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Refrigerator Mother

Autistic kids have autistic parents, what a surprise lol.

EDIT : Well that was too short, in my opinion it make sence that autistic kids may have one or two parents who struggle to share and communicate their emotions since they might be autistic aswell.

This is the same question as " what came first, the chicken or the egg?"

And you can have the very same question about the age of birth and other stuff, does something we associate with autism is a cause or just a symptom?

In my family, I have a lots of regrigirators, and the human ones.
 
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@GadAbout

Understand what you bring. But l give people freedom to use this as a mini session to brainstorm the connection between the two items of neglect and spectrum issues. Not saying that the theory is 100 % correct, just asking people is their need to not socialize somehow intimately and intricately wrapped in lack of socialization skills involving parents.

I had to truly stop and think is the world a threatening place in my reptilian surival mind because of how l dealt with my parents and where does being on the spectrum sit in all this? The way we see ourselves is how we perceive our parents see us, and l was totally in that think mode until 25.
 
I think the original theory was drawing a trend. We will find isolated scenarios on both sides of the fence.

My mom is NSD, so there's been little affection, and was mostly used for manipulation. Fridge mom? Sure, but we know more now. Refrigerator mother was probably just an outside view on a trend, without the ability to troubleshoot and diagnose each of these individuals following the trend.
 
So then extreme neglect that hinders socialization would increase our withdrawal of social interaction and increase depression in some of us and exacerbate autism symptoms in childhood continuing into adulthood.
 
Also would like to point out that several countries still follow this theory, France, Scotland, South Korea and some parts of Europe.
 
My grandparents lived through two world wars. The ramifications from occurrences such as being gassed then wounded in france (my grandfather), growing up during the blitz/bombings (my grandmother), being extremely poor and working in factories, farm fields, bobbin mills, from childhood (my other grandparents) created the not unusual problems of alcoholism, psychological disorders, and depression and anxiety, that manifested later in life. The question is, did their histories contribute to the anxieties and autism of my own two generations later?

Both of my parents had neglectful and poor upbringings and a great deal of freedom, they would have not considered them unusual. They lived as children through the latter part of the depression and a world war. And had parents who lived through their own problematic childhoods who raised them. They transferred their ability to enjoy their lives to their children, their desire to do their best produced me, so their is no finger pointing involved today. Genetically I inherited autism from my parents, and I also inherited their intelligence, their bravery, my mother's beautiful hair, my father's athleticism and their robust good health. So, it's been a good life, and autism is a part of it.

That was a really nice thing to read. Nice enough to make me envious.
 
I was also a very social kid until puberty struck.

ME TOO, but I think that might be the first time I've seen someone else say exactly that. I've always wondered if it was caused by events coincidentally surrounding puberty, if it was the puberty itself, or if it was both. From what you're saying, it sounds like it could have been just puberty itself!
 
ME TOO, but I think that might be the first time I've seen someone else say exactly that. I've always wondered if it was caused by events coincidentally surrounding puberty, if it was the puberty itself, or if it was both. From what you're saying, it sounds like it could have been just puberty itself!
ME THREE, puberty is when my problems showed up. I think it might be related to the synaptic pruning that happens during puberty. Maybe NTs can handle that better than those with ASD... or maybe the synaptic pruning happens differently in ASD.

Synaptic pruning - Wikipedia

Study Finds That Brains With Autism Fail to Trim Synapses as They Develop
 
That
ME TOO, but I think that might be the first time I've seen someone else say exactly that. I've always wondered if it was caused by events coincidentally surrounding puberty, if it was the puberty itself, or if it was both. From what you're saying, it sounds like it could have been just puberty itself!

That reminded me of innocent stories in a abandoned house with other kids. lol Puberty related now that l think about it? l have no idea.
 
Father slightly narcissistic and on and off alcoholic, a mother with compromised mental health and possibly autistic. The mix gave me absent and loud parents that hated each other's guts and couldn't communicate properly, so some degree of disfunction I suppose in the emotional range. Although if you ask what was first, the disfunction or condition, then the answer would be... 'me'? My parents always would say how different I was to my brother (NT), how quiet and busy with my own things, in my own little world. Easy enough to forget I existed, it seems.

