I’m so glad I finally found your site. I know you must hear this over and over, but the relief and sense of identification — and justification — that I got just from reading what others have said about being raised by an AS parent is indescribable. My father, before he retired, was a paleontologist.  He had a PhD in Paleontology, was a professor in his field and also a scientist for the armed forces.

What kinds of behaviours does your parent show that make you think they have AS?

I don’t know where to begin, but I can list a number of examples… He is quite egocentric, self-centered and most often lost in his own world. (Now that he is retired and we kids are out of the house, this is much easier for him to do.) Once as a child I had been badly injured and, since we lived in a rural area, needed to be driven to the hospital. The injury was so severe I was in real danger of bleeding to death. My mother was in the car with me, trying to put pressure on the wound. Meanwhile, we were all waiting on my father, who had been dressed but shirtless at the time I got hurt. I was sitting in the back seat of the car bleeding, and he was looking for a shirt to put on so he wouldn’t have to go to the hospital without one. Paradoxically, he felt very guilty about the injury later on, because he had unintentionally been part of the cause of it. He apologized profusely, over and over again, and even took me out for ice cream (a real rarity). No matter how much I tried to reassure him, it never seemed to penetrate — I never once blamed him, because I understood from the moment it happened that it was an accident. I grasped this intuitively at seven years old, but he, in his mid-thirties at the time, just couldn’t get it, and he really beat himself up about it to the point that I wound up being the adult in the situation and comforting him. I think that since this was a concrete, physical wound, he was able to see it and understand it in a way he could never see any of the other damage he caused, a lot of it more severe — in an emotional and psychological way. He is “mindblind.” He has no real “theory of mind;” He has no idea how his behavior affects or did affect other people, especially children. I’m not sure he completely understands that children, or anyone else for that matter, are people, or what it really means for someone to be a person. I know he doesn’t understand the difference between children and adults, and he seems to have little to no understanding of the emotional needs of others or the correct responses to those needs. He often seems to see my mother as an extension of himself with no independent thought or feeling of her own. That, however, has changed a bit in recent years as my mother has begun to assert just a bit more independence. He exhibits distinctive “weak central coherence” and “poor cognitive shifting,” and put together, they can create a real problem. His attention is mostly hyper-focused on one particular aspect of a situation, to the extent that he doesn’t realize what else is going on around him and cannot react quickly or appropriately to emergencies. However, I am rather proud of his intellectual achievements. His intense, prolonged concentration is legendary. When he was writing his dissertation, my mother tells me, he would write for 20-24 hours at a time without breaks to eat, sleep, or even go to the bathroom. He is exceptionally intelligent with an IQ well into the genius range, and he was a quite gifted scientist. We took many hikes, but they were more like forced marches. On trips, he had an absolute insistence on following a pre-planned route and stopping only at pre-planned destinations. He mapped every route and stop out in advance, and he could not make allowances for the kinds of things children may need on trips, such as unplanned bathroom stops. Everything had to be organized and follow the plan he had structured, or he would degenerate into a tantrum. We could not stop just because something along the way looked interesting, either — unless it was an intriguing paleontological phenomenon, that is. He carried tools for extracting fossils with him everywhere he went, just in case something caught his attention. He cannot read facial expressions very well. When I was a kid, he was totally unable to tell how I was feeling — again, though, he very rarely seemed to care what I was feeling, and he didn’t express much affection. There’s a sense in which I’m not sure he understood that I was feeling or thinking anything at all. He cannot differentiate socially between adults and children and thus has no idea what is appropriate and what is not, sexually or otherwise. He was often quite sexually inappropriate with me, and with my sister as well. Actually, he has no idea what