Parents took door handle off the door to my room- Weird?

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From a parents viewpoint, and a fond viewer of tv-series, I think I would have gone as far as confiscating the key to the door, IF there had been an incident in the past warranting such a thing. Locking the door while cutting yourself would be one incident warranting a temporary confiscation of the key. Having girls/boys over and often locking the door while not old enough to have sex (but old enough to be interested in trying) would be another incident. There might be many more, but the door handle? I don't see why anyone would do such a thing, unless there is no key, and the door handle provides the locking function. But in such a case, it would be much better to change to a door handle that couldn't be locked.

If you have any insight into why they took the door handle off in the first place, I would love to hear about it.

What was their reasoning behind wanting you to leave your door open? Why was it important for them to keep you from shutting(or locking if that was also part of their reasoning) your door?

I find that odd. They probably think if they took it off, you would not close the door or else you be stuck in your room. But you still be in your room anyway without closing the door but maybe they think if you can't close the door, you wouldn't want to be in your room.


Here is something also odd and funny, when we first moved into our house my parents built in 2001, we had no doors for awhile because they had not bought any yet so we used cardboard boxes for our doors for our bedrooms. then they finally bought doors a few months later after Christmas and put them in but not every room had a door. Only the bathrooms and bedrooms.

I think "they meant well" means "their intentions were good." I think trying to focus on intentions as opposed to actions and results is a waste of time, and usually a dodge to avoid taking responsibility for the consequences of one's own actions. Abuse is so normalized in modern culture that people will do anything to make excuses for themselves or other people when caught at it.

as far as being able to escape the noise, have you tried head phones, ear plugs or ear defenders? If nothing else ear plugs or ear defenders would help bring the volume down to a civilized level, and using headphones with soothing music could block you from noticing the noise -- the dampening kind would also help block outside noise while replacing it with more soothing sounds. Just don't wear the ear plugs or defenders too much as that can make your hearing even more sensitive. I use headphones whenever possible.

Just for the record, I agree with other posters, that taking the knob off a teen's door, esp a teen who is on the spectrum, is off base. efforts to force you to be normal will not make you normal -- think the proverbial square peg in a round hole. The best we can usually manage is learning to fake it for certain periods of time.

Their house or not, you deserve respect as a member of the family and household. If they can't give you that respect(AND privacy, this is VERY important, especially for a teenager), then your parents suck. I don't really know what to tell you to do about it. All I can really do is agree with you that it's messed up, especially if they know you're on the spectrum and understand what that means.

I've always hated how parents just love to hold the fact that it's their house over your head anytime you try to express any sort of disagreement with anything they do... It IS their house, but they can't legally kick you out until you're 18(at least not in america).

Good luck with this.

ANY teenager is justified in causing a row over this, aspergers or not, and what difference does it make whether there was an official diagnosis or not when you can't get one doctor to agree with another half the time on who has it and who doesn't? Doctors are not infallible, and only the individual can truly know himself. Doctors can only observe from outside like everybody else.

YES, DO THIS!

LOL, that's an awesome idea.

Yeah, I'm totally with you on this one, verdandi. I hate parents like that. Mine were like that in a lot of ways too, and it drove me nuts. Friggin' control freaks...

And I'm sure for the most part, my grandmother MEANT WELL, but that doesn't justify throwing soda cans at me, using a playstation controller as a flail on me, forcing me to eat food I didn't want until it made me throw up and then accusing me of throwing up on purpose just because I didn't like f*****g lima beans(when I was like 4 or 5... Yeah, every 4 or 5 year old knows how to induce vomiting and does so on a regular basis). These are just a few examples, but I don't personally give two s**ts whether or not she meant well. That's entirely irrelevant, and it doesn't excuse bad behavior. If you TRULY mean well, then educate yourself so you can DO well too...

There is nothing right about any of this.

That is quite bizarre. I have never heard of parents dismantling a door knob for any reason other than freeing a child locked in who didn't know how to get out. It makes me wonder if they were trying to "monitor" you rather than get you out of the room.

I think they should leave your door handle alone. Parents think they are doing their child a favor when they pull these stunts but they do not realize they are causing more harm than good. It's best to respect the kid and counsel rather than resort to these tactics. Kids learn to be quite ruthless by following these examples.

One time my grandmother was mad about me locking myself in my room and said "what if there's a fire and she's trapped in her room?"

They still didn't remove my lock or try to stop me from being in there with the door shut though.

Where I live now my door didn't have the latch thing that sticks out so I couldn't lock it but in my household especially after I became an adult a closed bedroom or bathroom door was as good as locked as far as we were concerned. You just didn't barge in on someone in the bedroom or the bathroom without warning and permission.

I remember another poster on here whose bedroom door lock was removed when they became a teenager, presumably because their overly religious family wanted to prevent fapping.

Wow, you were accused of forcing yourself to throw up too? I had a lot of food texture troubles when I was younger (okay, I still do), and would occasionally vomit from trying to eat the food I was told to eat. And when I did I was accused of inducing vomiting to get out of eating something I didn't want to eat. Ugh, I hate that.

But yes to the bolded sentence.

My parents threatened me with something similar when I was a teenager, because I also spent too much time in my room. I did so because I did not cope with my parents especially my father because of his temper. What they considered doing was putting a lock on my door and I'd have to hand in the key every morning and ask for it when going to bed. It didn't happen though. It would have distressed me, and so I'd agree for sensory reasons that your door handle shouldn't be tampered with.

Wow, I'm not alone in that? Really? How old were you, or was this a recurring accusation? I can only recall one time when that happened to me, fortunately.

Wow, I'm not alone in that? Really? How old were you, or was this a recurring accusation? I can only recall one time when that happened to me, fortunately.[/quote]

It happened to me during grade school. The one I recall most clearly probably happened in the 5th grade. My mother had cooked chili from a packet mix and the beans she used had a texture that just felt wrong (not soft enough) and I actually got sick after I finished eating and threw it all back up. The weird part was being yelled at for "trying to get out of eating chili." I mean, I ate the chili, which caused the problem. I remember setting out to make chili some 13 or so years later and mistakenly using the same mix (it had dessicated/reconstituted onion bits in it too) and immediately recognized it as soon as I tried to eat it.

One that was more frequent was lettuce, as my mother made a particular salad with a lot of meals, and the rule was that I had to eat some of everything that was on the table, even if I hated it. And my father would occasionally try to force me to eat the salad, which invariably made me gag and more rarely vomit. I was always accused of faking it.