Poll 5: Parents of autistics unhappy with their children

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You want to be a victim? Fine.

How can you have autism and not understand it?

For some autistic children, being in their own world is an important part of their joy during their childhood. It certainly was for me. I didn't spontaneously interact with people until I was 10, and it was only then that there were many negative things for me to process. The sensory stimuli were overwhelming since birth, but being in my own world protected me from that. The people were not noticed, so they could not hurt me. By age 10, I was old enough to have developed a sense of self, who I was, and I had some ability to process these complex social interactions analytically. At a younger age, it was smart of my parents to let me live in my own world, where I was happy, even if they couldn't tell and didn't have the emotional reassurance that they desired.

I was taught to be extremely polite and quiet as a child. Everyone commented on how well behaved I was. In a way it backfired because the other kids I went to school with were not so well behaved. They were rough, rude and rowdy, and I had no defenses. Good manners are just one set of social rules, and those rules only work when you are with other well mannered people. I wish I had been taught the "other" set of social rules, the ones that help you look out for yourself more.

That's a great video. I hope that more people around the world watch it and not just us.

Instead of complaining and bitching about their autistic children, why don't those so-called parents try to connect with them on their level instead of using the approach that they're trying to force into their faces. Those kids need their parents to be treating them with TLC. The only thing that I see in this video is child abuse and a lot of it. Those children would connect if they felt that their parents loved them. The reason that those children are crying and having meltdowns is because those parents keep on saying nasty things to them over and over again. I'd be the same way if my parents kept on saying nasty things to me over and over again. There were times that I've cried between the time that I was born and the day that I've moved out, because my parents did say some nasty things about me when I could hear them, and treated me like crap. I was only able to take so much and than I'd go into my bedroom twice a month to cry my eyes out, because the tough love approach didn't work for me at all. I wouldn't even go shopping with my mum for 4 months when I was 14, because my mum made it very clear that she was embarrassed to be seen in public with me, because of the way that I showed interest when people would talk about my special interests and my appearance. I told her, "You're embarrassed that I'm not like most girls my age, so why would you want to be seen with me in public?"

Last edited by CockneyRebel on 15 Dec 2011, 1:29 am, edited 1 time in total.

TheyGoMew never said it's the parents fault for the child's inability to connect. I'm 25 and I still struggle to connect with my mother. I didn't connect with her at all as a child. It wasn't her fault, it's just the way I'm wired.

I don't completely agree with all they said too. I can understand that it really does hurt to have a child that does not connect with you because I am aware of my inability to not connect. Sometimes when I try to get close and my mum doesn't want to connect, that hurt a lot.

I know a lot of mothers of autistic children who love them dearly but still need some time to rant.

I think there are a lot of assumptions being thrown around too (not from you). The kids on that video are from another documentary called Autism x 6 and they did show their father on it. It wasn't a bad documentary too. I suppose I like to see a balance of negativity (the actual symptoms that they were diagnosed for) and positivity (the help they're getting, showing that they are just like normal kids).

I am a father of a boy who I guess would be called low functioning. He is 5 and does not talk, and is not toilet trained. He has global developmental delay and measured on the Vineland II assessment his functional level for his age is below the bottom 0.1%.

I would have preferred he not be autistic. My reasons essentially are:
- I am worried that life might be hard or unsatisfying for him when he gets older.
- It's sometimes hard on our family life.

And I have in the past felt 'ripped off' that our life is different and things other people take for granted are not possible for us or are much harder.
But that's about me not him, and I've never felt disappointed in him, it's hard to even understand the question, perhaps the question was meant to be 'are you disappointed your child has Autism?'..

