The upbringing factor?

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I'm curious to know how influential upbringing is on the quality of life of someone on the spectrum. How does the constructive/destructive attitude of parents to our social and other traits/limitations make a difference?

I was brainwashed from the start to be ashamed of my traits, I was severely punished for them and threatened with abandonment even as a small child. My social life now at 50+ is non-existent, however much I tried all my life. I wonder to what extent the extreme failure is due to the symptoms and how much is due to the upbringing.

I wonder what an aspie is like who does not carry with him/her along life, into school, college, the work life, in addition to the AS traits, a heavy load of shame, guilt, anger, fear.

In my experience upbringing is EXTREMELY significant. As a child, my mother (the world's most stubborn woman), always insisted that no label ever be applied to me. This extended to both extremely positive and negative labels. The plan was that I could grow up to be myself rather than a label.

Despite my parent's protests I was still considered gifted and was advanced a couple of years in school (although not as far as my schools wished). In order to try to correct my social deficits my parents held me back to my own age group, having me repeat learning material (I got lucky during one of these repeated years, having a family friend sit me down and actually explain, in literal terms, how to be 'cool'). As a result of a lot of hard work, by my parents and I, I was able to make a small group of friends which i retain to this day (13 years later). I am able to, with significant concentration, converse (although usually somewhat awkwardly) with most human beings. I am also happily married.

I would, however, note that my social deficits are still glaring, I am considered very weird by most humans, do not fit in with >99% of people, am oblivious to all non-literal aspects of conversation, and would say my life and career are still significantly limited.

However, this life is in juxtaposition to my best friend's little brother. He was raised in an environment where aspergers was a constant excuse and label for everything he did that did not fit a societal norm. Arguably, as a result he is completely non-functional in society.

Given this extremely small sample, I am inclined to believe that upbringing can play an absolute factor in 'borderline cases'.

In relation to the social life of the original poster, I am in the same boat. However, perhaps due to parenting, I am okay with my absolute minimal social contact. I don't get people and people don't get me so I just try and live my life as I see fit.

another 50 something here.

Although I have yet to be formally diagnosed, I will share this with you.

Parents can be BRUTAL. My mother could not understand why I didn't want to play with other kids. From the earliest age (toddler and onward). When I was a bit older (grade school) my parents drove me around the neighborhood and wanted to know WHY I wasn't out playing with the other children

I had no answer. I preferred being alone from her earliest recollection.

I have no 'friends' either. At least now I'm too old for my mother to berate me about it.

Nurture, to me, is far more influential than Nature. My parents really didn't understand me--though my father wasn't so vociferous in his irritation at me. I did play with other kids, though I didn't make friends with very many. I had 1 "best friend," but he wanted to hang out in the group, so we drifted apart. I wanted to read the encyclopedia, not hang out by the candy store doing nothing. I enjoyed playing sports, though I stunk at most of them. I would get thrown out of bowling alleys if I vented frustration after a gutterball. I didn't damage anything, though--ever. I did steal a friend's sister's book once--"The Infant and Child in the Culture of Today." when I was 11.

There was no concept of "Asperger's" back in the 1960's-1970's. I was just odd; sometimes, I was banned from people's houses for various reasons--some of them evident, some of them not. My mother took the other kids' side frequently. I once tore a kid's wrist ligaments because he followed me around, calling me "ret*d," then wanting to shake my hand. I shook it, all right, to the tune of a lawsuit bought by the kid's parents.

In my forties-fifties I discovered that you're supposed to look for the unsaid in interactions with people, and that I can succeed in spite of my motor clumsiness and visio-spatial challenges if I practise hard. I wonder if my parents had worked with me from an early age on these 2 things, as well as not scapegoat me for my having been born different, how much more successful I would've been in life...

I guess my "punishment" was being ignored. I'm sure I was a big disappointment to my parents but they treated me the best they could. And the younger more able child, naturally, got the encouragement and the sports equipment, tuition, etc., etc., etc. I guess that might be why I never had any expectations for a future of any kind; pretty much a day-to-day existence. But I got lucky (no, not that "lucky" but REALLY LUCKY), and it's been 51+ years (almost 52 ) since then.

Personally I feel the opposite of Love is not Hate but Indifference. At least this has been my experience.

denny

70+ and counting.

The person with good parenting has a huge advantage over the person with abusive parents. That does not mean the person with abusive parenting if he or she has more skills/willpower/innate personality/luck can not do better then the person with good parenting.

