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Parents making a big deal out of harmless traits, does it annoy you?

Kit

Kit

Well-Known Member
Does anyone find it annoying when parents make a big deal out of harmless autistic traits and want to fix it?


Like if a child is lining up their toys or anything else, the parents freak out about it. If a child hand flaps or wrings their wrists, parents freak out about it. If a child rocks, the parents freak out about it. If a child has no desire for friends, the parents freak out about it. A child spending their time with their obsessions, the parents freak out about it. A child not wanting to be hugged or held or want affection, the parents freak out about it. One of my pet peeves about people in the world. I want to scream at them about it. Who cares if it's "not normal." Normal is over rated. As my mom says, "What's normal?" Who cares if it's part of autism or the spectrum. It's part of them. Normal is over rated.
 
I agree with you 100%. I tell my psych team, "I don't want or need any lessons to help me pretend to be normal. I will never pretend. I'm an honest person. I just want someone to talk to. My autism is not a problem. My clinical depression and emotional baggage is."
 
I think the reasoning for psych teams to have you act 'normal' is so that you can advance in the job market. Employers may claim that they care not for the person's personality and such, but even the most honest of them will be looking at the on the job interactions you have with others when they decide if they want to give you hours or not. Same goes for social abnormalities and such; they mean the best, but they don't quite understand how it can help, so therefore they either look at the 'bad' or assume the worst. My theory anyway.
 
I dont need no **** job. I'm on disability. :p I plan to become a writer (I'm almost finished my book)... and a psych tech too, but I'm normal enough where I don't need any lessons. And I'd only take lessons if the "why" was explained for everything. I am not one to blindly trust authority and I'm embarrassed that so many people on the spectrum do.
 
My 4-year-old son has a couple of aspie traits, that is why I started investigating the syndrome in the first place. But he lacks the classic traits like poor motor skills and delayed speech. When he walks in circles I stand up and start walking in circles with him - a kind of gesture of inter-generational aspie solidarity. My wife stresses out about some of his quirks, but I am of the opinion that we should give him lots of love and build up his confidence and help him to be the best person that he can be.
 
I agree with you except that delayed speech is not an Aspie trait; it's a HFA trait. I don't think poor motor skills is an Aspie trait either.
 
Quick note: With AS, there is no significant language delay of unknown cause, as there is with autism. That's part of the differential diagnosis. As for the poor motor skills, it can accompany AS or not; part of how many conditions are diagnosed is "Two of the following are present", and they list four or five things. I'm not sure if poor motor skills is listed like that, but I do know that it is commonly seen in people with AS. Dyspraxia is also comorbid with AS.

Back on topic: I almost wish my parents had been more "freaked out" by my behaviors; then I would have gotten help sooner, and not left feeling entirely out of the loop when I was in elementary school, not left completely misunderstanding of and misunderstood by my peers in high school. On the other hand, if I had had the diagnosis earlier, I may not be able to do many of the things I can do now. There were times when my parents would ask me, "Why aren't you doing such-and-such?", and because I didn't have the answer of "because it's part of having Asperger's", I simply learned to do it, even if I struggled.

However, in some cases, especially with the general public hearing a lot about autism, I definitely agree that parents tend to overreact to some of these behaviors. Of course, you cannot let a child line up their toys all day long, but that is definitely something that should be allowed if that is how a child wants to spend their time. I'm definitely still a hand-flapper, but usually only when I'm around people I know well. I agree entirely that the notion of "normal" is overrated--however, you do want a child to have full access to general education curriculum so that they can function in the world and be independent.

With parents experiencing their child not wanting to be held, I think that can be very devastating to a parent. The little one that you love and simply want to hold forever doesn't seem to want anything to do with you. That could be heartbreaking. The little girl I just started working with (who has autism) used to be extremely tactile defensive. The other therapists had to go through a lot for her to learn that touching feels good--they used lotion, make-up brushes, feathers to tickle, etc. Now she is very attention-seeking, and nothing makes my day more than when she crawls into my lap (or sometimes falls, haha--it's really cute). If she suddenly seemed to want nothing to do with me, I'd be very sad--and I'm not even her parent.
 
Thanks Ana54 and Krisi.

Spot on both of you. I did a bit of further reading, and the fact that I had significantly delayed development of speech seems to indicate that I have HFA. Self diagnosis is not always the best bet after all. I'll not go into it further in this thread, we are off topic enough already.
 
Ana54 said:
I agree with you except that delayed speech is not an Aspie trait; it's a HFA trait. I don't think poor motor skills is an Aspie trait either.
Click to expand...


But some aspies have those and get diagnosed with AS anyway. That's why some have messy hand writing.
 
krisi said:
The little girl I just started working with (who has autism) used to be extremely tactile defensive. The other therapists had to go through a lot for her to learn that touching feels good--they used lotion, make-up brushes, feathers to tickle, etc. Now she is very attention-seeking, and nothing makes my day more than when she crawls into my lap (or sometimes falls, haha--it's really cute). If she suddenly seemed to want nothing to do with me, I'd be very sad--and I'm not even her parent.
Click to expand...
That is so adorable! Talk about 'fuzzy feeling' lol ^_^
 
My parents have been gone for years,they did the best they could and nobody had ever heard of Asperger's Syndrome.

Apparently no one had ever seen anything like it,my parents and teachers were clueless.

some thought I was a great kid,others thought I had no buisness being in public school.

I was just the weird kid that no one could make sense out of.
 
I hated it when my mom freaked out and treated me like I was bad or like I was disabled and agreed with my nasty classmates... at least it looked like she agreed with them.


I hate people freaking out over me. That means they have no confidence in me. What's even worse is when they try and hide the fact that they are freaked out... sort of an insult to my intelligence, since they're so bad at it.
 
I guess it would have been helpful if someone had picked up on something and gone way over the top, so that I would have found out earlier. But I quite like the order that things happened and what they led to, even if loads of it was really awful.
 
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