Reflecting on Parents

[mw2530]

I have been going through a pretty significant bout of depression and can't help but help but think how my life could have been so much better under different circumstances or if there were slight changes in my choices or the choices made by my parents, schools, and other decision makers. My parents were older when I was born - both were age 41. I believe both are on the spectrum, although never diagnosed. My dad is certainly on the spectrum. My mom I am less certain, but I believe she is as well. She is very shy in situations where she is around people she does not know and I don't think she has any friends outside of family members. In any case, I check all the risk factors in terms of being on the spectrum. Genetics, male, and born to an older mom and dad.

In reflecting, my parents seemed to do well during the younger years of life, but as I reached an adolescence and teenager age, they struggled. I also had 2 older brothers and an older sister, but can't speak entirely to their experiences. I think they may all fall somewhere on the spectrum as well, but it seems like I have struggled the most in terms of social difficulties and making friends. I'm not sure exactly what all to write in this thread, because I feel like I could right pages and pages on this topic.

My parents were loving and I never went hungry and my mom did a great job of encouraging me to do my best in school. Perhaps she saw that I had a strong academic aptitude and saw an opportunity to leverage that so that I could counteract some of my deficits. Or maybe she just wanted me to do well in school. My parents did some damaging things that delayed my personal and social development. I was already vulnerable in this area, but my environment caused more harm. I recall feeling extremely embarrassed by them in public due to their behavior. I picked up on the fact that they did not fit in well which is forgivable since I get why that was a struggle. My parents were farmers and at times businesses that rely on farmers would put on free meals for farmers. We sometimes went as a family and my parents would make a big circus of telling us to eat lots of food and make sure you take this and that. They would also wrap food up in napkins to take home. It was very embarrassing behavior as I got older and felt a sense of shame. This just reenforced the feeling I got at school of being odd or an outsider. Our house was also very cluttered and messy. Not that I had many friends, but to this day I have not invited a friend to come into my parents house. I feel like it is still an issue if I were to ever find a girlfriend in that I would be a bit embarrassed to have her see the house environment.

They never did the sex talk with us and I never really recall them talking to us about our feelings and emotions. Maybe the sex talk is not that all uncommon, but odd that they did not talk about feelings and emotions. They never really talked much about relationships or gave any advice on such things.

They also were not helpful when it came to helping us make adult decisions. Such as what to go to school for and what college to go to. I get they may not have known any more than we did, but they could have helped us talk through these big decisions. Yet they would consistently make small decisions for us like what clothes we should wear or what to order at a restaurant at far too old of an age. So I grew up without gaining experience making small decisions and facing the consequences. As a result, I think it made it harder for me to make bigger life decisions and I never feel confident about them.

I could share more, but this is enough for now.

 

[Outdated]

One of the hardest lessons to learn in life is that your parents are also only people. Just ordinary people with the same strengths and weaknesses as all the other people you know. To be able to turn around and see them in this light is a difficult but necessary step in life.

Your parents sound like they're a lot more switched on and in tune with life than mine were, but the lesson is still the same.

 

[Levitator]

I hear what you're saying. People with autism tend to be kind of reductionist or conceptually near-sighted. They tend to see the tree and not the forest, before they then wander onward and go start obsessing about the little veins in the leaves. In other words, yeah, you will be fifty years old, they will continue obsessing about whether you remembered to drink water that morning when you would rather talk about what direction your life should be taking as an adult.

 

[MNAus]

I wouldn't second guess how life could have turned out if I were you. To be honest, based on what you've written, your folks sound fairly typical: generally good people with some odd quirks and things that irritate you. As a parent myself I can tell you that you do the best you can with limited information, in a highly volatile and complicated situation, trying to help a complex, often emotionally unstable and often vocally ungrateful person. It's a miracle anyone turns out OK as an adult TBH. Parenting is tough. Parenting kids with autism is playing on hard mode.

But over to the point of your post:

I ... can't help but help but think how my life could have been so much better under different circumstances or if there were slight changes in my choices or the choices made by my parents, schools, and other decision makers.

