Discussion
Due to the volume of critique we receive, often repeating the same arguments, as a group our members have come up with the following standard reply.
This is a site for people who grew up with AS parents to tell their stories, so that other children of AS parents can finally find a place where they find understanding, healing and support. There are lots of other sites out there that talk about the positive sides of AS, and we agree with many of them. Yes, people with AS have been misunderstood and oppressed. Some of us have inherited some AS traits, so we know what it is like.
Throughout our lives, we turned to professionals for help, trying to escape the pain of having parents who were naive, obsessive, peseverative, socially excruciatingly embarassing, isolating, had short fuses, didn’t seem to be on the same planet as the rest of us, could not look after our physical or emotional needs, could not touch us in a normal way, and much more, consistent with a diagnosis of AS. Since AS was not in the textbooks, we were told, that we would be fine if we would just be a little more understanding and accommodating of our parents, who “loved us in their own way.” This is a variant of Cassandra syndrome. Before the psychiatric establishment woke up to the reality of AS, It was hard enough to be a Cassandra when you had a child with AS.
Imagine how hard it was to be a child Cassandra. We are still trying to get over it.
The purpose of ASpar is not to understand our parents. We already understand them. We have been covering for them and parenting them all our lives.
The purpose of ASpar is to find our voices, tell our stories, and through doing so, find integration and healing.
This is also a wakeup call to professionals. The next time a desperate child comes to you and they have AS parents, look for the problem in the parents as much as you look in the child.
There is now no excuse for not factoring AS as a possible cause of family dysfunction.
We will continue to respond to original comments that are not answered by the above. Comments that continue on the theme of “The problem lies with you, you should understand your parents more” will be ignored.
FAQ’s
- Amanda Says:
February 12, 2008 at 2:06 pm e
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: 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. -
aspar Says:
February 12, 2008 at 6:41 pm e
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. 
Valerie Says:
February 14, 2008 at 12:30 am e
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-
“Tania” says
I had a couple of thoughts about this. First of all *all* parents are
doing the best they can, including alcoholic parents. There are many,
many groups out there for children of alcoholic parents, and no one
accuses them of vilifying alcoholic, or perpetuating negative
stereotypes. Adult children of alcoholics are allowed to have had
traumatic childhoods without being accused of being selfish, bitter,
traitorous, or being told to get over it and move on, because their
parents were doing the best they could.But, more importantly, this list *isn’t about our parents*. It’s about
us, and what it was like growing up with AS parents, and what it’s like
to still have to deal with them on a daily basis. It’s about *our*
experiences, and having a place where we can discuss them. There is a
difference. It’s not about Aspies! Do you get the impression that
Aspies don’t get that?!I read the website that the poster cited, and I had to wonder what her
kids were going to say when they grew up, because it really isn’t about
them at all, it’s all about how difficult it is to deal with kids when
you have AS. She even says that had she known ahead of time that she
had AS, she probably wouldn’t have had kids. If I were one of her kids,
I would have a pretty hard time reading something like that from my mother.I get that Aspies have a hard time raising kids. The vast majority of
people who cause harm and trauma to other people are suffering
themselves. Those who abuse children were almost always abused
themselves. But we don’t ask their victims to feel sorry for them, or
say they should “forgive their parents and move on.” There seems to be
this particular myopia when it comes to AS, that all parents with AS
should be completely resolved of any responsibility for any damage they
might have done to their kids, because if we speak our truth we are
“perpetuating negative stereotypes” about them.I think I’m ranting again.
I guess what it boils down to for me is
that this list isn’t about AS parents, it’s about people with AS
parents, and what it’s like to be an NT child of AS parents. If Aspies
don’t like to hear about our experiences, I think they should go play in
somebody else’s sandbox.
