How did you parents handle your aspie traits?

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My parents ordered me to go visit a friend on occasions, screamed at me why I didnt make friends. Once when I was seven or nine, I went to the grocery store with my mother and saw two other girls from my school walking ahead of me and talking enthusiastically to each other. They obviously didn't want to be disturbed, and I barely knew them.

My mother screamed at me to run after them and pushed me in the back. I ran, but deliberately slowly and managed to lose them. They were quite a distance ahead of me.

I'm not saying my parents were bad parents. They'd made mistakes, but they were very supportive and were willing to put me through college if I'd wanted to go. They even bought me a house in which I still live. But they couldn't deal with my aspie traits and pushed me to join the crowds on occasions. That's not to say it happened very often, but when it did, it was definitely annoying.

Did your parents force you to make friends?

My parents taught me I have no business judging them, because I owe them everything and, if they did anything wrong, I should have left their home and their support empty-handed and fended for myself. If I was unable to survive this way, it was my problem, not anybody else's, because I was already an adult, so they had already fulfilled much more than their responsibility as parents. There's a lot they gave me without having to, so it's a gift I had no right to take for granted. If I've failed in life, it's exclusively my failure, because I'm just such an absolutely lousy human being I couldn't succeed even with their very generous help.

Therefore, they handled my aspie traits perfectly.

They didn't have to force me to be social because I was active but odd subtype - I could communicate with anyone, everywhere and I wanted to go out and make friends. At least till I become teenager and got my first computer with Internet connection. LOL

The only troublesome thing about me social vise were my afterschool cries: "I don't understand! I really don't! It doesn't make any sense! Why the kids are so mean? Why don't I have any friends? I try so hard but they still bully me!" but my parents invalided my concerns, saying that I am overreacting and the kids are just teasing, not bullying me.

My meltdowns were more of an issue for them. I could often "throw a tantrum" in public and either run in front of me, unaware of any danger or stand still, crying out loud and being totally unresponsive. My parents were dealing by it by holding me, hitting me and putting me on their shoulder in order to prevent me from escaping or to make me move from my set crying spot.
Because of that they never decided for a second baby - they figured they wouldn't be able to stand another kid like me.

I was not diagnosed back then so they had no manual how to deal with me although my grandma tried to teach them (she used to be preschool teacher and she could figure out how to deal with troublesome kids).

She had really good methods. When she was taking care of me my days had a routine and if there was a change coming grandma was telling me about it beforehand, explaining me why the change is necessary and how I should behave/expect when it comes and she could even let me decide when it is supposed to happen. For example when she was calling me she was saying "Finish playing and come home within 20 mins!" not "Home! Now!" like my parents did.

To start with, it's probably worth mentioning my parents probably both have autistic spectrum disorders. My father never really interacted with me and to be fair, I wouldn't have wanted him to. My mother is noticeably more autistic than me but brought us kids up well, by herself. She didn't seem to have any worries about me not socialising. She did tell me I needed to try not to act so weird and stop talking about my main childhood interest - the paranormal - because people might think I was crazy and I would get locked up. She said the same about my rocking. By the time I was a teen, she struggled with my depression and didn't know how to cope. I know she found me hard work and I think she wanted to get rid of me because she always seemed to try marrying me off.

Corporal punishment and humiliation.

No need to go into details here.

Your mom sounds massively socially incompetent and clueless. Was she neurotypical, do you think, or was she diagnosed or "odd but undiagnosed?"

My parents were odd people. When I told them about the troubles I had in school, they just said "other people are awful" when the school told them there was something wrong with me, they said "normal idiots like these don't understand people like us." They meant well.

Other people real are awful, and I like 'normal idiots like these don't understand people like us.' Why couldn't my parents be so funny and accurate?

My mother is neurotypical with issues because her parents loved her younger sister more. She was always trying desperately to be like everyone else to convince herself there was nothing wrong with her. She was extremely insecure. If anything, my father is an aspie, and my brother too.

My mother wasn't so clueless, just stubborn. She made up her mind about something, that was it. Doesn't matter if the other girls obviously didn't want my company. Never mind anything. She had to prove I was as good as anyone else.

I don't want to criticize my parents too much. They had a rough time, and they always made sure me and my siblings had everything we needed. They never put us in danger, always drove carefully and made sure we had our seatbelts on. I wasn't the world most easiest kid, either. Never did my homework and was never motivated.

We had a play group thing in our neighborhood when I was a kid. Mom would bring my brothers and I to their house and sometimes parents brought their kids to our house. It was what we did. I wanted friends so it wasn't like they pushed it on me. Kids would come over to play and my mom let them play because she didn't want me to be alone and she wanted me to learn social skills. I was used by friends and they were mean to me but I wasn't aware of it then and she still let me play with them because I wanted to and she didn't want me to be lonely. I am not sure if it was hard for her or not to see my friends be mean to me. She could have kept them away but then I what would that have done for me?

I was pretty much raised as a normal child. Expected to follow rules, have appropriate behavior, I got grounded and had consequences if I disobeyed, I didn't get things my way so my crying (I assume were meltdowns now) was ignored and I would be told to go to my room and do it and come out when I am done. If I didn't get things, my mom worked at it. She didn't let me get away with things saying "Oh she won't understand if I tell her because she is in the moment child, I have to catch her in the act and because I didn't catch her, it's too late now or else she won't know why she is in trouble." Instead she took her extra time to draw pictures with me about my day and the draw the situation because I was visual and I was in the moment person so it was her way to get me to understand what situation she is talking about.

