Seeking advice from your parents?!

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Have you ever asked your parents for advice regarding your social life or dealing with fitting in? Now that I look back at my life, I'm sort of embarrassed by the amount of help I needed from my father. But he helped a thousand times more than a psychologist did, since he actually explained in depth what most people just sort of know. Thing is, most parents can't even get their teenagers to talk to them, and here I was practically hanging off his shoulder for some support and peace of mind.

PS, I put this in general autism because I wanna know if this is typical for people with autism or aspergers or HFA or what have you. If you have, let know. If you haven't and find this weird and amusing, go ahead and say so. I'd like to know if this is normal.

As a rule, I don't recall ever asking my parents for relationship advice, but in a way, they have shared with me bits of wisdom. My mom seems to have a similar view to my own, and I suspect she might have a touch of AS herself with some of the experiences she's related to me.

My parents were/are pretty socially clueless, and their main form of coping was through denial ("everything is fine," regardless of reality). So unfortunately they weren't of much help. There are sometimes things that can be learned from obliviousness, though (that it can work sometimes to just jump and not anticipate too much).

You shouldn't be at all embarrassed about asking your dad so much, that's a really cool thing that you had/have him.

I guess I feel weak when I never hear about others who went to their folks.

To be fair, my dad told me the same thing your parents told you, that everything's fine and that my concerns are petty. This went on till I was 17. My mother, God bless her, is a blithering idiot when it comes to coming up with something helpful to say, so I was stuck with her for most of high school. At least she tried though- of course, I wonder how she made it that far (50 when I was 15) without any better insight.

It's no reason to feel weak quite the opposite. The reason I didn't talk to my mum is because I couldn't and it wouldn't have crossed my mind to do so. I've no real idea why but I still find it hard talking to her unless I'm in a very good mood.

Hmm, well I think people aren't chooing not to out of 'strength,' but rather that it just doesn't seem like an option. With your dad maybe most people would've done what you did. It'll be interesting to see the replies in this thread -- BTW do you think it might work as a poll?

No. I asked my parents for that once and their advice was that it was okay to lie. My parents do not have practical advice apparently.

I have occasionally tried, but they did not provide useful advice on any subject. When my social issues were raised, my mother would go into denial and my father wondered what I would want to learn to speak to people for anyway.

I've asked my parents for advice, but only after I moved away. I ask my mom for advice more than my dad, and sometimes I get a laugh out of some of the things my dad says. My mom has given me a lot of insight into things that would be difficult to figure out on my own.

It wouldn't do much good--my mom is an Aspie who is more socially impaired than I am!

Of course, as Murphy's law would have it, I got a double-whammy in every other aspect of autism, which are traits that she didn't get (my dad was most likely Kanner's autistic--speech delayed and eccentric), so I can't get much advice from her about things like "how do I remember to eat instead of getting ravenously hungry, giving up on cooking, and eating five peanut-butter sandwiches" or "I can't find clothing that doesn't drive me crazy" or, "Help! I'm supposed to meet with somebody and I still can't recognize him!"... because she doesn't have things as strongly as me in that respect. Mom's got the naive Aspie thing and the social impairment, and I seemed to get the exact opposite of the spectrum as she did. The one big thing we have in common is that we are both sensitive to smells.

It's just fate, really. You'd think a person would be lucky enough to have an Aspie mom might also be lucky enough to have somebody whose case is similar to their own. But no, that would be too easy...

^ That's interesting. My mother has a lot of spectrum traits, but with an oblivious way of relating to people. I'm pretty much the opposite (hyper-aware/passive) For all the similar problems in the end, there's not much relating to about what's hard. I.e. for her it's "what's so hard about talking to people?" -- she monologues and misses cues but only notices that things socially keep falling apart. Vs. my "I recognize that I'm supposed to talking but I can't figure out what to say."

She understood a need for solitude/decompression, though, which was a godsend at times, when I was a kid.

Life is weird.