They like to say stories about how my brother would wake up in the middle of the night and cry 'bloody murder' when he was little and how in comparison they would find me in the late morning in my bed or playpen quietly playing with my own legs, or later with lego, or puzzles, or even scratching wallpaper off. So, I suppose, in a way, I am myself to blame, heh. On the other hand, it allowed me to avoid some nasty stuff when the house would get loud.

I wouldn't agree with the theory, though. My childhood may have given me some additional challenges in the mental health department, but I wouldn't say autism was one of them. Could moderate childhood neglect even bring this kind of neurological changes and so early in the child's development?

My mother smoked during pregnancy from what I know - that may have influenced things, I suppose, but the neglect, not really. If neglect really caused such changes, then there would be many more autistics in the world.

Ha. This topic always makes me feel rather melancholic.
 
ME TOO, but I think that might be the first time I've seen someone else say exactly that. I've always wondered if it was caused by events coincidentally surrounding puberty, if it was the puberty itself, or if it was both. From what you're saying, it sounds like it could have been just puberty itself!
For me I think it was. When I was 14 all my friends changed so much in their behavior while my interests remained pretty much the same and it seemed like I was all of a sudden surrounded by strangers communicating in a different language. They were all of a sudden obsessed with sex and fashion and cliques and I didn’t share those obsessions. I just wore comfy clothes and wasn’t too interested in sex, preferring listening to music in my room and reading books. I became pretty depressed and isolated.
Around age 16 I did become interested in sex but I was never fashionable or part of a clique. I did make some outcast friends so I wasn’t alone anymore. And the younger kids at school thought I was mysterious and cool, so that was a small win.
 
So far the two autistic people l know have dysfunctional parents.

If it was all due to the parents, then you wouldn't ever see a mix of autistic and non-autistic children in a family.

My guess is that when/if an autistic child responds negatively to (or doesn't respond to) physical affection or other traditional parent-child interactions, the the parents pull back and (hopefully) look for other ways to interact. An outside observer, such as a psychologist or social worker, could view the parents as being "cold".

For my part, my siblings picked up on normal social interactions, but I had to have things explained to me in terms of specific rules for specific situations.
 
Psychologists Once Blamed ‘Refrigerator Moms’ For Their Kids’ Autism

Now discredited, the theory painted mothers of kids with autism spectrum disorders as neglectful and cold.... Between the 1940s and 1960s, mothers of children with autism were dubbed “refrigerator mothers” and characterized as cold, neglectful, and even abusive.

The now discredited theory blamed mothers for “causing” their children’s autism—and stigmatized an entire generation of women struggling to understand and care for children with autism spectrum disorders.

The theory has its roots in statements by Leo Kanner, the first psychiatrist to clearly define autism. In a 1943paper—the first to define the condition—Kanner described the parents of 11 children with what he called “autistic disturbances of affective contact.” He called them intelligent but obsessive, often documenting their child’s every move in an attempt to diagnose and control their condition, and wrote that “in the whole group, there are very few really warmhearted fathers and mothers.”
Kanner kept working with children with autism, and three years later he observed that “most of the patients were exposed from the beginning to parental coldness, obsessiveness, and a mechanical type of attention to material needs only…They were kept neatly in refrigerators which did not defrost.”

At the time, Freudian psychology dominated the medical and cultural landscape, and parents (especially the mother) were thought to be capable of causing and fostering a variety of mental and neurological conditions in their children. Bruno Bettelheim, a psychology professor at the University of Chicago, believed in the Freudian model and felt that Kanner’s work strongly suggested that mothers caused autism in their children.

A Holocaust survivor who spent time in Dachau and Buchenwald, Bettelheim was director of the Sonia Shankman Orthogenic School for Disturbed Children, a residential facility that treated children who were considered emotionally disturbed. During the 1950s and 1960s, Bettelheim made a name for himself as an autism specialist.

