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RAISED by a FATHER with SUSPECTED ASPERGERS.

Rebecca Lloyd said:
I didn't expect hostility, but can I just say that I'm talking about my father, not people with ASD that I don't know. I am not saying those people are monsters, nor am I saying my father was a monster. I am saying my father was a very frightening man. I'm saying again exactly what I said above. Is that wrong on this site?
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I wasn't being hostile.
 
Rebecca Lloyd said:
thank you for saying that, and you are right, I am 70 although quite how you know that, I don't know. My father is dead. My experience of him and my attitude to him has been the same since I was 3 or 4 years old. I could've said I was very frightened by my father, rather than he was very frightening. I don't mind which way round it goes. :)
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I clicked on your name and a window popped up, saying, "female, 70." And I apologize for being confrontational earlier...
 
Mary Anne said:
Wait. I understand your POV, but the poster is entitled to their opinion. I think my father had a form too, and it was absolute hell living with him. He is dead now, and I just cannot forgive him- even though he could not help it, was unaware (he was born in 1923), uncommunicative, unempathetic, unsympathetic, and showed no love to all of us kids in our family. Both parents should never have had children. Anyone with those qualities should not have children.

Saying that a very young child has any sort of “attitude” towards their parents is unjustified as little children just don’t have the capacity for that. I recall my father being this way since I was three years old. I remember.
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thank you Mary Anne, good to know that someone can understand me. I guess, like me you might have simply carried the experience with you into your adulthood without being able to talk about it, or for anyone to understand it if you did... it's a big outsider feeling.
 
I don't want to pretend to be some sort of authority on this simply because I raised a child as a single parent and I have ASD, but I will give my opinion. Every relationship is different and there are many other factors that are involved and perspectives unaccounted for when you only have one.

My son and me have a very good relationship. He will always go to me first before his NT mother. I think his mother gets too emotionally involved and turns those emotions into manipulations. He feels manipulated by her and says as much in plain language that leaves nothing open to interpretation. With me, he can be sure that I'm going to say what I mean and have his best interests in mind every time.

I do believe in an emotional distance between parents and children and by that I mean that I am not going to dump my problems on him at any time. Also, that he can do so to me without expecting me to over-react based on an emotional response. I'm not the type of parent to take his side every time he got in trouble. If he messed up I was the first to tell him. Apparently, as my father who was a principal of a high school, told me, parents sticking up for their kids was close to universal and the one thing that ensured troublemakers remained troublemakers.

He is 20 now, and we have a parent-child relationship. We are not friends, he has enough friends, that isn't my role.
 
Rebecca Lloyd said:
Wouldn't everybody have a different perspective, though? Isn't that an expected thing?
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With Asperger's /asd = us
Without . = .you
Your father. = With.

Can you see what I'm trying to say?

Effect of asd on your perspective from those looking from the outside is not always apparent.
 
I'm almost 100% sure my dad was ASD and he was not at all frightening or anything. He was quiet and spent a lot of time alone, but he wasn't at all scary. Autism is not a personality or anything, it's just a different way of processing. So while you can be a frightening person and be autistic you can also be very nice and kind as well. Just like NTs. When I was a kid the scariest fathers I met were, I am quite sure, NTs.
 
HidinginPlainSight said:
I don't want to pretend to be some sort of authority on this simply because I raised a child as a single parent and I have ASD, but I will give my opinion. Every relationship is different and there are many other factors that are involved and perspectives unaccounted for when you only have one.

My son and me have a very good relationship. He will always go to me first before his NT mother. I think his mother gets too emotionally involved and turns those emotions into manipulations. He feels manipulated by her and says as much in plain language that leaves nothing open to interpretation. With me, he can be sure that I'm going to say what I mean and have his best interests in mind every time.

I do believe in an emotional distance between parents and children and by that I mean that I am not going to dump my problems on him at any time. Also, that he can do so to me without expecting me to over-react based on an emotional response. I'm not the type of parent to take his side every time he got in trouble. If he messed up I was the first to tell him. Apparently, as my father who was a principal of a high school, told me, parents sticking up for their kids was close to universal and the one thing that ensured troublemakers remained troublemakers.