So this is how life looks in the rear view mirror. You walk backwards in time till you get to a point where you think things could have been better handled and you wish the other option had been taken. When in actual fact life is more like a ball in a giant bagatelle machine whose direction you can only affect by blowing on it by flapping your hands. There are virtually no "sure thing" self-evidently right/wrong decisions. Wishing for things to be otherwise ignores the complexity of life, seeing it as a simple path with wimple decisions.

 

[Jumpinbare]

I always had trouble with wimple decisions myself.

 

[VictorR]

I think it's natural to think of what-ifs, and looking back at my similar experiences, I have a lot of what if's as well.

But at the end of the day, we don't know what those other paths may have brought us because even if you were able to change a decision/path, that would have had knock-on effects of an unknown nature.

While the past is prologue, the future... well, the future starts now. Every day, every moment is a chance to start anew. And as I love to quote from Natasha Bedingfield's Unwritten:

I'm just beginning
The pen's in my hand
Ending unplanned

And for those who like visuals:

 

[MNAus]

I always had trouble with wimple decisions myself.

Hahaha, I'll leave that unedited.

Ahhhh, but for those wimple decisions.

 

[Au Naturel]

It sounds like you had rather good parents. They were the only people they could be. "Shoulda-woulda-coulda" are all tickets to bitterness. It is what it is, and it was what it was, and there's not a damn thing you can do to change any of it. Time to accept it and move on.

A lot of your difficulty is self-administered. Your parent's house is messy. So what? Do you really think anyone judging you on that is worth your time? Your parents were frugal about food in public. How did feeling ashamed change anything? Whether you are ashamed or annoyed or think it funny or you merely humor their eccentricity is entirely in your head; a product of being young and desperately wanting to be cool.

Did you perhaps want them to mask?

Just smile and know they love you.

 

[Au Naturel]

I think it's natural to think of what-ifs, and looking back at my similar experiences, I have a lot of what if's as well.

But at the end of the day, we don't know what those other paths may have brought us because even if you were able to change a decision/path, that would have had knock-on effects of an unknown nature.

While the past is prologue, the future... well, the future starts now. Every day, every moment is a chance to start anew. And as I love to quote from Natasha Bedingfield's Unwritten:


And for those who like visuals:

Life is like an insect crawling up a tree; only it is a one-way trip. You can't go back and you can't stop moving.

Every branch presents a choice. You cannot see very far beyond the choice what lies ahead. So you make your best guess and resolve to live with it. Eventually, you are on the final leaf of the final twig and fall off. You're gone.

Some will have made it to the top of the canopy and some end up on a tiny sucker branch early on. Either way, life is about the trip and not the destination.

 

[Neonatal RRT]

Reflecting back on my experiences with my parents, how I parented, and, of course, working at one of the largest children's hospitals in the world, I have seen one extreme to the other and everything in between with regards to parenting skills. So, my experience with thousands and thousands of parents over the decades has created a bit of a bias.

So, here is my controversial take on the topic of parents:

At some point, we may have to look in the mirror at ourselves and make some hard social decisions. Society doesn't want to approach this idea that "some people should not be allowed to be parents" for psychological, psychiatric, genetic, age, and intellectual reasons. Furthermore, people should not be allowed to be parents until they have gone through some training courses on topics such as (1) childhood development, (2) anger management, (3) teaching and mentoring, (4) thinking skills, and perhaps some more topics. The reality is, we have a hard enough time right now with facilitating prenatal care and nutrition within certain communities, let alone the daunting task of implementing an effective screening and educational program. Some people think it is a God-given "right" to procreate and raise children, when clearly, we have generations of, and millions of totally screwed up individuals causing harm to themselves and others because of the effects of bad parenting to prove that it should be a "privilege".

 

[WhitewaterWoman]

Your parents sound like pretty decent people. Teenagers, regardless of neurological status, tend to be embarrassed by their parents and want to get away from them. It is an appropriate developmental stage, not particular to you, but happens to almost everyone in western society.

