Not being trusted because of being autistic?

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Has this ever happened to you, where people have not trusted you to do something just because you are autistic?

For example, because of my Asperger's I'm not allowed to go to town on my own because of some of my problems, a main one being the social skills. And because of some problems (I have Road Crossing problems) I can never be trusted to cross the road by myself.

Yes.

When I was formally labeled, people wouldn't even give me the chance to do anything alone without an aide. They didn't trust me to do anything for one minute, so this just drove me to act up more and more. Because they believed me to be incapable, it became a self-fulfilling prophesy.

This was why it was such a relief when I got home, went to see relatives, went on holiday or went to the leisure centre. Because people didn't know/care about my AS assessment, they treated me as a person and didn't automatically expect me to be incapable. They accepted me as a human, not a negative set of criteria to be corrected.

Labeling shapes other people's opinions of you.
This is why I'd be reluctant to call myself autistic: people would start to run away from me very fast because of ignorance, fear or disbelief.

I was also conditioned to be fearful and negative about autism by my parents, because they were genuinely confused and honestly couldn't see what was "wrong" with me. They saw a human being.

When I wasn't seen as a label, my organisational and academic skills improved. I also became much more confident and felt less ashamed because people began to judge me on what I could do, rather than automatically assuming that I couldn't do things (as was the case when I was labeled).

My mom didn't want me leaving the school grounds during lunch when I was 15 and 16 because she said there was no reason for me too and the school lunches are cheaper and healthier than eating at fast food and she didn't want me to get hurt by my peers.

She didn't want me to have a job either when I was in school because she knew it would stress me out and I can't do both. I do not take stress well. More meltdowns, prone to hitting and throwing things, depression, shut downs.

She wouldn't let me go on the honor roll trip when I was 14 because of my anxiety. She knew I would wreck the trip for the other kids by my anxiety and meltdowns because I wouldn't know what to expect, couldn't have the window open so I stay cool. I have gotten a lot better since then. Losing weight seemed to help my hot flashes. Now I get cold easily now.

I have felt she held me back but she claims she never did and when I questioned her by bringing up those examples she said I could not handle it then because of my anxiety and it would have been irresponsible of her and dad to let me do those things. She and dad let me do what I was capable of and what I could handle. It would have been very unfair to the other kids if they let me go on that honor role trip because I would have ruined it for them and I would have not had fun.


When I think about it, she didn't hold me back. She let me try new things such as she let me go to birthday parties I was invited to, she let me go on field trips, she let me do gymnastics, do t ball, softball, soccer, let me try basketball and I didn't like it so I never did it again. She let me do pottery. In fact my mother encouraged me to try new things and talk to me about it and ask if I wanted to try and it and I say yes and sometimes I say no.



I did have an aid who was over protective of me so I was Joon and she was Benny. I used to do things just to drive her crazy and get her attention like pretending I am about to pull the fire alarm. She even thought I wouldn't be able to drive a car, be on my own, maybe get a job, but I proved her wrong. She decided to let me grow up and learn and be on my own in classes when I was 17. It was just to help me be independent and learn. It was my mother who told her she needed to let me make mistakes or else I'll never learn.

yes!! !!
omg my mom is like yours she freaks out when i do stuff on my own she thinks ill live with her forever i know i wont but it will take time for me to move out of the house.

I trust my son completely to tell me the truth.

I do not trust him to know when he is doing something dangerous or risky.

Both conclusions have been reached through experience.

But I force myself to let go, a lot, on situations that I find frightening, when I'm worried his innocence or self-focus can harm him. He belongs to boy scouts and he has matured so much through it. But sometimes when I hear the stories about things that have happened on outings ... WOW, I can't believe I let him go. I shut it out. I've told the leaders I think it's better than I don't see and I don't know.

Kids need wings, but allowing your child to jump from the window ledge is so scary for parents. We know of so many dangers that you don't. We're always second guessing. It's in our instinct to be protective.

All you can do is work to PROVE to your parents you will be OK. Not tell them, PROVE it. Be responsible about hazards when you are with them. Be responsible about chores when at home. Be responsible about your schoolwork. It may not all seem connected, but it IS.

I wasn't diagnosed with aspergers until I was 20, so I have lived an entire NT life thus far. I was completely trusted because of my independence. Still, I still believe it was right to trust me because I'm very honest and I never got into any trouble.

Same thing... plus b/c of my AS my moms have offered to let me live w/ them permanently, no thanks! Part of the reason is that I do not want to drive or live w/ someone else.

I prefer being alone b/c of some of my issues... . but I am OK w/ occasional contact w/ others . But they think that just b/c I want to be alone I will have issues .

I may be 18, but I think I can learn to manage alone, I do more things when left alone for an extended period of time than when others are around .

Ever since I was formally labeled as an Adult, I feel like my parents stopped regarding me as a full-fledged adult and have started treating me like an 11 year old who obviously needs assistance with everything. I wasn't diagnosed with Aspergers until I was 22 so for those first 22 years I was held to the same expectations and standards as the rest of my "peers".

