Were you scapegoated by your family due to AS?

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I know I was.

No, though sometimes I feel I'm a burden.

No and I"ll tell you why. Because my brother was first and he had ADD. My mother still thinks there is nothing wrong with me. Even though I didn't talk until I was 3.

But I'm not bitter.

My father blamed his not getting a job on my psychotic episodes; although that is really not related to Asperger's.

Aridarr, my parents scapegoated me all my life without knowing or mentioning Asperger's. But it was due to Asperger's - as they admitted they scapegoated me for being "different".

I don't even know what scrapegoated means

There were two autistic kids in my family, and my older brother (the other one) got scapegoated more often.

a person or group made to bear the blame for others or to suffer in their place

Yes, almost all the time.

No, but I always felt (and still do feel) that I was held to a higher standard then my sister. Sure, I was older, but only by 2 years and she could get away with anything while I could get away with nothing.

I was always treated differently; adults used to let me do much more things than in case of other children from my family. I know that they would be punished pretty severely for some things I did and the only "punishment" for which I got was sniffing at me. I was always treated differently also because I was praised for maturity and seriousness - I was OFTEN really unbearable and naughty but I was also smart and talking to adults never scared me. My godmother always hated me and spread malicious gossip about me only because I dared be better than her stupid, fat daughter. I can safely say I am and always was a black sheep and I'm very glad of it because I don't like people from my family or maybe rather I should have said that I don't pay attention to them. They are so boring and conventional.

I was never scapegoated, thank God.

Big time! However, AS was unheard of during the times I was growing up. My parents used the term "disobedient", and always accused me of being that way. My older sister, my grandparents, and even my friends' parents, always took my parents' side, and blamed everything on me, saying I deserved every punishment I got because of my guess what?... disobedience. My other relatives were somewhat sympathetic, however, but even they said I should listen to my parents more often. To this day, I don't feel particularly close to anyone I'm related to.

Constantly by my father, never by my mother.

It's a funny thing, because my mom's recollection is that dad had "detected" qualities in me that he felt had hampered his own life, and when I was young he'd tried to steer my development by forcing me to do things that he thought would help me avoid the issues he'd faced - team sports were high on his list (imagine an eight-year-old kid condemned to sit on the sidelines of soccer games because he couldn't kick or run worth a damn - bye bye self esteem), as were a lot of other social "skill builders" (I was a boy scout for exactly two hours).

Eventually he just seemed to give up and, perhaps as a result of his anger at his own failings, berated me constantly for my inability to fit in and operate within societal norms. The game became "guess what I did wrong today" as he'd decide I had failed in some way and would then pummel me psychologically until I could figure out what transgression I'd committed and admit to it. The intensity of these interrogations was proportional to the amount of alcohol he'd ingested on any given evening.

He was a lawyer, and was very good at getting under people's skins. I was a kid, and wasn't.

I think if it had been obvious scapegoating I'd have been able to deal with it more easily - hearing "it's your fault my life worked out like this" would have been relatively straight-forward to understand (though hard to take, admittedly). The subtler "you're a disappointment" treatment took me years to recognize as scapegoating and I still fall victim to its effects years later.

Nick

Yes, possibly due to my aspergers, but not the name, the behaviour. I was about 36 when I was diagnosed.

Same here - I was diagnosed with ADHD when I was 4 but I'm pretty sure I actually have aspergers and that alot of my behavioral problems were caused by the way they treated me and not the other way around. He blamed me for things I could not possibly have had any control over - everything from interrupting his sleep by having colic as an infant (was he seriously surprised to discover babies cry?) to the state of the IT industry in New-Zealand. Something about me just got under his skin (I'm guessing my odd body language and poor social skills) and sometimes all I had to do to set him off was walk into the same room as him.

Last edited by Jayutimestwo on 23 Dec 2007, 9:16 pm, edited 1 time in total.