Be normal, now!

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My father sent me to private schools where i didn't pay attention in class, threw things at the teacher and pulled pranks. I got kicked out of school multiple times for misconduct. MY father would yell at me, and tried for many years to force me to become normal. He would get psychotic (he's not NT) and start screaming at my brother and I for little things like being ten minutes late to school. The experiences scarred me and for the most part I have extreme phobia of people getting angry with me. My mind goes blank and I can't concentrate on anything for a long while. As a result, I have severe social anxiety because my father was so abusive to me in trying to get me to behave to his social standards.

Does anyone else here have (or did you have) parents who tried, obsessively, to the point of rage, to force you to be normal?

No, I don't. I'm sorry to hear that your father was abusive towards you.

Actually, I think my father obsessively tried to make me an Aspie! I'm only partly joking there. My inability to divorce myself from emotion and rely solely on logic infuriated him. As did my failure to have black-and-white thinking. And my failure to behave, think, and act like him.

+1

mine should have got a dog not a kid - a fact i proved at 14 though it did lead to divorce within few months just at exam time

Yes - even though I am fairly sure I am one, I wasn't enough of one for my parents. Spock was our family ideal.

Abusive parents happen to everyone everywhere on the spectrum, in the same way that good parents do. I'm just doing my level best to make sure my son is luckier in that regard than I am...but there is a degree of luck to it. I am sorry your father was abusive.

I also blamed my parents for many of my anxieties...but as a parent, I'm learning that, while those scars are there and they are real - much of how I react to things is based on my particular neurology, and I do have control over that. I am learning to manage my social anxiety with many of the same interventions my son is using (although I have to admit the last year has been really difficult for me, since I have to start over with a whole new set of parents for my son's middle school.)

When I was growing up there were no such things as throwing tantrums, yelling at the teacher, etc. That was strictly verboten. The teachers can beat you and your parents walloped you after school. In essence you were a sitting duck. If you weren't normal, or didn't even try to fake it, you got pummeled. Sigh. We couldn't win.

My mother's father was the same way, utilitarian and domineering. Not that there's anything wrong with that, frankly it sounds paramount to survival on a societal level; but it seems like if you're forced into that mentality as a kid, it would have emotional repercussions which are hard to reconcile, even with therapy.

Actually, once I realized my father was only a man who had faults like any other human being, the emotional scars started healing themselves. I think my brother has had a much harder time coming to grips with all of it.

Although I--personally--do find something wrong with it because it does not allow for the existence of difference or diversity. It is built from a place of self-identified superiority that I do not think is beneficial. I think it is more beneficial to realize there is more than one way to be "right." His way may be right for him. My way is right for me.

Yes my father used to do this to me and my brother when we played up at school. Short fuse. I know now he is an undiagnosed Aspie.

I don't think my dad thought he was better than anyone. I think my dad got more angry than he had to on purpose, to keep my brother and I in line, if that makes sense.



My father, to a T. He would get in long arguments with me and my brother, making purposeful fallacies in logic just to make me and my brother angry, which would then provoke him into just getting even more upset, and now he had an excuse to do so...

I spent a long time believing that he was just a bad person when he's his own flawed person. Honestly it's a relief to think of him as just another person instead of this big bad entity that has to be feared!

I like that mentality.

It's been a helpful viewpoint for me. I hope it continues to be for you, too.

Yop. The conflict grew until I was 14, which is the earliest possible age, in which you are allowed to work in my country. I wanted to leave school and start working, so I could offend my own room and could have left the whole s**t including this idiot behind me. That led to conflicts, because as I was too dumb to behave normal in his eyes, this included for him, that I was also too dumb to live on my own. Also it would have proven to others, that he was a violent idiot, because "normal" children dont want to leave their homes with 14 and go working, as long as there are no violent idiots there. I was forced to do some tests, that should have proven me, that he was right and I should not be allowed by the officials to start working and leave my parents house.

The first test results proofed that I was highly intelligent (until then my school notes were terrible, because I was screamed to be worthless anyway, and didnt want to go further to school anyway, so there was no use to learning for me. - When I came home with good school efforts, it affected nothing because I still lacked in being normal, only when talking to others my father mentioned them proudly, because then he could use my school efforts to boast off before others. From my point of view: If good school efforts had no use for me, they also should not have for him.), the second more intensive Test showed an IQ above 130. Instead of agreeing to my father, that I was too dumb to live on my own, they insisted that I shall visit a higher schoolform. Which I declined, because I would have been forced to live longer at my parents home and I rather would have done suicide.

In the end we agreed with a higher school form with border school. My father was happy because he could boast off with his girl in the higher school form, but because I didnt live any longer in the same city he was redeemed of living with the shame of "my terrible behavior". (As example: On my way home from school i refused to greet a neighbor of us who was walking on the same sidewalk as I was, with full intention, and when confronted with this terrible, world ending behavior, I chose to disrespect my father by telling him the lie, that I would not have noticed my neighbor or being greeted by him. So it was obvious for him, that I was lying, because "not even I could have been so dumb to not notice, if a person is talking to me when bypassing on the same sidewalk." (The neighbor itself, just thought that it was funny and told my father as a joke, not in the intention, that I got beaten because of that nonsense.) So it was great, I came home from school, got slapped without explanation, when asking why I was slapped, I was told to knew why, and when I finally got told why I was beaten, and tried to explain to not have noticed someone and to be sorry, he got even more angry because of lying to him such dumb lies, and I got insulted to of being more dumb then can be imagined.

The border school and my good performances also showed me, that I did not deserve this behaviour, as I was told before and when my father wanted to become violent against me, on a visit at home, because of missing a train by being 5 minutes to late (which had non effect to my father at all - he just heard of it from others) I decided that I wont accept this behaviour from him anymore, and that I dont care that he was physical stronger. If he choose to beaten me, I would beat him back, so he would have to beat me much harder and it wouldnt be without physical proof on my body, and that I would call the police and insist a report from now on every time he touches me. And I meant it in every word.



I cant agree with you on that point. I know that my father was acting because of his self esteem problems, forcing him to feel miserable whenever he didnt seem perfect in the eye of others. (Which included harmless joking neighbors, that did not get a greet from me.) But still he had the free desicion of seeking for help or instead accept his own problems and the violence against others, this problems brought with them. So instead of going to a doctor, to seek aid, as I have done when I become grown up (which led to my Asperger diagnosis), he decided that beating others would be more comfortable for him. Even when it was not about him directly, he choose that terrorizing others with his violence, was a better choice then maybe go with his daughter to a doctor, to find out why she is having so much problems to act as "normal". (So he only saw the problems that was caused for him by my behavior, and everything he thought of was he himself, so my behavior had the only for him logical cause, that I wanted to make him upset. That I myself had much more problems because of that too (friends, class, ...), so there was no logical cause for me to act in this way by will, he did not see.)

For being ill, I cant blame him. But for the decision to rather beat his family instead of "the shame" of visiting a doctor, so his illness could be cured, I can and I will blame him until he dies.