I guess over the last 5 years, now that schools are doing a vigorous search for Aspergers students now that the condition has become known and accepted throught the systems, AS students are at risk for developing the learned helplessness that comes with segregation into special education. I think if I had a choice it would be better to grow up undiagnosed and learn life lessons the hard way as opposed to being mollycoddled throught life and live a somewhat parasitic existence. The fact is that having AS doesn't make you mentally challenged but once you are diagnosed your parents and teachers(with their benevolently misguided ultra-liberal perspective), feel the need to hold your hand and zealously protect you from every possible danger.

From my perspective, I think that I am a stronger person for having to deal with the bullying, peer pressure, and competitive demands of the Public School system of the 1990s without knowing I had Aspergers. I always knew that there was something wrong with me, but I had no name for it and I just figured that I was somehow different. It was not until about 5 years after I graduated High School that it seemed like the public school systems began to flush their classes for Aspergers kids. My main concern is that an AS individual will be safeguarded to the point where they can't deal with adult life when they are out of the school system. Even if you live with your parents as a young adult, when your parents die 30 years from now and you are on your own, what will you do then? To a reasonable point, parents need to trust and empower AS individuals and allow them to take guarded risks, because living in a vegetative, padded, state is not a viable option as an adult.

My parents completely trust me because when I was undiagnosed, I had opportunities to earn their trust that otherwise I would have not had. Now that they treat me differently since they know I have Aspergers, I know I otherwise would have a much less fulfilling adult life.

I grew up knowing that I'm autistic. My mom made sure I was kept in mainstream classes. As a result of bullying, I learned how to fight and stick up for myself. If I was the same kid in the schools we have today, I'm sure the system would want me to have a full time aide or would have done everything it could to put me into a special program. As far as special programs are concerned, they are not necessarily bad. It depends upon the program. A program that tailors teaching methods to autistic ways of learning is a good thing as long as the autistic students are taught the same courses as neurotypical students. An autism program that seeks to isolate and protect autistic students from neurotypical peers is definitely a BAD THING because this is a neurotypical world. Sooner or later, autistic people will have to navigate neurotypical society if they want to have any reasonable degree of independence. Rather than protecting autistic students from neurotypical peers, autistic students should be taught how to navigate through neurotypical society AND self defense.

In addition, neurotypical students should be taught information about autism and how to deal with and interact with autistic students. On the Wrong Planet IRC chatroom, I talked with a neurotypical Australian girl who's school educated students about the characteristics of autism. She says that 3 autistic students are popular among to student body and 2 of them have girlfriends. The third boy doesn't have a girlfriend because he doesn't want one. Both groups (neurotypical and autistic) have different learning styles that can be accomodated.

