As an autistic person AIBU

[estrogone]

To be sick to death of people blaming all bad behaviour on neurodiversity.

It seems like the go to excuse.

Little Johnny urinated on somebody- must be ND
CF stole my shit and is rude and unpleasant - must be ND.

I wish people knew that autistic adults (especially women) are highly sensitive to fairness. We have strong inner policeman and will make sure we play fair. We spent decades masking and sticking to the rules, so we would be the least likely to be a cheeky fucker.

Some people are just rude, insensitive, aggressive, entitled, horrid. As children this might be down to genetics, family dynamics, as adults because they just are not very nice.

It’s exactly the same thing as when someone on MN describes abusive behaviour from their husband and someone says ‘oh he sounds autistic’.

I was recently on an online training course (cost over £600) and as we did introductions a woman, after her name, said I am neurodivergent so may sometimes talk over people. She then went on to disrupt the entire training course - constantly interrupting the trainer and asking questions that only related to her field. My unkind side thinks the announcement was to get this free pass to do whatever suited her and get the most out of the course, my kinder side wonders if maybe her impulse control is that bad she couldn’t help herself. Either way, I now know the inner workings of a niche field and am £600 down.

Bullying?! Seriously - your perspective may well be skewed by your nd (I’m audHd by the way so you can’t co-opt being hurt by being misunderstood).

if you want to weep - imagine what it is like for parents of ND children who get judged daily for their children’s behaviour. Mn is awful for it and you have just perpetuated that on here. That is worth weeping about. You might want to re-read your first few posts - they were extremely judgemental.

My autistic four year old would just go back and do it again and again even if I said that is wrong to him twenty times (I carry him away after a couple of attempts because it has no affect). It isn't through the lack of trying!

This is Aibu people are going to have different opnions to you and thats fine ,if thats going to cause you high anxiety and to make you feel crap then maybe you should stay away from Aibu im not saying this to mske you feel worse but some posters can be very blunt in their replies.

Weeps also with frustration of being misunderstood too.

I am saying that your inability to recognise that ASD presents to others antisocially means that it does connect to bad behaviour which is why you see that link so often on here.

Anyway I’m backing out now, I find this point comes up a lot and when it does I always find the conversations very unproductive for me because I find I don’t agree with a lot of other fellow NDs on the issue who feel victimised by people suggesting ASD when there is social norms not being followed and I do think that is a lot to do with the autism condition itself on both sides.

Some children cant learn due to complex needs
My son has extremely challenging behsviour hes 16 in may but hes in a special school for children with severe and profound learning disabilities, many other children also have similar presentations
We have to adapt our lives to meet his needs
He will never live independently and will always need a high level of support.

Education and parenting are not the same thing

I have a ds with autism. When something tragic or horrific happens such as a shooting or other form of violence where they don't announce terrorism, myself or dh will usually comment betweem ourselves "how clickly do you think it come out that they have or blame autism?". Just to be clear we aren't saying that autism leads to this sort of behaviour just that i agree with op that it gets blamed for everything nowadays.

It really frustrates me as my son is the opposite and would likely cuddle/ squeeze someone too much rather than hurt them and if he does hurt someone it is never from a place of malice.

I'm in a place now where i feel that autism etc as a dx need to be removed and more accurate descriptors of how people present used instead. The dx's mean so many different things to different people that they could now describe anyone.

But that’s obviously totally different. Children/adults with such severe profound difficulties will likely not experience “friends” in the most used sense of the word so it isn’t really relevant to my post. At 16 your son isn’t expecting others to want to go hang out in town today and wondering why they are excluding him either. My post is aimed at those with understanding not severely affected in a profound way.

I work in a parenting field. I have parented 2 NT children who are thriving and one who is terrified to transgress any rules. Do you want to double down and tell me that my one child who is prone to aggressive meltdowns is my fault?

Take a look at NVR

But that’s exactly my point. You aren’t doing the thing I’m complaining about. So the consequence you use is removing him. So you are doing something about it. Whether you want to use the term or not you are using a “punishment” of sorts. No one ever wants to use the term punishment anymore. But it’s a consequence you decided upon due to his behaviour. Because obviously you love him but also understand that he can’t keep doing a bad behaviour to others.