My family was borderline poor too. A friend brought home stale donuts for us to eat. When we went to potluck suppers, my mother baked a cake that looked uninteresting (no frosting) but was super delicious. However, with so many other desserts on offer, people would eat the good looking ones and we took home most of the cake she baked.

To NeonatalRRT's comment: I once was fostering a couple of young moderately intellectually impaired mothers and I took them to parenting classes. It did very little good. As an advocate for people with developmental disabilities, I would advocate for the right of these mothers to raise their own children. Somewhere down the road, I saw how catastropic this was.

 

[Xinyta]

I have been going through a pretty significant bout of depression and can't help but help but think how my life could have been so much better under different circumstances or if there were slight changes in my choices or the choices made by my parents, schools, and other decision makers. My parents were older when I was born - both were age 41. I believe both are on the spectrum, although never diagnosed. My dad is certainly on the spectrum. My mom I am less certain, but I believe she is as well. She is very shy in situations where she is around people she does not know and I don't think she has any friends outside of family members. In any case, I check all the risk factors in terms of being on the spectrum. Genetics, male, and born to an older mom and dad.

In reflecting, my parents seemed to do well during the younger years of life, but as I reached an adolescence and teenager age, they struggled. I also had 2 older brothers and an older sister, but can't speak entirely to their experiences. I think they may all fall somewhere on the spectrum as well, but it seems like I have struggled the most in terms of social difficulties and making friends. I'm not sure exactly what all to write in this thread, because I feel like I could right pages and pages on this topic.

My parents were loving and I never went hungry and my mom did a great job of encouraging me to do my best in school. Perhaps she saw that I had a strong academic aptitude and saw an opportunity to leverage that so that I could counteract some of my deficits. Or maybe she just wanted me to do well in school. My parents did some damaging things that delayed my personal and social development. I was already vulnerable in this area, but my environment caused more harm. I recall feeling extremely embarrassed by them in public due to their behavior. I picked up on the fact that they did not fit in well which is forgivable since I get why that was a struggle. My parents were farmers and at times businesses that rely on farmers would put on free meals for farmers. We sometimes went as a family and my parents would make a big circus of telling us to eat lots of food and make sure you take this and that. They would also wrap food up in napkins to take home. It was very embarrassing behavior as I got older and felt a sense of shame. This just reenforced the feeling I got at school of being odd or an outsider. Our house was also very cluttered and messy. Not that I had many friends, but to this day I have not invited a friend to come into my parents house. I feel like it is still an issue if I were to ever find a girlfriend in that I would be a bit embarrassed to have her see the house environment.

They never did the sex talk with us and I never really recall them talking to us about our feelings and emotions. Maybe the sex talk is not that all uncommon, but odd that they did not talk about feelings and emotions. They never really talked much about relationships or gave any advice on such things.

They also were not helpful when it came to helping us make adult decisions. Such as what to go to school for and what college to go to. I get they may not have known any more than we did, but they could have helped us talk through these big decisions. Yet they would consistently make small decisions for us like what clothes we should wear or what to order at a restaurant at far too old of an age. So I grew up without gaining experience making small decisions and facing the consequences. As a result, I think it made it harder for me to make bigger life decisions and I never feel confident about them.

I could share more, but this is enough for now.

I think your parents really tried. A few faults here and there don't make a bad parent, but I do get where you are coming from in alot of ways.

Two particular things I relate to are a messy house and being taught practically nothing about life. These things do make life hard.

My parents are both egotistical, narcissistic, control freaks. The mess in the house was always because of my stepmother. She preferred it that way because she 'knew where everything was'. My Dad and her would butt heads, figuratively, over my Dad cleaning the house, because she would freak out and claim that she now doesn't know where anything is.

The other one with never being taught anything. That was just because my parents were neglectful narcissists. They didn't care or try to help me understand much of anything. And just expected me to 'get it' automatically.

 

[FoxLovinPat]

Ya I feel you there on the whole looking back on your parent's past choices and wondering what could've been if their choices had been different, as I've done the same and I know I can be an unfun thought process. I just try my best not to think on it and whenever I do I try and remind myself that it's in the past and we can't exactly change it now.. afterall it's not like we have time travel.