appropriate behavior is in general and frequently made embarrassing scenes in restaurants and other public places when I was growing up. He could not, as the article on your website pointed out, tell whether or not my behavior was intentional, and he made no allowances for children “being children,” since he had no idea what that meant. He expected adult behavior and complete rationality from us at all times, and we were much too young to provide it. Just about every day I spent with him in the house involved at least one violent interrogation over something I had done or failed to do. He would ask me, over and over again, why I had done whatever the offense was — like forgetting to do something he had told me to do when he’d told me to do it, or accidentally ruining a possession. Then he would rant, scream, throw things, and hit when he didn’t get rational answers that would satisfy him but were far beyond our ability to provide. Many times I wasn’t even certain what I had done to set him off, but he would mock me viciously if I asked what I had done. Clearly he thought I knew exactly what I had done and thought that I had done it, whatever it was, intentionally, just to upset him. I guess that goes back to the point about egocentricity. Sometimes there were no words exchanged at all and he would just suddenly punch or slap me from out of the clear blue and then walk away, leaving me completely confused about what had just happened and why. Along the same lines, he has always been unable to stand loud, chaotic environments for very long. He often just exploded when the noise or activity of childhood around him became too much for him. Seriously poor impulse control and a violent temper dominated him, and all of us. He has the usual obsessions, collections, etc.. He collects stamps, for example, but not in the “usual” way. Though he knows everything about stamps and knows what is good and what isn’t good collection material, he obsesses on certain particular stamps, often essentially worthless ones, and amasses them (i.e. one particular stamp) by the hundreds. He knows exactly how many he has of each one, where they are, how they’re arranged, etc.. He has had many other odd collections or obsessions like this over the years. If anyone touches anything of “his”, he becomes enraged. My mother is not allowed to clean his “room,” i.e. his “office” at home, at all. “Endless monologues”: He would lecture my mother for hours at a time on paleontology, and he would do it as if he were talking to a fellow paleontologist. He had no clue that she didn’t understand what he was saying; she had to just humor him. We all had to be careful in doing so, however, because he would get horribly upset if anyone suggested they didn’t want to hear him talk. He would also get very upset if he asked a question about any of his obsessions, particularly fossils, that I couldn’t answer. Another of his obsessions at one time was reading the entire encyclopedia from A to Z (in alphabetical order, of course), which he did. We were often “held captive” by his lectures on any and everything. I discovered quickly not to ask him for help with my homework, because that would inevitably lead to a one-sided lecture that would usually last well over an hour, during which time I was not permitted to leave to finish my homework or go to bed. He tells the same stories over and over and over as if they were new each time and often forgetting more and more prominently with each retelling that we were present ourselves when the event took place. He has little ability to have a conversation. He cannot comprehend that a conversation is two-way, involving both parties. He talks, sometimes even asking questions, but he then doesn’t listen and interrupts the other person in the middle of a sentence. He is prone to imaginative paranoia. For example, he spent the night at a hotel room once with a colleague and was convinced that the blinking red light from the smoke detector was actually a camera watching him. He also sat me down when I was about nine and told me pointedly never to trust the government. He exhibits the physical symptoms of autism such as repetitive rhythmic movements and systematic muscle twitching. For example, he often rocks in his chair, he has a very strange, rhythmic walk that swings from side to side, he swings his head unceasingly from side to side when he “lectures,” he rubs his fingers together in the same repetitive pattern, he very embarrassingly (for the others in the room, at least) “plays with himself” (for lack of a better word) when he’s talking, and so on. He seems to be unaware he’s doing any of it. I could go on, but I think this is more than sufficient. I apologize for writing so much — it’s just such a relief!