He used his platform to push the “refrigerator mother theory,” theorizing that the condition was primarily caused by neglect. In his view, pathologically aloof parents could trigger autism in their children when they responded to perceived withdrawals of their young children by withholding affection, causing a chain reaction that resulted in a psychological disorder.
To a modern reader, the parents’ behavior may have had a variety of causes. Perhaps the parents were so overwhelmed by caring for a child with autism that they seemed preoccupied to an outside viewer. Perhaps they didn’t express affection to their children in ways that made sense to Kanner and Bettelheim. Or perhaps they themselves were on the autism spectrum.

Bettelheim didn’t conduct medical studies to test his theories, but he did write about them at length. In 1967, he published a popular book called The Empty Fortress that compared life with “refrigerator mothers” to growing up in a concentration camp. Bettelheim’s personal experiences during the Holocaust and prominence in the media gave him a supposed authority that was hard to refute.

“It is enough that the infant be convinced that his life is run by insensitive, irrational powers who have complete control over his life and death,”wrote Bettelheim. “Infantile autism is a state of mind that develops in reaction to feeling oneself in an extreme situation, entirely without hope.”

As a result of Bettelheim’s work, mothers found themselves under the microscope when they sought help for their children. Many blamed themselves for “causing” their children’s conditions. Some mothers protested their portrayal as cold and abusive, but due to the prominence of the theory, “Guilt, shame, and pain accompanied the already challenging day to day experience for parents trying to raise a child with a significant disability,”write autism experts Raphael Bernier and Jennifer Gerdts.

Eventually, researchers began to realize that the condition is rooted in biology, not parenting, and that its behaviors fall along a spectrum. In the late 1960s, as the refrigerator mother theory gained traction, Kanner began to take a softer view of the parents he had once seen as “cold.” In a 1969 speech, hetold a group of caretakers that “I officially acquit you people as parents.”

https://www.history.com/news/autism-theory-refrigerator-mother
 
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My parents were neglectful and indifferent, but this definitely didn’t cause my autism. It did make it a lot worse, though, since I had pretty much no support at home and had to weather the stress and fear I dealt with every day alone. And it led to autistic burnouts (the first when I was 16), life-long problems with depression, and other symptoms of Childhood Emotional Neglect. Having loving, supportive parents is critical for autistic people. It makes me sad, reading the stories on this thread.
 
So then extreme neglect that hinders socialization would increase our withdrawal of social interaction and increase depression in some of us and exacerbate autism symptoms in childhood continuing into adulthood.

My guess is it adds some level of co-morbid personality disorders to the autism, like I'm a little bipolar or something too.
 
@Mia

Thanks Mia. Thanks for adding this. Some countries do subscribe to this theory, as l stated earlier, France, Ireland, South Korea and some parts of Europe. It defintely fell out of disfavor also because criticizing mothers isn't good or seen morally incorrect.

I still am interested if emotionally negligent parents contribute to exacerbate autism and depression in childhood and ongoing into adulthood. I just used fridge mom to get the ball rolling for discussion and to see if forum peeps found other conections not apparent to me.
 
I still am interested if emotionally negligent parents contribute to exacerbate autism and depression in childhood and ongoing into adulthood. I just used fridge mom to get the ball rolling for discussion and to see if forum peeps found other conections not apparent to me.

I think neglect and abuse in childhood, contribute significantly to other co-occurring disorders, that often exacerbate conditions that occur alongside autism. Difficulties such as low self-esteem, perfectionism, anxiety. Self-soothing behaviors; Drug and alcohol abuse, gambling, over and under-eating to name a few.
 
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My guess is it adds some level of co-morbid personality disorders to the autism, like I'm a little bipolar or something too.
Not to nitpick, but bipolar disorder isn’t a personality disorder and is mostly caused by genetic factors, brain chemical imbalances and hormonal imbalances, although abuse and trauma can play a role in triggering it.
 

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