–Tania
I did find the Aspie mom’s website very interesting, and I think if you
read between the lines, it’s a textbook example of the difficulties of
being the child of Aspie parents. It’s, of course, written from the
mom’s point of view, but if you take the point of view of the child, and
read it that way, it raises some very interesting questions. She
clearly cannot interpret her kids’ emotional states, and her kids’ have
developed some coping skills that may or may not serve them later in
life. But the piece is all about *her* and how hard it is for *her* to
be a parent. It’s not at all about her kids. Which is sort of a “duh”
because she’s incapable of empathy, but it’s also a critical component
of parenting. She tries to say at the end that you can make up for
empathy with reason, and I guess that’s the $64,000 question. Can you
really? I’m not so sure . . . I guess it’s not outside the realm of
possibility, especially with good social and professional support but
it’s never going to happen if the conversation is cut off at the knees
because we’re not allowed to talk about the kids’ experience because
that’s “perpetuating stereotypes.”In fact, as far as perpetuating stereotypes, it seems to me that the
“stereotypes” that we are talking about and the “typical symptom”
discussed on the website are the same. The judgment depends on who is
discussing them.But, again, I think this is getting too much into trying to justify
ourselves, our experiences, and our feelings to Aspies. I think we need
to be careful about that. The purpose of this list isn’t to try to
convince Aspies that our experiences are valid, or that our world view
is a valid one. That ain’t gonna happen. As I understand it, we’re
here to decipher, interpret, and hopefully understand what happened to
us kids, and how it affects our lives, and then to see if we can shed
some of the coping strategies that no longer serve us, or at least
integrate the fractured parts of ourselves into a cohesive whole. Every
once in a while someone pops up and says, “You shouldn’t talk about this
stuff because Aspies have such a *hard* time being parents. You should
just forgive them and move on.” Yeah, no sh*t. I know they have a hard
time. I was there for the ride. But I really see this discussion as
irrelevant right now. It’s not my job to make them feel better about
raising their kids.Sorry so long.
– Tania
24 comments so far
Leave a reply
Not willing to upset anyone, or to destroy anyone’s comfortable worldview of blaming others, but I know 4 Aspie parents in real life, and they’re incredibly good parents. Their kids are happy and healthy, NT and neurodiverse alike. (One of them even has a little Downer.)
Besides, I have an alcoholic father and a former alcoholic mother, both NT. They’re obviously different for Aspie parents. Dad doesn’t even *want* to be a good person, all he cares about is being comfortable, and he’s strictly controlled by his mother (being 50 yrs old, this is at least a little weird). While Mom gave up alcohol solely for *me* when she got pregnant. You can’t quit being Aspie that way. (And her “caring” is mmore of a problem to me than the “lack of empathy” you mention again and again. She is good-willed, but that doesn’t make it less terrible when she ruins my routine, orders me around, forces social bullshit rules to be followed without explanation, forbids my favourite activities [like cutting myself], and so on.) (More at http://weirdsanctuary.blogspot.com/2008/03/autobiographic.html)
*My* experiences show clearly that AS parents can be very good, and NT parents can be very bad as well.
How does that fit in your picture?
We welcome your comments and are happy to promote the idea that some AS parents may be good parents, though clearly we prefer to take the word of the children not the claim of the parents.
But did you read Tania’s comments above before you wrote?
It’s so good that I will state it again:
We wonder whether you understand that we do not say all people given the broad label of AS are bad parents. Nor do we have anything to say about what people with AS suffer at the hands of NT. We are well aware of this problem. Some of our members are mildly AS, and have been oppressed as well. But telling that story is not the purpose of our blog. The purpose of our blog is to tell our own stories, and no-one else’s stories, and readers can draw their own conclusion about whether there is a common pattern consistent with a formal diagnosis of AS, or not.
Aspies who have suffered at the hands of NT parents are free to start their own blogs, and no doubt many such exist. Starting a blog takes 15 minutes, and cyberspace is free. We publish your comment as a contribution to balance lest anyone think we are completely ignorant of your arguments. We know them, but you miss the point
I’m concerned that you are falsely labeling people with Asperger’s syndrome as violent and uncaring. A lot of the people who have described their childhoods on your site have mentioned parents that did not seem to care about them at all to the point of neglect and abuse.
I’m not an expert but from what I have read, people who have Asperger’s want to have friends and meaningful relationships (like most of us) but they lack the skills to read social cues and cannot demonstrate those abilities themselves. They suffer immensely as a result unless they consciously learn “the rules” and even then, they may use them in a manner that is rigid and unnatural so they still seem odd to others.
