Aspies and Child Abuse

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I wasn't abused in the legal sense; other than frequent spankings and being called "lazy", my parents didn't abuse me, at least not in how they perceived the meaning of the word "abuse". At the same time, they were much more strict with me than they were with my older sister, an NT. I don't know of her being an NT had anything to do with it, but this is what used to happen. She got to choose what to eat for dinner, while I had to eat what I was served and not dare complain about it. When she turned on the TV without permission, she was simply told to turn it off and go read a book, while I was spanked, sent to my room, and forbidden to watch TV for the rest of the day. She generally got to voice her complains about whatever, while I was told to shut up and obey. When she got a bad grade it school, my parents yelled at her a little bit, but generally shrugged it off; when I got a bad grade, my parents would go on a punishing spree, taking away the few things that gave me joy. My parents justified the strictness (or "better expectations", as they put it) by saying that since I was smart (meaning book-smart), more was expected of me.

As a result, me and my sister were never close, especially while growing up. Now we're on civil terms, in a sense that we give each other presents on holidays, and can spend a few hours in the same room without fighting; unfortunately, we'll never be good friends like siblings usually are after reaching adulthood. While I realize that my sister didn't choose to be the favorite and I didn't choose to be the pariah, the resentment over it is just too strong. To this day, whenever I hear someone say that parents love their kids equally, I can barely restrain myself from breaking their neck. It couldn't be further from the truth. In fact, until recently when the interest just faded, I've been trying to come up with a formula about how parents' love is divided among the children, based on the children's ages and similarity to parents.

So why such a long rant about my family history? Because it points out how differently parents will treat their NT kid and their AS kid. Sadly, it's the aspies that often end up being mistreated by their families. Some parents, deep down inside, actually hate their AS kid, and try to take out their frustrations in any way the law allows them to. Others, like mine, put more expectations on their AS kid, simply because the kid showed signs of above-average intelligence. But in the end, the aspie ends up with more stress in his/her life, just because the parents don't know how to interact with him/her.

Well, I would say yes, for the following reason :

If a child is on the spectrum, theres a possiblity that one of the parents is too. If a parent is on the spectrum, whats the real chance that the relationship will succeed long term? Quite low in my honest opinion, which would then lead to step parents at some point in the future. And thats where the abuse comes in. Step parents almost always feel threatened by other peoples children, they rarely understand them and they make very few allowances for them. With an aspie the problem is magnified by an order of magnitude. Add to that the fact that they will never get the responses they're looking for when it comes to telling off time and you get a real war zone of a situation.

I know there's a lot of generalisation in that explanation, but I'm sure there are more than a few people who understand from personal experience just what I'm saying. It certainly happened to me, my stepfather hated my guts and would never leave any telling off till he had me crying. He got an almost perverse pleasure in picking on me and would use any excuse to start on me, with my almost definite aspie mother ignoring it all as if it wasn't happening, anything for an easy life.



Funny really, I never got picked on at school at all. One day when I was about 5, shortly before my parents divorced, my dad caught me crying because a kid 2 doors down had picked on me, so he took me round and made me fight him. From that day onwards I stuck up for myself, I guess it earned respect from my peers if not understanding. It'd be me sticking up for the kids being bullied rather than getting bullied myself. Having a younger brother to protect helped too, you can't afford to think of yourself when you have responsibilities.

YES!

As an male Aspie, I have grown mainly around women. I agree with what TechnoMonkey said, if there is an Aspie child, then there's a possibility one of the parents is as well. My NT sister does display some Asperger traits {one friend, screaming matches with Mom, etc.} but she will probably go undiagnosed. However, my mom also does display some Asperger traits {no friends, cleanliness attitude, threatening me, etc.} but I believe she's more bipolar than Asperger.

I am not abused in the physical sense but there was this one time my sister & I got into an argument and she placed her hands around my throat to proceed to begin choking me with one hand. She began slapping me with the other. Mom came in & began to join in the proceedings doing the verbal department. Today, I am still abused verbally and emotionally. My mom & sister really don't give a rat's ass about my AS, they do know anyway. When I talk about anything that's Asperger-related during dinner, my sister loves to cut me off & do her daily 10-minute rant about how bad traffic was getting to class. Mom stares at her food & ignores what I have to say.

So why such a rant about the female NTs of my close family? Because there are some points where Aspergers will launch the s**t into the fan. Sadly, just from the hostile atmosphere of my home, all family members will mistreat each other. There is a slight probability that the Asperger child will just crack & seek legal revenge against the abuse he/she endured during childhood.

I would say yes.

I think perhaps we are more likely to FEEL emotionally and psychologically abused by our parents and the world in general because of the difference in our perceptions and experience of the world. Especially if our parents don't know we have AS and therefore don't understand our particular sensitivities and any other special requirements we might have.

