Sometimes I just would love my mom to fark off.

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This is the suff that as we age, we all need to make peace with and it's hard. I always say that my husband and I were raised by wolves, their parenting was that bad. You're right it makes the transition into adulthood that much harder when you didn't have a teacher at home.

That said, once we figure out what the deficiencies were, then we decide who we are going to be.

Before I had kids I took child development classes and read books, because I knew my mom didn't give me the right tools, so I better figure it out. I decided who I wanted to be and got the skills to be it.

My heart breaks when I hear the damage that is done to kids hearts by parents. You sound lile your family a had a tough time and you are really helping out, and that is something to be proud of.

I guess the hardest thing for my husband to deal with is that once you are an adult (not a specific age) how you were parented isn't an excuse anymore, even if that's the reason something is hard. Having AS and deficient parenting is a double whammy - reasons why its hard, but still not a pass to act poorly.

One of the things I haven't said, is growing up is no walk in the park. It isn't easy and takes strength and determination. To the young adults posting on this thread (including the op) you're doing great! Just by having the discussion, talking with us older folksyou are making great strides!

Part A - that's fine when it's not the middle of night and you're not half asleep. But it isn't actually natural or instinctive to look at something you know is there and are about to sit on, and in the middle of the night half asleep in the dark you might not remember to turn and look first. The act of sitting faces you the other way. Plus, as I noted in my example, we have a younger sibling prone to falling in. You can't expect a young child afraid that is afraid she is about to pee in her pants to check that a seat that is supposed to be there, actually is there.

Part B - on this, I think you are offering sound advice

I disagree with this but have to admit that there is a right and a wrong way to challenge authority, which I don't have time to go through on this message board. I do think that Aspies should ask someone to help them learn how and when to self-advocate, however, including against authority. It is such an important life skill, but I totally understand why it is difficult for someone with AS.

The short version is to ASK BRIEF QUESTIONS, not contradict. Lead the person in authority to see for themselves why the instruction is wrong or counterproductive, if that is the case. You might find out they mispoke, or that you misunderstood. But blindly trying to follow an instruction that makes no sense to you rarely ends well, so there does need to be a process for resolving it without annoying the authority figure. And when that process has gone on long enough (another skill to learn, how far to pursue it), then you buck it up and do as you are told because the authority is the authority, end of story.

I once made a thread about what is expected of you as you get older and how you are supposed to know on your own:

http://www.wrongplanet.net/postt122167.html

My aunt and uncle don't also flush the toilet after use because they like to save on water but unless they poo in there, then they want it flushed.

If you do not mind would you please post the long version when you have time?

There's a book series on the subject that I would recommend: it starts with Difficult Conversations: How to Discuss What Matters Most by Douglas Stone, Bruce Patton, and Sheila Heen.

The companion book, Crucial Conversations is probably more along the lines of what DW is talking about, but I think both are very valuable.

I think both cubedemon and DW have a point: sometimes, the stakes are high enough that you need to do what you're told without questioning it - but it's really important to know the difference between those times, and the times when you're being treated like a doormat...and that difference is not always immediately obvious.

With me I have to decide what is more important. Do I want to lose my job and then be unemployed? After all finding a job is tough for me so do I really want to lose my job by questioning my boss's authority or not listening to him, etc. just because I feel he isn't getting my respect or do I just suck it up and do it because money is more important than not working? I go by "job is more important" and suck it up. Part of life.

Yeah I do think there are supervisors out there who do abuse their powers and push their employers around because they have the power and if they disobey them, they can fire them but what can employers do about it? Everyone knows we all have to work and make a living to keep a roof over our heads so we have no choice but to let them push us around and they know it so they abuse their authority. Or if they have no problems hiring new people and they have lot of money it doesn't matter if they waste it on new people who quit all the time, they are still not going to care and abuse their authority anyway and not care if you quit.

I believe my boss in Montana may have abused hers but she was still a nice lady and maybe she was just too busy to go looking for her employer who was also a supervisor of housekeeping. But then again she could have waited till she got back to the office than sending me to go looking for her when I was in the middle of folding linen. And I did question her then and she hated it and always called it arguing. But back then I didn't know the consequences of my actions but if I knew back then questioning your boss can get you fired, I wouldn't have questioned her or tell her why can't she wait till J gets back. I was very lucky I didn't get fired but I stopped once I learned how you can lose your job.

My mom had an abusive boss too but she quit her job and got a job somewhere else.

