Refridgerator Mothers ????

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When my son was tiny he would stare at my face and I had to turn away. When he turned two he wouldn't give me eye contact and hasn't done since. I could never hold his hand because he hated that so to cross the road I had to hold his wrist.
My daughter never liked me just to hug her without permission I have always had to ask first since she was able to talk. And if I hugged her before she would squirm untill I put her down.When B was a tiny baby he would be fed then want to be put down there was no rocking him to sleep.
Both had sensory issues they didn't like to be touched without a need or permission. So I would wait for them to come to me to play horsey or for a hug, But I made sure that at least once a day I told them I loved them, I would try and hug them at least once a day. I felt my son didn't love me so I did my best to let him know that I loved him.
When I told A this he said I was silly or was it I was a twit. AS children do find it hard to cope with sensory issues when parents are continually wanting to hold them and show they love them. My mother said I was cold towards my children because I didn't walk around with C constantly on my hip, because I couldn't play tumble with B, it wasn't because I couldn't but because they didn't want to.
Now they are older they know that I love them very much and I still ask permission to hug C though she says I don't always have to do so. I get to tickle B out of bed and we have a good time doing that. And when I hug them sometimes it seems as though they stand away from me it is a good feeling to be able to hold them.
I would like to hug A but he doesn't feel comfortable with me doing that but I tell him I do love him and I really do, he may annoy the hell out of me sometimes but they all do at times. Sometimes my arms just ache to hold him when it does C finds she has more hugs herself.
This is my perspective an NT mum and wife.

I’d say my mom would be the opposite of a fringe mom, except that sometimes she doesn’t like to share when she’s hurt or deprest. She’s the only person I’ve ever felt completely comfterbol touching me, so I probably have a stronger than average connection with her.

I agree that AS is probably just genetic, and that some people’s parents are distant because they have it to. I’ve got a felling that most people with AS make lousy parents, although that might just be because I’ve always felt that I would make a lousy parent.

I wouldn't say my parents were 'refridgerator' as such, but they are not very touchy feely. They hug and kiss children when their younger but that tales off as they grow up ( passed todler age) it never bothed me at all but i think it did upset some of my siblings( i'm the oldest of 6) My mum is very like me and obviously i'm not very touchy myself. Though i do hug the kids i live with quiet often and i'm much more likely to hug them then tell them i love them....incidently my parents never told me they loved me either, i just always assumed they did. I guess they allways made me feel secure.....

My parents both ignored me a lot when I was very small, rarely even speaking to me. I know now they had a lot of problems in their lives and couldn't give. They were like children themselves.
I don't think they caused my problem, though.

Another resin that cold parents couldn’t have caused my AS is that I’ve showed symptoms since before I was born. When I was in my mother’s womb if my dad tried to get close to her or touch her I would role around and kick until she felt like vomiting.

a spill your guts about family post

ok

I'm middle aged and just heard about AS a year ago, after a few months I sent me sister who is 6 years older than me an e-mail and got back a reply "it sounds like all guys"
Never heard another word about it again from her. She is pretty much a self absorbed soccer mom type with 2 kids in college.

never mentioned it to my mother or brother. My father is dead, he was 39 when I was born and died at 78 years old My mother is 6 years younger then him and now 80 years old She has mentioned I hated being touched and held as a child.

My parents where pretty much shot, didn't seem to be even a spark between them,never mind like love. My mother is a nervous wreck type person and my father drank,but didn't bother anyone, he hardly talked to anyone.

my brother is 3 years older than me and bombed out in school,they kept him back twice 1st and 3rd grades and he just like gave up on school. Type of kid teachers would love to kill. He hated school and bookwork and for 15 years people where on his case and he was in general a miserable person.He was 20 when they gave him a high school diploma.

He burned the parents out and they didn't bother me they both worked and I just spent 10 minutes a day with them to eat supper. Life was all about my sister,she was the golden child and shut up 2 cents was pretty much what I heard if I tried joining in a conversation during dinner

My sister being 6 years older than me grew up in the 60's, Brady Bunch fantasy world of pretfect Levittown houses and mom waiting at home for her with milk & cookies after school
http://tigger.uic.edu/~pbhales/Levittown/

about half way down the above link is an aerial veiw of the type of hood I grew up in. Almost every house had kids in it that where born in the 50's and early 60's

I was a teenager in the 70's,got up in the morning,no parents at home,they where at work.My mother got a job to send the golden girl to private school. My brother was only a year ahead of me in school and his report cards really sucked,so as not to get the parents going, we threw them out for like 6 years and they never noticed

The school system was huge, like over 850 kids in a graduating class and the school was an open campus, come and go as we pleased like it was a college. Nobody knew who was who with over 2800 kids in the school. We skipped school at school, the lunch room was study hall and we could just hang out all day and go outside and smoke anything we pleased Huge shopping center next door,just walk over and get real food.

After school we had the run of the neighborhood,all the parents where working. At night we just hung around the streets sat in parked cars when it was cold and partied up a storm. When it was hot we just hung around drinking beer and smoking pot right in front of peoples houses Cops never cruised the neighborhood because nothing ever happened. We didn't leave a mess and weren't loud later in the evening.

