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ASD child and adoption?

mylife2023

Active Member
This may be a strange question, but what would possibly be the thinking behind a child not wanting anyone to know he was adopted . The child was five. Parents were probably unaware he was on the spectrum. He became upset and told them not to ever tell anyone and he was THEIR son.

Now I can understand this reaction from a child to some degree, but what about from the autistic perspective?

Thanks. Trying to put something together.
 
I'm not sure it's necessarily about autism. I had a cousin who was adopted, they told him about it when he turned 18 and he took it very poorly. "Why are you telling me these lies?" followed by a fit of rage where he punched holes in the walls of nearly every room in the house.
 
I'm adopted, but I was adopted as a much older child (I was a young teenager) after being in foster/residential care for most of my life. I was incredibly traumatized and it took me a long time to get used to my adoptive family.
But I still think of them as my family, whether I like some of them or not.

I have always been very open about being adopted and I don't see a reason not to tell people, especially because it explains why I have complex PTSD, which is something that people should know about me if they're going to be a close person in my life.

From an autistic perspective, I do understand being very attached to your adoptive family and wanting people (and yourself) to feel like they are your "real" family. Sometimes I ignore the fact that my parents are not my biological parents, because they are still my parents. I personally wouldn't get defensive about it if I was asked, but I don't want my parents to feel like I don't think of them as my real parents.
I guess I can see it from the perspective of not wanting your parents to feel like they are not your "real" parents, and not wanting them to feel like imposters or something. I do feel bad for my parents when people point out that they are not my biological parents, and people often point out that we are not the same ethnicity which is really annoying and irrelevant. Biological or not, they are family.
Hope that made sense. Thought you might like to hear this from someone who is actually adopted.
 
I was also adopted at age 5, but for me I was taken away by the state at 18months old, so to me the family that adopted me is my family.

A nice thing was my godfather was also adopted, although he wasn't on the spectrum as far as I know.

To me I have had my father be overly controlling, and shows narcissistic tendencies, and my adopted mother when I turned 21 said to me "you ruined the last twenty years of my life," so I am very traumatized, and also suffer from PTSD linked to trusting others.

I guess the only real way of knowing exactly why he feels as he does, is to ask him, I get he is 5 so that's hard to do.
 

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