"This is my house, my rules!"

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In general, I think most parents are willing to handle one, sometimes two questions or objections. (Although if it's for every little thing, all day long, that willingness will go down quickly.) So if the bath looks scary, the kid can object "It's too hot!" The parent will likely feel it and say it's ok. Then the kid says, "I wanted bubbles!" and the parent replys, "It's too late to put bubbles in." On the third objection, "I wanted a shower instead!" the parent is likely to lay down the law and say, "Get in the bath NOW." Hope that helps a little.

Well, no, it's not really. I was at work when I posted last, getting ready to leave so that post was made it haste and not worded well.

When I said we aren't stupid, this is what I meant:

To think as parent that we know everything about what we're doing is stupid. Most of us realize as soon as we become parents that we don't know squat. And we can forget that we thought we knew a lot beforehand. I think we all learn pretty quickly once we've got kids in the picture that we're responsible for, and they have their own little minds that think for themselves (unlike anything else we've ever been responsible for before, and that we can't just send them home to their parents, it's like the scariest thing that's ever happened to us. Over time though, we learn that even though we don't have a clue, it's okay. We're not perfect, but we can do it. We will make mistakes just like our own parents did. We will set rules that sometimes don't work, and will have to make adjustments occasionally to allow for unexpected circumstances. It does't take most of us very long to figure that out. It's a lesson that parenthood kind of forces on you, and adjust to it out of sheer survival. If you don't take care of your kids, somebody is bound to get involved and you could risk losing them. The fast majority of parents manage.

Personally, I've never allowed my kids to think I'm not perfect. I screw up all the time. I know I'm going to do it, and so do they. It's a fact of life, and IMHO it shouldn't be hidden from our kids. So we do screw up sometimes, and we apologize when we do. We make amends.

When our child doesn't come because there's a dangerous snake we didn't see, we might get upset, but we'll figure out what happened eventually, make up for it, and everything will be back to normal in good time.

I don't expect my kids to know the right thing to do in every situation. I expect them to behave when they can, and also expect to spend time and effort understanding why they couldn't when they didn't. That's part of the process of parenting. Setting rules, making adjustments when necessary, screwing up sometimes, making amends when necessary, and teaching them to do all of those things too, themselves. Because that's what life is all about, even if you're not a parent. It's just ten times more of all of that if you are one.

Sorry. I didn't have time to type all that out at work.

Even though you're not my kid, my snapping at you earlier is a pretty good example of what I'm talking about. Now that I'm home and not in a hurry, I could take the time to explain it better. I screwed up and offended you. It happens. But I know it'll happen sometimes, and I'm always willing to take the time to correct the problem when it does. I have to do it with my kids, and sometimes here too. It's no big deal. If I were afraid of offending people, I'd never leave the house or talk to anyone even online. It's going to happen. It's inevitable, but I do try to avoid it when I can, and am always ready to make up for it if at all possible when it does.



Same way we deal with parenting. Try, succeed, fail and learn. Nobody I know says either one is easy. (Except as parents we just hope in the process we don't screw up our kids too much. At least as the kid, you don't have to worry about that, because that's on us not you, no matter what your parents told you. )

There is a difference between wanting to know why and stalling and/or trying to get out of something.

Having multiple excuses for not taking a bath or going to bed or brushing teeth to me is not the same as wanting to know why. Sometimes "why" questions might be used as a stalling/non compliance tactic too but sometimes it is a genuine desire to understand.

If there is a gap between how you explain something (somethings are hard/impossible to sufficiently simplify) and the comprehension level of the asker, sometimes you do have tell them that it your rule and they need to trust you. (A kinder, gentler version of "my house my rules.")

The aspie in me has always wanted to wanted to know the justifications for rules. My dad had little patience and was a "my house, my rules" kind of guy who I do even to this day think enjoyed the sad, sad power rush of being able to order around a little kid. I always resented it as a child. I do not look kindly on it now in retrospect, either.

That does not mean I let my son do whatever he likes. It does mean that whenever possible, I do try to explain our rules so he can understand them, and I try not to have superfluous or stupid rules. I have general categories for rules that I can use, like health and safety, not wasting/destroying things etc., so even if he cannot understand a specific prohibition, he at least has some idea of what category is involved.

At 7, I really do think this has born fruit as he TRUSTS us to protect his interests. Trust and respect work much better than fear. Is he compliant all the time? Heck No, but when he isn't, by and large I know why (sensory issues, siren call of special interests, occasional tests of boundaries etc.) and if I have to punish for non-compliance it is not a surprise and the punishment is proportional. My son has a very intense temperament and I do think I have staved off worse non-compliance by being people he can trust. Parents are by nature dictators but if your kid recognizes you as a benevolent one, I think it goes better.