I have issues with my aspergers label as well. I was in special ed till 8 and was in mainstreamed and eventually was in honors classes in high school, which I graduated high school with honors.
I met all of my parents expectations(and more), where I had taken care of myself, had excellent grades, and even met expectations that even they did not expect to have had on me. But when it came to them trusting me and givng me independence, that was a different story. Even though I was the most well behaved person(one that my friends parents loved, and they did not know about my disability or even could tell that I had one), and has(and still have) excellent at independent skills, which were even more advanced than an average adult, but because of a label(at the time they did not have asperger's,but called it high functioning autism) my parents over protected me to the point where I was treated like I was ret*d. I could only go out until 6pm(at age 16), and the only places I could go with my friends were school events, and/or their homes as long as their parents were there. Because my parents were scared about sex and stuff, when I reached the age that their was boy/girl parties(event though I was not interested in boys anyway), I was no longer allowed to go to parties. But the sad things is, I actually had more freedom as a child and teenager than I do now.
That is because when I graduated high school, my mom had put even higher expectations on me(but still kept me in a bubble). I told her that I wanted to take a year off from school and maybe not work, so that I can think about what I want to do in life. At 18, I went to school for a week, realized I was wasting money sitting doing nothing, so I left. Mom got mad and made me work. I worked for Walmart, a job that made their employees work to the bone. I was supposed to work only part time(15-20 hrs. week), but I ended up working an average 80 hours a week, holidays 120 hours. But all of the full time only got to work 40, but because I could not handle a full time job, I went for part time. So after 9 months, I quit. Mom again got mad. I told her I will stay home while finding a new job and she told me until I found that job, I was to go to school full time. Again, I wasted money because first of all she made me get a job taht did not give me even time to breathe, never mind time to figure out what to do in my life. Well, I quit school,and I had no job lined up. She got angry, and I got scared, so I rambled that I could not handle her expectations.
So this is when she treated me more "ret*d" than I was a child. She not only took my independence from me, but also no longer trusted me to even do the basic things I was good at. She treated me like i could not even take care of myself, like I was some "ret*d brain dead" person. She had me put not in an agency(an autism one) that had a day program, and a group home, which to this day I am still at. The agency took advantage of me. Because of this "disability" they treated me like I was stupid. I knew how to take care of myself(or attempted too, anyway) they got mad and told me that I am not able to take care of myself, and that even though I did a better job at taking care of my self especially my health, they would yell at me it and "reminded" me because I am a client with a disability, I have no right to take care of myself and that I was wrong. As for my health, I had a major health issue(which was very serious), and I did everything the doctors told me to do and more. The agency nurse(a wicked evil b****) did not like the fact that I wanted control and manipulated the doctors into lies about my health and my issues saying I could not be trusted. I had type 2 diabetes(caused by medication) and I did all of the diet and everything. When I lost weight, but my sugars were still high(due to still being put on that medication, because the nurse manipulated the psych doctor who gave me that med saying that it did not cause the diabetes, even though my diabetes doctor said it did. The nurse took advantage that both of the doctors did not contact each other.)But because I tested my own sugar, no body was around, when I told them about then high sugar, I was accused of eating candy, which I never did. When I saw the nutritionist, the nurse lied to her telling her my sugars were low, so that she can make me Gain weight and make me things that were a no-no for diabetics. My diabetes doctors,and staff(who I made sure saw my blood sugars to prove her wrong) saw the sugars as being to high. So the nurse lied to the doctors telling them I was sneaking candy bars on my walk and eating candy bars, when I would never do that. When I told my doctors the truth that I never ate candy since the diabetes diagnosis, she manipulated them and said that my disability is mental retardation and that I am a liar and that I do things that are unhealthy, and I am incompetent of taking care of myself and not able to "speak" for myself. All this so the agency can control me.Eventually, I had another medical condition, which i hid from her, and I needed surgery, and this surgeon was such a life saver, I told him about what happened with the diabetes and he cared and had told all of my doctors what went on, not just about the surgery, but the other issues that the group home was manipulating. So the psych doctor and the diabetes doctor finally talked, and had taken me off the medications all together and a month later, my diabetes was gone, and I did not even have evidence of any insulin resistance or any at risk health problems.
Make a long story short, all because of me of a disability that was exaggerated and parents who would not respect me because of a disability,even though I am excellent at knowing what I can and can't do, my life ended up messed up.

Middle School kids are little @$$holes.

But having to deal with those types of kids in middle school and early high school is essential to building a "thick skin" to survive in the adult world.

yes nobody trusts me to be alone sometimes, or to even be able to speak for myself, or do things for myself like be able to handle laundry by myself, its like just because they know im autistic automatically im some plant who just sits there and needs to be taken care of 24/7, i'm more then just autistic, sadly not many ppl know that. The other day i was more verbal, a woman came over to talk to my mother about autism because someone in her family is affected, and she heard me speak, she even said shes verbal and very intellegent by the way she types yet she asked about me right next to me to my mother questions i could answer very easily, but acts like im not there im like wtf, like u dont trust ill tell u the truth or trust i know the right answer i dont know. Sometimes i wonder about ppl, and what goes through their mind, like jsut because we seem oblivous to everything off in our own worlds doesnt mean we dont know whats going on around us, and doesnt mean we dont notice u dont trust us with easy tasks because u think were autistic and we cant do them, plllease.

Well, let's see: every time I have wandered off anywhere in my entire life, all I have done is go out to some park area and sit there looking at the stars like the space-case I am. Well, I was also given practically no freedom whatsoever growing up (I didn't go about trying to pick up friends, so obviously I intended to murder somebody or physically attack a police officer). In fact, my parents AND grandparents would become anxious if I happened to wander more than a half-mile up the street. For my father, of course, it was never out of any concern for my safety. Oh, no. I would hear, "I'm afraid one day you're going to talk to a police officer like you talk to me, and then we'll all be in trouble." I have always been very courteous and respectful toward police officers, even on the numerous occasions that they have searched me for drugs (while my brother, usually carrying large quantities of controlled substances, casually walked by), but ironically this anxiety has only increased in him over the past few years (he is still waiting for Satan to manifest in his evil, atheist son).

I have still never had a single run-in with the law. I tend to chalk it up to the fact that sci-fi and fantasy authors tend to have very good ideas about what constitutes right and wrong. In fact, they make much better advisors in this regard than a man who invested copious efforts in his attempts to teach me how to unflinchingly, needlessly commit murder against innocent creatures of the forest (for which I have always resented him).

That is to say, my father was a hopeless, conservative jerk, and I had utterly rejected him for it by the time I was seven years old. Of course, I paid for this dearly, but I have not paid for it as dearly as my brother is going to pay for going along with it: he has become a remorseless thug, and he is destined for a well-deserved life in prison.

Sometimes, a person who has Asperger Syndrome is just a lonely kid who has surmised that inanimate objects can bring them up more skillfully than his parents. If you are one of those writers who helped teach me the right way, keep pumping that rot out. You might not think it's much, but it was all I had.