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.

There were three of us kids and he struggled with every aspect of parenting. My mother struggled with him and we struggled with it all. It’s a double whammy for kids like us, a difficult parent, and the often failing relationship of our parents.

All my life I’ve struggled with the repetitive hurt that my father causes me and the guilt I feel if I defend myself or try to get away from him. Guilt and suffering. I’m not going to defend the way I feel. I have a brother and nephew with the condition and friends who are mothers and wives dealing with it too – and I wish them the best, the very very best and I deeply emphasise with those that have the condition, there’s no doubt it can be hard to live with. Celebrate it if you have it, but remember, you must, like all of us, be aware of the effect you have on others, that is called empathy, and it’s crucial to successful human interactions. In this particular case, here on this website, it’s not all about you.

I just don’t understand why some people are posting here defending AS parents. If they didn’t grow up with our moms or dads, how on earth do they know what we went through, or are currently going through? People are just so odd! (Hey, but not as odd as our parents, right?)

As children, we were never good enough. Our self-esteem was so incredibly low that we would debase ourselves constantly. Dad would fly into rages in public places and we would sit there in stunned silence wondering what just happened. It was never his fault, it was always our fault or the fault whomever happened to get in his way. Many of his comments were inappropriate. He once asked my father-in-law if he got his coat from the Salvation Army Store. My father-in-law never spoke to him again.
We could never have a two-way conversation with him.
When I was in college, I went to him to tell him I got an “A” in my history class. He began immediately to talk about himself. All I wanted was for him to tell me he was proud of me. The rest of the time he rambled incessantly about his own experiences in high school and went off on tangents about himself. I never understood why he did that until recently.

Most recently, dad had major surgery. Up to that time, my mother who has Alzheimer’s Disease was living with him. He allowed her to sit on the porch by herself while he went to the store to get a newspaper. Of course, when he returned she was missing and the police were called and ultimately returned her. This did not only happen once, it happened five other times. He saw no need to keep her on her medication or to follow medical advice for her care.

When my dad had surgery and was hospitalized, my brother and I saw it as an opportunity to put my mom in a protected environment. Since we had Power of Attorney, we took over her care while dad was incapacitated. The problem was that when he returned home, he wanted to remove her from nursing care. Since then, we have had to play hardball with him. We now have a lawyer and are going to court to get guardianship of my mom. He has basically disowned us. We could not reason with him. He saw no need for anyone else to care for my mom. We could not believe he could not grasp the severity of her condition or acknowledge his past failures to care for her. It was as though he had tunnel vision; only seeing what he wanted and not being able to see what we were saying.

As it stands today, we are not on speaking terms. We have no animosity toward him because we now understand more fully what is happening. I hope that before he dies, we can somehow reconcile(he is 88 years old).