Both my parents seem to be on the spectrum. My dad was fairly decent to me though he stayed very distant and worked all the time to avoid mom. I would think mom is very low spectrum and probably also has OCD and maybe bi-polar or schizo. She always was verbally and emotionally abusing me as far back as I could remember. Whenever I would cry my mom would beat me. When I was 4 my cousin and her friend tried to drown me so they held me underwater till I lost consciousness and left me laying unconscious on the bottom of the pool until a stranger come rescued me. Ever since I was afraid to have water over my head like being in the shower or getting my hair washed under the sink. So when I would scream when mom washed my hair I would get beaten till I couldn't stand up. I finally got over the fear around age 12 of showering so I didn't have to bathe in the bathtub.

My dad always went on what a good kid I was because I didn't cry and pitch temper tantrums when they went out to eat. So he claims how easy I made his life. But my mom claims I really put her through it. I remember being like 4 or 5 and trying to take care of my mom because she would just sit down and cry sometimes and was unconsolable. I feel like I raised myself for the most part. By my teenage years mom was totally bonkers and would barely cook for us. She got ME in trouble at school because she tried to hit the principal with a baseball bat. So everyone was ugly to me about it and I didn't know what had even occurred till a teacher told me a few weeks after the fact.

My folks divorced and mom went to live with my grandparents and they have supported her ever since. Get this after all she has done to me she had the audacity to ask if she could come live with me and me support her. I would blow my brains out before I lived with her again. I love her because she's my mom and feel sorry that she has her problems. My dad thinks I should take care of her. He divorced her and didn't have to pay any alimoney but no he thinks I should have to live with her though he didn't want to anymore.

Maybe I shouldn't have said all that, but its the truth I was abused as a child. I think probably a lot of us have parents on the spectrum and they don't know how to deal with raising kids.

Are you serious? Your mom was using you for emotional support when you were that young? A psychologist with a Ph.D. sometimes can't even console patients; I can't believe she expected the same from you. Looking at the issue from your point of view, I'm guessing you thought you could actually console her, not realizing how big the issue was. Sorry you had to go through that. Being a kid, and an aspie to boot, I realize how solving a parent's emotional problem can seem like an achievable task.

It was like that with my parents for most of my childhood, only with a slightly different issue; namely, their marriage. They would argue all the time, flat-out ignoring the fact that I was right in the room with them. Sometimes one or both of them would end up crying after the argument. Being the naive aspie that I was, I seriously believed that I could play the marriage counselor. First I tried yelling "stop arguing" when I heard them doing that; that resulted in a "stay out of this, it's grown-up talk!" Then I tried kissing up to each of them, thinking that if I kept them happy, they would feel less compelled to argue. When that failed, I checked out books on fixing marriages from my local library, and showed them to my parents; they brushed me off completely, telling me to check out marine biology books instead (my obsession at the time). I eventually solved the whole thing by planting a fake suicide note, where I described in detail how I planned to end it all because of all the arguing. I deliberately made the handwriting look shaky and weak. They found the note, and although they haven't mentioned a word of it to me, they became scared sh*tless. How did I know? Ever since then, they argued considerably less, or at least did it when I wasn't around.

So how is this "abuse", you might ask? It was indirect abuse, being stuck with an endless, insolvable problem. If you know the myth of Sisyphus's Challenge, where he had to keep pushing a rock up a mountain, only to see it roll back down, you'll have an idea of how it felt like to be the marriage counselor of the family. As I pointed out above, I was trying to achieve something that a professional with years of training can't even do sometimes, and my parents didn't even care. Now that I realized how spent nearly a decade in futile effort, it really burns me up. Sticking a child with a task like that is abuse in and of itself.

Well even at the young age of 4 I thought I was somehow responsible for my mom mainly because there was no one else around to do anything but me. She had no friends, she ran what few she had off. She hated everyone around her so I felt sorry for her and believed at the time that everyone was out to get her like she claimed. I was fending for myself at early age. At 3 years old I was already fixing 1-2 meals a day for myself because of my parents work schedule. My mom did teach me how to make a few simple things so I could eat while my dad slept during the day as he worked night shift and she worked day shift.

My parents always fought. If my mom hadn't been a nutcase I know they wouldn't have fought because my dad remarried and has a good marriage now. I just can't believe I am expected to take care of her now when she never took care of me as a child. Part of the reason I ended up with hearing loss and wearing hearing aids as a young adult probably lies with the fact that she wouldn't take me to the doctor when I cried with ear aches. I also found out I have a heart valve defect which may have had since birth and also anemic. Course she never took me to the dr for check ups so a doctor could have found that out years ago. Then again when I was teenager I had some serious dental surgery and she threw away my antibiotics half way through the course which also could have lead to the heart valve damage.

She's so crazy she tells me over the phone I should stop taking all medication (including thyroid replacement which has to be taken for life) and she wants me to stop wearing my hearing aids. I told her about the HA's- look either I wear them so I can understand what you are saying to me or else we can't communicate- which do you want? That shut her up. She's worried my grandma will see my HA's but she's so clueless in the 4 weeks I spent with them over past two years she hasn't seem to notice. Well she's not said anything to me and she's so tactless if she had noticed she would have said something.