My point was that people on here often just shrug and say well he can’t learn due to his disability so it’s one of those things and then they allow it to keep happening. OR they refuse to “punish” and just allow it to keep happening without even trying to remove them. At 4, your son is repeating behaviours and so far doesn’t seem to be learning. If you just shrug and give up now and allow it to keep happening he’ll have no friends and you’ll HOPE he gets a revelation at some point in his life. But by keeping up continuity of explaining he can’t do something and removing him there’s a POSSIBILITY one day he’ll think “Hmm I really don’t want to go home so I’m actually going to stop today”. He might not. Maybe his disability is so severe he will still be unable to understand that at 25. But also, maybe he has the ability to learn about consequences in the future. But unless someone keeps trying how will you know? No one should be written off at 4 that they can never ever learn to do/not do something. (I’m not saying you’re doing that by the way. I’m just using the general “you” as an example).

I’m autistic. I used to have plenty of bad and undesirable behaviours when I was younger. I honestly didn’t understand some things. Plus I wasn’t diagnosed and didn’t understand why I was different which didn’t help. But I’m now in my 40s. I absolutely understand if I behaved as I did in my teens I wouldn’t have any friends. I’ve learned. Some autistic people CAN learn. Others will call it masking and make it out like it’s a bad thing. But I want friends. I want to have a nice life. So I’ve learned/masked whatever in order to enjoy my life. I’m so much happier now than I was at 18 when i was falling out with all my friends due to my behaviour.

People think they raise their children the same they don't. Working in a parenting field doesn't necessarily make you a great parent. Lots of people work in jobs they shouldn't and are terrible at. I don't think a child's personality type is a parents fault, I do however think the way a parent chooses to handle it absolutely can be. Just like posters on this thread and many others who hide behind the diagnosis and choose not to discipline their children as they think its pointless as they won't listen as they're ND

"There needs to be a point when a behaviour seriously becomes unacceptable and there is an actual consequence for it whether they child could help it or not."

There is no point in a consequence that isn't going to work. You need to look for the cause of the behaviour and work from there. Consequences is essentially lazy parenting.

So if a 4 year old is constantly hitting other children how do you find out the cause and how do you solve it? Are you saying it’s not possible that the child is hitting simply because they can? So the cause is just because they want to. Then what?

Ok cool. Pointless trying to explain anything with nuance to you too as you clearly have a very fixed mindset. I think my lived experience, training and experience over many years (my oldest child is 20) make me well qualified to state that I parent my children as well as anyone could according to their specific neurotypes. To think that you know better than me about my own parenting is wild.

What is kind of hilarious is that I haven’t even said how I parent my children and yet here you are, clutching your pearls and making all kinds of assumptions 🙄

Which is why i said other people the only time I mentioned you was saying working in a parental job role doesn't automatically make you a great parent just like some police officers are criminals and not all teachers are intelligent and not all nurses are caring

Links?

Most parents of ND kids in my professional role blow me away with how well they parent in very challenging circumstances.

Of course there are some amazing parents but we repeatedly see it on here people saying there is no point in saying no to their nd child as they do it anyway. Just like in actual life I've see lots of parents who let their children do allsorts and say he/she can't help it their autistic/adhd etc and then go back to completely ignoring their children.

I agree with you but I also feel some ND children do have valid reasons for their behaviour. As long as parents are addressing it I'm happy to cut them some slack.

MN does not speak for the autistic community and actually just saying no often isn’t the right way to teach autistic children better coping strategies.

I’ve read it again and can’t see where you say “other”. Also neurodivergence is not a personality type. If you come on here with such strong opinions about a subject you clearly know so little about I suggest you do some research.

yes some of us with lived experience on threads like these may seem somewhat brittle. That’s what years of fighting and advocating against a system that doesn’t understand your vulnerable child does to you. Anyone who doesn’t understand this then count yourself very lucky and perhaps think before you post about things you don’t know much about beyond observing from the outside.

Absolutely. Try saying no to a kid with a PDA profile and see how it escalates. That’s not to say nothing can be done - but no is not the way to do it.