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Don't be mean. I promise to do my best to judge that fairly.
I'm not saying a parent knows your inner feelings, but I am saying that after watching repeat behaviour patterns you notice stuff. And with younger kids they don't really connect these dots. So yeah, to some extent we do know our kids better than they do
But this all has limits. And expiration dates.
My mother was constantly telling me what my thoughts, feelings, and needs were when I was growing up. She never tried to get to know me. When I would explain my actual feelings or opinions, in detail, she'd accuse me of lying. I think she was actually just projecting everything she didn't like about herself, and sometimes her mother and sisters, onto me. Some of the qualities I supposedly had were mutually exclusive, or just didn't make sense when applied to the life stage I was in. She was telling me she hated how haughty and arrogant I was since I was 3 years old, at least. When I was a teen, out of nowhere, one day she started to tell me how sad it was that I was so insecure. I was like, I thought I was arrogant. How can I be arrogant and insecure at the same time? She said I'm arrogant because I'm insecure. But, she'd been characterizing me that way since I was a small child. What small child thinks or acts that way? Little kids are notoriously honest and straight-forward. What 3 year old has the emotional sophistication to behave arrogantly to cover up insecurity, and what does a 3 year old have to even be insecure about?
Sounds to me like she was potentially jealous that you knew who you were, didn’t hide your thoughts and feelings, and her being insecure herself interpreted that as you acting like you were someone you aren’t. Your description comes off a lot like she was projecting. She probably has a lot of insecurities and feels like, herself in your shoes, she would have to act arrogant and haughty in order to mask her own insecurities to present herself similarly to how you present yourself.
Yeah, that ranks pretty high on the fucked-up scale
As the years go by and I approach my {redacted}'s, I am frequently reminded of and learning of ways in which my parents were both smarter and stupider than I ever could have known.
My mom can accurately describe a dozen different behaviors that I expressed throughout my childhood that indicated add or autism or something, yet still she was (and still is) adamant that I am a perfectly normal human being. I can't tell if she's just trying to be supportive in her own dysfunctional way, or if she can't accept that she produced a defective offspring. She is responsible for the quote "I don't need a doctor's permission to be weird", and I fucking love that.
It's an inheritable condition. It's very common for parents of autistic/ADHD kids to think they're 'normal', because their idea of 'normal' is themselves or their own parents, who also have them.
From someone who's on the spectrum to another: To classify a difference in focus or a difference in processing as a defect is inaccurate. "If you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will go through life believing it is stupid". There are things that come naturally to neurodivergent brains of which neurotypical brains are utterly incapable. "Hyperfixation" is just a way of saying that we become subject matter experts faster than other people. Even the reviled "attention deficit" is just our mind getting bored of things we've seen before. You are an explorer of the cosmos. If someone else says you are less, just because you find it difficult to care about the meaningless monotony of social constructs, that is a limitation not of you, but of them. Fuck 'em. Find your superpower, and follow it.
I figured out that I am preternaturally talented at classifying bits of knowledge and drawing them together to form syllogisms and comparisons. This has made me find my life's work in teaching chemistry. I get go be paid to be an alchemist, teaching the arcane secrets of the universe to students, showing them how we have learned to bend the very fundaments of reality to our will. I think that's pretty neat.
Traditionally, some autistic people passed as being within the range of normal.
And while you could call your autism a straight up defect, you should then be fair to yourself and recognize how many defects non autistic people can have.
I wouldn't say aggressive assholes, unrelenting blackout drunks, and gamblers who put their family in poverty are less defective even though they frequently pass as normal intermittently through life. There's the nature vs. nurture argument, but as far as I've heard there's a big factor of predisposition to these things. Someone more educated might know.
Either way, if you manage to live with your autism even remotely well, I'd say there are much more debilitating defects you could have started with. Could also mention conditions often suspected of normal-presenting people, like narcissism and psychopathy, and also things like suceptibility to religious delusion, willingness to oppress, and finding cruel political strongmen appealing. Those last two are terrible defects.