My parents made mistakes but considering they had no idea what they were dealing with in the 1960s and 1970s they did well and made decisions that were good even by today's standards. Of course they told me and still tell me to socialize and smile more but it was never berating and acceptance of differences between people was always preached.

I have thought of myself as a very flawed person, a person that was missing things that other people seem to have, a person who had to work two, three, four times harder to be minimally competent at things other people do with ease. But I have never though of myself as a bad person and I credit my parenting for that. I never have had a relationship and I have had rarely had more then one real friend at a time and the last one was decades ago. But I have gotten along well and went out with co-workers. I don't believe that would have happened with hostile parents. I always made job choices on the understanding and acceptance that I was not a "people person" who was not coordinated. Would I have accepted it with hostile parents? I doubt it.

Maybe I am wrong as a lot of you are here despite been abused by your parents but I do not believe that I would be alive today with the parenting a lot of you had to deal with.

I had a very abusive upbringing and for a long time thought that my difficulties stemmed solely from that.
While the overt episodes of abuse were awful, what had more of a lasting negative impact on me was the complete absence of emotionally positive experiences. There was no support, encouragement, positive attention, affection, affirmation nor protection. It was an emotional wilderness. I ran away at 15, having no model for how to conduct social interaction. I put my specific difficulties like dysparaxia, startling to loud noises, social difficulties to the trauma of living in a toxic barrage of unrelenting criticism and bullying at home. Other people thought I just had "bad nerves". As I was born in the late 1940s, there was no concept of children who were not neurotypical. A couple of teachers did make some emotional investment in me, and without that, I think I would have committed suicide at a very young age.

So I lived for over half a century just thinking that I was a damaged NT, reading thousands of self help books and obsessively trying to cure myself and fit in.

I think that abuse, coupled with being on the spectrum, can exponentially increase the difficulties.

With any child, the choices a parent makes in how to raise them has a massive influence in how they turn out. AS or NT.

"So I lived for over half a century just thinking that I was a damaged NT, reading thousands of self help books and obsessively trying to cure myself and fit in."

This made me smile (ruefully). Back in our early "40s days the call to "everyone" in society was to "pull yourself up by your own bootstraps." So everyone, you and I included, were to not depend on others but merely strive hard and "forge ahead." And this is what was built into our psyches, and we "forged" ahead buying books and worrying. I was taught early that deviations and failure were always my fault.

Since I didn't know what caused the "difference" in understanding between myself and others, for a long time I speculated NTs could converse by mind alone and I was the only "deaf" one who never "got it."; this and a thousand like ideas.

Once in a while I put my two cents in a thread when the OP asks asks: "Would it have been better if I'd never been diagnosed?" I always (in many ways) say no. It certainly would have been easier on both my early and later families had I/we known.

Just now I'm trying to adjust my "Theory of Mind" to accommodate the wrong things I taught myself growing up, and there's a lot.

denny
70+ and counting

This is me too. In addition to over 10 years in therapies.

Parents either give their children a "failure" script or a "success" script. They give children a basic sense of safety in life or the opposite. These are major factors for those of us who had abusive parenting to cope with as well as ASD, and hugely magnify the intrinsic anxiety that comes with ASD. If you receive the failure script combined with the experience that life is fundamentally unsafe, it forms an additional barrier between the self and the world. It's like trying to tie shoelaces wearing boxing gloves..

My formative years were full of daily verbal assaults:

"You'll never amount to anything"
"You'll always fail"
"No-one will ever want you"
"Who do you think you are" (If only I had known...)
"Everything that goes wrong in this family is your fault"

Yet I was determined not to fail. I tried harder than any other child at school, to prove my worth there, to gain approval from teachers (substitute parent figures). Sadly, although my academic successes were many, they were never something I could take any pleasure from. Each success foreshadowed the possibility that the next time I might fail. At home nothing was ever good enough: a mark of 99% in maths earned only a scornful: "trust you not to get that extra mark". Success was always reframed there as failure. I became increasingly hypervigilant, extremely perfectionistic. At university, anything less than an A+ felt like failure. I had to prove to myself that I was "good enough", and set the bar was impossibly high.

Finally I had a breakdown. This was ultimately a good thing, as the counsellor I saw suggested that the overwhelming pain I could no longer numb out stemmed from the absence of love, respect and safety as a child. You would think that in my 30s, I would have been able to see that for myself, but I couldn't.

Even the most gentle suggestion that everything was not "my fault" was the most astonishing revelation to hear.