Also sometimes bosses start bullying their employers just so they quit so they can hire someone new and not pay them as much. This is what was done at my mom's old work she speculated because she saw a pattern. People who had been working there for a while start getting crap from the bosses and then they quit and they hire new nurses. Then my mom was the last person to quit.

Please don't temp me ... at least until after April 18. I am a CPA; these are just my "clear my head" breaks. THAT conversation won't exactly clear my head ... and, well, I'm not sure if I can do it on a message board. But, snag me when I'm not in deadline mode, and I might be willing to try.

I'm completely on Snivy's side with this. DW/Kailuamom/LeagueGirl: missing the point I think. Nothing wrong with explaining the other side, but you're imagining the other side is objectively true, rather than just another perspective. It's not some supernatural truth which others need to hear or need to accept. It's your point of view. Even if it happens to be shared by powerful people, it's still just a point of view. You think you're being reasonable because other people think the same way, but you're not, you're being one-sided, and you're taking a very arrogant, belittling tone. Why is YOUR view the “bottom line” and not ours for example? Why do YOU get to put your position as more fundamental than ours? Just because you have power in the dominant system? Because there's a lot of you and you all think the same? Because the state is on your side? These aren't good, logical reasons. They're refusals to think. I'd sympathise if this was really about your needs, but it's not, it's about thinking you're entitled to get your way because of a sense of authority which is an indirect effect of being NT. And you're being so dismissive about the fact that other people might have needs which don't fit into your neat little schemes. Actually, you're being rather hateful, because you're deciding other people don't have worthwhile lives if they don't fit arbirtary criteria of your own devising. And to actually tell us not to argue!

I can see that Snivy might feel very silenced by this, that nobody is listening to legitimate grievances. I hope this is not as harrowing to her as it seems to be, because it feels to me like she is under attack from judgemental people who don't sympathise with her situation and who want to fit square pegs in round holes. Snivy: if you're listening, please don't take a lesson of self-hatred from this, it's just intolerant people giving you a verbal bashing because you've somehow stepped on a pet-peeve you couldn't have known they had. It's a horrible situation to be in and it's coming from people not stopping to think and to situate their own points of view. Snivy asked how to get her mother to see reason about needing to be left alone when stressed. Instead she gets lectures on her way of life, attacks on her character, accusations that she should be thrown out, even polemics against her fixation (don't you realise these things are necessary for us?!) It happens so often when someone asks a simple, honest question from a non-mainstream point of view: people descend on the unusual viewpoint like baying wolves, spouting judgemental rhetoric, saying they should be grateful just to be alive and belittling their needs relative to some imagined point of comparison. It's a form of silencing and it does us no good at all, it just imposes your point of view and closes the discussion. We don't need your diatribes on why we should unconditionally submit to what NT's want. We don't need your judgements on how we're living. We don't need your laying down the law against what you choose to interpret as deviance. We need help to understand why NT's are misunderstanding our needs, and help articulating our needs more effectively. Why is that so much to ask?

When people say “acting like an adult”, they're being ideological. What they really mean is conforming. An autistic person – whatever their age – is never going to conform. Very few of us have normal lives. Many of us will always have needs which need supporting in some way – if it's not parents, it's a circle of friends, a therapist, council services, the benefit system – or else we sink. Many of us sink, and the ones who do are not on here to offer their “I-coped-so-you-can” platitudes. The important thing is creating and defending niches for ourselves. If being supported by parents is one of those niches – and there's nothing wrong with it being, contrary to the moralising nonsense that's been going on here, the world is NOT just and so surviving by this means is no better than any other – it's only going to work with a certain kind of parent who is sufficiently flexible to give enough leeway. It's only going to work if the relationship is two-way – not in the distorted sense of two-way as defined by NT 'give and take', but in the sense of a genuine focus on the needs (NOT whims/authority) of each person. Very often the current balance of give/take is too loaded against us. In any case, we shouldn't have to give just to be left alone.

Unlike some heartless people here, I actually believe in human welfare and human rights. I don't believe in conform-or-die. I believe it's ethically abhorrent that there are people without homes in a country as rich as America. And I don't believe that the system demanding something is a good enough reason to take the demand as justified. Some of you seem to just love being the ones making the rules – even over things which don't really matter, just as a matter of principle.

Some of you are fussed about really small things – you care so much about the “trail”? That's not your son's problem – it's your own anal-fixatedness. I know perfectly well-functioning, NT adults in shared houses who don't do ANY of the things you're talking about, and they don't all die or constantly live at each others' throats. What is more, some of us will not be able to see the “trail” you can see – we're processing far more, and our senses work differently. Of course, you won't have this problem, because parents who make these kinds of demands are the ones whose kids move out when they're 18 and don't speak to them for a decade.