Though it sounds to me that unlike with my adoptive parents, your parents did were trying their best and were just having troubles due to their own struggles. Which I guess is fairly common when it comes to parenting, and I've heard it said that even the best of parents will do things wrong as afterall nobody's perfect.

Kinda reminds me of the situation with my bio parents, while yeah they did neglect me and my older brothers I don't think they did it maliciously or because they didn't love us. From what I've heard they were most likely just overwhelmed and didn't have the proper resources, both physically and in terms of parental know how, as they were poor, had their own issues (it's suspected by the family that one or both of them were neurodivergent themselves, I can definitely see that with my bio mom), and had to somehow care for 3 neurodivergent children, two of which were on the lower end of the spectrum and/or perhaps had other comorbidities. We all wound up separated tho so I dunno what might've been found out about their diagnoses but they definitely needed more support than I did, so it's highly likely our bio parents just didn't know how to give them that support.

So I'd say maybe try and view it similar to how I do with my bio family, that your parents tried their best with the resources they had and didn't mean to cause you any problems.
And as for the dwelling on the past and what could've been.. well I feel like other commenters have explained that pretty well already so I don't have anything to add that hasn't already been said much better.

 

[mw2530]

I get all the comments regarding not being able to change the past and to just move ahead and look at the future. I can tell this is an ASD forum by all the pragmatic advice lol. I guess that isn't really what I was looking for. Sometimes it is important to look back and process passed experiences in order to loosen myself from the grip they have on my current thoughts and feelings. If anything, I don't think we as a society think do enough to remember and learn from the past and there often is a lack of respect for history. I get that my parents probably did there best and certainly had their faults. I'm not a parent but my siblings are and I can see how difficult it is and it possibly has never been harder to be a parent then right now. Kids are vulnerable especially those who have ASD or are outcasts due to some other reason. The things you experience as child or adolescent fundamentally affect your development and life in a profound way. There are many traumatic experiences that I have went through so it is not like I can just shrug my shoulders and move on so easily. My hope for the thread was for myself to understand a bit why things have turned out the way they have for me so far and. It is also giving me some perspective that a lot of my struggles and failures are the result of challenges during childhood and adolescence that never really were resolved at that time. This just led to more and more problems and as life progressed the consequences of the problems became more and more severe as I progressed through adulthood. I also figured others here could relate to some of the experiences that that I shared.

 

[mw2530]

A lot of your difficulty is self-administered. Your parent's house is messy. So what? Do you really think anyone judging you on that is worth your time? Your parents were frugal about food in public. How did feeling ashamed change anything? Whether you are ashamed or annoyed or think it funny or you merely humor their eccentricity is entirely in your head; a product of being young and desperately wanting to be cool.

Yeah I get some of this was brought on by my own mind, but the experiences were real and as a kid you don't have the wisdom to see that some of these things are somewhat minor. But there are real consequences for being embarrassed in front of peers when you are a kid. It did affect me at the time and just piled on to the other challenges ASD brings about that no child is equipped to handle on their own without some support. Keep in mind that I am referring to a time when I was a kid or teenager. Do you think the same way today that you thought and felt when you were a kid or a teenager? I'm guessing not.

 

[Outdated]

I had a pretty messed up childhood. There'll be a few out there that had a tougher time than me too but I can tell stories that'll make hard men cry. My family was pretty dysfunctional but so was my society at that time too. Like the old chinese curse - may you be reborn in interesting times - I was born in the 60s and the whole world was going through massive social changes.

I don't know how I moved on from the things that happened to me but I did. I'm not without scars but I don't carry trauma around with me either. Maybe it was in part because the whole world I lived in at the time was so mixed up. My family was always a struggle, I was always too odd to try and be normal and my father always accused me of doing it deliberately just to upset him. That never changed, and every time I spent any time with them I always came away feeling depressed and miserable.

