Sometimes I just would love my mom to fark off.

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Azurecrayon: "your "us vs them" argument here is invalidated by the fact that the list of people you give are not all NT... maybe its more of a parent view" - My problem with it is not principally that it's NT, but that it's asymmetrical and silencing of other perspectives. I'm not anti-NT at all, I work hard to understand and explain NT perspectives, and I realise the suffering in autistic-NT relationships often goes both ways. But, I've framed the response here in an "us vs them" way because it is framed in an "us vs them" way by the people who I'm arguing against. They are taking a "my way or the highway" attitude which is an attitude of dominating someone else. Us the adults vs them the immature kids. Us the hard-working people vs them the moochers. Except of course, it's not immature kids or moochers, it's someone with a disability who either hasn't learnt something or can't do it, and has sensory problems they're trying to express and asking for help with. And I was really upset by the way they got a verbal bashing for it. Point taken that maybe the people who administered the bashing doing this because of their parent stance rather than because of being NT (though I think the assumptions of what an "adult" can do are based on an NT model). But the implications are the same wherever it comes from. It's not helpful in resolving real problems, it's more a way of silencing the problem by putting it on the other person. OP is being told "forget YOUR needs, OUR demands are the bottom line". That's us vs them. So of course, I put the other side in the same terms – they're on the attack, so I defend. TBH I find the way they're arguing offensive, which perhaps made me over-react. They're just denying that there's any way of thinking but their own, and they're making enormous assumptions about someone else's situation which they have no grounds for.

"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" - When did I say it was the ONLY thing which causes hurdles? It's just that I feel differently about problems/hurdles to you. I have the same feeling about ALL hurdles – regardless of where they come from. I hate the ideology that people are responsible no matter what problems they have, for things they can't help, and can be held to the same standards even when they're different. It's unfair to autistic people, and it's unfair to a lot of other people as well. On a global scale, it's a minority ideology: most people either believe in extensive welfare states or extensive support from extended families. I don't understand how this "you're responsible", "sink or swim" attitude has taken root so deeply in a few places. No-one I know thinks that way about people they're close to. Maybe it's one of these things that only really exists on the internet. To me, it seems like a failure of the sense of compassion and the sense of justice at the same time – it's as if people are switching off their ethical capabilities when they say these things. I know this can't be what's going on, but it really frightens me what impact this must be having on vulnerable people of all kinds.

The other thing I recognise, that you don't seem to want to recognise, is that there is such a thing as an insuperable hurdle. Therefore, there is such a thing as an unreasonable demand on someone. You can't expect a blind person to read regular books or learn to drive. And these inner, insuperable hurdles don't vanish just because they're socially unrecognised or taboo. Threatening the blind person that they must learn to drive or else be thrown out achieves nothing except causing a lot of misery. What's more, the things which can be insuperable for different people are very variant. A demand which is perfectly reasonable on NT's is not reasonable on autistics. A demand which is meetable by one autistic person might not be meetable by another. It's also socially relative. A person with no disability or psychological problem still has a lot of insuperable hurdles: they can't sprout wings and fly for instance. But dominant norms rarely make these kinds of demands on someone who fits the norm. They often make such demands regarding forms of difference which are poorly understood. So I see over and over (not only in relation to autism but all kinds of things), people saying something equivalent to "I can't sprout wings and fly", and seeing the kind of responses that went on here: you have to sprout wings and fly, you can if you try, you're just making excuses, you're immature/a moocher/[insert label here], other people making allowances that you can't sprout wings and fly is something you should just be grateful for... of course, I'd have much higher regard for the ones who realise I can't sprout wings than the ones who think i can.

The original post very much indicated some degree of a smothering / "helicopter parent" type of parenting style, not an authoritarian "do as I say or you're out" type of style, which is another of the reasons I'm so upset at the nature of the responses: the responses assume everyone will have the authoritarian kind of parent (which isn't true) and that this kind of parenting is unproblematic (which also isn't true), and that the best response to a helicopter parent is to just be grateful and not have any boundaries about sensory needs (which definitely isn't true). Put simply, the adult children of authoritarian parents don't have the kind issues OP is having because their kids leave home pretty much as soon as they're legally allowed to, even if they have no job, no life skills and are moving into extreme vulnerability (and, yes, I know people who did this). They get messed-up in all kinds of other ways, I've no doubt a great many 'sink' rather than 'swim', and they're ultimately worse-off than the other kind I think, but they're not going to be having OP's particular problem. If, on the other hand, you've got the helicopter kind of parent, first off they're very unlikely to throw you out, and they're going to work hard to make sure you don't want to leave and it's not in your interests to do so (I've heard of things as extreme as offering someone a car if they'll move back with their parents). It's more a problem of persuading them to let you go, or finding ways to learn the things you need to for them to let you go. Also, they may well be a nuisance, but it's all very well-meaning and supportive, it's not at all a demand for a 'transaction' or something in return for whatever they're providing, and they won't make it look like they're laying down the rules even if they end up inducing you to do what they want. It never ends up as host/guest or landlord/client, they don't see it in these terms, and most likely, what they're demanding (in their mind) is either something they think you need, or something they think will cheer you up. They can also be extremely hard to persuade that you don't want something doing for your benefit, so it's not so much a problem of people being ungrateful for what they're given, as wishing they'd stop giving when you don't want it any more. TBH I think most people with this kind of parent are very grateful they didn't wind up with the other type, and this is one of the things which makes it very hard to tell them to go away or get mad at them, though I've also seen some who are ungrateful for different reasons, i.e. because they found it so hard to break away, and resent not having learnt certain things sooner.

For each of us, there are certain things we can't do, which are just as immalleable as a blind person being unable to read a normal-text book. Some which it would take years of therapy to learn how to do. Some of these we can work around by doing things a different way, some of them we can't. There's other things we can do, but we find unusually difficult – far more so than the average person, so they're the kind of things we can do once in a while, but not every day or every week (we need to regulate stress to avoid meltdown). And there's still other things which we could in principle do easily enough, but we'd need teaching, showing, explaining, reminding. The authoritarians assume they're all of the last type (or it doesn't matter since they're the ones making the rules), and they force us to do things we can't do and things which make our lives a misery (this will happen even if they're . The helicopter types assume everything is of the first type – it can't be learnt – and everything is intractable – it can't be worked around. This doesn't necessarily mean they understand our needs any better than the authoritarians do. Also, it's a continuum, and some of them are in the middle – which doesn't at all mean you get a happy medium, it means you get some of both sets of problems. It sounds to me like OP's parents are somewhere between the two, but towards the helicopter end. So advice along the lines of "act as if / treat them as if they're an authoritarian parent" is not going to work.