I think this is a good topic. I think that if your upbringing was very difficult and not supportive you will develop more comorbid disorders such as depression, social anxiety, maybe more severe OCD. If you come from a supportive environment you will become more successful in adulthood and have less comorbid conditions.

Just a theory of mine.

I'm not sure if the upbringing does have an impact on every child on the spectrum, but it did me. My dad is very intellectually dim, and my mum lacks confidence and self-esteem, and although they are both NTs, having an unconfident mum and a dim dad hasn't done me much favours in life. I am not blaming my parents because they can't help what they are, and they have always been there for me and have done their best to support me and still are now. That's why I got diagnosed when I was only 8, because my mum really wanted me to get the right help in school for me. She just worried too much about my well-being, and she still does now. I love my parents to bits.

I know another Aspie who is my age but has a mum with lots of self-confidence and a dad who is quite bright and ambitious, and an older sister who is very confidence and gives him lots of social tips, and so he has gained confidence too, and is doing well compared to me. He has a girlfriend, and has a descent group of mates who he goes out with, and having mates and a girlfriend will open more doors for him I suppose.

My mom fought to get me diagnosed because she grew up with dyslexia and didn't get diagnosed until adulthood. She keeps on saying that her life would have been better if she was diagnosed.

I kind of agree with her, but getting diagnosed with autism is nothing like getting diagnosed with dyslexia. I kind of wish that I received a lighter diagnosis like ADHD when I was growing up.

Because I was diagnosed with autism I was constantly babied. That didn't help me at all. I've suffered a lot of psychological damage because of that. A lot of people refuse to acknowledge my psychological damage and blame all of my problems on a "lack of discipline." I don't think it's my fault. I think the school system and autism "treatments" are to blame.

I grew up in a strict, angry household. I constantly heard put-downs and insults multiple times a week, and was spanked for every little infraction, from having a tantrum (not meltdown) in a store, to reaching for water outside of meals (long story). My toys were constantly threatened; as in, they'd destroy them and make me watch, if I didn't do what they said. Until age 5 or so, I honestly believed that my name was B. Quiet. I constantly got "compliments" like these ones:
"Everybody has good kids, nice kids, the kind of kids they want. We have a curse from hell!"
"You're a disgrace to the family name!"
"How am I going to look people in the eye, with a son like this?"
"Do you expect me to show my face in public after you did so horribly in school?" (a C on one homework assignment)

My older sister, by comparison, was treated like an angel. Ironically, when I did something to put myself in danger even slightly (like get my socks wet in winter), oh man, was there hell to pay! I could never understand their anger: If I'm such a horrible child, WHY are they so concerned about keeping me safe? Wouldn't they be happy to get rid of me through no actions of their own, and use the opportunity to get a better child through birth or adoption.

Since I loved my parents, I tried to help them however I could think of: I asked to be put up for adoption, so they could "born" (bring forth) a new child; I asked to leave home and live like a hobo on the street; one time, I even asked to be euthanized (!). All my requests were met with anger and punishments, especially the last one. Needless to say, my self-preservation instincts were nonexistent, to say nothing of my emotional development. For a long time, I believed that adults only experienced 2 emotions: happiness and anger. Everything else, even tears of sadness, was a set of meticulously choreographed actions. At one point, my parents sensed something was wrong, and had me go to therapy for a while. But I was so worried that the therapist would share everything with them, that I didn't dare tell her what was really happening, only vague generalities, like "they're too strict". Plus she gave me advice that was ridiculously naive : "just tell your parents how you really feel" .

Now, my relationship with my parents is pretty decent, after I moved out of their house 7 years ago, and I'll give them credit for paying for my college. They even bailed me out financially one time when I was unemployed (it was a fairly small amount, about 1 month's rent), and I rebuilt my savings enough to afford two cruises since then. But I can't help but view as too little too late. My conscience won't let me say it to their face, so I decided to simply never get married or have kids, and was upfront with my parents about that, and only that.

Still, the damage's been done. Even now at age 30, I'm completely incapable of loving anyone in a romantic sense. I get warm feelings toward women who are affectionate or sexual with me, but never love. I get my affection fix from women I meet on cruises (who, for some reason, all acted highly affectionate with me) and through escort services. Thankfully, I had friends as a child, so at least I was able to properly master the concept of friendship. I have great friends that I've known for over 10 years.

Last edited by Aspie1 on 18 Apr 2014, 8:56 pm, edited 2 times in total.