Did your parents pay attention to you as a child?

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My mum knew there was something different about me when I was a baby in the late 1960s. A doctor told her I had brain damage and a would later be disceribed asa severe learning disability. My family thus paid attention to me when they thought I had a learning disability but whe it was found out that I was much higher functioning then things really started going downhill from 1974 onwards. My dad was very abusive and used to beat my mum up regularly when he used to arrive home from the pub pissed. Often I would get beaten for the least infraction form that time and having an allistic level of intelligence was used to justify this treatment. I also knew that I was treated like some kind of second class citizen and my mum still thought I had 'brain damage' until I was diagnosed in 2003 as having Asperger syndrome. However the development of temporal lobe epilepsy in 1974 was ignored or thought as attention seeking. My other siblings woulld have been picked up on straight away. I was diagnosed with epilepsy when I was 21. I am also from a very disfunctional family and there is little emotional bonding with abny of them. Meeting my mum is like meeting someone from the council rather than meeting a close relation. There was not much of any attention and having three siblings two brothers and a sister one has to share and share alike but what was shared was spread so thin. It became like the only way mu mum could feel adequate is by puting me down which is a way she has bonded with us since her mother treated her like an Edwardian domestic servant in the early 1950s.

During the 1960s and 1970s there was the feeling that I had to hide my traits to ignore that I had any difficulties which may have been how my father felt about his own disability (having polio as a child) so I was taken out of special educational needs school which was said so that I would be more independent and able. Before which I has almost an idyllic relationship with my mum until easter 1974. I would not have been aware of any what would now be descibed as aspiphobia. When I was a couple of years previous to attending an allistic school my mum did encourage me to bunk off school which was one for children with milder learning disabilities and learning difficulties such as dyslexia and a lower school for ther types of disabled children who have other disabilities and may be allistic. When I did attend an allistic school from 11 years old I was fully aware of what people thought and this may have. The previous years were based on pity which is the reaction of what families thought when one of their members has a learning disability but when that has been proven otherwise then I was either ignored or beaten for such minor things which would not irritate most other people. There in my family was a sense of a favourite and I was not it usually my eldest brother and sister. He had dyslexia and become a successful carpenter and my sister been to university may have a developmental disability herself and has a reasonable job. My dad was also violent to my sister and sometimes I had to take beatings so either my. mum or sister wouldn't have to. How your family perceive you is roughly how others will later on but anyway my mum got divorced in 1979 due to the domestic violence. My elder brother had two tonic clonic epileptic seizures (which was diagnosed propmtly) due to the stress of it all and the beating because I forgot some geography homework from the allistic school and was mad to getup at 7 to do it. Now looking back on it I did not know why I would have to do it was since I thought the school useless as a special needs school in my case and only served to justify abuse and the neglect of my emotional needs due to having no real friends to escape to when I needed until much later and many mistakes later. Some of my sensory issues have been catered for but only in relation to food so it was all pretty dire after 77.

No. They didn't pay much attention to me.

Mom was always worried about me (she was always afraid she might lose me or get me hurt because I was her only baby: I remember I asked her why I don't have any siblings. "You gave me enough for 5 children. You were a terrifying child.I couldn't deal with you. I wouldn't be able to raise another one if it was same as you were.") but she was not a good mother, she never learned to take care of a baby or child. No talent at all. She deals with teenagers well but younger children just get on her nerves. She got no motherly instinct. She didn't even know what to do when they told her to "push" when she was giving a birth to me in the hospital...

Dad on the other hand tried to raise me but his methods were extremely ineffective. Discipline, discipline and push away if child needs something because child must learn to take care of itself. The only effect was me getting scared of him.

The only one who cared was my grandma. She was trying her best to understand me and although AS was unknown then she developed a few nice strategies. I was a very good child in her home where the rules were clear and many stuffs that I needed were allowed despite seeming weird. I was becoming a hell child again at parents home because dad didn't let me do what I needed and he was giving me orders I couldn't understand.

About my traits:
My tantrums were called "actress acts" - I couldn't stop myself but they were saying I am a convincing actress and should use it in future since I can cry on cue.
My inability to play with other children were "all my mom fault" because she was not letting me out by myself when I was preschool age because she was afraid bullies will do something bad to me.
My unusual plays were considered normal because my dad also played like this when he was young (he has the traits himself, not as many as I do though).
My unusual abilities and interests were my parents pride and nothing to worry about.
My lack of understanding what other people need and what I am supposed to do was "all my grandma fault" because "she was letting me to do anything I wanted and teaching me I don't have to respect others" (his description of "respect" is "doing what you are told to without asking for reason or clarification").
I have a feeling though that some of my odd behavior were realized by my parents but they didn't want to believe it themselves. I remember being angrily told "Don't be like your aunt!" when I was doing something especially weird. My aunt is autistic.

My preeschool caregivers (I was very off compared to other children, I was sitting alone in corner, lining up toys...), school teachers(due to my "odd" reacting to being bullied) and of course my grandma were concerned about me and I was frequent visitor of child or school psychologists. But they were unable to tell whats wrong with me. I was "just a very smart girl that needs to learn how to deal with her peers". But noone ever told me HOW.

I grown up wondering "whats wrong with all the people around me, why do they hate me so much?". It took me a long time till I started to question myself "whats wrong with me?" instead. The only one who was listening to my concerns was my grandma. My mom was thinking I am weird and I should focus on getting a boyfriend and partying and everyone will like me and dad was angry that I can't deal with peers myself and want parents to solve all my problems "just like grandma was always doing for me"...

My mother knew I had Autism when I was a kid----and this was the 60s, so that wasn't really heard of, then (I've been diagnosed with Asperger's, but that was even MORE unheard of). So, she told the Vice Principal of my elementary school, and I was put-through a battery of tests----beginning with reading tests, which was ridiculous because I was reading, and telling time, and doing very VERY basic math (2 + 2 kind) before I ever went to school. Anyway, eventually they put me in Special Ed which I didn't like 'cause those kids were considered "ret*d"----then they finally took me out of that.

When I read the title of this thread, I thought the OP just meant the "regular" "did your parents pay any attention to you", and my answer to that would've been "NO"! ! My mother just wanted me to sit still and shut-up.

Nobody's really sure who my father was.

Oh, I DID have a teacher who took an interest in me----she told my adoptive mother that I had "sparks of intelligence", and I thought "what an idiot----I haven't shown anymore intelligence because I haven't been given anything to which I can show intelligence". (I became a Computer Hardware Engineer----so, I couldn't be TOO stupid----when I told that teacher, she didn't believe I had accomplished that. What an idiot!! !)

My parents and grandparents paid attention to me, but my entire family is BAP or beyond, so it was not considered a problem that I didn't communicate or socialize or even talk. It's a different mindset than NT families. In BAP family, it's fine not to communicate, it's normal. Even so, I was quite out there compared to other family members, but my parents didn't freak out about those differences, because they could tell that I was intelligent, and that was what mattered to them.

Deleted.

No, but I graduated high school in 1973 - so my formative years were long before anyone understood anything. Back then unless you were profoundly psychotic or profoundly classic autistic and thus had to be put away in a long term institution perhaps permanently - not much thought was given to those who might appear semi-normal but just a bit odd.

So when I didn't have any friends or would go hysterical over seemingly minor things like my brother's locking me in the basement - I was, "Just trying to get attention." Frankly, nobody, absolutely nobody cared. But to be fair both of my parents were more screwed up than I was. So maybe - they were simply incapable of attending to my peculiar needs.