Most of the responses have just been extremely unhelpful. Being grateful they aren't throwing one out is not going to keep one's stress at manageable levels. Blaming oneself for there being no jobs available isn't going to miraculously summon one into being, or make sensory problems go away. Criticising computer games as addictive – as if someone should simply lose their fixations, exposing them to even more stress and meltdowns – is downright counterproductive. Some would be helpful with a certain kind of parent: bargaining regarding chores will work if the parents are in an exchange frame for example (it's not going to work if they're "trying to help" rather than extracting labour, as they aren't going to recognise what they're doing as a cost). But the real issue is an unrecognised need: the parents aren't recognising the need for de-stress time and fixations, which is needed to avoid meltdown.

It may well be true that the best way out of these situations is to live alone (as has already been said), but this isn't going to be a viable option for everyone. Personally I'd advise, when approaching NT's about this kind of thing, the trick is getting them to recognise that your needs are different from theirs. Explain to them what effect interruptions have on you, and why you need de-stress time. Try to explain it by analogy to experiences they're familiar with. Have facts to back it up: if possible, get something from a parent-oriented source which supports what you're saying. This shouldn't be hard, since most materials on autism are written for NT's (it might be under the terms 'monotropism' or 'mono-processing'). Anyway, try to explain that transitions between states of mind can be stressful for you, and that stress can lead to meltdown. Try to come up with an "it's like" analogy ("it's like that time you got angry because I was being noisy when you were watching TV" for example). In the event that your parent has autistic tendencies however slight, this shouldn't be hard. Don't try to explain this when you're angry, explain it when you're calm. The best time might be an hour or so after you've been irritable towards your mother – go and find her and say, "here's why I was irritable, this is what just happened". We can easily hurt NT people's emotions without meaning to, so I'd accompany it with, "I'm sorry if I upset you" and "I find it really difficult not to get irritable when...". Explain very carefully that you appreciate their motives are good, that they're intending to help, but their actions aren't having the intended effect. This needs to be related to what their intended effect is. If it's to cheer you up, explain that interruptions make you frustrated. If it's to make you socially function, explain that excessive stress makes you unable to function. The difficulty to work around is that she might take this as something personal: you're rejecting her help, you're not grateful when you should be, or even that you hate her. So try to reassure her as much as possible that this isn't the case. The conventional meanings attached to your actions are misreadings of your mental state. Accompany it with: "I really appreciate when you do..." (something else). "I really enjoyed" or "I really learnt from..." (one activity you did together). Reassure her that you love her. Try not to blame her for making you irritable, because she probably doesn't know better (even if you've told her, she doesn't know intuitively, she probably thinks you're concealing your mental state: a lot of depressed people say "I'm fine"). Try to understand why she feels you need company, or need to be more active, when you're in pre-meltdown states. (For comparison: what you're mother is doing is exactly the right thing to do to an NT person who has depression – I've seen sites which say, if someone is depressed, make sure they have company, make sure they know you're there for them, try to get them to be active and to do something useful or something fun). Try very hard not to judge her for it, even if she keeps doing these things. I empathise completely with the response of feeling angry in these situations, but try to put in place a qualifier: she isn't trying to harm you, she doesn't understand (intuitively) how your mind works, and she might have great difficulty stopping herself from doing something which comes very naturally to her (it feels to her like she's abandoning you if she doesn't do it).

That's certainly one approach. However, I think the "tough love" approach is also valid. The neurotypical parents in this forum, unlike those in general society, live in a world where a significant fraction of their interactions are with aspies or auties. Unlike most people, they need to learn how to handle aspie styles of communication as well as neurotypical styles. And for those trying to give advice to the original poster, this thread is a perfect opportunity to practice that, since the original poster is aspie, not neurotypical.

I agree. I am only practicing what I feel I need to practice in life. I have currently begun training towards a long-term career shift and hope to work exclusively with people on the spectrum and their families in an advocacy/therapeutic capacity.

I suggest that being direct is an ASD "style". I believe there is a way to be gentle and direct at the same time, thereby not changing one's "style" of communication (ie. direct), but being more mindful that others have feelings that can be damaged by our words. I teach my son that words are powerful, often more powerful than fists. I believe most on the spectrum have experienced the pain over the power of words first hand more than we like to admit sometimes. I have noticed that some on the spectrum use the "direct" style of communication as an excuse to be downright mean to other people while claiming they do that because they are on the spectrum. For me, that's unacceptable.

All of that said, there are times when anger and absolute wrath are indicated.

Hear hear.

Slight disagreement though: it's not mainly a problem of realising people have feelings, it's a problem of realising that NT's (and other psychological types, and differently constructed autistic people) will be affected by things in ways you or I might personally not be. It's quite possible to hurt an NT person without any intent or even awareness of having done so, even if you're being very mindful, and even if you don't say/do anything which would hurt you personally, and/or which would hurt autistic people in general.

Also, this works both ways. The dismissive/one-sided tone some people were adopting in this thread makes me (and maybe OP, I don't know) less prone to listen to what they're saying. The thing about the 'trail' for instance - on retrospect this seems an accurate mnemonic for how a certain subset of people (though certainly not everyone, or every NT) thinks about tidiness. But if I'd been told it in this tone, at a time when I didn't largely know it already, I'd just have ignored it as someone who doesn't know what they're talking about because they obviously see things too one-sidedly. They aren't making allowance for instance, for what's visible to them being invisible to someone else. Therefore it's 'poorly translated' for someone who isn't inside their frame. Maybe some of these people are autistic, and think they're being 'direct'. But they're 'directly' expressing something that's limited to one way of seeing, that isn't talking between two, so it fails as communication.



The mistake you're making here is in thinking that everyone on the spectrum has the same abilities that you do. You need a good deal of intelligence and a lot of free processing power so to speak to be able to learn these things - especially to be able to figure out how an NT person might react to what you say (in my experience, analogy to how I'd react DOES NOT work, though it's better than no allowance at all). It's very hard to know with someone else if they're doing it because they're on the spectrum or if they're being mean, even for someone else on the spectrum. Can one tell for instance if someone else knows a different way of saying the same thing, or if their need to say something has a Tourette's-tic-like quality where holding it in would be painful?