He is 20 now, and we have a parent-child relationship. We are not friends, he has enough friends, that isn't my role.
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So, would that mean, do you think, that my father's ASD might have nothing to do with my experience as a child? I've thought about this quite a lot because before I suspected he had this way of thinking that he was simply authoritarian and rigid, and those were the ways people were described back in the day, as well. So for me it's a matter of whether his behaviour was a result of his different mental functioning, and therefore he couldn't help it, or his behaviour was just egocentric, narcissistic... that he wasn't very loving or understanding and that he could've tried harder. Although he admits that in his book anyway.
 
kay said:
I'm almost 100% sure my dad was ASD and he was not at all frightening or anything. He was quiet and spent a lot of time alone, but he wasn't at all scary. Autism is not a personality or anything, it's just a different way of processing. So while you can be a frightening person and be autistic you can also be very nice and kind as well. Just like NTs. When I was a kid the scariest fathers I met were, I am quite sure, NTs.
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Right, so this is the thing that's been on my mind. None of it really matters now, but I'm trying to explain things to my daughters. In fact my father was a kind of dare-devil character, and very far from quiet. So, we just return to his personality. This is good to hear about because my grandson is high functioning autistic probably, and he's quiet, hugely talented, affectionate, but very much a loner.
 
Rebecca Lloyd said:
thank you. I won't be staying for very long, I guess.
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You ARE MOST WELCOME HERE Rebecca Lloyd. Stay as long as you like. All people are welcome. You might say things that upset some sensitive members - I seem to frequently :) - but that’s ok. We all learn from each other, and many find knowledge, as well as connections with others here.
 
I have to say that I certaintly don't like everyone that has Aspergers because I find some of them are too rigid, confrontational, unempathetic, disrespectful, creepy, passive aggressive, etc. The fact that they have Aspergers could be a factor in how they are, but I can't help how I feel about them or how they act. My personality just doesn't click with theirs. You don't need to feel ashamed for how you feel about your father Rebecca just because he happens to have Aspergers. You can't really help how you feel about him. Some people we like and get along with, while others we just don't.
 
Mary Anne said:
You ARE MOST WELCOME HERE Rebecca Lloyd. Stay as long as you like. All people are welcome. You might say things that upset some sensitive members - I seem to frequently :) - but that’s ok. We all learn from each other, and many find knowledge, as well as connections with others here.
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thank you, I really appreciate that.
 
Rebecca Lloyd said:
So for me it's a matter of whether his behaviour was a result of his different mental functioning, and therefore he couldn't help it, or his behaviour was just egocentric, narcissistic... that he wasn't very loving or understanding and that he could've tried harder.
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People usually can NOT help being unloving, rigid, narcissistic, or egocentric because they learned it long ago, and slowly. It’s ingrained.

I do not think you can get very far in thinking that way. He was what he was...no matter if it was genetic, chemically biological, brought on by trauma, or abuse in his own childhood. It is what it is. You either accept that or not. You accept him or do not accept him. It is good to explore the reasons behind him, but it does not always give closure in the way you think.

We all as we age, look back at how we should have, or could have done things differently. The concepts eluded us at the time (I am soon to be 62). Your father wrote a book, and looked back on his life. He could not have changed back then.

It doesn’t matter if he chose to or was unable to. This part one has to accept, when dealing with childhood traumas and abuse. Both of my parents did the best they could. It’s was mom who abused us kids. She was mentally ill and came from child abuse too. My dad was abuse, was an unwanted orphan at age 7, lived in an orphanage with strict authoritarian nuns. He had no training on how to love, parent, communicate, or nurture us kids. So it guess he could not help it either, but for things said, and how he did not deal with problems in our home, and allowed our mom to physically and mentally abuse us...I will not forgive him. I finally forgave mom around 5 years ago.
 
Mary Anne said:
You might say things that upset some sensitive members
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I'm neither sensitive nor upset. I was merely expressing a certain degree of skepticism and I didn't mean to offend anyone or make new members feel unwelcome. I was not being very friendly and I apologize.
 
Rebecca Lloyd said:
Right, so this is the thing that's been on my mind. None of it really matters now, but I'm trying to explain things to my daughters. In fact my father was a kind of dare-devil character, and very far from quiet. So, we just return to his personality. This is good to hear about because my grandson is high functioning autistic probably, and he's quiet, hugely talented, affectionate, but very much a loner.
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I think a lot of men have thought that being a strict, authoritarian, cold, rigid, military like dad was just the way you raised a kid.
 
SunnyDay16 said:
I have to say that I certaintly don't like everyone that has Aspergers because I find some of them are too rigid, confrontational, unempathetic, disrespectful, creepy, passive aggressive, etc. The fact that they have Aspergers could be a factor in how they are, but I can't help how I feel about them or how they act. My personality just doesn't click with theirs. You don't need to feel ashamed for how you feel about your father Rebecca just because he happens to have Aspergers. You can't really help how you feel about him. Some people we like and get along with, while others we just don't.
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I never have been ashamed of my feelings for him, I think they were essential to my survival, but my daughters were always uneasy around the idea of him, or talking about him, but now that I'm 70 and they are in their 40s, I've asked them if they want to know 'stuff' and they've said yes, so I'm trying to address that now for them. I'm a seriously awkward individual myself and it'll help them to know about my childhood experiences.
 
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