Asked about Aspergers
from 
JoeUser Forums
JoeUser Forums
I've previously posted about the fact I believe my mother has Aspergers Syndrome, and have been asked to open up a bit more about it.
Here's something I'd previously written for my Yahoo Group (ASPAR - for adult children of Asperger parents) about it, and it's damn personal. I'm feeling a little weird about posting it, but one lady who's just joined has a story far worse than any I've ver heard and it made me think mine is pretty tame. Plus one of our associate members has just won parental rights for his son - his ex is an Aspie and has been denying him access to his son, who he believes may also be on the autistic spectrum.
But I realise I may get hate mail - our group has attracted a great deal of criticism from people involved with AS and people on the autistic spectum.
Our founder, Judy (also an Aussie but most members are in the US), has just started a blog group to post our intro stories. .Link Not many stories up yet though. The story I wrote for them which follows was written a while after I joined as I had blocked it out until I started re-examining my relationship with my mother when I discovered what Aspergers was.
Growing up Aspergers
What it's really like to know your mother doesn't love you like other mothers.
The first time I knew my mother didn't love me was when I was, as I estimate, about 3 or 4 years old. We had gone to the house of a woman she was acquainted with, and they were talking, fairly intensely. I needed to go to the toilet, and I asked my mother to take me. She told me where it was… outside the apartment, in a dimly lit hallway, where there were several locked doors. I couldn't find it. Timidly (because by this stage I had learned that I could not interrupt my mother) I came back into the apartment and requested that she show me where the toilet was. She shrugged me off and told me that I was big enough to find it myself. The hallway was dark and intimidating, I tried a few doors and couldn't find the toilet. So I came back inside and sat down. Then I couldn't hold on any longer, and I wet my pants sitting at the table with my mother and her friend.
Later that evening, when my mother was driving us home, she smelt the urine on me, felt my socks and asked me what happened. I told her - and she laughed. Raucously. To this day, I have never been as humiliated as I was at that moment… but I had blocked it out of my memory until the time I discovered what Asperger's Syndrome was, and why it made for bad parenting.
Up until that time, I had blamed my mother's poor parenting skills of a variety of things. Firstly, she was sent at a very young age to a Catholic boarding school with her older sister who was studying to become a nun. Therefore, while she had a large family of siblings, she never learned parenting at the coal-face. Also, she was from India. Therefore my Westernised upbringing clashed with her cultural conditioning, creating difficulties. This is what my dad told me. And don’t get me started on what he closed his eyes to over the years.
One of my strongest teenage memories is finding two of my friends in my room at home tidying it. They had come over to take me out to a coffee shop, or the movies, or something… but my mother had them so terrorized that they were cleaning up because I wouldn't be let out till that happened. I knew these girls; I knew their mothers; nothing like that would ever happen in their houses.
What you have to understand about having a parent with Aspergers is that a person with the syndrome is the most important person in their universe. Nothing else exists apart from them, what they want happens for them. You have an adult who operates on the same emotional level as a three year old. When you are a child of a person who has this syndrome, you quickly realise that in order to survive, you have to put this person's needs above your own. And that's tough when you're 5 years old.
OK, what are the some of the signs she shows? Echolalia… repeating what you hear or read. I thought everybody read road signs out loud till I was about 15. Obsessive connections to rituals. My mother had our German Shepherd so well trained, he would not eat till she told him to. One night, she was busy, and forgot the ritual. She came out onto the porch half an hour later, and found the dog waiting to eat, with a full bowl of food under his nose, because she had not given the command - so important to her, that she had ingrained it in him. And when my dad had his stroke in 2000, she didn't understand that she would have to forego her Wednesday trip into a nearby town because she had to go to the hospital every day. She actually argued with me that she HAD to go!
So there you are JU. Asked and answered. And I've put it up here partly because I want people to know that it's important people with Aspergers get help - especially if they become parents. Because they need it.
Here's something I'd previously written for my Yahoo Group (ASPAR - for adult children of Asperger parents) about it, and it's damn personal. I'm feeling a little weird about posting it, but one lady who's just joined has a story far worse than any I've ver heard and it made me think mine is pretty tame. Plus one of our associate members has just won parental rights for his son - his ex is an Aspie and has been denying him access to his son, who he believes may also be on the autistic spectrum.
But I realise I may get hate mail - our group has attracted a great deal of criticism from people involved with AS and people on the autistic spectum.
Our founder, Judy (also an Aussie but most members are in the US), has just started a blog group to post our intro stories. .Link Not many stories up yet though. The story I wrote for them which follows was written a while after I joined as I had blocked it out until I started re-examining my relationship with my mother when I discovered what Aspergers was.
Growing up Aspergers
What it's really like to know your mother doesn't love you like other mothers.
The first time I knew my mother didn't love me was when I was, as I estimate, about 3 or 4 years old. We had gone to the house of a woman she was acquainted with, and they were talking, fairly intensely. I needed to go to the toilet, and I asked my mother to take me. She told me where it was… outside the apartment, in a dimly lit hallway, where there were several locked doors. I couldn't find it. Timidly (because by this stage I had learned that I could not interrupt my mother) I came back into the apartment and requested that she show me where the toilet was. She shrugged me off and told me that I was big enough to find it myself. The hallway was dark and intimidating, I tried a few doors and couldn't find the toilet. So I came back inside and sat down. Then I couldn't hold on any longer, and I wet my pants sitting at the table with my mother and her friend.
Later that evening, when my mother was driving us home, she smelt the urine on me, felt my socks and asked me what happened. I told her - and she laughed. Raucously. To this day, I have never been as humiliated as I was at that moment… but I had blocked it out of my memory until the time I discovered what Asperger's Syndrome was, and why it made for bad parenting.
Up until that time, I had blamed my mother's poor parenting skills of a variety of things. Firstly, she was sent at a very young age to a Catholic boarding school with her older sister who was studying to become a nun. Therefore, while she had a large family of siblings, she never learned parenting at the coal-face. Also, she was from India. Therefore my Westernised upbringing clashed with her cultural conditioning, creating difficulties. This is what my dad told me. And don’t get me started on what he closed his eyes to over the years.
One of my strongest teenage memories is finding two of my friends in my room at home tidying it. They had come over to take me out to a coffee shop, or the movies, or something… but my mother had them so terrorized that they were cleaning up because I wouldn't be let out till that happened. I knew these girls; I knew their mothers; nothing like that would ever happen in their houses.
What you have to understand about having a parent with Aspergers is that a person with the syndrome is the most important person in their universe. Nothing else exists apart from them, what they want happens for them. You have an adult who operates on the same emotional level as a three year old. When you are a child of a person who has this syndrome, you quickly realise that in order to survive, you have to put this person's needs above your own. And that's tough when you're 5 years old.
OK, what are the some of the signs she shows? Echolalia… repeating what you hear or read. I thought everybody read road signs out loud till I was about 15. Obsessive connections to rituals. My mother had our German Shepherd so well trained, he would not eat till she told him to. One night, she was busy, and forgot the ritual. She came out onto the porch half an hour later, and found the dog waiting to eat, with a full bowl of food under his nose, because she had not given the command - so important to her, that she had ingrained it in him. And when my dad had his stroke in 2000, she didn't understand that she would have to forego her Wednesday trip into a nearby town because she had to go to the hospital every day. She actually argued with me that she HAD to go!
So there you are JU. Asked and answered. And I've put it up here partly because I want people to know that it's important people with Aspergers get help - especially if they become parents. Because they need it.