How has the AS person affected you and your family?

Substantially. My NT mother has been the until-recently unrecognized caregiver for someone with special needs. My sister, also NT, has coped with our tumultuous childhood in her own way, and I cannot speak for her. I am in therapy. Now that I understand that he is AS, it puts together many of the pieces that made little sense before, and that helps. However, I still suffer from complex PTSD as a result of my childhood and essentially identify as someone who was emotionally, physically, and sexually abused. The difference now is that I understand how and why it happened to a greater degree. What do you hope will be the benefit to you of joining our support group? Hopefully I will get validation, coping strategies, and just a place to correspond with others who have been through it all too and understand. I will probably be pretty quiet at first, but after a bit I will get more comfortable. I would also, of course, like to help others if I can.

The mother is a technician and does a very good job. And never wants to take a day off from work which is probably best for the child. She does not have social skills. She has no friends. She repeats the same stories over and over again I think because she likes to hear and relive them. They are either about happy times in her life or great sorrows in her life. She is only 30 yrs old. She has no empathy for the child. She wants her to be perfectly dressed and behaved at all times but has no skills and does not know how to teach her things. She wants her to be like a pet or doll. I have never seen her actually play with the child. She also hoards things and keeps them in the child’s room and expects her not to play with them but is not able to discipline her enough to keep her from it. Of course the whole house is full of stuff. The mother is sometimes very violent to the child not intentionally just because she is an idiot and does not realize that she is hurting her.

I could go on and on about the mistreatment of the child as you know but what I need to know is how can I help the child?

I try to keep her at my house at least every other Saturday night but I am old and have to work everyday to support myself. The grandfather sees the problem but doesn’t know what to do about it. I have not mentioned that I think his daughter is Autistic but she shows all the symptoms. And he realizes she does not behave normally. I can’t even imagine how she treats the child when no one is around. The father is not much help because he is a good guy but a little weird also. I did get him on my side and get the mother to quit giving the child enemas at the drop of a hat when she was having trouble going to the bathroom because of a lack of good nutrition. The child was even threatened with enemas for  any little thing she did wrong. I pitched a good old fit about that and I think I took care of it. The child is very smart and she talks to me. Of course she is not potty trained. But maybe this summer she will decide to train herself.

Help me help the child. 
 

           In addition to my father’s aversion to social situations, he
exhibits external habits associated with autism. He is an interminable
pacer. It is extremely rare to see him at the dinner table or even seated
while watching television. While he paces, he rubs and claps his hands
together in front of his face while uttering low grunts. He is almost
completely unaware of this habit and will do this under the scrutinizing eye
of the general public. The intensity of his current mood seems to trigger
the frequency of his rubbing and clapping. Severe anger causes him to shout
and his rubbing and clapping transforms into rapidly flailing arms above his
head, not stopping until well after the shouting ceases.

His unusual obsessions stretch farther than pacing. He is a reclusive
encyclopedia of knowledge for World War II facts. He can watch the same
documentary on General Erwin Rommel’s battle strategies against British
occupied South Africa ad nauseam. Only on a few occasions would he share
some of his information. His infrequent war speeches were spotted with dry
coughs (no medical correlation) then he would trail off and pace in another
room.

             My father also has a habit that is uncharacteristic of
autistics. He seems to have somewhat of an imagination. He enjoys playing
with toys. He used to set up my younger brother’s figurines and have pretend
battles for hours at a time. While playing, he would often pause to clap and
rub his hands together. He would never play toys with us though. This was
one of the many activities he preferred to do alone.

            My mother never made excuses or attempted to “cover up” my
father’s eccentricities. She would apologize to us for not having a father
that was more “involved” in our lives. Divorce wasn’t an option because of
their financial situation so we were all forced to live in a tense
household. She knew my father had problems and pleaded with him to get help
or medication, but he refused. He stubbornly concluded that nothing was
wrong with him and he was always right.

I was always embarrassed to have friends and family visit us. Holiday
dinners consisted of everyone trying not to stare as my father inhaled his
food then ran off to the basement to pace and clap for the duration of the
day. In addition to this, my father also thought that demonstrating
infantile behavior was funny. Releasing bodily functions in front of others,
or especially strangers, was hysterical and also the pinnacle of my father’s
socialization. To contrast the examples my father would set, my mother
exhaustingly attempted to teach us that dad’s behavior is not normal and we
shouldn’t model after him.