I think that is what most parents on this board try to aim for. It is not perfect. We get frustrated and lose the perfect calm demeanor we probably should have sometimes because we are human. We try our best.

Yes indeed. That. ^^

TRUST is a huge issue for aspies. My father was also hard core "my house, my rules." He did not tolerate disobedience. But, he didn't have to very often, because we had a really good relationship. I remember truly wanting to please him because we were very close and I did trust him a great deal. He's 75 now, and keeps telling me now he's sorry for being so hard on me. Which is weird because I keep telling him he wasn't. That I don't remember it that way at all. He was pretty strict in comparison to other parents around town, but it never bothered me. It did bother me to displease him though.

We do argue now about some of the dumbest things, but it's not about "my way or the highway" kind fo stuff. It's more about how I do some things differently from him now.

I was visiting him recently and went to put a bowl of soup in his microwave, and he said, "Don't you want to put a napkin over that?"

"What for?" I asked.

"Oh. Okay," He shrugged, but the look on his face said, "That's ridiculous, you know why."

I put the soup in, started the oven, and calmly told him, "Dad. I have a microwave with far more power than this one at home. It won't splatter. Trust me."

It didn't of course, and he got over it. It's just funny though, that we do argue over dumb things, but they're never bad ones, and I still trust him implicitly. I just do some things differently from him and that annoys him sometimes, but oh well, that's tough. I'm 52 years old for gosh sakes. If I want to have my candy bar and eat it too, I will!

He still has certain rules in his house. I and my kids respect and follow them, because that's as it should be.

As a kid, I would have sold my soul to work and earn money instead of going to school and/or having to obey my parents. I knew that if I worked, I'd be able to buy anything I wanted: toys, video games, candy, salty snacks, you name it. Case in point. When I was 10 or 11, I somehow got fascinated by one of those charity car washes. So my older sister (10 years older) said she'd get me a job washing people's cars. You should have seen how my eyes lit up when she said that! I'd be doing real work! I'd be earning money doing something I can easily do. (School and chores didn't count as "real" in my mind.) I immediately had a vision of myself bringing home an envelope of cash, handing it to my parents, getting endless praise (instead of the endless harping I was getting), then walking over to a candy shop down the block and buying a big bag of artificially flavored junk pumped full of corn syrup, carnauba wax, Red 40, and Yellow 5. (I'm being facetious here with the last sentence, and given my age, I was unaware of paychecks and child labor laws.)

So, being an aspie child and all, I started bombarding my sister with questions about when she can take me to a place where they'll have me wash cars. At first, she'd say something "later" or "another time". But since I was very persistent, she admitted to me that it was all a joke. There won't be any cars to wash. There won't be any money earned. And there won't be a status as a full member of the family. I kept my composure, since I got spanked for not reacting appropriately to a joke before. However, that night, I cried myself to sleep.

As for getting taken advantage of 100-200 years ago, being an aspie kid and having the naivety that comes with it, I'd probably never realize it's happening to me in the first place. Ignorance, after all, is bliss. I'd still be elated to have a job, earn money, be able to buy what I want, and enjoy being a full member of the family. "Getting taken advantage of" was the price I was more than willing to pay at that age.

I don't think that child laborers were treated as full members of the family. More likely they were treated like leased out chattel slaves. Often times they lived on site and were beaten by the sweatshop managers when they did not work "hard enough" or tried to rest during their unregulated work hours. Their pay was docked for "infractions" like dropping things. They would get injured on the job (no OSHA regs), and they would not get disability or workman's comp. If they did live at home they were often beaten by their parents if their pay was docked.

This abuse is a good part of why we have labor laws.

"... and you had me when I was given no choice in the matter."

So, who is the responsible one?

If your child is an adult, they're still your child.

Exactly

Well my friend, be careful what you wish for because it may just come true. Read the story called "The Monkey's Paw."

No, it meant I am not angry or upset at you for snapping.

Years ago, people would adopt children to use as their servants instead of to love and raise as their own child. Now it's not so simple to just adopt a kid anymore. I also read online that back in the days like the 1800's, people had kids, lot of them so they can use them to work in the fields with. That is also why summer vacation was invented, so kids can have time off to work in the fields before returning to school for the year. Now today, people don't have lot of kids anymore. Times have changed. Plus people grew their own food then, had their own milk, there was no electricity nor running water, no natural gas, so it was cheaper then. Plus people made their own clothes. I bet more people learned to sew back then too because it was pat of life and it was something you needed to learn. Now today it's just a hobby, not a need. It would be extremely expensive to have 14 children today. Plus they had no birth control back then so it's not like all those people chose to have that many children and I know not all families had tons of kids.

I think I can see why now why some people on the autistic spectrum have a problem with "My house, my rules." Their own parents probably thought they were trying to stall them by asking "why?" to everything so they got frustrated and went "My house, my rules" not even understanding that their child wanted to understand the reason behind it.