Nobody noticed I was stoned at dinner or came home drunk at night

One of the kids found out the local boy scout troop was almost dead,they had only a few kids so about 5 of us joined the boy scouts at 14 and 15 years old We figured cool,get a few cases of beer and some weed and go camping the nerd scout leaders where horrified we smoked cigarette's and wouldn't go buy us beer they would have croaked if they knew we smoked weed.
the 3rd camping trip the idiots took us to a weekend scout jamboree. It was tramatic for the boy scouts,we had the mentality close to kids from a housing project and there we are with like 1000 eagle scout types
We had no scout uniforms, camping equipment,yeah right. We had an old army tent and blankets and pillows and regular household pots and pans. Merit badges zero. They didn't have any for joint rolling and beer drinking.

the 4th and final camping trip a few kids hitch hiked into town for beer and got caught coming back. i don't think them guys sleep that night after taking the beer away

I don't remember ever hearing a word about it from my parents,they probably never found out. It was like ,hey I joined the boy scouts and they said whatever, hey we are going camping and they said whatever and than it just ended and they never asked whatever happened with the boy scouts

I was 18 by the time I got raked over the coals, the assistant principal at school finally caught me after looking for me for 3 years and it was over ordering a cap & gown for graduation, wasn't no chance in hell I was graduating. I made the mistake of telling him I should have ordered the stuff and got the hell out of his office. I hadn't gone to gym class in 3 years and a few other nonsense classes I never went to, so I didn't have enough credits to get a diploma. I had passed all the required classes like english (don't laugh I passed ) and math and science.

The parentel units seemed really bent out of shape about that deal. The next fall I took 2 night adult education classes and was qualified for a diploma,but they only have graduation at the end of the spring semester and never told me about it.So after applying for a job one day and checking off high school graduate I stopped at the school and asked If they had a deploma for me and they handed me one.

The parents where all bent out of shape a year before and had no idea if I ever really went to the night classes and did get a high school diploma. The only thing that was important was my graduating with my class so they could brag to their friends their boy is graduating. Probably the only reason they where pissed off about it was because I made them lose face in their social group.

All parents want to do is be able to brag about their kids and my brother was nothing to brag about and than my teachers in grammer school start telling them I'm not applying myself and could do at lot better, so they probably figured oh great another dud kid and just gave up and figured their girl was the only one worth a damn and just ignored my exsistance. Best damn thing that could have happened

[ My theory is that the mothers in question most probably had Aspergers.


]

I think this was maybe the case. and just me you did make sense

I wonder, if you took an NT child at birth, locked him in a room without any human contact, then released him at 18.
Would he relate well with other people?
Would he understand body language?
Would he be happy looking at other people in the eye?, or be like a wild cat viewing it as a threat?
Would he be self absorbed in his own interests that he had to do to keep himsely ammused?

What Iam asking is, are these traits hard wired into us, or are they learned from close contact with a loving mother like the act of talking is?

I wonder if the same area of the brain that fails to develop due to lack of emotional contact witha primary caregiver, is the same area that is maybe devoloped differantly in Aspies?

I myself am diagnosed with Reactive Attachment Disorder, along with a host of other things like PTSD anxiety OCD etc etc.

I had a "refrigerator mother" though it was certainly exaggerated by a stepfather who genuinly hated me, my Mother was not allowed to play with me for instance.
I was abandoned by her when I was 18 months, returned to her when I was 4, was kept alone in my room from returning from school until school time the next day.,
Put in Childrens homes from 5 to 8 years old.
When not in homes the only interaction I had with those that where to teach me how to Love was to be smashed around the head, kicked in the stomach, told I was a girl etc etc.

To those that think this sort of behaviour doesnt affect kids, Iam afraid you are deluding yourselves.

I dont know if I have AS or that my experience did the sort of damage that resulted in AS, just know that the sympoms are the same.

My parents were great, and turned out three normal, well-adjusted children before my younger sister and I came along. My eldest brother is a bit of a "shadow Aspie", but the concern for justice and detail has served him well in a career as a police officer. Other brother (#2 in birth order, in case anyone cares) is a successful electronics engineer, and teaches physics part-time at the local community college. Elder sister is a happy housewife, married to an avionics technician.

No unhappy memories from childhood about either parent - my father was a terrible punster, quick with dirty jokes as we got older, and took me hunting with him (once he learned fishing bored me, he stopped insisting I come along, and he tried to teach me about auto mechanics, but didn't get upset when I failed to take to it). My mother was always supportive and caring, and when we were bad she had a much more effective punishment than any mere spankings - she had this look. She would give you a look that made you feel guilty about everything you'd ever done that might possibly have disappointed anyone. It was a powerful counter to naughtiness - no stolen cookie or speeding ticket was worth that.

I didn't get too much attention as a child, either - when my little sister was diagnosed autistic, Bettelheim was still a respected professional, and Mom took it kind of hard, and may have overcompensated a touch, so she was always trying to give all this attention to Mary, and leaving me to my own devices, which was pretty much the way I liked it anyway. It made for a good balance.

As a consequence, I'm fairly well-adjusted for an Aspie, other than the part where I can't keep a job because I can't play the game of office politics and get fired in favor of someone who rubs the boss the right way...

This is an interesting thread because it contains many of the theories.

There can't be any concrete cause determined because of the differences in the spectrum. There is not yet a complete, exact schematic of the electrical mapping of the brain available. There is no way to determine the when, what, and how to answer this with certainty at this time in science.

The born with definition. One description here was right on...one mother's other children's eyes 'snapped' right to her. We know that sometimes it is from birth. But then we also know some babies are perfectly normal and then 'bam' they regress and either have drifted away or begin to drift away.

Same with abused, neglected children...orphanage studies.

The development of the brain in the first 3 years is exciting studies. Abuse and neglect has the potential of causing enough damage that the result is a child on the spectrum...their brains are physically damaged or under developed. It cannot be ruled out but can also be completely ruled out....not all people on the spectrum were abused. I think we have entered an 'age of reason' that does not immediately define someone on the spectrum as a child that has suffered neglect or abuse.

I do think that classic autism or AS is either from birth or from the first 3 years. There are stories of kids that 'regressed' after an illness. I have no way of telling if it was from birth or my first three years. I have a mentally ill parent who admits nothing, not even what is known, but is - was - and still is capable of anything.