Even if you know things now, chances are you didn't know them at the age an NT child would have, and that you learnt them through using your intelligence to compensate for things you aren't picking up intuitively. This isn't possible for everyone on the spectrum - one can't explain to a person who's barely linguistic for instance, to say things more gently, especially if one also needs to teach them (say) not to injure themselves, or how to catch/avoid meltdowns before they happen. The way I see it, everyone has limited time for learning, and a limited capability to handle stress, and people who have a lot of problems need to be strategic in rationing these. There's 'opportunity costs' so to speak in time (or stress-level) spent learning/developing any one thing - we need to be very careful about not pushing for things which either demand more than someone has the capability for, and not pushing for less-important things at the expense of more-important things (this includes for instance that we need to be encouraged to develop our special talents if we have any, or to develop them if we don't - otherwise finding a suitable job will be very difficult - this is the mistake that's most often made, concentrating on rectifying the deficits rather than playing to the advantages). I often see a pattern where people are expecting other people to suddenly address everything at once - declaring any deficit 'not acceptable' and creating black-and-white borderlines (one can't drop crumbs, one must do every kind of housework a diligent NT person would do, one must never be abrupt with someone else, one must never shout of slam doors, one must tolerate interruptions when playing or even working, etc etc...) What gets lost in all the rigidity is the sense that something worse may have been prevented, or being learned to be prevented, or something important gained, at the cost of whatever the alleged deficit is: maybe one has to accept intolerance of interruptions if one doesn't want explosive meltdowns for example; maybe one has to tolerate someone saying mean things as a preferable alternative to acting on what they think. The trouble with this discourse of 'acceptability': it feels to me like it's never far from telling someone they're guilty whatever they do, which isn't a recipe for getting anything you want from them, and will seriously mess them up. It assumes that people are always capable of whatever is demanded of them, which isn't a logical view to hold, and it involves putting too much responsibility on the person concerned, i.e. demanding more of them than they can conceivably do at that point.

Another point. A lot of NT people think in broad-brush patterns and prejudgements, especially if they're dealing with people they don't know very well. So we have a choice which view to encourage:

1) NT person assumes you're autistic, assumes nothing you say is (intentionally) rude, assumes it's "acceptable" because you're on the spectrum, and tries not to get hurt. They treat autistic people better than they would otherwise. They get less hurt by what you say than they would otherwise (thinking you did it on purpose makes it a lot worse for them).

2) NT person assumes you're just like everyone else, assumes you know what they know and think like they think, takes what you say just like if an NT person says it, and we're back to square one in terms of everything we say being misinterpreted: they assume every AS/HFA person they meet is (deliberately) rude, arrogant, inconsiderate, etc.

I'd rather have them thinking 1 than 2, firstly because it makes life a lot easier for a lot of autistic people, and secondly because it's accurate probably 90%+ of the time, which is a lot better than the small proportion of the time they're right with 2. In which case, we need to avoid saying things which make them think 2, even if we know that 1 isn't 100% true. We can't expect them to tell cases of 1 from cases of 2 because they don't, in general, know autistic people well enough to make these judgements, and even people who know a particular person quite well can slip into 2 in cases where it just isn't true. It's bad for autistic people, and bad for effective communication with NT people, to give NT people any excuse for falling back into thinking 2 instead of 1.

In any case, I don't think people who refuse to vary their speech-styles are being deliberately inconsiderate, they're just demanding a different 'balance' of what counts as 'considerate': we have to put up with NT speech styles (even when they hurt us), so they should have to put up with autistic speech styles (even when it hurts them). Personally, while I also work towards greater tolerance for autistic speech styles, I go for the 'gentle' approach. I think about it more in terms of effectively communicating what I intend to communicate: if an NT person takes something I say as an insult when I don't mean it to be, I've not communicated what I was trying to communicate. It's a bit the same as not using five-syllable words when talking to a four-year-old. One might wish them to learn five-syllable words eventually, but in the meantime, one has to take account of what they already understand, and build a bridge from here to there. This is easier to do if one makes whatever concessions one can.

I differ slightly. In my experience, aspies naturally communicate by being not just direct, but being bluntly direct. Certainly I personally find that it takes a tremendous amount of additional effort to make the message "gentle" as well as direct.

That's unfortunately necessary in day to day affairs, but here on wrongplanet, I feel that aspies should be able to behave as comes naturally to us, without having to tiptoe around neurotypical sensibilities that are, frankly, irrational.

I have never seen anyone use Asperger's as an excuse to be purposely rude, and I think it's rare with other forms of autism as well. I have seen it as a reason not to worry about sugar coating things or saying things that are false just to appear agreeable, but I think it's a pretty legitimate reason in those cases - even if that approach unfortunately impractical outside of wrongplanet.


I don't agree that "absolute wrath" is ever justified in meaningful communication. Everyone should be expected to make their arguments calmly. If you feel wrath, keep it to yourself and give yourself time to calm down before hitting the "submit" button.

aspie1968@ I was actually diagnosed with AS when I was 12 so I am not an NT. And I never attacked the OP nor was rude to her. I say things the way it is and if you would have read my posts or even bother clicking on one of the links I posted, you would have seen I had struggles too growing up, same as when I said about what issues I used to have at work because of my boss abusing her authority I suspected and how I used to "argue" with her she called it and how I didn't know what the possible consequences could be for my actions. Then I learned to not do it anymore.

Don't assume anyone is NT if they spoke against the OP and you forgot to include cube, missykrissy, edself, and momsparky. They all spoke against the OP too.


I had a response to you last night but deleted it because I was unsure about it but I think this time I was more calm so I said it in a better way and I wasn't tired and felt loss at words. I just felt singled out when you included me in your first post but didn't have the other aspies included like cube and edself. I dunno if the other two are aspies and I have faced enough discrimination on this forum.

