lost my sons to adoption

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this is so sad. same thing that happen to my family. that's why i don't like social workers they all lie

That is really horrible to hear, but even more horrible, its not the first time something like that has happened. The same thing happened to RTOS the guy that created the aspie-quiz. Read about it here:

Click here and scroll to bottom

I think the main problem is that a lot of people are misinformed about AS and think its a mental illness. Its not, its simply a learning disability.

More than likely, your boys will also have AS and they need a parent with AS to nurture them and help them overcome their limitations.

i understand why they were taken, i just don't think its right or fair and now theres a big hole left in my life, i keep thinking its a terrible nightmare and i'll wake up any second. a year ago no one knew i had asp ergers, it was suspected i had it at school but no diagnoses was ever made. i decided to chase it up because i wanted to know for sure i had it and a social worker got funding for me to have the assessment. once it was diagnosed i was given a socialworker for aspergers and suddenly they became very intrusive in my life and it ultimately lead to them removing the boys.. the terrible thing is if i hadn't chased up this diagnosis no one would ever have known i had it and this wouldn't have happened.

I missed that. Exactly what reason did they have for taking your boys? The fact that you have aspergers is not a reason. Were you beating them or trying to sacrifice them to a golden statue?

As far as the diagnosis, its not quite that bad in the US, but it is grounds to deny medical coverage because its considered a pre-existing condition. That's why a private diagnosis is a better way to go. That is, pay cash and use a fake name. Putting it on a job application is a good way not to get hired.

This is one of the reasons why I have not so far pursued a diagnosis; I already "attracted" quite enough attention from social services when my son was 2-3, when I was "just" depressed, ( after someone supposedly supportive, and supposedly a friend, the leader of the local group of an international breastfeeding organisation, reported me to them ... ! !! ... for which I never forgave her, especially as when I had met her 18 months before, I had told her that I was almost certainly suffering from post-natal depression and she had said "Nooo, you're not! You just need a big hug", because she liked dispensing those and feeling like "Mother-Earth" ).

But there is no doubt that this is one of the very frightening downsides to getting a diagnosis if one is a parent. It really can be very dangerous, as you, and Lotusblossom, have discovered. When I was thinking of moving back to the UK last autumn, a friend from Autscape was telling me about the benefits ( financial etc ) and support that can get with a diagnosis, but I said that the risks were simply too high of the "authorities" using it to take my son away or to interfere in how I brought him up, especially as until this year he was homeschooling. I have spent years feeling under pressure to behave as "normally" as I possibly can.

I think that as n4mwd says the diagnosis should not be enough reason on its own, and even chronic depression, so long as you were not abusing or neglecting your children, shouldn't be. I can't believe that this is a sound or even lawful decision; it sounds as if you were not correctly advised or defended at the hearing, and I think that with help from one of the organisations that now exist to support people on the spectrum and/or with mental health issues it must be possible to have it rescinded. I very much hope so for your sake. It's absolutely a scandal if not, ( unless you really were seriously neglecting them that is ).

PS. How long ago did this happen? How long is it since you had your children with you full-time, and how long is it since you last saw them at all?
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Last edited by ouinon on 12 Aug 2010, 8:56 am, edited 1 time in total.

This is discrimination in the highest form!! !

>>the children go into foster care for a day every fortnight so they can experience 'normal' family life.
EXCUSE ME???? WTF is "normal family life"??? WTF does that even mean???

I think that would make me take it to the Supreme Court and then FORCE them to define WHAT "normal family life" means. It sounds unconstitutional, regardless of what country one is in.

Last edited by gnomederwear on 12 Aug 2010, 9:00 am, edited 1 time in total.

QFT. Ditto Ditto Ditto. I agree. Imagine if they did this to the children of lesbian and gay couples!
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Mustard, do you get any visitation rights?