After our last falling out I just never bothered again. Except for a couple of chance meetings running in to my father in shops I haven't had anything to do with them for 15 years now. And my life has been a lot better without them. A mutual friend asked me a few years back why I was still angry and I told him the truth, I'm not angry at all, they're just too much hard work and as they never showed my any support I don't see why I should bother.

 

[MNAus]

I get all the comments regarding not being able to change the past and to just move ahead and look at the future. I can tell this is an ASD forum by all the pragmatic advice lol. I guess that isn't really what I was looking for. Sometimes it is important to look back and process passed experiences in order to loosen myself from the grip they have on my current thoughts and feelings. If anything, I don't think we as a society think do enough to remember and learn from the past and there often is a lack of respect for history. I get that my parents probably did there best and certainly had their faults. I'm not a parent but my siblings are and I can see how difficult it is and it possibly has never been harder to be a parent then right now. Kids are vulnerable especially those who have ASD or are outcasts due to some other reason. The things you experience as child or adolescent fundamentally affect your development and life in a profound way. There are many traumatic experiences that I have went through so it is not like I can just shrug my shoulders and move on so easily. My hope for the thread was for myself to understand a bit why things have turned out the way they have for me so far and. It is also giving me some perspective that a lot of my struggles and failures are the result of challenges during childhood and adolescence that never really were resolved at that time. This just led to more and more problems and as life progressed the consequences of the problems became more and more severe as I progressed through adulthood. I also figured others here could relate to some of the experiences that that I shared.

I understand what you're getting at there. And I agree, it makes sense to process the past, but i guess you'd want to have in mind the goal of achieving some sort of acceptance. Not saying "that's fine" or "that really wasn't anything" or even "that's not important, I should just get over it". But just accepting. That also doesn't mean you shouldn't have phases where it maddens, infuriates, saddens or disappoints you.

I guess your message came across as "I'm depressed, and I can't help but think my parents, educators, etc. are substantially to blame. If only...." which may or may not be true, but draws people to try and help by making the journey to that acceptance a little more comfy and simple, perhaps But like i said, you feel about it all the way you feel. Perfectly legitimate. I think everyone here was just helping you navigate to that stage of acceptance. If you're not ready to go there yet, fair play.

I think there are a lot of us have similar experiences where our disadvantages during childhood echo into our adulthood. It's not explicitly mentioned in most posts, but you can see it and make the connections when people talk about their life when they were younger here.

 

[Shevek]

Every year, I see more clearly how my early family life left me with permanent problems, but I also see that my parents had their own problems, and were doing their best according to their own stunted abilities. Nobody has had the luxury of raising kids the same way they were raised, and in a similar world for centuries.

 

[Outdated]

If only....

That's a mental trap my grandfather warned me about when I was little.

Don't go dreaming in the realms of What If, you can get lost in there. You play with the cards you've been dealt.

 

[Au Naturel]

I think I was in my early 20s when I realized that not a jot of what happened in my life before matters. I am here, and this is who I am. How do I improve my situation? Even if just baby steps.

There is absolutely nothing you can do to change the past. If you were an abused child, you will always have been an abused child. Many of us were abused in many ways. A lot of that abuse only feels like abuse because we were autistic. We were a bad match for the NT environment.

Not a bad person, just got dealt bad cards.

Acceptance isn't about rewriting the script to something else, and it isn't about making lemonade out of lemons. Our parents, peers, and teachers were who they were, and the inevitable result was what happened. Ruminating over a past that cannot be changed only gives that past - and those people - power over us. Acceptance is simply saying that what happened is water under the bridge. A bad memory of a nasty storm. Time to move on.

That's also known as zero-based thinking. It also avoids the sunk costs fallacy.

It may take years to realize it. It may require assistance by therapy, or you may be able to embrace a philosophy that helps. Some people never do either, and nurse that sense of injury for a lifetime. They hold it tight like their "precious."

Once you've realized it, it may take years to actualize it. There's no quick and easy solution. But you have to try, or you condemn yourself.

“The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,
Moves on: nor all thy Piety nor Wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,
Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it.”
- Omar Khayyám ​