The “big deal”, Kailua, is firstly that things you want may be extremely arduous or even impossible for some of us, secondly that it's grossly unfair that you can decide “what's expected” and we can't – when we have far more unmet needs than you do, and thirdly, that it's most likely not our fault that some of us are still living with our parents, it's because of factors outside our control. The “big deal” is that it's not up to you to go around saying someone else is “not adult” because they're nonconformist or have a disability – any more than you could tell a blind person they are “not adult” because they can't see well enough to clean. It's a big deal because these apparently small demands can build-up to the point of pushing an already stressed person into overload, which is both horrible for us and “unacceptable” to you. It's a big deal because what YOU'RE reading as disrespect IS NOT disrespect, it DOES NOT mean that to us, it's your OWN violent interpretation of something completely different – because you're confusing your own presuppositions with reality (guess what? You don't get to decide what someone else's emotional state is, whether it's “respect” or something else, I can decide someone's shouting because they're happy not angry, it doesn't make it true). And it's a big deal because it is a microsocial product of the entire logic of systematic dominance which ensures that NT's are systematically more likely to have jobs, houses and the rest, and which systematically makes us dependent on you to a disproportionate degree. Because you have this structural privilege, you're using it to make asymmetrical demands, to set red lines when we can only request, to demand things which give a small gain for you at the cost of a huge loss for us, to make US do things WE think are silly while not doing FOR US things that YOU think are silly, and generally acting in a way which is NOT respectful in a reciprocal, multiperspectival sense.

People can't just get jobs because they need them, and even in the best of times, a lot of autistic people will not get jobs. A good parent will try to protect you from this, not to exacerbate the problems with additional pressure. No, you can't just throw your children out because you get fed up of them, you have ethical obligations, even if they aren't recognised in law. So, yes, free should be free, and the necessities of life should be an entitlement – and a good person will do their best to make these ethical principles reality, especially for those who are close to them. It's called gift-economy, and it's what all non-market relations are ultimately based on. Thinking of all relations as a transaction is a recipe for sociopathy: if families don't love each other, if staying with one's parents is just a transaction, then why not do a better transaction, kill one's parents and take the life-insurance? It's ultimately where this “responsible for yourself” attitude leads. TBH I think I'm just too compassionate to make sense of this NT attitude. If the situation was reversed, I'd NEVER throw out (say) my elderly parents, or a friend who was depending on me, over some judgement of what they're doing with their life, over not feeling like enabling something; nor blackmail them by threatening (however implicitly) to do such things. My amygdala would not allow it, my personal code of honour would not allow it, the inner truth of my soul would not allow it. I cultivate friendships with those who share a compassionate orientation to life.

Think of it this way: are these things REALLY worth escalating over? Think of the worst-case scenario: your adult child can't or won't clean up to your satisfaction, you order her/him to leave, s/he refuses. You're really going to hold them at gunpoint, or call the police, maybe have then jailed if they fight back? Really? Over a few crumbs? Is that the kind of person you want to be? In a choice between your authority and your child's welfare, does it really come out that way – you're someone for whom your feelings for your closest are less important than your own power?

If you think of yourself as a landlord, or if you think “your rules go” just because of some legal status you have, you're just acting like a tyrant and failing to relate to others on a human level. “No-one's hiring” isn't an excuse, it's often a fact. It might not be possible for an autistic person to just keep applying unsuccessfully. Some of us can't stand applying for things we know we won't get, because rejection hurts. It can put us in meltdown. And it's a double-bind, you see? We aren't allowed to go in meltdown either, it's “unacceptable”. It just staggers me that anyone can see a situation like this and not instantly feel it as completely unfair. NT people NEVER have to deal with the immense problems, the immense hurdles we do. Oh... I know, we're not supposed to ask if it's fair, it's “immature” to be ethical nowadays. Interesting how it goes the other way when the boot's on the other foot though isn't it – your own sense of fairness, of who has authority for instance, is enough to justify extreme actions, even though fairness is supposedly not an argument against these actions. And why should WE have all these obligations to cope with the stress NT people cause us, when NT people have no such obligations to cope with OUR needs? It is VERY sensible to believe we shouldn't do things which could stress us to the point of meltdown. You're putting us in an impossible position. We don't avoid stress, we go into meltdown, maybe you have us jailed, the police beat us up, or we end up institutionalised. We avoid stress, suddenly it's all wrong: we're meant to be taking the risk of meltdown so that we function! The current system is very cruel on autistic people, especially in America where the benefits system is so limited; it's a complete double-bind that people are expected to find work but the work isn't provided in sufficient quantity to go around. Especially when someone is working hard just to stay out of meltdown.