And this is how dominant-group assumptions get accepted by dominated groups... the master bullies the slave, the slave 'learns' there are 'consequences', the slave suddenly decides that the master is no longer a master but just 'the way things are'. The slave is still a slave but starts to take the other's power as an outer limit to both thought and being. You don't realise that these consequences are coming from the power of the master, you see them as coming from "reality". Because what you call "reality" is the master's reality, it belongs to them, they decide what the consequences are, but you speak as if you're speaking with the voice of the master. What's really upsetting here is that you don't just accept the master's reality because you can't change it (which is ethically problematic but makes rational sense), you actively go out of your way to impose it on others, and to deny that there's something there which you're helping to impose. You teach others to view it as simply 'reality'. You try to silence viewpoints which aren't sufficiently conformist by comparing them disfavourably to the master's reality. Your argument starts from strategic reasoning, but you've gone way past where strategic reasoning could rationally lead. You've given up even imagining that things could be any different, or criticising the way they are. You don't have sympathy for anyone who might hope for something better, or for anyone who needs something better because they can't make the same compromises that you've made. Believing your own perspective is just the way the world is, you close thought around the existing system.



"Moocher" is a term of abuse, hence rude. Doubly so when applied to someone who honestly believes (even if wrongly) that there's no work available. Saying that someone who is of legal adult age is "not an adult" is rude. These are not factual/informational statements, they're illocutionary speech-acts which reduce the status and attack the self-esteem of the person they're directed at.

Still, it's not so much the rudeness which upsets me with this kind of response as the denial that the person you're responding to has a legitmate point of view. Also the fact that the original post is about getting OP's mother to understand the need not to interrupt, and instead of addressing this, everyone goes off on tangents about jobs and housework. I've seen it before in many different settings, and it's what happens when people feel threatened by difference. People respond by belittling the person who triggered their anxiety, denying their right to speak (in this case, their adulthood) and attacking their entire perspective as delusional, dangerous or absurd. Very often, a group of critics weigh in from the same point of view with very similar comments, without adding anything to the discussion - making the target feel bullied. The effect of being on the receiving end of this treatment - especially when it stems from an honest question, which is not answered - is that the person subjected to the treatment becomes frightened to post/ask anything, becomes convinced they're worthless and/or becomes convinced the world is against them (I don't know if any of these applies to OP, but it's very noticeable that she only replied once and that reply was defensive). As a result, the alternative points of view get hidden, they don't get aired, and 'reality' is made to seem more monolithic than it really is. This serves a psychological function for the people who do it, because it stops them from being reminded of their own privilege, or their own surrender. It also bolsters their self-esteem by allowing them to feel superior to the people they're criticising (in this case, to feel like a "real" adult). But this comes at the expense of causing suffering to the person targeted, closing the discursive space to alternative viewpoints, and makes it impossible to actually get the information one needs by asking in these kinds of spaces. It also hijacks the discussion with your own agenda. If all the people determined to act out their hatred of others who can't cope as well as they can had just kept quiet, maybe OP would have got some answers from people who've worked this issue through with parents/housemates.

And it's not even like any of you who were attacking OP were saying anything new. It's the same old fallacies I've seen a thousand times in different settings... people shouldn't feel 'entitled' because it's the system which decides what they're entitled to, not their real needs (this is a 'backlash', anti-welfare-state and anti-human-rights discourse seen often in relation to the corrosion of social rights of all kinds)... any reason, however valid, is "not an excuse" (I've come across a blind guy who walked out into the road in front of cars because of this, and who was opposed to putting beepers on crossings)... it's a priori impossible that someone might be unable to get a job... people with disabilities who don't work are moochers... children with special needs are spoilt brats (I've actually heard that autism doesn't exist, it's just an excuse for naughtiness and/or an effect of bad parenting a couple of times)... if you commit violence against someone to get them to conform, it's 'for their own good', they 'need it' and they'll 'thank you for it' (i.e. they'll identify with the oppressor - this one I have heard in relation to 'corrective rape' among other things)... and it is so often accompanied with accounts of the person's own life/problems as if this somehow makes their lack of compassion for others any less obvious. The trouble with these sink-or-swim stories is they're always told from the side of the person who swims. We don't usually hear from the people who sink, partly because they don't all survive, partly because they get scared-off by the kind of thing which happened here, but I've heard from a number of them and the things the authoritarians think are 'good for' someone look very different from their point of view. It often seems like I'm hitting a brick wall trying to argue from a human-centred perspective with people who are system-centred - people who don't really care if, or how much, other people suffer, they just care about making the system work better and/or getting their own rewards for conformity. I don't know if this is where you're coming from but some of the things you've said are in this vein.



No need to feel singled out. You offered helpful advice along with the abuse at least, which is more than the other critics did. Missykrissy made some horrible comments and should definitely have been listed, but I must have missed her when I was reskimming the thread as to who wrote the offensive posts - apologies for that. I didn't think the other three you mentioned were on the attack - Ediself was just advising about self-regulation regarding gaming, Cube is just saying "explain things point by point", Sparky seems to be taking a middle position... so it really was just the four on the attack, though it feels like a lot more because of the post volume. So you really don't need to feel singled out. Anyway, I have nothing against you *personally*, just against the particular complex of discourses you seem ot have embraced. For saying you've supposedly coped so well, you seem very defensive. Are you sure the process by which you coped didn't do you more damage than you think? Maybe you're more deeply hurt than you realise.

I haven't followed everything these last few pages but I resent the implication that I ever went "on the attack." Some readers seem to have missed that I SPLIT the issues, siding firmly with the OP on the main one (privacy) but giving reasons for not siding with the OP on the others (being left alone about getting a job, not having mom come to the job counseling meeting). It was with the later situation, about getting a job, that I sensed a conflict within the OP between expectations and reality, a desire to be treated as an adult while not demostrating the ability to act as one. Which is, to be honest, perfectly normal for the age and stage.

Those getting upset at the tone some responses took seem to incorrectly assume those responses related to ALL of the OP's post. They do not; they relate to select portions that you don't seem to be focused on. There is more than one question here, more than one issue, and forgetting that confuses the discussion.

Hum league-girl, I never wrote anything "against" the OP; I basically gave him some tips to help manage gaming and family life a bit but that's it...

It seemed against it because you gave her advice like I did but people are always accusing me of being rude. Aspies and NTs. Maybe it's an aspie trait I have, shrugs.