I spent years researching publications on autistic parents and have hit
continual dead ends. Of my many e-mails to organizations, the Autism Help
Line sent me a link to the ASpar website which was a relief to find. I was
fully aware that high functioning autistics grow up and have families, but
couldn’t find any publications from people raised by them.

In becoming a full member of ASpar, I hope to find available resources from
people who have gone through this as well as offer my experiences to aid
others. My siblings and I have always felt different and isolated in having
an unconventional father and it would be supportive to hear other
experiences similar to ours. I feel strongly that there should be a
heightened awareness of autistics becoming parents so that acceptance and
understanding can reach those children who have the difficulty of being
raised by autism.

Currently, the foster care agency is trying to terminate his parental rights.  The basis is his inability to bond.  One issue that is going to come up is his poor social skills.  It is very difficult to understand what he is trying to communicate.  Also, his inability to understand how various things could affect his daughter worry me.  For example, he asked the court to move our foster daughter into another home because he changed his religion and wanted her to go to a foster family who had the same religion (no one specific, just any family who had the same religion so she would be going to complete strangers).  He and his family are happy with how our foster daughter is being raised by us and feels that she is in a good environment.  When he was asked how being moved from the family who has loved and raised her for the last 2 1/2 years would affect her, he had nothing to say.  He felt that she would adjust and that it wouldn’t be that big of a deal. 

I’m afraid that the judge may hear the testimony regarding his inability to communicate, his inability to show that he cares and his poor social skills and say, “so what.”  Our next court date is in Feb.  Do you or any of your members have anything to say in response to “so what?”  We love her so much and she deserves to be raised by someone who celebrates the wonderful little girl that she is.

I believe my father has AS while my mother has aspects of AS as does my older sister.

We “discovered” AS in the family as a result of all the behavioral problems my nephew was having in primary school, and after a great deal of confusion and testing found that he was diagnosed with AS. In observing my nephew’s traits, my younger sister and I realized that there was a lot of AS in the family.

My father is a retired professor of [science subject] and my mother is a retired professor of [social science subject]. My father, apropos of nothing, will launch into long discourses at the dinner table about the history of his science, detailing scientists’ names and dates, which the rest of the family must “sit through” in its entirety or he will either fly into a rage or sulk.

My mother acts as if this is perfectly normal. However, she also will recite in excruciating detail, terrible stories about tragedies that happened to people she has known in her life or go into “professor mode” about some topic. If we then change the subject, my father will just “zone out” or go into a funk until we talk about something that interests him.

I should mention that my parents are both immigrants who are currently 80–for 40 years, I thought their behavior was due to their immigrant heritage, but reading your website (at which I found myself “laughing out loud” in recognition) has convinced me that it really has been AS all these years.

My parents are completely isolated, they have no friends and rarely ever talk about their families in their homeland. For instance, about 8 years ago my mother mentioned that her mother had turned 99. I did not even know that the woman was still alive! However, three months later, I was informed that my grandmother died!!.

My parents have always had very rigid routines for eating, sleeping, going to the store, etc.

They have a tendency in public to rub people the wrong way. They pick fights with waiters about where to sit in a restaurant, they argue with salespeople over tiny discrepancies, and they can be physically pushy.

At the same time, reality and truth are relative concepts–my parents openly lie about the most trivial things and for years I thought I must have a “bad memory” because I couldn’t seem to keep straight what the current “reality” was. It was not until I was dating my husband and he was astonished by one of their minor lies that I realized that they had routinely lied all my life!

In arguments, they must always be right–if I began by talking about some misunderstanding or slight by them, they would immediately turn the argument against me saying that I was being “disrespectful” and should apologise for even bringing anything up. Then they would launch into all the “bad behavior” I had ever done over the last ten years (much of it “made up” or “twisted”) to prove that they deserved an apology instead of me. But they never apologise for anything if they can help it.