The sense some people have, that people who are dependent (through no fault of their own) are justifiably living one step away from the abyss, have no rights or entitlements and should just be grateful not to be homeless, makes me more angry than I can tell. Nobody chooses to be disabled or discriminated against or (in most cases) unemployed, it's not a matter of personal inferiority, it's a matter of an unfair system. I have just read that the average age people buy their own home now is 37. That's the average – some will be much older. You know the proportion of 30-year-olds living with their parents? In parts of Europe it's over HALF. There are MILLIONS of people unemployed nowadays. This isn't individuals being childish, it isn't people not looking for work hard enough, it's a structural phenomenon.

Parents and other helpers shouldn't be trying to use their structural privilege to force someone to be 'functional' at the expense of stress and suffering. It might just be a question of biding time until the right opportunity appears. People find all kinds of ways to survive, but the “conform or die” attitude helps no-one. It always ends up as a 'blend of adult/child' and negotiating boundaries is very important in these situations, even if there wasn't the additional complication of autism.

“i don't let my kids use their AS issues as a reason not to do things they think will be hard or that they don't feel like doing. i don't want them to think it's an acceptable reason to do whatever they feel like doing with no regard for other people or what needs to get done” (Missy)... the worst attitude problem EVER. Imagining real needs are just excuses. Imagining “acceptability” trumps needs. It doesn't work that way. A blind person can't see because you tell them it's unacceptable not to. They can't learn to drive because it “needs to be done”. Autistic needs are less immediately visible, but just as intractable. People are what they are. People need recognising for what they are, not forcing into round holes when they're square pegs. Have you even thought for a second what will happen if your children DON'T “do what they feel like doing” and end up having a meltdown at the wrong place and time? Or that maybe their fear of going into meltdown, being unable to avoid it (that's an “excuse for not doing things), and self-loathing at thinking they're responsible for it, will drive them into a paralysing depression, and THAT will make them unable to work? Some people are so short-sighted... “I coped so anyone can”, “responsibility applies whether there's any logical reason it applies or not” - we're to blame for things which aren't our fault. Not only are you running the risk of inadvertently destroying your children's lives, you're failing to stop and think whether the regime you're upholding is fair, and you're uncritically reproducing inequality and oppression. You're taking the world as a fixed reality, but your own attitudes and actions are reproducing this world, not improving it.

PS: before anyone starts on me, yes I do work, I've lived independently, I've lived as an adult with my parents, I certainly don't play games all day. But IF I ever lost the job I have, and couldn't find another suitable job, I could find myself in a very difficult situation: I know my limits in terms of stress, I know I can't risk meltdown (especially in public places), but convincing a benefits official of these limits and risks would be very difficult, so I'd probably end up depending on family or friends. It's not an imminent risk, but it's a shadow hanging over most of us one way or another. And IF I was under enough stress, I WOULD play games all day, or something of the sort, and so would all of us, unless we wanted to have constant meltdowns at the worst possible times. The system is being downright unreasonable expecting that I'll always be able to find work, no matter the circumstances, or else pass their tests (which are rigged against mental conditions), and thankfully I've got family and friends who aren't petty-minded conformity-mongers like certain people here. Oh, and when I've had good jobs, I've also supported friends who are going through rough patches. It's how compassionate, non-judgemental people act. A hard lesson for some of you I'm sure, but in civilised communities, this is how we treat vulnerable people – it's a lesson some of you need to learn.

Stuff that! I have been telling my son "I'm your mother, not your maid servant." since he was three years old. Mummy doesn't play maid at all at our house. If you're capable of doing it, you do it for yourself. If you're not capable yet, I help to show you how to be capable. If I then choose to do something for you that you are capable of doing yourself, it is because I am kind and want to express my love and affection for you by doing something nice to ease your load.

The best response is, "I would know better if my parents had ever taught me." Once they get over being mad, they may realize that they do need to teach you.


It's not really a parent child issue; it's a host guest issue. Parents typically feel free to mess up the kitchen and leave the cleanup for later because it is their house, so they're ultimately going to have to do the cleanup if no one else does anyway. But if it's the child's house then the situation is reversed. And I can tell you the frustrations are very much the same: my 78 year old mother used mess all sorts of things up behind her just like my two year old used to. The difference is that my mother took decades to mostly train out of that habit, while it only took maybe nine months for the two year old - though as a fraction of age, it was about the same in both cases.