I was trying to tell it from what her mother's point of view could be. If you would have read my post correctly, I was asking her some questions to get more information like how long does she play the game for and suggesting what her mother wants. It is a fact that someone is a moocher if they live at home for free when they are an adult and don't do anything around the house to help out like keeping the house clean as well or doing work around the yard or in the home. I didn't make this up. Blame it on my mother if you like since she is the one who told me. I don't think she made it up either. She also told me what she considers an adult is as I stated in my post what she had told me. She told me being 18 doesn't make someone an adult all of a sudden. You don't go to bed when you're 17 and your birthday is tomorrow and bam you're an adult, bye bye just because you turn 18. No, they still need support and help to move forward. Just because someone is an adult does not mean they should all of a sudden know how to do everything on their own and handle things on their own without help. So was my mother being rude to me when she told me all this stuff? I remember I was freaking out about turning 18 because of all the responsibilities and she told me "No Beth turning 18 just opens more doors in your life, that doesn't mean you are an adult but yes you are considered one." And I can remember the long chat and her giving me praises when I do something so adult because I handled it on my own. Lot of people seem to think turning 18 means you can magically live on your own now so bam they get kicked out and bam parents don't help them so they are on their own to figure it out themselves so my mom said being 18 doesn't make you an adult. Heck she says all of her sisters didn't become adults until they all moved out of their parents. She says her little sister didn't become an adult until she had her first child because she started to take life more seriously. Yes they are technically adults because they are over 18 and I am sure you have heard people say things like "Johnny didn't really grow up until he was in his 30's" meaning that was when he started to be an adult. I am even sure you have heard people say in their adulthood they have grown up some more meaning they have matured more. Even I have been told online I have grown up over the last few years because I was more mature. Were they being rude?

LeagueGirl, I apologise that I've been too harsh to you. I hope you can see why I thought what you were doing fit into what certain other people here were doing. I still think you're using elements of a problematic discourse. I'll explain why I thought it was (mainly, not wholly) an attack on OP, and why certain things seemed rude to me.

No, it's not a fact, it's a value-judgement. It has strong negative value-connotations. Nobody says 'I'm a moocher and proud of it'. Nobody in social science (fact-led) uses terms like moocher. They use terms such as 'dependent person', or for a more precise version of OP's post, 'person whose survival strategy draws on kinship support networks'. These are factual, value-neutral reassertions of the same situation.

I also don't think you could defend this claim literally. Paraplegics are moochers? Elderly people living in care-homes are moochers? Someone convalescing from an illness is a moocher? They're all 1) adults and 2) not doing anything where they live.

In any case, I think your definition is wrong. Definition of 'moocher' off urbandictionary: “Someone who always asks for things and favors constantly and will never leave you alone. They will ask for money, rides to places, for you to do simple tasks they could do easily” - OP is neither actively asking for favours nor asking for help with tasks that she could do easily. 'Moocher' (as a slang insult) does not apply to everyone who's dependent, it refers to people who constantly asks for help they don't really need, to get out of working. Hence you're misapplying the term. It has strong connotations that the person can work, but does not want to work. It doesn't apply to someone who can't work, thinks they can't work, can't get a job, or thinks there are no jobs available.

I know you don't think you were being abusive, but can you see why I thought you were, and why OP might have thought you were?



Yeh, we're getting somewhere now: you come from a social milieu in which insulting and silencing certain groups of people is the norm, and you've never questioned whether it's legitimate or not – so you don't see it as rude, you see it as normal discourse. And why should you? 'Rude' is a social construct, and in your milieu, these statements were constructed as normal and polite. But they'll seem rude to people outside this milieu. For comparison, there's some social milieus where 'effing' at one another is part of normal conversation, it's not taken as rude if it's used as an emphasiser, only if it's used directly at a person is it (mildly) rude. In other milieus the word itself is defined as rude. What's probably happened is that you've internalised criteria of social propriety for the milieu you were raised in, and only say things which are defined as polite in this milieu, but they're being read differently outside the milieu – just like if your mother had “effed” all the time, you were “effing” all the time and couldn't understand why people thought you were rude. Do you ever get the feeling you do everything right, you follow instructions, you play by the rules, but it's never enough? If so, I sympathise a lot, and it's something a lot of aspies go through. It helps a bit with this problem to think multiperspectivally: it's not that certain things are objectively rude or objectively bad, different people take the same statement in very different ways, and it's a bit like every time you switch to a different social situation, you're moving to a foreign country with different customs and rules.

My objection was less to the 'rudeness' though, than to the use of a conception I felt is silencing other views – which is a structural issue with the discourse used, rather than a normative criterion. Your conception of maturity is a value you've learnt, rather than a fact, and it's mixed-up with value-laden interpretations of factual knowledge, in a way which makes the value seem factually accurate. It sounds to me like you're using 'adult' in a value-laden sense as well, and I think you're using it (or your mother has used it, and you've taken it literally) as a metaphor for social conformity. Except that unlike saying “this person is socially conformist” and “that person is socially nonconformist”, it contains a strong implication that the conformist (“adult”) person is always right. Most of us love children, but there's a prevailing assumption (now challenged in some quarters) that children don't have rights or voice, so calling an adult a child is a way to say they shouldn't have rights or voice. And being a child when you're meant to be (socially defined as) an adult has the additional connotation that you're a 'bad' adult. It's like saying someone is acting like an animal: it's always insulting, even if one has nothing against animals. I've seen the maturity/adulthood discourse used to silence people a lot, and it's been used against me (never by my parents, always by random people on forums) in this way. For instance, sometimes people who disagree with my political opinions tell me to 'grow up'. If I complain about the nature of the current system, some people say I sound like I'm under 18 or under 30 and therefore what I say doesn't count. People have actually said this explicitly, and they do it to avoid engaging with what I'm actually arguing. It's ridiculous because these people don't know me, but they've decided in advance that certain views are immature and hence disqualified from the discussion – which of course, prevents any discussion from happening.

There's also a certain connotation that, because I'm autistic, or because of related things such as stimming or playing games or being emotionally less subtle than others, I'll always be childlike and immature according to some people. We're all permanent adult-children in some discourses. For instance, we haven't 'grown up' if we prefer some fixation or other to social parties. I don't know if your mother used it harshly or softly, but I've seen it used very harshly, and it does real damage in these cases. It's a variant of Agamben's bare life/socially qualified life distinction, which has a very sordid history. Be aware I'm not saying you or your mother are bad people, just that you've picked up certain ideas which are in the air and which can have damaging effects.