Hopeless. All their ideas about social mingling, and particularly dating, were about 40 years behind the times anyway. I was looked on as 'not right in the head' for wanting to spend time in my room reading rather than being 'sociable' by sitting downstairs watching TV with them. Um, pardon me, but Aspergers notwithstanding, isn't a need for more privacy a fairly basic teen trait anyway?

My mother used to give unsolicited advice on how to relate to people, but it was basically 'You're just not pretty enough, make yourself prettier and people will like you more, oh, and be more sociable'. That said, I have strong suspicions that she actually didn't want me meeting someone and getting married. Unless it was someone she liked and approved of, who was rich and could support her and my dad in comfort for the rest of their lives. As I clearly wasn't attractive enough to pull that kind of guy, the plan was for me to stay home and be their old-age carer instead. (I'm not kidding. She told me that after my divorce.)

no. they know nothing of my life, really. i tried opening up to them once in a letter, it was devastating. i just felt exposed and they didnt even try to understand. so i never tell them anything.

Yes, with mixed results. When I was in my teens and lacked friends, I talked about it to both of my parents. My dad offered sympathy but little advice, which didn't solve the problem, but was comforting and I appreciated it. My mom would say "if you want to have friends, you have to be a friend", which didn't help and was discouraging. What I do appreciate about both my parents is that they didn't try to make me fit in or be normal - they didn't advise me to give up important parts of myself and my principles in order to be accepted.

No my father is not worth talking too about anything unless it involves making money or sport. He is very, very ASDian and now has the first signs of dementia to add to the mix, and thrill us all no end. My mother (God bless her) isn't really the advice kind. You would really need to specifically ask her and pin her down to get an answer. I find my sister inlaws do it more than any of her own children, but that is not a hell of alot either. She is no push over and ,It's not that she does not care about her 5 kids. However she trusts us to make our own way and does not want to but in. Her own mother was very controlling and had and still does have an opinion on everything, however cared very little. I'm sure this affects the way she interacts with us. However if you ask her about practical stuff there is certainly no one better.

I am and have always been very independant and although I can learn from other peoples experiences I always think "yeah but I am different, so that would not apply to me" It's not good, it's not bad it just IS. So in other words other people experieces are not the same as mine and there for they are really not helpful at all. As far as social stuff goes I know how to play the game and I think I have done it fairly well in the past. Despite not having a boy friend and no interest or knowledge in getting one untill I was 26 and then marrying that same boy friend 5 years later. As my 2 young ASdian boys have taken up so much of my time and energy, I get older, my chronic pain-chronic fatigue condition gets worse , the cranckier I get, I feel the amount of energy-time required to do the whole social thing is disproportunate to what I actually get out of it. So usually now if I can avoid it I do, so rarely feel the need for advice on social things.

I am more than aware that nothing is forever and I realise that one day I may be in a totally different place. When and if that days comes I suppose I will have to adapt again. Not too sure if asking for advice on all things social would seem to be appropriate at age 50 ,60,70, 80 or 90 though. Maybe I will just stick to my old routine then too........ just try to muddle through on my own the best way I know how. Atleast then there would be no one else but myself to blame if things go wrong...........LOL

cheers

No, in this case asking my mom for any advice would be just ridiculous. Why?

-first and foremost, she would have a really hard time trying to come up with any reasonable advice fitting my situation, she just isn’t creative nor showing out of the box thinking in any form and that is what she would have to do to be helpful if I ever hit upon an idea to ask her about this – on a cognitive level I was very well aware of all conventional ways of how to deal with not fitting in so the only reason I could ever ask her (or any other person for this matter) for help would be my suspecting she’d be able to tell me about a new, unique way I’d never be able to think about on my own.

-I had had a couple of bad experiences with confiding to her in the past when she used what she heard from me later on or just misinterpreted my words (she isn’t the smartest person I know, that’s for sure) and, in my own eyes at least, I made a fool of myself then. So I thought: never more!

-I HATE exposing myself to others, some things shouldn’t be ever talked about with people for this or that reason.

-in the best case, I’d hear some claptrap on how many people had problems of this kind and that I should just be more outgoing and then everything should turn out fine – a “my daughter is just an ordinary girl like others, not some freak unable to deal with people” denial phase.