Cant even talk about my AS with family

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raisedbyignorance
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13 Oct 2010, 7:02 pm

Anyone else having this problem? Of course many of my rants on here have centered greatly around my family's inability to take my AS seriously or to understand the little difficulties in how it has affected me.

If I even mention my AS, my family seems to give this attitude that's almost like "whatever you need to shut up and grow up" type of attitude. Then my mom tells me to work on my eye contact. And my dad just thinks I dont try hard enough even though it is hard for anyone with AS to try to be sociable.

It was easier to talk to them about AS in the first few months of my diagnosis when my dad was trying to do his research on it but I wasnt very knowledgable about it back then so my dad was relying on books. I think that's what creates a lot of problems because this was earlier in the decades and those Tony Attwood books, as good as they are dont give you as much knowledge about AS as we know of today.

And people say that I may have gotten my AS from my dad and as socially imcompetent as he is, I find it hard to believe that he could have the same condition as me and be completely unsympathetic or misunderstanding of my difficulties.

Is anyone getting this 3rd degree treatment from their families or whatnot?



DrHouseHasAspergers
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13 Oct 2010, 9:35 pm

My mom insists I don't have AS; I'm not even sure she told my brothers that I am an aspie. Luckily for me, my dad is way more accepting of my diagnosis. He tells me not to hide it so people can understand my behavior and help me behave in a more appropriate manner.
My mom won't tell anyone I have AS. She won't let me get the IEP I need to be able to get extra time for the PSAT and the ACT. When I am around her, it's like if I even mention my AS in passing, she freaks out and goes into her "you don't really have it" lecture. I hate that every time I mess up socially all I get is "grow up and quit saying you have AS"
So I know how you feel and it's incredibly frustrating knowing you don't have family support to help with the social/behavioral issues.



Callista
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13 Oct 2010, 9:44 pm

Quote:
And people say that I may have gotten my AS from my dad and as socially imcompetent as he is, I find it hard to believe that he could have the same condition as me and be completely unsympathetic or misunderstanding of my difficulties.
It doesn't mean he doesn't have AS. My mom's the same way; she either insists I'm not disabled or else believes I'm not able to live on my own--she seems to have this idea that disability is either total and obvious, or else isn't there at all. She definitely has AS herself; all the signs point to it; but she often expresses the opinion that I should just "try harder", as though that were the solution to everything. I think it may come from her own history of having to cope on her own without a diagnosis--she believes that if she could cope (i.e., she's still alive), then she must not be disabled; therefore I'm just not trying hard enough and can't be disabled either. But whenever I manage to convince her that I have a real problem that can't be solved by the "try harder" method, she seems to flip to the idea that I'm severely disabled somehow (I'm not; at most it's moderate) because she has no mental concept in between "not disabled" and "totally incapable". Her own AS doesn't really make her more sympathetic--somewhat less so, in fact. She doesn't realize that if she'd been diagnosed, and given accommodations, she mightn't have had it so tough as she did. She most likely thinks it was that tough for everyone--that what she experienced is something that everybody experiences, even though it includes things like being utterly exhausted after a day at work and unable to do anything but lie on her bed; or not being able to go to church because of the perfumes and the loudness of the speakers.


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CrouchingOwl
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14 Oct 2010, 1:10 am

My parents have been ok with it, but there was a sibling I couldn't talk to for a while. He was fairly convinced that Asperger syndrome was a direct inability to tell right from wrong and was primarily manifested by making uninvited sexual advances on others. Claims to have known someone who knew someone with it from way back when, when that way back when was before it was in the DSM... I had a hard time convincing him that he was full of it. I think he eventually got the message, but we still don't talk about it.