I learned to think of myself as an annoyance. There are other things I have learned. I’ve learned compassion for my father. I feel sad that he has lost his chance at a relationship with me. Perhaps my children will grow up having particular complaints about my parenting. They seem happy now though, and my family members and confidants tell me that I am doing well. I am learning much from reading here and I wonder how many people have learned to hate a thing – a way of being- rather than feel anger towards a person who was cruel or inept. That isn’t to say there are no problems that come with asperger’s. i’ll be first to admit that there are many. I just don’t believe that they cannot be worked with, around, and through. I assure you that we are fully human and have a full range of emotions and free will. My father is a flawed human and failed parent. I believe that I can be something other than what he was.
I understand how you feel. I self-diagnosed myself with Asperger’s a year ago. All my life I’ve been “strange”; I’ve had to really work hard at interpreting social cues, to not talk about the same thing over and over again, to look people in the eyes, and not to fidget and seem distracted when I’m having a conversation. And sometimes, to my dismay, I sometimes blurt out inappropriate comments. Thus, sometimes I tend to rub people the wrong way. And yes, social situations are hell for me; like you, I often rehearse what to say and to think before I say something. I really don’t like spontaneous changes and I like to know before hand when something out of the ordinary comes up.
I often find myself obsessing with certain topics and I find it difficult to multi-task.
Ten years ago, my sister read a book about Asperger’s and mentioned that I might have it; I was in denial, of course. Now, at age 30, I am proud of who I am and not ashamed of myself because I’m not neurotypical. I still struggle with things other people take for granted.
I am married and the mother of a 17-month old toddler. My husband always seemed to accept my eccentricities without question; he doesn’t have Asperger’s but he’s on the geeky side himself, he’s really into science and computers.
My daughter, although very young, doesn’t appear to show any Asperger’s at all. Too bad there’s hardly any literature out there at all about Aspie parents raising NT children.