They are rejected by a lot of people and end up isolated and confused. Certain problems go hand in hand with Aspergers such as obsessive compulsive behavior and depression – I rarely read about a propensity for violence and neglect.
Some of the descriptions of these so-called Aspergers parents sound like a myriad of mental illness and in some cases, sociopathy (sociopaths are not always violent serial killers – they can be just utterly self-consumed people without a conscience).
I’m not sure what you can do about it because people believe what comforts them. But I think this is why psychiatrists say not to diagnose people yourself. There are many things that have similar traits that are not Aspergers. It concern me that you are making life more difficult for people who are already struggling.
This is a very good example of reading about something as opposed to knowing about it. Text-based and rule-based understandings are priveliged against experiential and intuitive understanding, and of course lend themselves to feelgood political correctness without ever having to live for a minute with the problem.
Rule-based versus intuitive understanding are of course at the heart of the autistic versus the socistic divide. (“Socistic”, a new word coined by myself to describe those who are “neurologically wired” to be socially interactive and group oriented.). Every intuitive person knows only too well how absurd decisions are made on the authority of people with no commonsense who are authorised by their written texts. The thing is that you can’t prove intuition by logic, and in this way, authors with no commonsense whatever but great logic, can override commonsense. (Don’t worry, if you are intuitive, you will know what I mean, if not, you will go to the academy and do another 3 year research project).
As for psychiatric authority, psychiatrists came late to the Asperger’s world. They had to be dragged kicking and screaming to recognise AS. With the exception of the original work of a few like Asperger himself, and Lorna Wing, most of what they know was developed online by people with AS and their families.
As far as I am concerned Aspergers is not a medical phenomenon, but a social phenomenon around a different form of neurological makeup.
People with AS make great professors of logic. They make lousy parents (unless they are intuitive and can read social cues, in which case why call it Aspergers?). Similarly, highly intuitive social butterflies may become professors of logic, but I doubt if they are out there picketing MIT demanding their right to a tenured lectureship based on neither interest, skill nor training.
PS: AS and violence
People with AS often have very short fuses. Noone is saying they are violent because of a love of violence, but just because they lash out to protect themselves from overstimulation.
Not a good quality, when you have noisy babies and young children to raise
Academic bluster ftw
Your distrust of authors on the subject and psychiatrists aside, it doesn’t change my point that a lot of the people on here are describing what could also be personality disorders and even sociopathy while lumping it under the label of “Aspergers Syndrome”.
As for people who “never had to live with the problem”, they are probably going to be more objective actually. I’d trust their assessment over somebody who is plainly upset about their childhood to the point where they start a support group for people like them.
That’s a novel idea you have there, Anna!
People who live with a problem and join a support group about it can’t be trusted as much as people who know nothing about it.
Don’t think it will catch on.
Anna – what difference does it make what our parent’s suffer from if what we have experienced and described here most closely relates to the definition of Asperger’s?
They were still horrible parents, no matter what you choose to lump it under.
My mother may indeed suffer from other disorder’s but the closest thing I’ve ever found to explain her weird behaviour is Asperger’s.
Anna – it’s ok that you don’t get it. You are welcome to visit and read our stories. And, we’ll visit your site and read your your stories. We won’t vilify nor doubt you and your experience and, we don’t expect you to vilify or doubt ours. It is what it is. As Shakespeare wrote, “A rose by any other name would smell so sweet.”
Anna, does an AS person understand this
If only it would be enough to be told I love you
If only some clothing, shelter and food would do
If only a home is no more then a house we share
NO, they don’t To the AS mind if I say I love you, you just have to accept this as fact. That is not how it works for a non-AS child; they need to FEEL the love more then being told. If you cannot make your child FEEL loved then you are an inadequate parent; period. It amounts to emotional neglect; Simple. Any non-AS ( be aware ) psychiatrist will tell you this.
Oh, and just because the AS parent might suffer does not mean that we, their kids not not suffer. It is not either or; most likely it is both. nothing is only black or white! we are just showing our suffering And it concerns me that you are trying to make life more difficult for us then it already is.
