To think that this isn’t lazy ? We all have different limits

[Alldifferent]

I was talking to my mum today and she asked what my plans were this week and I said what we did yesterday and what we are doing today and tomorrow and how thu fri sat sun will be doing nothing as I need downtime after 3 busy days . She is fully aware I have limitations due to having ASD and she piped up with ‘you’re not helping yourself with that lazy attitude ! Your get up and go has got up and gone !’

I tried to explain even though I don’t really think I should have to and she said ‘well me and your father often say we are still funding your life as we still work ! ‘ I’ve tried in the past to explain about ‘spoons’ but she always gets irritated and says ‘less talking about CUTLERY might help! You always did prefer inanimate objects to people! ‘ 🤦‍♀️

Im not lazy ??!! If my own parents are this openly judgemental to my face I hate to think what’s said behind my back.

I'm not autistic but I am medically complex and also have ADHD. However, for me, being able to financially support myself and my family comes before other activities (obviously would be great if we could survive off just DH's wage but this is the real world!) and this has meant that through periods of ill-health I've had to work part-time. I'm lucky that I now work mostly from home which means I can still do some things on the weekend without ending up in hospital.

I definitely have side-eyed people who are healthier than me and claim benefits, because I agree that we cannot be funding everyone who doesn't like going to work, but I don't know OP's whole situation and why working isn't an option for her. I believe it's 80% of autistic people who are not working and I think that says more about workplace culture than them.

Yeah, I think that’s fair.

Thanks to everyone who replied to me! Really interesting. I do wonder how much diagnoses from ND to anxiety could be considered logical responses to living in a really overwhelming, chaotic world. It’s a shame these things are thought of as an individual issue instead of an indication that perhaps society is in some ways getting more and more difficult to thrive in.

I could not agree more!

Yeah, I agree with that. The world isn’t fit for purpose right now.

Although I do agree with you to an extent and i absolutely agree any energy you do have should be used working even if it's just part time above leisure activities . However Saying you side eye people who claim benefits and are healthier then you I don't agree with as their is no way of knowing who is healthier then who. I'm on high rate pip and work part time. To the outside world they would be shocked if they knew I was on pip as when I go to work it's game face time but they don't see the reality of my life outside that. Pip is a very difficult benefit to get anyone on it absolutely deserves it.

I'm obviously only referring to people I know well, not casual acquaintances, who are perfectly capable of big days out and holidays, but won't work and use random undiagnosed illnesses as a reason. I don't know how they explain it to UC. I agree that if you're getting PIP it's because you really need it.

The lcrwa part of universal credit is very similar to pip a 50 page form lots of medical evidence required a full assessment with a medical professional. You may think you know people well but unless your actually living with them you honestly have no idea, like I said I have multiple people close to me in my life but they honestly have no clue what my actual life is like as they only see me at my best. When you have multiple chronic illnesses you become an amazing actor because it's the only way to keep people in your life. People would soon get sick of you if everytime they saw you, you was sleeping or crying in pain or having panic attacks or following days/ weeks of no personal hygiene, or crawling up the stairs, or bed rotting or being unable to walk out the front door, the house being a shit tip because you just can't keep on top of it. Nobody sees this side of people as it's hidden. But people I know would be exactly like you and think they know me well and think theirs nothing wrong with me. And this is why we don't judge others because we don't know.

Healthier is massively subjective and you cannot compare different disabilities or different peoples abilities to work with those disabilities, not everyone can do a work from home job. Not everyone has the capacity for even finishing school. With how very difficult if is to be awarded sickness benefits these days, if people are on benefits they are so because they are unable to manage a job at this point.
you say you had to prioritise work because if not you’d have no roof…well that happens to people who can’t work. If my home was threatened tomorrow I cannot work so I’d be homeless.

Exactly: my own dad and siblings have no idea of my situation.
i currently have cancer and needed a life saving amputation of my leg, I’m ASTOUNDED how much nicer people are to me as a disabled person now they can see something ‘wrong’. People are Helpful and kind and certainly don’t give me grief about using disabled parking now, the only difference is they can see my leg now. My other stuff is still far worse in terms of pain.
it says so much about how society thinks it knows but doesn’t have a clue,

Well no. ND brains are still different and those people would still struggle. Society doesn’t help but it’s not caused by society.

You're raising three kids seven days per week. That's three more kids than my autism will let me raise.

Keep doing what works for you and consider carefully what you actually get out of this relationship with your parents.

Exactly, it is so impressive to me that someone with the same condition as me can take care of 3 kids. If I spend the evening in a crowded pub I need to spend the next day recovering 😅

Yeah well, that's just the nature of disability. Be glad you don't get it. Sadly some of us do. It's not a choice to lay about doing nothing/the minimum. If you don't rest often you find that you can't do anything but rest because your body stops working and or you are in too much pain.

I was interested in this so looked for some journal articles and this has been being questioned for quite some time apparently. Some studies have found anatomical differences, others have not. (Studies that don’t find anatomical differences find differences in neural pathways and hormone processing, and apparently these are developed over time - so in society). Obviously there’s a huge spectrum and strides change all the time and don’t agree.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25316335/

Also one thing this book found is that there are differences with hormonal processing that are key to some autism diagnoses that are variable depending on geography and sex - so there is already discussion about the interplay between environment and biology:
https://books.google.co.uk/books?hl=en&lr=&id=mOoaEQAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PA49&dq=info:armEfBoP7oUJ:scholar.google.com/&ots=RxsHv-a75V&sig=VQcXyvQN8Ec2fVRIASyBoPQynn4#v=onepage&q&f=true (p. 59)

I also wonder why, if this is the case, autism
is diagnosed by discussing feelings and
behaviours instead of via brain scans? Probably a money issue but still, seems like we could help a lot more people if we actually knew what was going on for them.

I didn’t mean structurally different, I meant the way autistic people think and process information is different. We know that autistic people tend to be bottom up thinkers: they look at details first and then work their way up to the bigger picture. It’s why my son can spot a new key on my bunch of keys instantly, but it takes him two days to notice that the car itself is different, for instance.
We know that autism runs in families, 60-90% of identical twins are both autistic, so there is a genetic component to it.
So even if we retrained society to be made for us, we would still be different to NT people.