Forced Conformity/Socialization, My Experiences

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Actually, we aren't right now. My father died nearly 5 years ago, and my mother and I aren't speaking now because I wanted to get married to someone she all of a sudden didn't approve of when she found out we were getting married.



I tried back then telling them how it made me feel, but they didn't seem to care. I would tell them how I didn't like it and they'd simply say "yes you do" or once I told them how they ruined my summer vacations and my mother would respond "nobody ruined your summer."

It was like they didn't care how I felt about it as long as I did it. I used to think they were "addicted" to seeing me swim if that makes sense. The fact they didn't care how it was affecting me, refused to hear or accept anything I had to say, and even made up elaborate lies about how I had to devote my life to it said alot to me.



I probably look younger than I am for the same reasons. I still try to stay out of the sun as much as possible. To me, being tanned was never a status symbol. I never saw why it was such a big deal and why I should do it too. The only reasons they ever gave were the old "because we said so" or "everybody does it." I know people who when their parents didn't allow them to do something if they responeded "Everybody is doing it" their parents would respond "If everyone was jumping off of a bridge would you do that?"

When it comes to status symbols, I think part of being Aspie is not caring about that stuff anyway. We usually don't have the need to show off to others or seek others' approval.

I am the same way, I don't like getting water in my eyes either, or putting my face in the water. That was one of the problems my brother had teaching me to swim, I wouldn't put my face in the water.



I still don't like to swim and won't do it anymore. That probably has more to do with my experiences than it does with fear though.

Of course. Bribery works best though.

PrisonerSix, looks as if your mum is a lost cause. I hope she didn't stop you from marrying the lady who wanted to.

I got into strife one day at the local pool when I was about 10. This big girl was berating her little brother because he didn't want to swim. I told her she shouldn't be so cruel and she said "mind your own business".

What brand/model of shoutgun do you want to get?

ALthough you are not asking me, I say a big pump-action double-barreled gun.

Prisoner,

With only a few details changed, been there, done that, got the T-shirt.

Swimming, going to the beach and bicycle-riding were my parents' battlegrounds with me too. The No. 1 reason I got hit as a kid.

Of course now that I'm grown, and understand AS, none of those activities are problems - I can enjoy them almost like a normal person! (In fact, when I was unsure about driving, I got to like bicycling a lot. Still do.)

The real issue, of course, was shame and anger about the AS, which they didn't understand and didn't want to understand, with the forced swimming, lessons etc. as a substitute for the help you and I really needed (which my parents were too ashamed to ask for). Then they could say 'But we're doing/we did something to try to help!' Yeah, right.

I'm sure lots of us have had the experience you and I did of essentially being told 'we don't like you and want to replace you with this other person' - somebody who loved sports, had big muscles etc.

You don't get over things like that easily.

Sometimes you just have to get out and cut your ties with those people.

I did.

That said, some pushing of AS kids to do NT things is good and therapeutic - expand your horizons, pick up a few social skills and maybe even discover exercise or a sport you like. But the good kind is alongside nurturing/channelling your special interest: swim, run or ride your bike as well as, not instead of, getting into electronics...

Anyway, sorry all that happened.

What are you doing to recover from it?

I was very lucky that my mother didn't ever push me to do things that I wasn't ready to do, as evidenced by her washing my hair till I was twelve.

Then she helped me graduate by buying one of those detachable shower heads, so I could aim the water away from my face and still get the soap out of my hair but not into my eyes. All went uphill from there.

11 in my case.

Part of what stunk about my childhood besides the general badness I described earlier in this thread was the inconsistency in the ways my parents dealt with the AS - I'd be pampered one day about one thing (like washing my hair) but nagged, yelled at or even hit the next about another issue.

Looking back I can now see why they'd seem to indulge me in washing my hair for me, etc. It temporarily took away one outward sign of the problem so it was 'enabling' for them, not for me - they didn't have to deal with it for a little while.

That was the same reason why in junior high (Years 7 and 8 to the British) they'd do school projects for me - to try to cover up what was wrong instead of letting me fail and having the school snoop around asking them questions about my problem. (They already were fighting a big battle getting me to do homework instead of reading about and playing with toys related to my interests all the time.) Knew it was wrong and once even cried over it. The worst was when the project was about World War II history, one of my interests, and my mother took that away from me and did the whole project for me - told me how much she really hated me!

Part of the problem was my mother was probably on the spectrum herself (where I got it!) while my father was very angry about having to put up with the both of us.

Thanks, Scipio and Malcolm. You understand.

I did marry the person I wanted to marry, and so far, we're doing fine. I tend to think the problem my mother has with me is she didn't want me to grow up, she just wanted a child to take care of. Even though she'd often say things like "i'm not going to be around forever for you" and the like, I always felt like she didn't want me grown up. I guess getting married was one of those things grown up people do she didn't want me doing.

My sister used to berate me the same way not only in swimming, but other ways. I think the reason my mother let her get away with that and alot of other things was to inflate her sense of self esteem. My mother always felt women got a bum rap in our world and didn't want that to happen to my sister so she let my sister get away with everything. My sister would often treat me badly in school and get some of her friends to gang up on me. My sister never denied any of it yet nothing would happen to her. If I ever said a bad thing to my sister, she'd turn on the tears and I would get in trouble. Even when I'd point out these double standards, I'd just get into more trouble. Sometimes if one of our three older brothers would talk back to or down to her, they'd get yelled at too.