My parents never hugged us and barely ever touched us as we were growing up and they rarely played with us–my father’s idea of playing with me was to give me addition and subtraction problems to do (at age 5!)!

How has this affected my family? I came across your site after having had another huge fight with my parents (who said some really prejudiced things about people from my husbands ethnic background in front of my husband) during a dinner.

Almost all the holidays, birthdays, and other celebratory events in my family have been marred in one way or another by my parents’ bad behavior. They picked fights with all of us right before our graduations (they did not even go to some of my younger sister’s); birthdays were either treated matter-of-factly or devolved into fights; Holidays were opportunities to either “lecture” or rage or sulk. They refused to come to my bridal shower and the rehearsal dinner for my wedding (embarassing me in front of my soon-to-be in-laws) and threatened not to come to the wedding the week before it took place (to which I just said “fine”–they relented and came when they realized I meant it).

As a result, about 15 years ago, I stopped talking to them for about three years. After a lot of therapy, I have been able to cobble together a “relationship” of sorts with them–though I am not talking to them at the current time. … My older sister tries to spend as little time as possible with my parents when she comes and there have been numerous times when she has visited and left precipitously in a rage.

My sisters are not currently speaking to each other. So AS has had a very detrimental effect on my family.

What do I hope to get our of ASpar? The knowledge that there are other families like mine that have suffered (that I am not alone)–and the hope that other people can suggest ways of dealing with an ASpar parent. I do think that AS has a strong genetic component.

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

My father has said that he wishes people were more like computers, in that computers make sense and people do not. When I was growing up, he was constantly angry with me, and whenever I displayed normal childlike (i.e. spontaneous) behavior, I was punished, I think because he viewed me as a machine that was malfunctioning, as he had not asked me to behave in this way and therefore was unable to make sense of my actions. To this day, he claims that I was a very troubled child, as whenever he “talked” to me I would begin crying.

Ellen

He toe-walked, paced, had no friends, was completely without affection for his children had no ability to relate to children, had difficulty with his temper, difficulty with changes in his regime, very self-centered. Very bright and verbal, was a prominent neurosurgeon. Had difficulty with empathy or seeing anything from anyone’s viewpoint but his own. We were terrified of him.

Felicity

He has never been able to show affection, say he loves you or give you a cuddle, when he takes my children out i worry about whether he will remember he has them. He has no sense of anyone else at all, how they feel or how his behaviour can make them feel. He is very focused on his hobbies and persues them with obessive tendencies. I used to think he was very selfish, he just seems unaware of the world around him.

Janet

 … his obsessions with a very few subjects, which he turns all conversations back to, to the point it’s often impossible to hold conversations with him about anything else. – the difficult insistence on adherence to routine, the inability to understand or manage emotional reciprocity, the general sense of something always just being off somehow in interactions with him.

Bridget

high verbal skills but poor writing, inability to understand other people’s emotions, dependence on routine, emotional coldness/distance, inability to express or understand normal emotions, difficulty making normal eye contact, incredible disorganization, obsessive “collecting” tendencies, obsessive tendencies to follow a certain pursuit or pastime without deviation (and then drop it just as suddenly), and others

Jan

I have a brother who is violent, often beating me when we were growing up, right up until I was 18/19 years old, he is two years older than me. Mum was too busy putting on a “front” and dad was oblivious.

Cathe

I am still recovering from the pain and sense of isolation that having a  parent like that brings – made worse by my mother’s insistence until later years that he was wonderful: handsome, intelligent, brilliant, special.  He was all of that, but he was also anxious, depressed,intolerant, controlling, insensitive to the point of cruelty.

Rona

She was from a middle class background and he was working class. Her savant skills in languages got her a university degree, even though she couldn’t put 2 and 2 together in real life, and was I now realise intellectually disabled in parts!, (problem solving, sequencing, prioritising. no inductive or deductive logic). Yet she was one of the few women of her generation who actually went to University. He was so impressed with her, and guilty too about never being able to give her a better life. Well, he was simply too tired from labouring all day, then coming home to do all the cooking, cleaning, sewing, under a constant rain of recriminations and accusations. He was a battered husband and couldn’t leave.