I don't know exactly what your mother did and didn't say, or how she said these things. Maybe it was all quite innocent, but I can see ways it could be misused. If she was using statements of the kind which silenced your claims at this point, if she was claiming for instance that you had no right to privacy because you weren't an adult, or that your views on a topic count for less than a 'mature' adult's would, or that aversion to doing something due to a strong sensory sensitivity is simply immaturity, then she wasn't necessarily 'being rude', but she was being abusive, she was dominating you (probably without meaning to), and failing to respect the person you were back then. Also, if she was claiming you legitimately didn't have the ability to look after yourself at 18, but still claiming she had an ethical (not just legal) right to throw you out if she felt like it, then she was being abusive (without meaning to), because this would be a double-bind. The claim that you aren't an adult at 18 logically entails that you can't have adult responsibilities at 18, so this position would require you to hold contradictory positions at once.

It could easily lead to racism for instance, because in some groups it's quite normal for young people to move out a lot later, or never move out. And also to class prejudice and ableism, since low incomes are a reason for staying at home longer. There are countries in Eastern Europe where 70% of 30-year-olds live with their parents or in-laws. There are countries in East Asia where it's expected that young people will live with their parents even after they're married – it's socially deviant if they don't do this. Many indigenous groups have extended family systems in which it's expected that nobody leaves the parents' home unless they're married out, and not at all if they're of one of the genders. Is your mother saying, or are you saying, that these societies are immature or that most of the people in these societies never really become adults? The old colonial discourses which justified occupying these countries and subordinating and massacring their populations were excused by saying that these cultures were not 'grown-up', the people were all like children (hence no rights) and the societies were in a backward, childlike stage of development (hence no cultural respect). It's a worrying parallel.

It worries me, too, that we've had an economic change which means young people today are far less likely to live alone or marry young, and this change has produced a kind of generational class-divide between the precariously situated and the included. Depending how old you are and she is, it's likely that in your mother's generation, when she was growing up (probably in the period known as 'Fordism'), wages (for low-paid workers) were higher than they are today, welfare provision was more extensive, unemployment was a lot lower, most men (and those women who worked) had a job which paid a 'family wage' (enough to support several dependents as well as the worker), a high proportion of people were in lifelong marriages – in general, people were being prepared for a life of getting a stable job, getting a mortgage and starting a family, and achievement of this life-model was viewed as definitive of maturity and of social functioning. I don't want to idealise these times, because there was also a lot of sexism, racism, authoritarianism and so on, but it's true that the discourse your mother has taught you made a lot of sense in this social context, that it related to this particular reality, even though it also had its blind spots in that reality. But we're in a changed reality. Nowadays (in the period known as 'precarity'), there's a lot fewer jobs, there's mass unemployment, welfare has been cut back, most jobs are not 'jobs for life', there are very few stable full-time jobs left, the wages the average young person can obtain don't cover the range of socially-defined needs/demands they used to (there's a lot of 'working poor'), house prices are higher (and people are more reluctant to take on contracts when they have insecure employment), very few people receive a family wage (meaning that fewer people ever have children, and those who do have less time to give them), and so on. We also see growing numbers of young people staying with their parents into their 30s or longer, growing numbers of young people cohabiting with flatmates in 'student-house'-like arrangements (again often well into their 30s), and the reappearance of dependence on family and/or friends as ways to cope with insecure employment, unemployment and overwork.

The problem is that these changes, and the effects they have on people going through them, are being moralised in the dominant discourse: the (mostly young) people put in this position (but also over-50s driven out of former 'jobs for life') are judged harshly, as if it's their personal traits which cause the problems – they're not getting good jobs because they're not looking hard enough or they're lazy, they're not leaving home or starting families because they're immature, they have unstable jobs because they're failures in life, if they have children they're bad parents because they don't give their children enough time, and so on. It's an entire social class of people being treated this way (the 'precariat' they're sometimes called), and the fact that they're treated in this way contributes to the continuation of their vulnerability. People with disabilities suffer particularly, because we get selected-against for the jobs remaining, and we can't usually do the same range of jobs other people can. Nearly all people with disabilities are in the precariat. So we get lumped into the whole stereotype of the precariat as lazy, immature, moochers and so on, which has a devastating effect on disability rights. There's all kinds of other knock-on effects as well. The moralisation of precarity is one of the causes of the so-called 'crisis of masculinity' for instance: there's men acting-up to prove they're 'real' men, because they can never acquire the things they need to fit the definition of 'real' men. There's people turning to crime because they'd rather risk going to jail than face the stigma of being dependent. All over the world, there's marginal young people who are constantly discontented, who end up in all kinds of social movements and revolts because they have no hope for the future. There's a structural problem here, and it's nothing to do with the character-traits of the people who end up precarious – it's not a problem of immaturity or laziness or not knowing what's required, it's a problem of how the social structure is constructed.



You seemed to make a lot of the second issue and not very much of the first one, and you were using rhetoric about the work/immaturity issue which was antagonistic.



I think this is an attack because you're saying OP doesn't have a valid viewpoint on the grounds of not conforming to your criteria of normality/adulthood.

Actually, I think OP was being very realistic, in a literal, concrete, aspie kind of way. She's established in her own head that, as a fact, there's no jobs, and that, as a fact, she's not eligible for disability benefits. Therefore, she thinks her mother is being unreasonable trying to make her keep looking for jobs and keep applying for benefits. It's like someone saying: I'm paraplegic, I'm in a wheelchair, I'll never walk again, but my mom keeps insisting I try to stand up, even though I keep falling on my face and hurting myself. Why won't she just accept that I can't walk? Or perhaps: there's no ice-cream stall at the park, but my mom keeps sending me to the park to buy ice-cream, why is she doing this? The fact that not being able to walk will seriously affect the first person's quality of life, or that the second person might be thrown-out if they don't manage to get ice-cream from the park, is immaterial to the problems with the claim. Nor is it going to do any good to argue that, since both are living with their moms and are technically adults, they should just be grateful to have somewhere to live.