I was also kept away from certain kids because I copied everyone and I thought all behavior was normal so when my mom found out how I was acting in school, she and my father got me out of that class because kids in there couldn't act appropriate due to their disabilities or behavior issue so it was just easier to get me out of that class than trying to teach me why other kids can act a certain way and I couldn't and it would have just been hard so having me with normal kids was easier. I was never placed in a special school and I joined a group therapy once for kids with problems and my mom didn't like it because kids in there were so dysfunctional it would just confuse me. Then my school wanted me in a behavior program and my parents stopped it because they know what it would do to me.

I think my mom adapted and she didn't know any different because I was her first child. Oh her moving furniture bothered me, just tell me ahead of time she is going to be doing it. Oh I get very upset if my things are touched, keep my brothers out of my room and not have them touch any of my stuff. Oh I am in the moment child, just tell me about the situation and about my day, oh I am visual, draw pictures. She also took classes too to try and figure it out. I am a hands on and tactile learner, well she got me a puzzle with the alphabet. I didn't know any different myself either so I didn't see it as my mother trying to change me and her telling me to not play with my lip or hair. They may have been stims but they were seen as habits and I would do it without thinking about it. I didn't know any different either. She also made me not feel I was broken. She found creative ways for therapy like swim lessons, pottery, voice lessons, gymnastics. I did t ball, I didn't understand the rules, she stood out in the field with me and told me what to do. If I was allowed to do something or if something I did was ignored, I would think it was okay and I would do it over and over and it would be hard to get me to stop so make a big deal about it when I do it the first time. See, she adapted. She still made mistakes so don't get me wrong. Getting mad at me for my obsessions and taking them away or getting mad at me for my emotions and how I handled things and getting mad at me for not acting my age and I didn't know then how I was supposed to act and I didn't know I wasn't being my age until I was told. I noticed each age group had their own rules and I had to figure them out through trial and error. I thought it was all behavior then so I didn't know any different. I didn't have any excuses for inappropriate behavior.

My mom seems to be a atypical NT because she hates the word normal and thinks everyone is different and she sees me as normal. My dad on the other hand has ADHD. He was more laid back than my mother and I can't remember him doing anything with me except taking me to my appointments and to school and picking me up and cooking us food and taking us out. He also said "no" less often than my mother, she described herself as a tough mother and told us other kids had easy moms and Dad is easy and she is tough. That was her way of explaining to us why other kids could do things we were not allowed to do and why they had things we didn't have so she said those kids had easy parents and she is a tough mother and our dad is easy because he doesn't say no too often.

Nothing too bad.
My mother always to explain situations to after they happened so i would understand. My dad, not so much. He would (and still does) tells me to stop being annoying and behave (not so helpful) and seems to not accept my diagnose.

When I was a baby, my mom respected, that I wanted some privacy and not too intense eye contact.
When I was a toddler, my parents used to catch me and cuddle me very much against my will, because I "disappeared" too much. I lowdly disliked cuddling.
I was an "active and odd" type,- the little professor, who could walk up to strangers and begin to talk out of the blue - maybe hug them or kiss them- no caution here.

My parents acknowledged, that I was different and tried to teach me to be more flexible.
By 7, they put me in a small school.

During school years, they tried to teach me to set myself above my bullies - with very little luck. That strategy doesn´t work, if you´re scared.
Through teen years, my mom and I were creative together - and batteled each other.
When a young adult, my mom tried to make me control my shutdowns- and I did, - sort of. I developed a strong anxiety.
My mother had strong aspie tendencies - AND some degree of borderline, so I didn´t know how she´d react the next moment. I learned to control myself - a little too well.

All in all, they acknowledged, that they had had "a little loner" as my dad used to call me, but they didn´t know about autism, so their attempts to understand me and ease things for me were a bit naive.

They didn't really force me to make friends per say, but I recall a time when they made me go with my older sister to a roller derby with her friends. I didn't want to go (noise + boring), so I brought my Rubik's cube. My dad was SO MAD when he found out. As far as other traits, they'd tell me to look at them and talk to them but it didn't really work. They never really cared that I didn't have friends... in retrospect I'm unsure if that stance was beneficial or not. I like my parents regardless. I think they were relatively adaptive overall.

they mostly saw it as misbehaviour and quirks. Mostly handled it by punishing me or ignoring it completely. I'd bang my head on walls and talk nonstop about frogs, and all i got was yelled at or told to shut up.

Growing up in the 1950's, no one had heard of Aspergers. All my mother knew (father died when I was a young child) was that I was "smart, shy, and nervous". She knew that life, especially as I grew older, was tough for me, but this
was considered a character defect and my own fault. To her credit, she rarely gave advice, and did allow me to have
many pets, and to pursue my various interests.

In all fairness to my parents, no one knew anything about Aspergers when I was a kid. Fortunately, they never forced to to conform ( noncomformty is a family tradition ), but they did push me to socialize more than I cared to.

Yes, that´sright. My mom also thought, I had a character defect. I must say, the thought stayed with me for many grown years.

at first they tried to make me talk to people and do things now they've given up on controlling anything i do