Did your parents try to change you?

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No, they were both weird, and just let things slide. I've been told there were times other parents would say "normal kids don't do that," but they apparently ignored them.

my mother didn't like me having any opinion that differed from hers, so as long as I held the same beliefs as her and didn't deviate, the only things she really griped about were my faulty intellect (because I didn't "get" things), my literal thinking, and my inability to read her mind so I'd know how she wanted specific chores done. so I guess she didn't try to change me, because that seems like it would require active coaching. it was more like she just complained all the time.

Isn't that a parents job??
They can't turn you into what you are not.. but it is their job to help you be the best you that you can.

I am a parent of a son who just turned 13 in October. There are many things we tried for our son, if it doesn't seem to match.. we move on to something else.

We tried soccer, baseball, martial arts, cub scouts, track (he's still in it), soap box derby (he rocks at it), and many other things. I'll keep throwing things at him to keep his mind working and challenged.

A spot came open for him to go into a language immersion program in 1st grade, we kept him in for 2 years before it became clean it was not working for him.

He is going to say we tried to force him to do things... how mean we were to 'force him' to take 3 years of martial art or to take music lessons.

My job is to hopefully give my AS son to be better equipped for adult life than I was (am). I can't make him into something different, he already is... I just want him to know that different is sometimes better.

My answer to this question about whether or not my parents tried to change me would be, "No, not really."

Well, that isn't a definite "No." My parents allowed me to be the way I am. But, there were times that my mother tried to encourage me to be more sociable---that is do more of the things that my fellow classmates were doing (good things that is). Often times my mother would ask me if I wanted to go to a certain birthday party, or go to the pool with some of the others in the neighborhood, etc. I think my parents felt like I wanted to do more with others my age, but I felt more comfortable in the company of my family. In school, I did have a best friend that I was close to, and some other sort-of friends---so it wasn't social isolation. I just preferred being with my interests.

Yes. They've tried a billion ways. Including, apparently, that they won't let me unpack my stuff under the pretext that we need to paint the rooms and stuff first. Though, it looks like they're doing it to keep me away from my stuff, to see if it'll encourage me to be more normal.

But they will never succeed. They never have, and they never will. I'm quite proud to be who I am, for the first time in my life.

sort of. it was more they tried to 'normalise' me. they put me in mainstream school classes, even though it was reccomended that i go to special classes (ONLY because of the speaking thing). and they kept my diagnosis a secret from me and most people until i was too old to now know something was up. the normalisation didn't work, but attending mainstream classes and mainly focusing on watching their interpersonal relationships and connections has given me an ability to read people and dynamics in between them. the only bad thing is, though i always know exactly what is going on, i still am unable to participate appropriately. i don't understand why, except that maybe my brain makes connections very very slowly.

My stepdad was an absolutely control freak. I was forced to do everything he wanted, believe everything he did, and of course, he was never ever wrong. I hated every single thing about it. I hated his sports, I hated his cars, I hated his alcohol, I hated his philosophies, principles, everything. A few of them were even right, but that didn't keep me from hating the way it was enforced on me. I was not allowed to like video games, not allowed to like to read, not allowed to like computers or any number of sciences. When I would argue with him it would end up in me being grounded, or backhanded. I remember being ridiculed for not having a girlfriend in middle and high school. I would spend every day at home fearful, just because I was expecting him to come to me and say I did something wrong and I was in trouble, and it happened very very often. I spent from age 6 (when my mother married him) til age 16 under that, and I will always have issues with that sort of person.

Yes, and I have always been viewed as the one needing direction because I was seen as weaker. It's only now, probably in the past year, that I feel like my mother might be proud of who I am. I've grown into my current job and am finding that I am really good at it, so my mom sees me in a new light - She's my boss . Also, I am taking antidepressants and feel a lot happier, thus refusing to be put down anymore.

Not much if at all. Which sound good to people who's parents did the opposite but I dunno. I think I would of been better off if I was pushed into some things

Yes. All the time. eyecontact was someting i had to hear about all the time. "Look at me when im talking to you!" was something that was yelled at me daily. But, i also found some good things from it. Besides my father still doesnt understand what asperger's is.

ok..now for a better answer than my last one...
Growing up, we didn't have much money...and there was a lot of stress. I have a very artsy-AS-ish mom who has executive functioning problems the way that I do, and the stress of having a family was really hard on her..so she didn't quite know what to do with me, and also, she was quite a bit of a non-conformist herself, so it was always her stance that I was not the one with problems...it was the system that had problems..she was miserable growing up and sorta felt like an alien in her surroundings...She understood that the fumes at school and the florescent lights drove me bonkers and stuff like that...and she was kinda too muddled and depressed to actively do stuff to try to change me anyhow. We were always just used to not fitting in...My dad had the same sort of understanding I think..When he was young, his parents let him stay home more often, and he graduated from high school early because firstly he was in advanced classes and skipped grades, I think, and secondly to get away from the bullying.

My older family members seemed more concerned about my development than my parents. My paternal grandfather was more for actively trying to change me, and my maternal grandmother was somewhat more disdainful...I guess I was the "starter kid" and they got it better the second time around with my NT sister...and also all my cousins on that side were, for all practical purposes NT...so I just happened to be the weird one..taking after my mom, who was her "weird" child.

It was only when I entered High School that my mom would do stuff to intervene...My sense of aesthetics/fashion evolved into something really eccentric, and certain really strange articles of clothing that I favored would disappear. She'd mentioned that her mom had done this with some of her strange hippie clothes when she was young........Nothing would be said, to warn me in advance, but I would come home from school to find my room completely cleaned and reorganized...A weird major obsession I had in my early teens was vintage hats..and I managed to somehow acquire masses of them..mostly from thrift stores...and she put them all in a plastic bag in the garage one day where they were immediately peed on by cats.

Anyway...there were not really strong moves to fix me, and if there were milder ones, I certainly didn't pick up on them till things got rash...I know that my grandfather often harangued my parents about my odd behavior....but a lot of it didn't really register with me.

At 15, I went from being a very childlike teenager to joining a band...and the band (all guys at least 4 years older than me) sorta took over with my upbringing..in regards to my learning social skills and stuff....that that was when I really realized how totally off I was...I was always doing stuff wrong and getting reprimanded for it, and I really had no idea.

In my experience my parents basically did something that seemed to have the intent of "correcting" my issues, but that's not to say it helped at all, and easily made me miserable. I have a divorced family and I developed obvious OCD tendencies when I was about 8 or 9. Dad yelled at me every day as if he had Alzheimer's, as if he couldn't remember that his same behavior yesterday just made me hate him. The whole AS thing was simply something to be cured. Mom didn't quite do the same thing but still doesn't understand any of it. I feel like just recently they may have realized that it's actually having a huge impact on my performance at school, which is kinda disappointing, because I was diagnosed when I was 12, now I'm almost 18. At least it's a break from frivolous scolding.