Now, there's a few ways this might be working out in practice (with both perspectives involved). It's possible OP doesn't realise that work comes and goes in cycles, that the job ads are different each week, that there are lots of different places to look for jobs, or that failing to get benefits once isn't the same as being ineligible. If so, this is a classic 'autistic person misunderstanding NT-run systems as more fixed than they are' kind of problem – though it might also be necessary to 'ration' how often OP does something which is likely to be stressful. It's also possible that OP's mom is being pigheaded and can't accept that there's no jobs available (a lot of people are in denial about the number of jobs available, and OP could live in, say, an isolated rural community where new jobs don't come up much). Or that OP's mom is misreading autistic withdrawal as depression, and responding by trying to cheer her up in ways which are perfect for depression but misapplied (maybe she thinks job hunting, however futile, is at least something OP will recognise as a good excuse to drag her away and cheer her up with some together-time). Or that OP's mom is a 'helicopter parent' type who is hyperactive in trying to 'help' her daughter in a way which is well-meaning, but without boundaries. Or something else which I've not figured out yet. So it's not something that can easily be classified into your current schemas.

What you've done is one of two things: either you've turned this literal/rational claim into an irrational claim (you have to even if you can't), or more likely, you've misinterpreted it as metaphorical for something else (OP is unwilling, not unable, to work or claim benefits). And you're doing this because you have a whole schema or scenario in your head based on intensive media coverage and widespread social discourses, in which there's a pervasive problem of young people being lazy and irresponsible and in which their problems will go away if they mature (see above for why I don't think it's an accurate story). You've mapped OP's situation into this familiar story you already have, even though it probably doesn't fit, and you've made transitions which are not entirely logical in order to make this transition, taking OP as saying things which OP didn't say. It's extremely unlikely that what OP meant was actually what you took OP to mean. You've seen the two as identical by mapping your schema onto what OP has said, and it's silenced OP's actual question to a great degree. You didn't take OP as speaking the way an autistic person speaks, and you didn't suspend judgement when there were a range of possible interpretations. Even when OP corrected your interpretation in a second post, you carried on in the same vein.

If the OP wants the mother to understand her perspective, she has to understand the mother's. We provided the mother's. Take that information and figure out how to find the medium.

I did have the incorrect impression that the OP did not wish to see herself as disabled, and my response was tailored accordingly. I apologized for that later. If she CAN'T do those things, and never will be able to, that is another conversation, but then she needs to make THAT clear to her mother. But to say there are no jobs and give up ... it's not an option unless you are disabled. Like it or not, that is real life and all the understanding in the world won't change it. Do I understand how and why that is challenging? YES, I do. But it still isn't an option in the world of adults. It's isn't for me, it isn't for my AS husband, and it isn't for anyone else not receiving disability assistance. We can talk this in circles forever, but the talk will not change the reality. THIS is what her mother knows but is obviously not conveying well. THIS is what the mother should be helping her grown child with. It sounded to me like the mother was trying, just not tyring in a way that was effective for the OP. But it doesn't make the mother wrong, it makes the mother ineffective, and bridging a communication gap requires that BOTH sides spend a minutes understanding where the other side is coming from. So that we provided: where the mother might be coming from. If you want to discard that information it is your choice, but you aren't actually helping. Some day the safety net goes away and there is NO ONE to understand and bend for you. Unless you get yourself qualified as disabled. It's a reality every adult has to accept and have a plan for. And, yes, learning to stand on my own may well have been the hardest and scariest thing I ever did in my life, the most exciting, the most frustrating ... all of the above. It is that way for most people and I DO understand that it is about 50 times worse when you have AS, and if you've read me eslewhere you would know how I recommend parents handle it, but the young adult still needs to hear the truth or we've cheated them.

I may well have missposted, and I accept that possibility, but your understanding of my motives, thought process, and intentions is so far off-base I can't even reply to it. If I had more time maybe I would dissect your post and show you where you've gone wrong but I actually have to earn money so my kids can have a decent life, while still finding a way to spend quality time with them and helping them learn to navigate the challenges of life, so we'll just have to leave it at an impasse and agree to disagree.

You know, I have to apologize if I've been ranting. But I need to rant. Care to know what my life is like right now? I'm trying to figure out how to get through a work deadline, expected to be effective 7 days a week, despite not having worked full time in 15 years. Think that transition has been easy? No, it may well break me, but I HAVE to figure out how to make it work because my AS husband has a job that is destroying his mental and physical health and needs to quit. So, I have to figure out how to work and be effective at it, because a husband and two kids depend on me, and probably my MIL soon, too, because she is in need of assisted living and can't afford it. Either I figure it out or I watch my husband die working. Someone has to pay the bills, and I'm OK with it becoming me, but to find myself going through this hell of a transition, want to take a break to clear my head, and come here looking for that break, and see someone with the free time to write pages and pages think they know oh so much better than I do ... OK, sorry, that probably wasn't a fair shot, but it IS how it feels. I don't need that kind of #*@@*!( in my life right now. Who is trying to be understanding of me? Reality check. There is no one.

I have never pushed anyone beyond what they can do, but I will nudge them to do what they CAN do. If I suggest something that is truly out of reach, the person I made the suggestion to can say so affirmatively. I do believe everyone has to at least try, and not give up before ever starting. I've seen my AS son and my AS husband rise up to do things they never thought they could all because of a well timed nudge, because of someone believing in them, and I've seen how fulfilling that has been for them. I have no patience for giving up too soon because the world keeps on spinning and someone is going to have to pick up the slack. I pick up slack willingly for those who can't fend for themselves, I very much believe in taking care of everyone, but there is a limit to what people like me can carry for the rest of the world, and part of the deal is that to the extent anyone can, they will.

We've got parents here that feel it's a luxury to sleep 6 hours a night they carry THAT heavy a load, and you want to tell them they haven't been understanding enough? Ridiculous. They have endless patience and advise endless patience in hundreds of situations. So we get one upon which we think a nudge is necessary and you don't ... happens. Disagree respectfully. Don't make incorrect assumptions about who we are and what we think.

There are many roads that don't involve pay that are worthwhile, please don't confuse what I'm nudging towards. If one can't work they can still contribute in some meaningful way. When Tracker was between jobs he wrote a book. One member here who is disabled wrote long posts giving me amazing information about my son. Some people light up the world just by being in it. But playing 8 hours of video games, were that to be how a person was spending their life (and I'm not suggesting anyone in this thread is) ... that's not it.

I miss being able to spend hours on here thinking of just the right words to help someone through a difficult situation. I miss being with my kids. I miss my old life. But I'm sucking it up because I have to. It's what being an adult means.

Woahwoahwoah. Why not start a thread explaining this? I'm pretty sure there are plenty of people here who will be happy to help and support you if you start a thread on your situation. It's not quite fair to expect people magically to figure it out if you don't say anything, though.