I know, and knew that when I posted the revised response. The first post obviously did not get the correct message across (my actual intention). I still felt in encumbent on me to correct and clarify. Leaving it as is could have caused others to come to the same conclusion.

Again, I would have loved to grow up in a family of 14 kids. As a child, I was constantly lonely. I begged my parents to "born me a brother" (that is, to have a child close to me in age, since my sister was much older); "no". I begged them to adopt another child my age; "no". I begged by parents to get a pet; "no". I'm kind of glad in retrospect that the internet didn't exist back then. Otherwise I would have tried to contact adoption agencies, used my parents' credit card to buy a pet off of eBay, or worse, try to buy someone's baby brother on eBay that someone put up as a prank. (Given my naivety as an aspie child, I'm convinced that I'd have thought that the last one was real.)

Also, my family was very poor for most of the time I was growing up. Every cent counted. Cereals bought were mostly store brands. Clothes and school supplies were from K-Mart or consignment shops. Household supplies were from dollar stores. Restaurant outings happened four times a year maximum. Purchases of small pleasures (candy, toys, museum tickets, etc.) took so much begging and pleading, it was almost not worth the effort. Even when my parents took me somewhere, buying snacks or souvenirs from the shops there was a forbidden discussion topic, punishable by spanking at home. And when I lost school supplies or had clothes damaged beyond repair by bullies, it was treated as a world catastrophe. The only thing that kept me from shoplifting was the fear of bullying in jail or juvie; it overrode the desperation I felt.

So, when my older sister "offered" to get me a job to wash people's cars, of course I was happy beyond words! Look at it this way: I'd be doing real work, my parents would love me more because I was helping them earn money, and I'll be able to buy small pleasures myself instead of begging and pleading. The vision of myself eating a bag of popcorn and sipping on a soda, while walking around the grounds of an outdoor museum, was sweet beyond words. I wanted to walk into a store, pick something, and be able to get it without begging. So of course I cried myself to sleep when I learned that the job of washing cars was just a joke, and a cruel one to boot. It just gave me trust issues.

Adoption is very expensive and you have to go through all this red tape and it can take years to adopt a child. No insurance will cover this vs having your own child. Plus you don't get to pick the gender of your child when you make one. It's either the male or female sperm gets to the egg, whichever enters the egg first. Plus you mention your parents were very poor. I think they were smart by not having anymore children because kids are expensive and they also couldn't afford to go out much or buy you stuff because of their poor income. Bills come first and food and kids like with shoes and clothes. It's not easy growing up poor, I know it. That is why some people are against the poor having children. My husband grew up poor too and he also said it was hard and he has to wear clothes that were second hand so they were all worn and he got teased for it. They also had to wash their clothes in the tub sometimes or eat off of top ramen noodles sometimes and they didn't get to go out and have fun like eat out or go to the movies or get a toy sometimes or have a snack from a store. Just because someone gets pregnant, doesn't mean they will end up with a boy and again and again every time they get pregnant it could be a girl every time. Even fertility treatment is expensive too so it's not like they could take your dad's sperm and find the male one and put inside your mother. I don't even know if that is possible either.

I suppose they could have let you work around the neighborhood and get a job at age 16 or whichever the age was back then to work in businesses just to help them out so your life be better. There are teens out there that do work and give their paychecks to their parents to help out with the bills so they won't lose their home or have any utilities shut off due to the economy or rough spot they hit. I wouldn't mind my son having a job or earning his own money. I would see it as it would teach him responsibility and how hard people work for their money to live and get what they want so they save up for it. I think that is also why parents give their kids allowance and then when they are older they have to earn it from helping out around the house and doing chores so they learn how life works and learn to save and learn people work hard for their money to get what they want and they can't always get what they want because they don't have enough.

I am surprised your perspective hasn't changed about your parents. My mom's changed, mine changed, I am sure others on here have changed too about their own parents.

Plus pets are expensive, You have to buy them food, give them shots, and what if they get sick and have to go to the vet. Sure poor people have pets too but I wonder what happens if they can't afford their dog food or the vet bill or their shots? Their animal better not get sick or hurt.

I did have a job at 16. It was cleaning the pool deck and reporting incidents of misconduct to the pool supervisor. I got paid minimum wage, but being able to buy what I want when I want, made it feel like manna from heaven. At first, my parents wanted to put my earnings into a limited-access savings account, but I thwarted them by visiting a currency exchange, cashing my entire check there, and hiding the cash in my room. I contributed by periodically buying groceries and treats (hauling 4 bags on a city bus) and giving them $10 for utilities.

The car-washing joke was made when I was 10 or 11. That's when my family was really poor. Dangling the possibility of having extra money right in front of my nose, then yanking it away, felt cruel beyond words. Like I said earlier, this joke gave me trust issues.