4 Responses to “ASpar”
Charlotte, on June 4th, 2008 at 1:31 pm Said: Edit Comment
Hi,
Reading through these comments, including the controversy and responses to critics I have a few things to say. My husband is in the process of being diagnosed with AS, we have two children together, at the moment they are young enough to interact and play with him; time will only tell how their relationship goes with him and how they feel about him.
I do believe that this is an important space for children of those that have parents with AS or ASD, however I do understand the controversy that surrounds it. After doing a lot of research into AS and seeing a leading world specialist present on the topic, a lot of the stories do seem to represent other psycological disorders, that sometimes do go hand-in-hand with AS or ASD.
It rubs me up the wrong way to see undiagnosed conditions being labled AS or ASD when there are so many other conditions out there. Maybe the children are identifying with the aspects of AS and are attributing all of their behaviours to it.
I suspected my husband had AS after hearing Tony Attwood speak, i told him, “hey you might have this”, but until we actually spoke about the way he thinks, according to criteria, I could assume he had it but I think a lot of understanding can be gained from discovering the way the person thinks. I realise this may not be possible for everyone but I do believe this can help at least to become somewhat more certain about it rather then diagnosing from a individual viewpoint.
My worry for this site is that it excuses other aggressive behaviours for a diagnosis with AS. Somethings, such as physical voilence, should not be labeled under a certain criteria as a purposeful act.
I hope this website brings understanding as well as healing for all those concerned, and forgiveness. Afterall everyone is different and if people were more excepting there may not have been so much embrassement for all those concerned when the parents were doing their ASD flapping, pacing, clapping or any other forms of physical expression. Sometimes it is everyone else that can make it bad and I am sure you were all loved just in a very ASD way.
aspar, on June 4th, 2008 at 5:33 pm Said: Edit Comment
Lashing out at very slight stressors is very common in AS. When the slight stressors are the normal sounds of little children, it’s not rocket science what happens next.
How can you be sure that we were all loved in “a very ASD way”? That’s quite a statement.
I understand where you are coming from, which is a heartfelt desire to be fair to people with disablities, but your comments are not coming from life experience but from other people’s theories.
Tony Attwood is a great guy, and he has a very positive and practical attitude to AS. However, he has an audience to please, and I doubt he wants to involve himself where things are not quite so sunny.
Charlotte, on June 10th, 2008 at 7:32 pm Said: Edit Comment
Hi again,
Just to clarify a few things, I work at a special developmental school and have been working with children and adults alike with AS and ASD. I do not live with them but have worked numerous hours in respite conditions where I have spent a lot of time with them. I would not make my statements without having experienced the physical violence and behaviours from people with ASD, for such views would not just. My views are from my personal experience, as well as all the research, (from many different sources), that I have done.
My views are not attended to cause a grievence with anyone but mearly to point out that as with most disabilities there are other aspects that come into play, hence the reference to other conditions.
I do not have a specific heartfelt desire to be fair to people with disabilites, I work it and live with it (my Husband), I have to specific compassion for them or feel sorry for them. I do believe that like everyone they have their strengths and weaknesses. I do not excuse behaivours from my students just because they have ASD.
As for the being loved in “a very ASD way”, I do believe that they do love, they just don’t know how to do it the way we expect it to be or what is best for the person or child.
aspar, on June 10th, 2008 at 9:58 pm Said: Edit Comment
I was just about to delete your post, but I’ve decided to address the fallacy in it, because if someone was saying “I love you, I love you” but they were standing on your foot with a stiletto heel digging into you, and you were screaming with pain, “get off, get off”, and they were saying, “but I love you, I love you”, and that was all they could relate to, you would soon see the fallacy of your statement. It might make you feel good to think that an AS parent loves their children even if they are abusing them (however inadvertently). Note that we do not blame our parents, we recognise that they are disabled, and they do not intend to hurt their children. But that is small consolation to a small hurt dependant child.
One of the most common threads in our group is that we actually feel more hurt by the NT parent who is in denial, who has invested so much in a relationship that can never meet their emotional needs, that they would rather sacrifice their children than admit the mistake they made. We now believe that our NT parents suffered “battered spouse syndrome”, except that they are emotionally battered rather than physically battered. They have lost all sense of self as they are drawn into the emotion denying world of the AS spouse.