Sometimes my mother would even consult with my sister on what to do about my alleged problems. It was almost like having 3 parents, Mom, Dad, and Sis. The years of letting my sister get away with murder, protecting her her against anyone who even looked funny at her and caving in to her every whim did finally backfire on them many years later and when that happened, I had no sympathy for my parents.

To Young_Fogey:

With swimming, I had no interest in it at all and frankly, still don't. I was never comfortable in the water and don't like getting my face wet very much. Something inside of me told me not to do it, so I went with that inner voice and for a long time, it wasn't a problem. In fact, I found a benefit of being a non-swimmer; when other siblings went off to swim, I could go and do my own thing in peace. In the past, my parents would try to force me to do what they did and play with them, but they always treated me badly because I was the youngest, slowest, clumsiest, etc., and couldn't do what they did. Being able to get away from that poor treatment gave me peace. However, it wasn't to last as you have seen.




I agree, they were trying to force me into a mold that would make me look normal. My mother used to tell lies about how much I loved to swim and how I could swim before I could walk when that is far from the truth. She'd even take pictures of me in the pool and either send or show them to others as proof of my undying love of swimming. I guess she thought if everyone was convinced I loved swimming, I would eventually have no choice but to love it.

Sometimes I thought they were trying to make me be a copy of my sister. Not only did she swim, she was an avid reader. I did read, but I couldn't do it for hours at a time like her. She also played a musical instrument, which I also caught hell about because I never was interested in learning an instrument.



No you don't.



I've tried to and the only one I've really cut ties with is my mother. I had for the most part cut ties with the rest of my siblings, but my wife wants me to keep ties with them. She doesn't understand how my family is because she grew up knowing all of her cousins, grandparents, aunts, uncles, etc., and I did not. We can't ever be a big happy family like her's was, I just wish she'd understand that and let well enough alone.



I don't think so. I think if I had been allowed to make my own choices and not spent my summers enslaved to my sister and other siblings, I'd be alot better off. Before that first summer of forced swimming, I did get some teasing from other kids at school but I could actually take most of it knowing I had a safe place to go at the end of the day. I could withstand peer pressure and so forth, and not get myself into bad situations. After the first summer of forced swimming, it became harder for me to stand up for myself and cope with what was going on around me. I felt like I was less of a person plus it damaged my relationships with everyone in the family. I was never the same after it all started.



I've tried recovering by just moving on with life, getting away from them, and pursuing my interests harassment free. I still have intrusive memories of what happened that won't seem to go away. Summer 2004 was the 25th anniversary of the beginning of what happened to me. It still haunts me now and if it hasn't gone away by now, it probably never will. If there were only something I could do.

I can relate to that too. Inconsistency is in my opinion, one of the worst things a parent can do when raising a child. I can remember things that happened in my life that sometimes, my parents would yell at me about and at other times, I wouldn't be wrong about at all. They couldn't make up their minds it seemed.



Mine would go behind me and make changes on projects too. I always thought I was supposed to write how I saw it, not how they saw it. They were again, trying to hide who I really was from the world and attempt to make me look "normal." Or they'd tell people I said something I never said or that I liked certain things I didn't like, thought certain things I didn't think, and so forth. They went behind me alot spreading lies and gossip about me and didn't respect me choices and I never understood why because if any of my siblings made a choice or a viewpoint, it was respected.



Mine was frustrated because her inconsistent parenting was actually causing more problems than we had to begin with and not creating the "perfect" children she wanted. My father at times didn't like the things my mother did(including letting my sister get away with so much) and didn't know what to do. My mother would say to him she wouldn't do something than do the opposite just out of spite because she wanted everything her way.

About the only thing regarding me that ever had a united front on was forced swimming, if that made any sense. They were determined to get me to swim and love swimming by whatever means they had to use.

Dear PrisonerSix,

OMG, our lives were so similar!

That's great! I'm so happy for you. I'm still looking for that.



DITTO. If mine were still in my life she'd react the same way to my marrying or even dating (if I could even get that far in spite of her running my life).

Except that she never said this:



Looks like we lived with the same basic contradiction: parents who were both ashamed of us because of the AS and made it impossible for us to live in the world of NTs. People who really hated us.



Mine would completely take over big projects but did this to me too with a questionnaire/'tell us about yourself' project.



Once when I was 12 and my mad (in the sense of 'crazy') mother had one of her turns she ranted and ranted about my having a special interest* and handed me a list** of 'acceptable interests' such as sports ('My interest is: sports' - didn't like them then, don't now) and made like I loooved the Olympics!

Bottom line: they were hateful and you and I are better off without their noxious presence in our lives.

It's hard for NTs (like your wife) to understand but I've managed to explain it to people, even before I really knew about AS (I guessed right that I was borderline autistic).

*Which puzzled the hell out of me because it was one I'd chosen partly to fit in and because it was something I thought my parents would like (and for a while it looked like they did)!

**That was one of her AS tendencies: she'd bombard you with notes instead of talking to you. Took me a while (living with flatmates) to learn that this wasn't normal!