Autistic parents who don’t like physical affection

[Nezuko22]

How do you cope?

My eldest is the complete opposite and is trying to hug and kiss us constantly. And I really do mean constantly, she’s been home for 2 hours and she’s tried to hug and kiss me 15 times. I don’t mind a hug and a kiss before going somewhere and before bed but she’s quite forceful about it. She pins down the toddler who is quite a lot like me and I have to tell her off for forcing kisses on him when he’s screaming no. She runs at ne making kissing noises and it honestly makes my skin crawl. I’ve had words with her to reassure that I live her but I just don’t want to be harassed for this sort of physical touch constantly and that she needs to respect people boundaries if they say no. She’s 11 btw. Does anyone else have any experience of this?

I don't know if you'll come back OP but it does sound like your daughter is being excessive in her request for touch from people. Does she know you don't like it because of autism? It sounds like you have good ways of physical closeness (the hand holding, the hair- they're both good!)

Personally I would explain 'I can't do a lot of hugs because of autism, it's physically uncomfortable for me (just as it would be for someone with a bad back etc) but I love you and I show you that in this way (enter example)"

@Nezuko22

You need to accept that your view on this is very much outside the realm of normal.

many adults still hug their mothers. I am nearly 40 and when visiting my mum we hug a lot, cuddle on the sofa whilst catching up.

• but to us autistics it's not normal what do we NEED to accept it is?

@Freshersfluforyou

I wonder if hugging isnt the only thing lacking here given you say you can't imagine hugging your own mum. That's really not a typical attitude to have.

• You don't understand autism do you?

You deal with it for the sake of your child. A deaf person doesn't say "oh well I can't hear the baby crying so they'll just have to stop", they adapt their life to look after the baby and purchase assistive technology to know when baby is crying.

Yahtzee, you really got me with that one didn't you? Ohohoho.

Of course there are sensory issues. Don't be dim.

The difference between having a child sneak up on you and pounce on you and hang off your neck or scoop you up from behind and having intimate sex with a partner is that you have the option to withdraw your consent from one of these actions if it gets too uncomfortable.

Or did you really think you'd disproved autism by asking how us autistics manage to have sex if we don't like physical contact?

The op does hug her child though. Your comparison is a straw man argument - there’s a huge difference between adapting to meet a baby’s needs and telling an 11 year old they don’t need to bear hug everyone several times an hour.

@LostTheMarble

The op does hug her child though. Your comparison is a straw man argument - there’s a huge difference between adapting to meet a baby’s needs and telling an 11 year old they don’t need to bear hug everyone several times an hour.

It's not a straw man, it's a comparison of parents adapting to meet their child's needs. This child needs hugs. 3 hugs a day is clearly not enough. The fact that there is a number on it is weird, autism or no autism.

If the OP is willing to try cuddling her child more often when she needs it then her child will likely calm down. Posters can shout "how can you possibly know that for sure?!"

Well, does it matter? Try it and see if it helps. For the sake of your child. I'd try anything to improve my child's life and if they were clearly desperate for more physical affection I would be looking to myself to see why that's lacking in their life.

I am autistic and I do struggle with touch sometimes. I just feel really uncomfortable, like it makes me tense up and feel weird !! But I do try and ignore those feelings for my kids sakes.
I don't cuddle my mom or dad, the thought of that makes me cringe !! Infact I struggle even having a conversation with them on the phone, it's like I get embarrassed almost ? Really hard to explain. We do have great relationships though.

I'm getting unreasonably upset by all the reiterations that DD is 11 and should have grown out of this by now. (I recognise that my "unreasonable upset" is a consequence of my own adverse childhood experiences. I'm all therapied now, but these things still grab a person sometimes.)

Warning: This post references emotional neglect. I am not by any means accusing OP of abuse or anything like it!

Two of the signs of emotional neglect are

• acts inappropriately infantile
• delayed emotional or physical development

Some examples of emotional neglect are

• Lack of emotional availability: Caregivers may be emotionally distant, unresponsive, or emotionally unavailable or rejecting, making it difficult for children to connect with them on an emotional level.
• Ignoring or dismissing feelings: When children express their emotions, caregivers who emotionally neglect them may ignore, minimize, or dismiss their feelings, telling them to “stop crying” or “toughen up.”
• Absence of affection: Emotional neglect can involve a lack of physical affection, such as hugs, kisses, or comforting touch.

https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/childhood-emotional-neglect (good links in article)

The point here is that DD's delayed emotional development and age-inappropriate behaviour aren't some kind of failure in the child, but a natural consequence of arrested emotional development. Such arrest happens when a child experiences adverse conditions, such as neglect of some of her needs for affection.