Let me make clear again, that AS is a broad diagnosis, possibly too broad. Some people dxed as AS may well have empathy, may well be able to put their children’s needs before their own. They are not the people we are writing about.
People with positive experiences of AS parents are welcome to create their own website.
We are determined to tell our story.
Hello, after reading some of the posts from this page I’m a bit confused
There seem to be a lot of replies to people expressing a difference of opinion with the goals of this site. I think I’ve now seen quite a few times within the site where a member has pointed out that the poster has insufficient experience to comment on the purpose of this site because they haven’t either,
1. Got any experience as the child of an AS adult.
2. Got some kind of neuroscience degree.
So, I’m wondering if someone could tell me who among you has a medical degree sufficient to make a diagnosis of Aspergers?
I’m sorry, I don’t mean that to sound disrespectfull but there are a lot of replies claiming “Asperger’s traits” and such.
It’s just I don’t see how the act of saying those words qualifies as a diagnosis.
I was under the impression that a diagnosis would nullify the need to use the word “traits”
You pointed out these “traits” in your statement at the top of the page but I’m wondering if you could actually prove that you do really understand (as you point out) the misunderstanding and oppression for AS people?
Seeing as by your own admission “as a group” you do not have Asperger’s.
I asked this question because you seem to have included your “aspergers trait’s” claim to qualify yourselves to understand the Asperger’s mind in general.
I’m afraid I have to disagree and say that logically, by it’s very nature, Aspergers can only be truly understood by someone with Apsergers and i believe it’s wholly unfair of you to make such a claim.
A trait does not make a disorder.
I dont need a degree to make that statement, I believe it is common sense.
I very much look forward to your point of view and apologise for the directness of my post, you seem to have a strong dislike for personal points of view so I really just wanted to understand what your position on this is and worded it the best and most consise way I could.
I have no objection to the purpose of this site, I think it’s important to people to feel a kinship with others concerning things that are hard to understand and think it’s very helpfull and brave of you to continue to support each other in such a way.
Hi there
You ask a fair question.
I am a sociologist, and will answer you in sociological terms. I was one of the key members of the early Autism Self-Advocacy movement, coined the term “Neurodiversity” in an academic article, and wrote my Honours thesis on all these issues.
AS is a disability, not a disease, like measles, where you can see the spots and someone looks under a microscope and goes “AHA! It’s measles!”
AS has always been around, but only recently has it been named as a disability. In other words, it is a social construct, a common belief that a set of criteria, any one of which can manifest to any degree in an individual, constitute a “disability”. What is a disability anyway? None of us are perfect. A disability is a way of saying “we have special needs, we need certain kinds of support”. That’s what Asperger’s is, a social movement of people asking both for recognition for their special abilities, and help for the ways in which they have been excluded.
Who is authorised to determine who belongs to this group?
Doctors?
The AS movement was developed through all the online conversations between those of us who identified with AS to some degree. We proved that what was in the DSM IV was inadequate.
It is true that we built on the work of the trailblazers, Doctors Lorna Wing, and Hans Aspergers to name two. But the development of the paradigm was by us, the families.
The doctors didn’t educate us. We educated them. The experience of most people with AS and their families is that the medical profession was conservative, often arrogant and ignorant.
Eventually word spread, and now there is a veritable feeding frenzy of “professionals” of all stripes, all touting their expertise, and promising their “help”. They are good people and we need them in a complex world, but they are not the experts. The families and individuals who live with AS are the experts in my opinion.
Diagnosing a “classic case” of AS does not take specialised knowledge. Most of our parents have classic traits. They cannot make friends, cannot read social cues, are obsessive and monologue. Most work in the sciences, and so on and so on.
Most adults who have a diagnosis of AS worked it out from themselves, or their families worked it out from them, and then they got a professional seal of approval for their own discovery.
Like I said, its not a disease, where something hurts, and you go to a doc and they do blood tests and xrays.
This is not rocket science.