But my son does have many qualities I love. I would list them here, but I don't like to brag

hello everyone! some people have taken this slightly the wrong way, the text is discussing some, not all, parents of autistic children and by "do you agree with the sentiments" I mean "Do you think the writer has valid points?"

thank you for your opinions everyone

Since my daughter was born before the onslaught of Autism Speaks advertising, I knew literally nothing about autism prior to her diagnosis, initially of PDD-NOS, then changed to autism. The upside of that is that I didn't have a "worst case scenario" vision from that media exposure. The downside is that I learned everything about autism from a pamphlet (a pamphlet! that's what they give you) and then Google and some books I bought. What Google brings up when you google "autism" and what mainstream books describe is alarming to say the least. So I was worried. A much broader view that has come from getting to know other autistic kids my daughter goes to school with, finding WP, and reading a broader array of books has given me a calmer outlook.



I did get caught in that one for a while. My daughter is quite affectionate with family members so I didn't have the "why won't she let me hug her?" sadness that some parents have. I also understood wanting to play alone since I sometimes played alone as a child. What took me a very long tiome to get was the anxiety over new experiences. I loved new experiences as a child and had actually never met somebody who disliked new experiences. Lots of people dislike new experiences they perceive will be scary, difficult or overwhelming (like starting a new school when you are a kid) but what I had a hard time understanding was how this applied to all new experiences. I get it better now. But it took me a while since it was so counter-intuitive.


There was a period of highly specific shame that I had about my daughter's public meltdowns. All toddlers have meltdowns so I wasn't ashamed of that. Nobody thinks anything of it. But kids tend to grow out of it as they get older. She did too, and doesn't have public meltdowns anymore. But there was a several-year gap between when most kids grow out of it and when she did and in that gap I felt very judged as a bad mother incapable of teaching her child self control. Sometimes people would actually come up to me and say negative things while I was trying to get her someplace secluded and quiet. Through trial and error I learned her triggers and her upper limit of exposure to things. Now more mature, she knows her own triggers and will tell me when she needs to leave. But the years before that I was pretty ashamed on certain ocassions.



This is a particularly difficult one. I am having a very hard time sorting out what is autism and what is adolescence. Talking to friends with NT adolescents helps with that.



This I don't worry about. I think it's because my husband and I both made a committment before she was even conceived that we would let our future kids just be who they are. We were rebelling against the hyper-parenting philosophy which is the norm these days and trying to go back to the looser 70's "Free To Be You and Me" philosophy. Parents these days are under a lot of social pressure to have high-achiever uber-kids. It's a lot more pressure than my own parents were under. Since we consciously rebelled against that prior to her birth, I think that helped a lot with not being unduly upset she won't be class president.



I absolutely agree. This is what my husband and I were rebelling against before she was ever born. It is a lot of pressure on a child, whether they have autism or not. Kids crack under these sorts of parental expectations. I had a college friend that cracked because of what her dad expected and she could not deliver. Thus I don't attempt to make my daughter NT. She would crack. Lots of people here post about how they cracked after attempting that.

So why do any parents do this to their autistic kids? There is social pressure, but the strongest pressure of all is not coming from peers. It's coming from health professionals. It's easy enough to resist pressure from other parents. Just label yourself an iconoclast. I'd already done that years prior to her birth. Resisting pressure from health professionals is a lot harder. My first act of resistance came when I refused the Downs Syndrome test when I was pregnant on the grounds that I had no intention of aborting a Downs baby (I don't have a Downs baby, but I didn't know that then). My OB was very insistent and told me how very, very, very, very difficult it was to raise a Downs child and I should reconsider. I stood my ground, paving the way for standing my ground at other times with other profesionals recommending drugs or therapies I didn't agree with. But this was only after I googled myself blind (and found WP in the process of googling) to make sure I wasn't being reckless.

I think a lot of parents have been convinced by doctors even more than by Autism Speaks that they are bad parents if they don't try whatever therapy the doctor is advising.

And then there are parents who would just like a reprieve from having to clean feces off the wall. Having to do that too many times will wear away a parents autism acceptance. I haven't had to do that. It's a lot easier to accept idiosyncratic play than some other things.