Accepting Aspergers

Post Reply New Topic

Why families CANNOT accept people that are soooo different than them in your family? Once when I told my grandma about my sensitive issues, she asked if I can take medication to get rid of it. Why can’t family learn about what you have, my mom learned about my Cerebral Palsy, Psoriasis, Learning Disability & Aspergers, I guess she was the only one that love me soooo much & wanted to learn about what her daughter have.

Most people don't even understand what "understanding/accepting disabilities" means. They superficially say we should all be accepting and understanding of differences because they want to sound like good people, but they do the opposite. When it comes to an invisible disability like autism, it's even worse. It's the same as having a "zero tolerance for bullying" policy and yet allowing/encouraging bullying to be very prevalent in a workplace (like where I work). Basically people don't even understand those things because they don't care at the bottom of their hearts.

If they do care, like the case of your mother, they do try to understand and learn. Unfortunately, most people don't care, and are not interested in understanding or learning. It's a sad reality.

Your grandma sounds a lot like my dad. He doesn't fully understand my AS. A lot of the things I did as a small child, he thought I did on purpose. That drove a wedge between him and I. Even when I was a teenager, he didn't understand. I blacked out and bent over when I was walking over to the stairway one time at the age of 16 and he got all angry at me. I told him not to get angry at me. My mum asked what was going on. My dad replied, "He was all hunched over." I told my mum that I had a blackout and I couldn't help it for the life of me. My mum had a talk with my dad and reasoned with him.

I can relate to your feeling annoyed with her for asking that. I'd like to think that if anybody asked me that question I'd just say "no, I'm afraid it doesn't work like that." But I don't know the details of the situation. Of the people who don't understand ASD, I guess some admit they don't and some think they do understand it. I usually feel a lot more sympathetic towards people who don't mind admitting it. I don't expect people to find out about ASD off their own bat, but it's a shame when it's people who claim to care about me and they carry on acting as if my problems don't exist. I should probably be more patient with the ones who don't admit they don't understand, but then bigotry can annoy me a lot, because it does a lot more damage I suppose.

I knew somebody who had epilepsy, and she said it was rare that anybody bothered to ask her what they could do if she happened to have a fit. I think a lot of people care but it just doesn't occur to them that they might be able to help. And ASD does take some hard work to understand what it's about.