Our parents will not be diagnosed. They are all in their 70’s or eighties, and have struggled through life as best they could. Why would we want them to be upset any further. What being in ASpar has taught us is to integrate the knowledge that however much they hurt us, they had a disability and did not know what they did. This acceptance allows us to forgive, to carry on and where possible continue to care for them. It’s a telling fact that most of our members continue to care for their parents because even though we did not know they had a neurological anomaly, we did understand their fundamental helplessness at some level.
ASpar are in the business of educating those professionals who in a couple of years time will set themselves up to teach “Parenting skills for Parents with ASperger’s Syndrome”.
We are giving them the raw data they need to do this work. I hope that one day, both adults with AS, and their children will be glad that we put ourselves on the line for them.
I hope this helps.
Judy
Actually I’m really sorry but it doesn’t help.
Thank you for pointing out your Sociology degree, coining the term “Neurodiversity”, and your brief sociology lecture.
I’m however slightly insulted that not only have you managed to ignore and fail to simply answer my question, you have also done so in very disagreeably patronizing terms.
I had hoped my efforts to remain fair would have had the opposite effect.
I don’t believe i questioned anyones right to belong to this group, all I asked was for your reasoning to claim to the right to express an understanding of the AS point of view when all you were wiling to admit was a few “traits”.
I’m sure, given your level of education I don’t need to remind you that “trait” is a WORD and through this word (and it’s usage) you are implying that none of you have Asperger’s.
The idea of diagnosis isn’t even relevant.
What I’m saying is that on a purely verbal level the statement “Yes, people with AS have been misunderstood and oppressed. Some of us have inherited some AS traits, so we know what it is like” is unfair.
It could also be said that through this statement you are willfully misleading people.
It states categorically that you make no claim to the same level of experience and hardship yet you want the same right of argument.
I’m afraid by your own standpoint as regards other arguments in this site you are shooting yourself in the foot and insulting people with AS.
Even now in your reply, to say “The doctors didn’t educate us. We educated them” you are making a mockery of people who are proud to stand as people with Asperger’s.
Who I was diagnosed by and how many times I have had to endure repeat diagnoses has never concerned me. My identity as an Aspie is a representation of my pride in my uniqueness and the people I share a kinship with.
And yes, I find it upsetting when people take that standpoint and use it half-heartedly for their own means.
I’m sorry to pick apart your reply but you really wasted a lot of time with what was from my point of view a misguided and transparently practiced reply.
I made no reference to your relationship to your parents nor did I bring its pertinence into question yet you spend a considerable amount of space defending it.
And the “professional seal of approval” as you put it is in fact sometimes very necessary for us lesser mortals who need it to cling to our often waning rights.
I’m am also very aware of the difference between a disease and a neurological disorder. I would like to remind you that as much as you are entitled to your viewpoints you are still only one side of the fence.
As a person with AS, being between groups like yourself, the medical profession, people hoping for some kind of cure, the one thing that makes the never ending argument tolerable is our joint ability to respect each others continuing rights.
I respect your right do what you must to support your ideals but please don’t take away something very personal to us by using it to support your reasoning for this site.
I don’t mean to give you an elitist view of Asperger’s but with the explosion of new organizations all claiming to be the voice of autism in general and half of them stepping on us in the process, you must at least understand my reasoning for defending what is personal to us.
Just as you defend this site and your efforts, I need my right to defend the nature of who I am.
Regardless of your experience with Asperger’s.
I must disagree with your opinions on diagnosis not being rocket science. I believe that such a viewpoint in this day is too complacent.
Just as it is becoming easier to claim Asperger’s, it is also easy to misdiagnose someone and potentially miss the real problem (be it neurological or just plain behavioral). There are too many “self-diagnosis” websites almost turning Asperger’s into a fad. It even gives some (especially youths) a convenient excuse to behave how ever they like and blame it on Asperger’s.
I of course do thank you so much for including my opinion on your page, I believe even to have such an open forum for criticism for such a potentially volatile subject is very admirable and a generous sign of how open you all are.
Your prompt response was also very appreciated.
And I’m very thankful that there are at least some people out there that can avoid the pitfall of calling Asperger’s a disease.
Thank you again.
A pleasure to exchange differing viewpoints. Good luck.