Sounds PC



I can see it now. Apparently the word was misused in my life or I misunderstood the meaning of it when it got used. It gets confusing when a word is the meaning of a situation and when it's not.

And urbandictionary is a website by people who explain what words or phrases mean. Looking it up in a online dictionary, I got:

mooch (mch) Slang
v. mooched, mooch·ing, mooch·es
v.tr.
1. To obtain or try to obtain by begging; cadge. See Synonyms at cadge.
2. To steal; filch.
v.intr.
1. To get or try to get something free of charge; sponge: lived by mooching off friends.
2. To wander about aimlessly.
3. To skulk around; sneak.
n.
1. One who begs or cadges; a sponge.
2. A dupe, as in a confidence game.

Doesn't sound like the OP nor what situations I have been in and my mom used it on me Unless she thinks living for free is stealing or free of charge Then I can understand why she used it. It's all about perception on words.




Yes that is it. I sometimes wish people would make up their minds. Here is a perfect example where I was rude to my aunt. It was my wedding and after it I was opening up the presents and so was my husband. We get a gift that is from my aunt and uncle and my grandparents brought it out when they came. Now my aunt and uncle and their daughter never travel outside of Wisconsin. My dad told me in 2005 it's because they are cheap and I knew he meant they don't want to spend lot of money to come out. I was shocked they still got us a gift and I opened it and said "They may be cheap but they weren't cheap enough to not get us a wedding present." Everyone just laughed and I thought I had said something funny. My mom tells me "And who taught you that Beth" and I say "Dad" and mom goes "Bill Bill" and he goes "I didn't say that" and everyone just looks at him. I go back to opening the presents.

Now skip to a month later. I am sending out thank you cards. I decided to share it on there with her. I thanked her for the present and was shocked they got us one and they may be cheap but weren't cheap enough to not get is it. About three weeks later she send me a typed letter apologizing that I was shocked and said she was offended at the word and so was her husband and daughter and told me getting me a book on etiquette would have been a better gift for me and she hopes my marriage goes well.

Now after that, I learn cheap is actually an insult and it is not what I thought it meant. Everyone calls me cheap, dad, mom, husband and the way it was used growing up, I learned it meant inexpensive, refusing to spend lot of money, staying at inexpensive hotels, shopping in the clearance. Even my mom said she is cheap because she be shopping in the clearance or staying in inexpensive hotels and using time share when we go on trips. I had no idea irony was being used with that word. I had to learn it the hard way. Then it just connected why everyone laughed at the wedding. It was the 'I can't believe she said that" and no wonder dad was denying he said it to me and no wonder people looked at him. I also wonder if that is why my mom asked me who taught me to say that. I wonder if it may have been a cover up so no one would get upset with me. But no one told me to not say it to them and why. But my dad has poor social skills too and does lot of insults unintentionally and lacks empathy. But he doesn't have AS. He just happens to have poor social skills. He still keeps saying they are cheap and my mom finally says he is just being a jerk.

Husband still calls me cheap and my dad and even I call myself cheap but not anyone else, only me. But I can see why I would use that word to my aunt and uncle.

Then there is my office clerk I had when I worked at a hotel. He said I needed to use my common sense and always told me 'What did I tell you?' and whenever I would try asking him questions or to clarify what he said and to make sure I understood, he get mad at me for asking. Then I stopped asking him questions and then one day he told me if I don't understand just ask. That was the most annoying thing ever. He gets mad at me for asking and then he tells me to just ask him if I don't understand. Now is that me missing something there or was he just contradicting himself? But I will never know for sure. It's easy to blame things on your AS when things go wrong not even realizing it's the person, not you. Only way to know is if others had the same issues with the person as well like you do, then you know it's the person, not you. But apparently it only looked like I had problems with him unless I was unaware of others having issues with him. I had problems reading between the lines, I took things literal and he said I didn't use my common sense.






I thought animal was a sexual term or a term for someone who is wild or partying (thinking of Animal House). I always picture zebra or elephant or something so the phrase had always been funny.




She used it softly.






My mother probably does think that. She has told me some people don't grow up until they have kids or are married and she told me she thinks her and her brother were both grown ups before marriage because they were the only ones in their family that moved out and all her sisters didn't move out until they were married. So yeah even I thought that too because she told me. But is that thought really a bad thing? No one has ever gotten mad at me or upset or offended I have said some people don't grow up until they have kids or are in their late twenties and people have told me some people never grow up.



I have noticed my mom is stuck in the old times because things she told me I have found out were wrong like sex for example. She told me it was not appropriate to talk about it with others by telling them about your sex life or making jokes about it or just doing chit chat about it. Then online I hear more people do it these days in public and they talk to other people about it and it's became acceptable. My mom was just stuck in the olden days. I said that to her once when I was 18 over something else and she took offense to that. I still don't understand to this day why she got so offended is it's true. heck she even told me to not have sex till marriage but I found out on my own by being online it's wrong because people have sex before marriage and it's acceptable. Those people aren't wrong, my mom was because it was wrong back then and she is fully aware it had changed in the 60's but she kept the old custom. But yet she continued passing old things onto me and I find out she is wrong thanks to reading online.


Now after reading all this, I am now confused about words now. I have gotten a hint I probably misuse lot of words because I have read on here tons of people misuse words and if you look it up in the dictionary, it does not mean what you thought it meant. I have found out dumb means you can't talk and stupid means low intelligence and imbecile also means low IQ and so on. I found out I had been misusng the words stupid, dumb, idiot, moron, because that is not what it means in the dictionary. But I still continue using them the way I was taught they were used because word definitions change but the original meaning stays in the dictionary. I even found out I had been misusing the word cheap after the incident. Then the word dump. My dad has always told me he is dumping us kids off at school or dumping me off at work or at the bookstore or at home so I say it to a mother on Yahoo Answers about her two kids and daycare she looked at. I told her good thing she checked the place out first before dumping them off there. Then I couldn't understand why she called me ignorant and wasn't very nice with me. I told her back if she wasn't intending to drop them off at a daycare, why look for one in the first place. Turns out dump had a negative meaning to it and it does not mean what I used it as and my dad misuses the word when he says it to me. I thought dump and drop meant the same thing in that context so I wonder what it would have looked like to other people if I said about my son "I dump him off at my aunt and uncles when I go to work." (Note: I don't leave him there, my husband takes care of him when I am at work, that was just an example).