Please note, I said "some" of her needs. OP evidently is a caring mother, just poorly equipped to meet some of her daughter's emotional need - resulting in delayed emotional development in that area.

It does sound as though OP's daughter is sensory seeking in the domains of touch and proprioception. This doesn't mean she's autistic, however: sensory seeking occurs in many other conditions as well, one of them being adverse childhood experience.

Most of you will know that autism screening takes some pains to look for evidence of ACEs or other trauma, since many trauma symptoms closely mimic autism. If DD develops further indications of ND, fair enough. On currently available evidence, though, such specific sensory seeking suggests a direct relation to this specific aspect of her childhood.

There's time to pull this around for the child - it shouldn't be too difficult, it's only one aspect of an otherwise nurturing environment. She deserves repair.

What she does not deserve is to be labelled immature, demanding or faulty.

There's time to pull this around for the child - it shouldn't be too difficult, it's only one aspect of an otherwise nurturing environment. She deserves repair.

What she does not deserve is to be labelled immature, demanding or faulty

100%. OP could really try to help her daughter here, but it requires looking inward and accepting that an area of your parenting is lacking.

It happens to everyone at some point. We all get things wrong when parenting. But the stubbornness in refusing to acknowledge that this little girl is struggling is ridiculous. She is quite clearly struggling and poster after poster is on this thread saying that the OP doesn't need to change as she's autistic, and her neurotypical child just has to understand that and learn boundaries.

Some humility wouldn't go amiss, for the sake of the child.

The only way to find out would be an autism screening.

Being autistic is inherently traumatic and around puberty for girls these struggles really amp up.

A lot of OPs daughters behaviours could be trauma related but can also be ND related.

We've obviously only got a very narrow view of OPs daughters life and the OP has said she doesn't think her daughter is autistic and I respect that.

If you look at my earlier post though, I've highlighted a lot of behaviours that do fall within the autism screening criteria. I'm not diagnosing OPs child but I do think every one should have an open mind about this. The average age for an autism diagnosis in women is 38. That's usually because autistic behaviours in women are seen as normal over generations, because they're so similar due to how were socialised differently.

I also think it's really important that every one reads the OPs posts, and understands: she does hug her daughter at least 4 times a day, and does hug her throughout the day, however can't respond to every single bid for physical connection because she had caring responsibilities for her other child, sensory social and emotional challenges that she needs to manage to be the best mum she can be when she does have quality time to spend with her children, she offers physical touch and connection through other means too like handholding, tickling, tracing shapes, playing with hair etc. The OP isn't denying her daughter physical touch, the OPs daughter is simply seeking proprioceptive and emotional input in extreme ways such as pinning her brother down, picking her friends up after they've asked her to stop to the point of frienship breakdown, ramming into OP, hanging off OPs neck, wrestling, and other ways that are not safe, appropriate, or respectful of boundaries. Nobody should be saying that the OPs child should have grown out of hugs, but the OPs child is old enough to recognise that she has personal boundaries and so do everybody else and therefore everyone deserves to have their boundaries respected. We aren't talking about a child who is saying "mum can I have a hug?" And then OP saying "no! I hate hugs!" We're talking about a child who doesn't understand consent, a mother with already heightened sensory sensitivities, and who has stated she feels like she is being harassed and understandably so because there is no bid for consent. If there was, OP would surely give it willingly.

In no other world would you tell someone with any time of trauma, ptsd, cPTSD etc that they should ignore the things that make them uncomfortable or stressed or dysregulated, and the OP shouldn't either. The tools the OP needs are the ones where mutual consent can be seen, heard, understood and acted on. Some children need really hard boundaries, especially children who may have, without a hop skip jump or leap, their own social, communication, sensory and emotional deficits.

Thank you. I’m not sure why this behaviour is seen as okay just because it’s something that the OPs DD wants. It’s not okay to forcefully do anything to anyone especially someone who’s at an age to understand better

This is really irresponsible to state you think the child is being emotionally neglected or traumatised when you don't know the child or family, or her upbringing, or any other issues that may be contributing. The OP and family probably need to have a proper assessment so this can be better understood. Not armchair analysis from people on forums telling her her child is neglected and traumatised, FGS.