Evidently not, based on the responses. I'm going to address DW_a_mom's response, because it's at least coherent.


You're right that there should be some give and take. However, I doubt your specific advice will work. If the original poster's mom is anywhere near as neurotypical as my mom, she'll still poke her head in to check in or to give a reminder, because to her, those things don't count as "interruptions". Many neurotypicals are simply incapable of conceptualizing that someone could actually want time alone, without company.

With my mom, it eventually became necessary to, after telling her I needed to be alone for a certain period of time, yell at her whenever she interrupted within that period - and to make it clear I was restarting the clock, since I really did lose the benefit of the destress time if I didn't get the full period uninterrupted. This was in my house when she was visiting, though; it probably wouldn't work with the original poster in the parents' house. I'm not sure anything will work there.

I will note that my mom's visits have become far better since I had kids. Now she can go bug them when she feels a need to bug someone. They're still young enough to appreciate all adult attention, and it actually takes a load off my wife and myself.


There used to be a book, What Color is your Parachute?. Follow all the steps in that book, and you will get a job. I don't know if it's still in print.


Sorry, no. This is the original poster trying to take responsibility, and the counselor and the mother are interfering with it. No wonder the original poster hasn't been able to do it yet.

I think that's the point that most of us were trying to make without being pointedly rude to the OP and telling her she ought to find a way to make a life whereby she can be free of these intrusions. When you live in someone else's house you simply don't have the freedom to live the way you want to live. When you click that this won't happen, you leave and manage as best as you can. I didn't go so well at this for a vast number of years, but it sure beat the hell out of staying in the home and feeling like crap all the time.

The OP obviously wants freedom and respect. I think this is universal when you hit the age (irrespective of HF-ASD or NT status) where you are becoming more of an autonomous person. A lot of us can't get that in our family homes. A lot of parents want to keep kids from developing that autonomy as well.

I couldn't even live with flatmates when I left home although I tried extensively. I had one roommate that didn't even allow me to sit in my room before work and have a coffee quietly. She had to come in and socialise with me. It drove me up a tree, but I was the "weird" one because she was "just being friendly" and "who doesn't want that connection with their housemates". I have lived on my own (outside of partners and now my son) for the majority of my life because I couldn't stand the interruptions and my issues were too great to "share" with a household. This meant I had to pay twice as much in rent in my early twenties than my peers did, which meant I had to find a way to manage that or I had to manage the flip side. My needs had consequences. I either had to sacrifice psychologically/emotionally to live with other people or sacrifice financially to live alone.

I believe the parents here are simply trying to point out life is filled with consequences. Life doesn't stop having consequences just because you're on the spectrum. Just as being autistic isn't carte blanche to be an arse to other people, it doesn't give us a pass to make demands of those looking after us or resent that we are still in a position where we obviously need looking after.

Well, you know what they say about aspies - to get them to understand, you actually have to say what you mean. The flip side is that aspies are unlikely to take offense at bluntness; it's the circumlocutions that are frustrating.

The parents here are either parents of aspies or parents who are aspies, so presumably they understand those things.

Yeah, but I also know a fair few parents of aspies who dismiss "rude" as "ASD" and tend to throw the baby out with the bathwater so to speak. I get that is their issue and not my issue, but I think if I want to be able to speak about ASD issues with NT people I need to be more gentle in my approach. I don't like to be rude and I have worked hard on being more diplomatic in my elderly years . Even if it isn't the way I would communicate, the truth is I don't want my "style" of communicating to hurt other people. It isn't so much about how I might be perceived as how I might make others feel. If I alienate people, especially parents of spectrum kids, I can't communicate what of value I might have to share that would be of benefit to people on the spectrum. Maybe.

(i am not quoting the whole post, but it pretty much went in the same direction as this first paragraph)

your "us vs them" argument here is invalidated by the fact that the list of people you give are not all NT. this isnt an issue of all the NTs trodding upon the ASDs and trying to force them to submit. maybe its more of a parent view, since parents are usually the ones having to clean up and take care of the kids. or maybe its more of a female view, since females are usually the ones left holding the bag when it comes to cleaning up the house after other people. but its not just an NT view.



i think its a pretty simplistic view of the world to think that autism is the only thing out there that causes problems and hurdles for people, and that all autistics have it worse than all non-autistics. there ARE worse things than autism, more disabling things, more difficult to overcome things. and there are a lot of successful autistic people out there, and dont assume its only because they strived soooo very hard to overcome. if life were all about how hard you worked, it would actually be fair, and i think we all know it isnt. there is a lot of chance and timing and possibility involved in how well anyone does and what they are able to overcome.