Oh, “differing viewpoints”, my ass. It’s because of you and the like that autism will be eventually eradicated from this world and, along with it, all the inventors and great thinkers of humankind. Congratulations, really!
BTW, I just found this interesting link for you:
http://tinyurl.com/5o4dlv
“Just as you defend this site and your efforts, I need my right to defend the nature of who I am.
Regardless of your experience with Asperger’s.”
Why?
Rodiel,
BTW, “This is a site for people who grew up with AS parents to tell their stories, so that other children of AS parents can finally find a place where they find understanding, healing and support.”
Val
About tinyurl: I know Phil Schwarz and he may remember me. We always got on amicably. He describes himself as having a “mild variant of AS”. He’s not the people we are worried about, and read very carefully the previous comment bar mine. Wulff just blew Phil’s legitimacy right out of the water when he blew mine. Live by the sword, die by the sword. I also have a mild variant of AS, but I don’t lack empathy, I can read my child’s emotional cues, I like cuddling and have a firm touch, I don’t monologue at my child, I don’t try to isolate them, I don’t scream louder than my baby when she’s upset, and a million other things that full-on Aspies do.
Phil Schwarz does not represent anyone but one mild variant of AS, himself. ASpar is not talking about parents with “mild variants of AS’
As for your other comment, well, I agree with your self-description. It’s asinine… not to mention infantile.
I just found this site and am thrilled that the children of Asperger parents are finally speaking up. My mother, who has a PhD in mathematics, is an Asperger — just diagnosed at the age of 76. … My childhood was just God awful. And, now, she’s begging to move in with me. Yikes!
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?)
I have also just found this site and am so delighted that finally this special group of people has been recognised = the children of Aspies. Hello to all, how wonderful to find you. I have been to Asperger’s support groups and read everything I can about the condition but the children of these people have until now been overlooked. There seems to be an emphasis on diagnosing children and helping parents – yeah great maybe they can cure it. So I am really shocked to read this controversy raging on this site, this one place I have found that addresses my curious, unique and unhappy point of view. My father – an Aspie- was an engineer and a hugely difficult person to be around. I struggle everyday and I’m 46 – I can’t answer the phone for fear he’s there and I’ll get another lecture about his life.
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.
Thank you, thank you, thank you… Finding a website like this is an indescribable relief. Yes, there is controversy and debate, but what a gift for someone who has been looking for answers about their parent for so long. Yes we love them, and yes we hate them, and yes it has hurt us, and yes – we have fleetingly wonderful moments with them – but it is ultimately sharing our story that gives everything that we went through meaning. For so long we thought we were alone, and now we realise that so many others have walked the same silent painful paths through childhood… You can argue the semantics of knowing whether it’s a PD or AS… At the end of the day, we are here because we are grieving the love that we could not give them and we could not receive from them. My father has not been been formally diagnosed with AS and I’m sure he never will be, but that doesn’t change the fact of how much hope I have found here… Just because you know or don’t know the cause of death doesn’t make the pain of losing someone any easier… You don’t weep any differently for a loved one who has hung themselves as opposed to one that has been hit by a car… You still weep… Likewise him never being formally diagnosed doesn’t mean that there is any less sadness.
Okay I have an aspie mom (probably never been formally diagnosed but she clearly fits almost all the traits and has several comorbid disorders) and an NT dad. Can I, as an aspie, say that I am glad I always lived with my aspie mom. My NT dad was always so obsessive about making me neurotypical, and it always stressed me out so much whenever I was over there. Yes, there were some bad moments in my childhood because of this (my mom always spanked angry, never minded the spanking part so much (as I usually deserved them) but the angry part) but I would have been a nervous wreck living with my dad all the time. Course… this probably isn’t the perspective your looking for is it.
P.S. I wonder if these ideas are spread too much with no consenting form of view would I myself never be able to adopt… or far worse, have a kid of my own taken away from me. I plan to adopt as soon as I am able to finicially support a child (I am already able to emotionally, mentally, and all other ways, support a child, just don’t quite have the money issue down yet, and might not for a while) and it would be horrible if everyone thought anyone with asperger’s could never make a good dad. Personally I think asperger’s parents are ideal for asperger’s kids, we are generally the only ones that can understand them real well.