They say because I have aspergers, I will effect them by haveing it as they say parents have a strong influence on the children, they think my youngest child especially has learned asperger type behaviours which has impacted their ability to socialise, giving them anxiety and ocd. They say because Im visably anxious around people that the children will learn to be anxious and that I have 'unrealistic' ideas about life and this will negatively influence the children.

Im just glad that they are currently solving it in the way they are and have not taken them yet.

I would strongly advise people against haveing diagnosis as I was seen as a good parent by authorities before i had the diagnosis.

The social worker said the only reason why it has not progressed to court in my case is because I 'engage' and do everything they recomend. This can be hard to do as they phraze things in an ambiguous indirect way such as 'bla causes me concern' or 'I would prefer if you did bla', which does not convey the seriousness of how much they want you to do it, it makes me have to really concentrate and pull apart everything they say so that I make sure I do what they are asking.

I'm so sorry that happened to you. But you know? Something similar happened to me, and something you said brought it all into perspective.

I have NOT been diagnosed with AS, and it's something I've considered for a long time. And it's also a possibility I've discussed with friends.

So very soon after my daughter was born, social workers started visiting us. There had been THREE separate phone calls to DHS about us, all of which were false and we're sure that the calls were malicious attacks on my family. One of the first things a social worker asked us is whether I'd been diagnosed with AS. IMMEDIATELY I start thinking "so THAT'S what this is about..." So, of course, I said no, and I volunteered no further information. By nothing short of a miracle, we cleaned our house thoroughly only a day before each visit. We'd been accused of not getting medical treatment for our son's chronic ear infections, and we showed them the medicine bottles, the prescription, and how much medicine we had left to prove that we'd been giving the medicine regularly. We explained that we'd been hit hard financially and, yes, it was a source of stress for us--but not any more or less than anyone else going through the same thing!! !

So a month or two after the last visit, we finally sold our house and moved into a motel. We bought a new place out of town, and we don't discuss where or how we live. We keep our mouths SHUT. We don't have a phone. We have a PO Box where we receive our mail (not even remotely CLOSE to where we live). And the road we live on, according to any map I've been able to find, doesn't even EXIST.

Paranoid? Maybe. But not without good reason.

Social workers are NOT interested in helping you keep your children. I'm sorry to say that, but it's true. They give you NO information. They just take the children and find any way they can to convince you that "it's only temporary." The system is set up in such a way that the judge is going to rule in favor of DHS (if we're in the US). It's POSSIBLE to fight it and win. You need an attorney who harbors a seething hatred for DHS and is willing to work without a large fee. If you have the money, then of course you can hire the best of the best, but you might also find a young attorney who is still idealistic and willing to work pro bono. The problem with lawyers that you hire is that TYPICALLY they have worked for the other side. They are not interested in helping you keep your kids. They get more money for being "Family Masters" or "guardians ad litem."

What happened to us was such a utterly horrible thing, people who claimed to be our "friends" trying to take away our kids over personal grudges, that even the social workers could see through it. After the third visit, we started talking to an attorney we knew we could trust who had worked in the system himself. There were some other things we did within the community (letting people around us know we were being abused). After word got around what was happening and after this person had been confronted--not accused directly, but she figured out we were onto her and were considering a lawsuit--the calls and the visits STOPPED. We made ourselves vanish after that. We are much happier now, but constantly on guard after that experience.

I shudder to think what would have happened if I HAD been diagnosed or had even mentioned that I THOUGHT I had AS. That alone would have lent credence to what the caller stated, and it would have begun proceedings against us. The fact that my diagnosis was one of the first questions makes sense now. The foster care system in the US is an ugly place where children are abused worse than they often are in their original homes. They are bullied, beaten, and raped by other, older foster children. There are greater instances of teen pregnancy among foster children because of rape and the inability of foster teens to seek help. Those who do manage to survive the system age out at 18, and because they are so poorly educated college isn't really an option--especially if they can't complete high school or pass the GED. They'll often grow up to be homeless, drug dealers/addicts, prostitutes--you get the idea.

