Can I make apsergers worse by my lack of or over parenting?

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Depending on how I go about parenting my teen with aspergers. Can I essentially escalate her aspergers in anyway? I dont know whether I am being the best parent for her.


I still feel lost in helping her. I dont want to enable her behaviours but I dont want to neglect this either.

In therapy we are trying to challenge the negative thoughts that prevent her being social at school. She will not take that first leap and experience some of that fear of starting that first initial speaking in a conversation. She is doing alot of avoidance behaviours.

How do you know it's "avoidance behaviours" and not genuine difficulty with initiation?
I've had a lot of bad experiences with people presuming that I was "avoiding" things due to anxiety, negative thoughts, or whatever, when in fact it was that I either didn't know how to do what they wanted me to do or couldn't perform the sequence of actions even if I did know. I also had trouble with people calling AS symptoms "behaviours", so I just thought I'd ask.

It's not necessarily avoidance behavior.

I see a lot of kids who are over parented crash and burn in college. They get there, they have no idea how to fend for themselves, are very naive, it's a mess.

Avoid doing that to your kid, but also avoid not parenting.

You are obviously a very caring parent, you are seeking reassurance and answers to do the best for your child. You should be commended.

Although parenting does not cause AS, I do think it can make a big difference to how an AS kid functions. Obviously, if the kid starts getting depression and anxiety in addition to AS, their functioning will be poorer.

The most important part, however, isn't how well you teach social skills or anything like that. It's making sure your child knows you love them and has a strong bond with you. Even if you are working on a tough issue with the kid, make sure to take time for enjoyable, pressure-free interaction.

Regarding her social avoidance - a lot of AS kids end up with social anxiety as a result of social rejection and/or awareness of social difficulties. It's natural to feel nervous if you know from experience that you often make social mistakes without realizing it, and others often don't give you the benefit of the doubt when you do. Keep in mind that her fears may very well be realistic for a kid with AS.

From my personal experience, the best way to deal with that fear is to experience success in social situations. Try setting up situations where you know she can succeed, such as interaction with people who you know are tolerant of AS behavior (eg other AS kids). Experiencing some success in those situations will help build her confidence.

Thanks for the advice here, some things to think about, I didnt consider. She doesnt give a lot of insight, but she did say after a lot of digging with the therapist, 'how' do I start talking? We've given many examples, but I do know its harder to put into practice, easier said than done, when anxiety is in there as well.
I cuddle her everyday, she is okay with cuddles, but wont intitiate first. We bake yummy things and go girly shopping.
I am still so amazed how small activities give her so much joy. She really is so easily pleased.

Parenting does not cause ASD's. You are not going to "make it worse" no matter what you do.

At the end of the day, we are all making it up as we go along and nobody has the right answer. I find it spectacularly difficult to find the line between doing too much for my son and doing too little, but I also realize that there will come a point where he has to do it all himself (probably a bit farther in the future than other kids will, but it's still there.)

I try to judge how I'm doing by what my goal is three or five years from now. As a result, I quit worrying a long time ago about whether he could tie his shoes (he's capable, it just takes him forever) or whether I'm "coddling" him by asking the school to allow him to leave class early so he doesn't have to deal with crowds at his locker (when is he going to need that skill? Never.) I am absolutely insistent that the school help him keep up his assignment notebook, because he will NEED to keep track of stuff when he's an adult.

I don't know if that helps you - but I guess I look at the end goal of whatever we're working on, and if it isn't worth it, I forget about it.

You can certainly cause her a lot of anxiety, stress, and depression if you go about it in the wrong way and there are ways of helping to minimise the stress of it. I would say ensuring that stress is minimised as far as possible at home is important. Most autistic people get more of coping to with others than they can handle just in the school day, so making home into a social skills learning environment isn't likely to be helpful, not least because most people are totally different around their immediate family to how they are with others, so sharing with your sister isn't actually that relevant when it comes to sharing a house, for instance.

I think that is extremely good advice. We have expectations of a certain reasonable standard of behavior at home, but we don't really expect DS to socialize with us or with other people once he's out of school.

