what did parents used to do with autistics

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What are parents to do when spanking hitting and yelling at defective kids who won't learn isn't working? In the old fashioned days did parents just take the kids to be put to sleep or take them out back to shoot like in old yeller when the dog becomes defective by rabies? Like if the parents say something gross/vulgar and you repeat it should they first yell, then spank, then punch, then beat down, what comes after? Obviously I haven't had the experience after that but my fakestepdad used to be military and tried to do his own boot camp with me and I got institutionalized. :/

My mom yelled at me a lot, my dad tried to talk my autism out of me. My mom was always telling me I should be like my older perfect sister or the bank teller or anybody but me. But yeah, like everyone always says, in those days they just didn't know.

Most likely they were either institutionalized and called "lost causes". Then they started shutting dowm asylums, I'm sure there were cases of extreme abuse and murder. But that sort of thing wasn't talked about. Well in the past, as in 20 years+ ago. Before asylums they may have been abandoned, killed, given up on and taught to do simple tasks (again labeled lost causes)... eh yeah mostly not the best life overall. It's better now because at least there are more laws, and more understanding of that the kid may have a number of conditions that need a different approach.

Put in institutions. Parents still did that when my parents were little and in their twenties. But I think it was becoming less common then. I read somewhere online it started to change in the fifties when people started to decide it wasn't right and my mom said there was special ed when she was a kid. I am sure there were still parents before then who didn't lock their kids away.

I would have probably been put in one too if I was born back then and my mom said I would have turned out to be a Nell.

Way back before there where any autism diagnosis, kids would likely be diagnosed schizophrenic, put on medication and institutionalised for their whole lives.

That would probably be around 1900 and before and since the advent of mental health care.

In the 1960's and 1970's among rich people seeing a psych started becoming chic. But in the lower middle class areas I grew up in there was still a large stigma involved..it was seen as the ultimate in giving up so if you had to see a psychiatrist you must be really crazy. They hid them away in a room and when they got to legal age they were put in the street and told to "sink or swim." If the person "lost it" as an adult they were institutionalized or if the family could not afford an institution they were locked in a room. But people did find out, and as kids and teens we believed the house where the person was locked up was haunted. Teens would get as drunk and stoned as possible in order to get up the "courage" to throw rocks at the window where the "crazy" person/boogie man lived. Once the window broke everybody ran as fast as they could away.

Last edited by ASPartOfMe on 18 Mar 2014, 2:10 am, edited 2 times in total.

There was a movie, I can't remember what it was called - but this woman was institutionalized as a lost case and they were doing electroshock on her, but then somebody read something she wrote and she got and became a famous writer. It was based on a real woman who was a famous writer in real life. She lived in Australia and (at least in the movie) had red hair.

Edit - the writer was Janet Frame and the movie was Angel at My Table. It was a good movie. (also a book)

Before the 1800s (or late 1700s) when they created asylums, kids with mental or developmental problems would often be chained in an attic or basement. It was acceptable to kill them as well. In 1654, in Massachusetts there was a law called the Stubborn Child Act which permitted parents to kill an unruly, disobedient and stubborn child. There's no doubt in my mind that if I had been alive in the 1800s I'd have been institutionalized and earlier I'd have been chained in a basement or killed.

It's actually pretty scary to think. This is a large part of why I personally don't get people who yearn for "the good old days." I have no idea and I guess that what scares me. I know for one I would have never gotten to college which granted is more a benefit of modern technology like computers(I have your textbook crappy Aspie handwriting). So yeah I think the uncertainity is what scares me. Until my diagnosis of AS, my parents always knew there was something different and one doctor even discounted the possibility of Asperger's which was strange given his own son had Autism.

My father was a colonel in the Air Force. He was so disappointed in me. My posture, stims, voice, interests, emotionalism, just drove him crazy. He and I never had a normal conversation about anything (he lived to be 92, and I took care of him for his last 5 years). He was always training me, testing me, shaming me, instructing me. And he hit me until I was 19. He would also bump into me, or step on me, like I was invisible. He'd thump me on my head... and he would yell at me, and glare at me. He ordered me around... he inspected me, and the chores I was ordered to do. He sent me to military school at 18, and I ran away after 10 weeks. I hitched hiked halfway across the country to Denver, and got a job in the back room of a sporting goods store putting on ski bindings. That was over 50 years ago.

It depends on what resources were available to the parents, how "functional" the child was, and what the family believed.

Some people chose to put the child in an institution; others were forced to do so by ecclesiastical or civil authorities.

Some people kept the child at home; dependent upon what the child was capable of doing, the individual was a source of as much free labor as he or she could produce. Or tied to a bed, chair, radiator, etc. and left in a basement or attic to rot.

Some cultures believe people who have disabilities are more pure spiritually, and they're revered and cared for. Mostly, in undeveloped nations, they were institutionalized or left to beg and die in the streets.

I think some of the ancient (and modern) hermits we read about were probably on the spectrum.

As we're aware, though, not everyone who has an autism spectrum disorder has subnormal intellect or is severely and profoundly disabled.

I think people who were fortunate enough to earn a living at pursuing one of their obsessions were probably the "creative geniuses" in their communities.

My dad is 72; without being a diagnostician, I am as sure as I can be that he has an autism spectrum disorder. Two of his 4 older sisters were around him enough to know what he was like as a baby and small child; everything they tell me about his early years is consistent with what we recognize now are the indications of Asperger's/autism. He became a mechanic, welder and heavy equipment operator. He's known for his skill, and therefore his peculiarities are tolerated. He did not do well academically and I cannot tell what level of literacy or numeracy he achieved. He has his obsessions, routines, and off-the-wall theories about life. Dependent upon the situation, I've seen him be a very cunning manipulator of people, the out-of-control "parent from hell" at parent meetings, and utterly oblivious when discussing one of his obsessions.

They were also left in fields to die, I think it was more with disabled babies and ones with birth defects. What is also interesting is mommy animals do this too with their young when it's defective and we used to do the same thing because we are also animals but we know better now.

They pretty much got treated like any other intellectually disabled or mentally ill person... which is to say, not very well at all. Sometimes it meant death by abandonment; sometimes it meant being put in prison; then eventually there were "asylums" and other similar institutions... During the eugenics movement, many were sterilized; of course in Europe quite a few became victims of the Holocaust.

It's never been particularly good for children who couldn't pass themselves off as non-disabled. But some parents did refuse to abandon or institutionalize their autistic children, and they were raised at home and cared for by family. That would have been the best outcome you could hope for, when assistance for disabled people mostly meant institutions.

I lot has changed in the last 20 years. I grew up in the 1980 and there have been several time they threaten to put me in a mental institution. luckily, I was able to avoid it but I would say I was just inch's if not millimeters away from being committed. Being mentally ill or having any other kind of mental problems in the past was not a good thing at all.

You know that Autism Speaks is pouring millions in to research to try to identify the genes that cause autism so can detect it in babies that are still in the womb. That way. They can recommend(or force.) the mother into getting an abortion. Although I don't agree with Autism Speaks or abortion. I think that abortion is a lot more humane than some of the stuff that was done in the past.

Or described as supernatural entities. Though that might be purely conjectural, these conditions offer an interesting explanation for folklore of children being take away and turned into mythical creatures.