And she was beautiful. They were a handsome couple.

Before we went out anywhere, my parents would make me rehearse the elaborate lies we would tell to others about our domestic misery. Keeping up the front was all important.  We were pretty much social pariahs anyway, because my father’s self-esteem was gutted and he couldnt keep up with successful men of his generation who had wives to nurture their careers. And people couldnt get away from my mother’s monologues fast enough.

Alicia

I begged him to save himself from her constant screaming and blaming but people in his circle didn’t do that kind of thing, divorce was unheard of, so he endured. He was a wonderful man and highly responsible, and afraid she couldn’t survive without him. I guess the odds were high that she might have ended up a bag lady, or permanently drugged and  institutionalised and misdiagnosed perhaps as a schizophrenic, if he hadn’t. He simply couldnt leave her to that fate. It was easier for him to convince himself that nobody was perfect. His mantra was: “People fight because they care for each other. People who don’t fight in their marriages are more of a problem. Your mother is just highly strung.”

He is clearly OCD and perseverent. As I child I used to watch in puzzlement as my father would come in and out of the kitchen four or five times an evening and run his hands over each of the stove dials, checking to make sure they were turned off. Ditto with the lock on the back door. He was incredibly rigid about certain things- for example, we had to line up our shoes exactly in an order specified by him in the cupboard

Some memorable topics of perseverence include: “Why Actors Are Not Artists,” “The Early Days of Computer Operating Systems,” and “The Fundamental Theorem Of Algebra.” Even though he could talk in great length about such things, in actual fact he made little sense. The meanings escaped him, even in technical subjects. He was just stringing together concepts by association, not by meaning. For many years I was so hungry for his attention that I would listen to him and try to bring something meaningful into the conversation. But his reaction to anything different from what he was saying was just to repeat himself in a louder tone of voice. He could get quite angry and even fly into a fit of rage over such things. If I didn’t want to listen to him he would become like a sulking child. Yet he never changed his behavior in the least.

He would lecture us constantly on such topics as Responsibility or The Way Things Are or How To Behave. It only took the slightest “infraction” to get him going. Again, he made no sense. He would rant and rave, literally foaming at the mouth. In this condition, a wrong word or look could result in him suddenly hitting a child. He had no clue how to relate to children (or to adults for that matter). Any show of normal human emotion or desire would often send him into a rage. He became desperate to stamp out the offender and the offense. He used to demand we give him reasons for what we wanted or were doing, but any appeal to our feelings would be answered with, “Feelings aren’t reasons. You could say you feel anything. How do I know if its real or not? You have to give me logical reasons for what you want.” Failure to comply would result in him getting louder and more aggressive and saying the same things over again. Of course we tried to comply and it has taken me 45 years to get to the point of unraveling that mental knot.

My father was also extremely paranoid, always thinking that people were out to screw him in one way or another. He did not know how to manage conflict, even minor ones, like a misunderstanding over a hotel reservation or a mistake in a restaurant bill (which he always obsessively checked). He would either become incredibly aggressive and threatening, or else if he could not intimidate the other person, he would withdraw and later obsess and perseverate endlessly over how wrongly he had been treated.

As a child, his touch was a source of major freak-out to me. It his hard to describe but it gave me the creeps whenever he touched me. In my mother’s case, her touch was often very mechanical, like I was a piece of luggage, not a child. I didn’t like her touch but it didn’t make me feel yucky. But my father’s touch had the effect of making me cringe. There was some kind of weird energy in it. I really don’t know how to describe it. I would go out of my way to avoid being touched by him and when I couldn’t avoid it, the feeling I had was as though I had just walked into a damp, cold morgue with dead bodies lying around. Honestly!