What I do with DS at home is go over social situations that happened elsewhere if he wants to talk to me about it. We kind of use home as a place where he can break down social stuff into terms that make sense to him, not make him learn or do new stuff.

All kids are different, so this may not work for you - but my son seems to find it helpful.

Let me speak from my own experience. Avoid Anxiety! It's hurts.

The fear of a situation turning bad and causing anxiety, will cause anxiety in itself.
Don't push, That would be like your daughter telling you to be more anxious and less outgoing.

Kids are cruel, and teachers are kids that never left school.
when you turn your back, who knows what they are doing too. So just because they are nice today...

Sometimes the best help is not the norm.
I have Asperger's , I am physically fine. But I think like an Autistic person.
The girl in my Special Education class in 11th grade had Autism, Highly Intelligent, In a wheel chair.
She was afraid to do her testing and homework in the class because she was afraid,anxious, odd girl out.
Just having another Autistic person in the room helped her. Nothing crazy, just having a person who understands what is in her head.
You see, the things normal society likes we just don't. But we do enjoy other things.

We are just wired so much differently, I re-assure my wife all the time.
That our son is having fun, he just prefers to be by himself or with others just like him.

I have to respectfully disagree. My daughter was prompt dependent and I made her that way. I certainly didn't cause her autism, but my parenting handicapped her even more than she already was.



This is one of my worst fears. I sometimes think I over parent my kids, but I don't know how to stop. They are both happy and well-adjusted, but sometimes I think that I....I don't know...I am not like other parents and I wonder if I am doing too much.

OP, is there some way you can give her a "safer" environment for practicing this before expecting her to just go out into the world and initiate interactions? Can you maybe find out if they have some kind of peer mentoring program at school? Maybe if she could be paired with a nurturing peer who could be given tips on how to best encourage her would help?

To this day, I hate initiating interactions with people I don't know. And when it comes right down to it, it is because I am awkward and I know it. And I know they know it. And it just feels weird. I am fine in a work environment because then I have a "role," but socially I just hate it. So it isn't so much that I "avoid" it like I would avoid something unpleasant like scrubbing the floor. It's more that I avoid it because it makes me feel inept, awkward, and incompetent.

You can't make AS better or worse by any type of parenting, but you can make your child's ability to function better or worse. Overprotecting is not good, but kids do need guidance.

I agree with the last post- you can affect your child's reaction to situations. I don't think you can make the "Aspergers" gene or whatever you wish to tag it better or worse, but you can certainly affect how your child reacts to situations because they are dealing with it by how you approach it. If one parent never says a word to their child with Aspergers, there is no way that child will end up socially interacting the same as one that has proactive parents who assist their child in finding appropriate ways to cope with their challenges on a daily basis.

Now granted, I'm sure that arguments can be made that parents think they're helping but actually make their child more cautious, but I mean positive parents that get positive reactions from their kids- it does help...

I think another thing to remember is that if they're still kids, they aren't "cooked" yet so to speak. All kids, even autistic ones, have a certain level of resiliency. If you find that something you're doing is wrong (considering the conflicting advice out there and the number of variables you can't control, this is near inevitable,) you do have the power to make it better, you can figure it out and change it. It is also important to remember that what works for one kid may not work for another, and vice versa.

I am finding that a lot of this parenting thing is about acknowledging when you've made a mistake (not easy to do, considering that frequently the "right" thing takes some time to take effect) and then finding a way to correct that mistake. Better to do that while our kids are still developing than for them to have to do it when they are fully grown (as a fully grown person whose parents never faltered from their not-working methods, I can speak to this directly.)

I acknowledge that, due to factors out of my control, I wasn't a good mother to my son until we got the support we needed and I understood what I was supposed to do. It did have a negative impact on him. However, two years into appropriate supports and us changing the way we handle him and a whole bunch of trial-and-error - things are better all the way around.

I also think that my son really learned from my husband and I realizing that we needed help, going out and finding it (which was no small task) and then changing OUR behavior - more from that than from any therapy.

I think about this with my son and my nephews and niece.... being over bearing makes OCD worse, can kill confidence, creates anxiety in the kid. And since an AS kid is gonna be super sensitive in these areas it could be adding flames to a really big fire.