With your children, I truly hope that they are adopted into a family that will at least care for them and shelter them from the kinds of things children in this country have to deal with. In the United States, the things that happen to children are just appalling. No one, especially not the government, has the right to take your children from you.

MONIQUEIJ: What happened with your family?

Oh, I get it...so basically, they say "JUMP!" and you must answer "How high?"

You know what "causes ME concern?" That public funds are being wasted on such nonsense while not enough funds are allocated to ACTUALLY HELPING autistic children through more funding for ABA, speech services, and therapies which will help her better integrate into the system. My daughter is on a 2 year wait list to receive ABA services from the government and they have the audacity to use public funds to pull this kind of bullsh*t!?!?!

I think you guys have just fired me up enough to pick up my LSAT application and start pursuing law school.

Pardon me for truncating, but AngelRho, that is a frightening story. Good for you for moving away and confronting that "friend". It's stories like this that make me hesitant to try to be social and uneasy about pursuing a diagnosis through my insurance. I think I might be an unusual mother if I had kids, but by no means unfit. I suspect my dad and grandfather of being aspies and they weren't always the easiest to get along with, but I would have rather taken the good with the bad with them than not known them at all and been raised in some other household. At least my dad understands my wiring.

@Mustard, where is the mother of your children? Did she not have a say in the hearings?

AngelRho, I don't think that you are paranoid either. I have spent years feeling under pressure to behave as normally and as invisibly as I possibly can ... because if not the authorities might come and take my son away, ( esp as his NT papa is away from home, for work, an average of four days a week ), or at the very least interfere with us as draconially as they are doing with Lotusblossom.

I wonder whether there will be more and more cases like this, seeing as there are so many more diagnosed in the younger generations now growing up and reaching childbearing age etc. This sort of attention, oppression, surveillance, and threat etc might even function as a sort of eugenics, discouraging people on the spectrum, diagnosed or not, from having children.

At the very least it's terribly wearing/draining, as if being an aspie parent is not already difficult enough.
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My thoughts exactly. Wait till social services starts getting access to our Internet habits in the "interest of the children" - bye bye WP.

My favourite relatives on my mother's side ( I loved our visits to them when on holiday in Germany ), used to say that I was like an ugly duckling with my family, not understood etc, ... but the funny thing is that my dad is almost certainly on or near the spectrum, my sister too, and even my mother has some traits, so theoretically they should have understood me, ( and I them ), ... except that I was an aspie high on sugar and gluten from a very early age; exciteable, noisy, distractable, careless, "lazy", insouciant, ( until manic-depressive breakdown hit in my mid to late twenties anyway ), compared to their hyper-quiet, meticulous, laboriously considerate, careful/considered conscientious, responsible/anxious seriousness, etc, and it is only now, since becoming a mother, and cutting out gluten for the last three years, ( and sugar increasingly ), that I have come to resemble, and ( since finding out about AS too ) to understand them.

I have a strange feeling that in the state I was in as a child and adolescent I might actually have been happier in a less autistic family. Which sounds awful, but ... may be true. So I don't know what I think about fostering/adoption of children of aspies/auties in general! Horrible for the AS parent, ... but for the child ... who knows. I sometimes think that my own son, somewhere on or near the spectrum, might have been better off with more NT upbringing. My own experience is that being brought up by parents near or on the spectrum, and with a sister close to it too, I was like a black sheep/scapegoat whenever they were not having a nice time, and I found being around them so complicated and so oppressive that school, ( when not being bullied anyway ), seemed preferable most of the time. I wonder whether John Holt's ideas about child rights would be useful in this sort of situation; allow the children to decide where and with whom they live from age 7 upwards! :lol


I was wondering about that too.
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They do it in the USA too? I sure won't be trusting any social workers and the services.

I hope I won't be getting any harassment from them after I have my baby.