There's a time and a place for some intellectual humility, and that swings both ways. There are a lot of things we just don't know about the people we're close with, and at the same time there are a lot of things we don't fully understand about ourselves, that the more objective outside observer may be able to identify pretty easily.
And that goes both ways in a parent-child relationship, a sibling-sibling relationship, a friend-friend relationship, or even a spouse-spouse relationship.
My wife certainly knows certain things about me that I myself have blind spots about. And vice versa.
heckacentipede isn't as clever as they think they are. As a grown adult I find myself biting my tongue in every interpersonal relationship I have to avoid making others feel bad. It's not a superpower, it's an application of basic emotional intelligence.
I work in a job that has to deal with a lot of parents. These types are absolutely not uncommon in the United States. I have seen so, so, so many kids completely traumatized by their shitty parents or their parents' shitty religion, to say nothing of my own miserable experiences. I think a large part of it comes from, as usual with Americans, total arrogance. I think a lot of parents just assume they'll know how to raise their kids, and don't actually do any research or study into developmental psychology to try and understand good parenting habits. Being a parent isn't easy and reading literature is a great way to learn ways to be better at it. Considering how the concept of learning is under attack in the U.S., I don't think it's a stretch to say a lot of parents don't really know what they're doing, don't have any interest in doing better, and a lot of them end up being shitty because of it.
Almost like people online who can extrapolate your whole horrible personality and belief system from a comment they don't like.
Oh you're that type...
That's why I like to put my horrible personality and belief system in my comments so no extrapolation is needed. Keeps things nice and simple.
BTW I think we should eat babies and I'm a grumpy asshole.
I'm either American or Russian, depending on who I'm arguing with.
It's always entertaining.
That moment, when something on the internet triggers traumatic memories and you're tempted to tell them to the randoms, but all you want to do is to look at pink fluffy unicorns instead for 10 hours straight.
I don't mean to tell you how to live your life, but maybe if those unicorns happened to be dancing on rainbowe they'd help you calm down even more. :)
Indeed, they do. 🦄🌈
My mom and I actually talked about this. We love each other very much, but, outside of horror movies, most of our interests are different. On a car rise we went thought some things. Favorite song, movie, etc. As I've gotten older and gotten the language for it, I've explained what overwhelms me and when I need to be alone and our relationship has gotten way better. We actually had a fight last week and it was pretty... Normal. I had said something snippy, and told her soon after I didn't even feel that way because I was upset and was snapping at her, which is why I wasn't ready to talk to her. She actually let me cool off and we spoke later, explained ourselves, and made plans for if the situation happens again.
My mom has put a lot of work into understanding me and giving me the space to make mistakes. I learned a lot of her quirks and preferences through trial and error as a kid, but she had to do that with me as an tight lipped adult. It's not 100%, there are still things I prefer to discuss with someone else, but the work as really been paying off for us.
However, this only works with certain parents. 👀
"You'll get bored of this thing in a week and then it'll just go unused."
"No I won't, gosh mom, this is not a phase"
*the exact thing they said would happen did indeed happen
Except Pokemon. That just became a cult.
Basically my upbringing in a nutshell. Had a parent gaslight me on my own gender identity since early on in my childhood and even made assumptions on my own bodily needs (overfeeding when I’m complaining that I’m stuffed, while bringing out more food for me to eat. Also not believing that I have to go to the bathroom as often as I asked, leading to accidents that I’ve been punished over).
And then they wonder why I barely talk
I wish my 5 y.o. went to the bathroom more often 😅 She likes to play and ends up having an accident every few days....
Eh, I get it. But our parents (those of us who where lucky enough to have ones who were trying and loving), they did know us better then we thought.
Better than we know ourselves? Probably not. Of course at what age that becomes true is different for each kid and parent.
That last one feels to real