OP hasn't said her child is immature, demanding or faulty. She has said she is struggling with her child's need for a lot of physical affection because of her own sensory issues due to autism.

People are also missing the part where OP's daughter is doing things that are a) unsafe for an 11 year old to do given her size, because others could get hurt, and b) are violating the boundaries of other children including a younger sibling.

I find it incredible that people are just implying here that the child should just be allowed to carry on doing what she wants and others should just give her what she wants. Yes, they need to find out what is being communicated or what the need is behind the behaviour and find out how to meet it. But it is also okay to put boundaries in place and use age appropriate redirection with a child who is doing things that may put the safety of others at risk and cause them discomfort or fear, like being jumped on or physically restrained. Including her mother.

There is a lot of projecting going on in this thread.

The OP is not your mother.

@CrazyGoatLady

I find it incredible that people are just implying here that the child should just be allowed to carry on doing what she wants and others should just give her what she wants.

No one is saying that. No one.

@Garlicbest has given a very reasonable and sensitive response and already people are frothing.

Thank you, @Yourethebeerthief. Putting a different point of view to people with autism's often a minefield - when the point of view has something to do with autism, it can feel like running wildly across the minefield in your heaviest boots!

100%

Absolutely this. And yes, trauma can present as socially delayed behaviour much like autistic traits, however only being hugged a few times a day vs on demand is not emotional abuse causing the type of brain changes related to trauma. It’s actually pretty fucking offensive to those of us who had real childhood trauma to suggest as much. Trauma is not a word to flippantly throw about just because someone disagrees with a parenting technique or cannot understand the position of an autistic person and their own struggles in the situation.

What the op needs to take on board is going back to square one of why her daughter is overly physical. If the op doesn’t believe her daughter is autistic, could it be a preteen grasping to the last moments of younger years? Mimicking some of her toddler siblings behaviour? Or is there a possibility that her daughter is autistic, which often in girls does start presenting more openly leading up to the teen years? These are the issues that need to be taken on board, not ‘well if you only hug your child three times a day it’s emotional abuse’.

In no other world would you tell someone with any time of trauma, ptsd, cPTSD etc that they should ignore the things that make them uncomfortable or stressed or dysregulated,

it happens literally all the time - not that it means we should just do it to everyone else too.

loads of people on MN told me once that I’m “too much” for my partner for needing support whilst having EMDR for PTSD on the traumatic birth of our child/near death experience. The poor man needs socialising and I should suck it up. for example.

MN is a subsection of society and society doesn’t give a flying fuck about autism, trauma, ACEs, etc. the difference here is that the OP has agency, and can seek support in whatever form that takes. Her daughter doesn’t. I’m not saying she should give in to something she’s not comfortable with, but seek support (probably better outside MN).

@Garlicbest thank you for your thoughtful post about emotional neglect and ACEs. One thing that came to mind is that other forms of abuse (which can be perpetrated by people outside of the family) can also lead to a regression in behaviour to younger than the child’s age.

I think OP should seek professional help to learn coping mechanisms for herself, strategies so her daughter’s sensory needs are met, and to look into what else may be going on with her daughter. Also - where is her father?

🙄

Well the suggestion was more to make sure she got a good long enough hug and didn't get cut short by a mum who found it hard, not to mark the end of the allocation of hug time! But my wording was perhaps clumsy.

This isn't about being unhappy about "alternative points of view about autism". We don't know if the OP's DD is autistic or not and there is nowhere near enough info to make certain judgements about the root causes of the issue or to accuse a parent of emotional neglect and traumatising their child. Or indeed to decide whether or not the child is autistic or has other SEN.

Quite a few people in my field think autism doesn't really exist and it's all just trauma and there are also those too quick to go to diagnosis and locate the issue within the child or the condition(s). We need to have both and it's important to be able to sit with uncertainty when we don't know or it isn't clear.

Quite a few people in my field think autism doesn't really exist and it's all just trauma and there are also those too quick to go to diagnosis and locate the issue within the child or the condition(s). We need to have both and it's important to be able to sit with uncertainty when we don't know or it isn't clear.

Right ...

And in the meantime... hug the child who desperately needs it. Ya never know, it might help her.

If it was that simple I don't think the OP would be here.