Your upbringing and its effects

[Khendra]

As I'm about to enter the latter half of my thirties (36 next month!), I've done lots of thinking on how my upbringing affected me. In my earlier thirties, I was prone to nostalgia over my young childhood (which was very happy), but now I think I can view it with greater objectivity and perspective.

I especially liked my younger years because it was a free, joyful time for me and my family. We did home videos that we put on VCR tapes (this was the early 1990s lol). We were into sports and lots of imaginative stuff. I had a big Ninja Turtle collection I loved to play with, and I drew lots of comic strips. My older brother and I played football outside. I was a very exuberant, creative tomboy, and my family never made me feel guilty about that.

But when I got older, my parents started to get weird theologically. I didn't know better at the time, I thought they were right, but looking back, this caused a lot of problems. They got into faith healings and end times hysteria. Trinity Broadcasting was on the TV constantly, my dad predicted the end of the world would be 2008, and my older brother (in his mid teens by this point) thought he had to hurry up and get married. He ended up juggling several Internet girlfriends from out-of-state in 1996 and 1997, and he kept taking the family car to drive and see them. One ended up rejecting him in 1997, and he committed suicide over it.

My own teenage years were driven by introspection and social avoidance. I still occasionally drifted into the naive, oblivious idealism my dad was especially prone to, but I also had a very ruminating side, which I got more from my mother. College was good for me and helped me socially somewhat, and I did very well academically, but I struggled a lot with faith during this time, along with hormones (I finally met my beloved in 2004 -- thankfully a good match, not like the tragic end my older brother met with when he was trying to find someone).

In my adult years, it's been a long process of trying to learn maturity, learning that I had a very unusual upbringing, and trying to put all of that in some kind of constructive context. My parents were loving and well meaning, but ultimately naive and delusional about a number of matters, and they didn't have understanding or boundaries when it came to bringing adolescents into adulthood. We weren't given chores, responsibility, moral teaching, etc. I asked my parents about such things, including before my mom passed away in 2018, and their answers revealed their indulgent parenting style: " we wanted to be your buddy," "you weren't interested in chores so we didn't give you any," "we just wanted to be loving and not controlling, " "I guess it wasn't in us to teach morals," "I guess we got carried away with end times teachings," etc.

As a result of all this, I have a hard time fitting into any social group. The strict moralism of conservative Christianity is still foreign to me, and now that my dad is older, he can't really grasp just how weird he and mom raised me. He thinks everyone should be a free individual, celebrate their uniqueness, be light hearted and not worry about hell because it's not eternal anyway (in his view) and just enjoy life. His life motto is "ignorance is bliss and I'm a pretty happy guy." He's unable to see the consequences and problems of this mindset. But now that I'm older, I know I don't want to raise children with that kind of approach. Life also has many problems, and perpetually cheerful, delusional thinking is not the way to handle them.

 

[Rae Ray]

Hoping everything goes well for You Khendra. Have a Happy next month Birthday !

 

[Stardust Parade]

Hey good to see you! It’s been a while. I was wondering how you were doing.

 

[Ella Spell]

First, my condolences about your brother. What a tragic story all around. I'm so sorry that your family had to endure such unimaginable loss.

I think a lot of parents do a disservice to their children by raising them without chores or responsibilities. My mother was like that. She didn't teach me anything stereotypically "female" because she was a perfectionist and I wasn't a model daughter. She was embarrassed by me being asocial and rather male-brained, if such a thing exists. She assumed I wasn't interested in cooking or cleaning or doing chores, and that I wouldn't do them to her standard, so she didn't expect me to help at all. Even if I wasn't interested, I needed to learn. A person needs those skills to become an adult regardless of their gender.

Likewise, I didn't get to learn or do any of the "boy" stuff because I was a girl. My dad and brother and grandfathers didn't think it was right for me to fix cars or do the house repairs that they worked on. I ended up not having chores at all. Again, this was a disservice. I look at all the skills my brother learned about car maintenance or home repairs and wonder why I wasn't taught.

It was a tough learning curve but I left home for Uni and never went back. I had to learn all of those skills on my own at an older age than most people. Now I own my own home and I'm self-sufficient, but I wish I had learned with guidance and memories from my parents.

Regarding religion, my mother taught Sunday School and was active in church but she didn't expect me to go with her. Again I suppose I was given freedom in that regard. I grew up with curiosity about religion whereas most people are forced into it, and then rebel.

 

[Au Naturel]

My childhood, particularly after my sister left home, was catastrophic. A different person could have shrugged it all off. Some of the children my parents fostered (before I was born) actually thought it wasn't at all bad.

It took a long time (several decades) before I realized that my upbringing did not make my problems. "Bad parents" did not make me an Aspie. But it was ignorance and unawareness that caused them to not understand and to handle it badly. There was no malice in it though at the time I would have called my mother a certified monster and blamed her for everything.

If I had had lots of friends at school all the drama at home would have washed off like the proverbial water off the duck. But given the traits of Asperger's and the sorts of things that gave social value to a person, it was inevitable that I'd be the omega dog in a thouand dog pack. Conversely, a comfortable home life would have made school easier to deal with.

You cannot blame parents for being the people their culture created. There is nothing to be gained and much to be lost in wailing over a miserable childhood. The past is dead and cannot be changed. One needs to let go of it. Live in the present and look to a future that hasn't yet been born.

 

[Au Naturel]

"being asocial and rather male-brained, if such a thing exists"

Actually... yeah. That's a thing. I have read in scientific papers that women with Asperger's tend to think in more "masculine" terms. Sometimes they are considered tomboys - and that can be a good thing. Others wonder if they are lesbian or even transgendered because people think they "act like boys." That is a needless and confusing thing.

There is a different set of traits in the condition for women than for men.

My daughter learned to drive a stick, enjoys archery, and passed a combat pistol course ahead of most of the guys in it. She gets her hands dirty and does her own automobile maintenance. Her car has 335,000 miles on it and still runs fine. But no, she's not gay and she's not transgender and not really a tomboy. She even tells me she's got the Aspie gene.

 

[Gracey]

sorry to learn about your brother. I imagine that was a tough time for you.

It took me leaving home (17) to 'open my eyes'

If nothing else @Khendra, your experiences will help shape your children's future.

You get to make the decisions about how you'd like to nurture, support and encourage based on what you don't want.
The past experiences you don't agree with.

The beauty of it all is, you're now in the fortunate position to change it up.
Begin to shape your own ideas about the kind of parent you'd like to be.

 

[Ella Spell]

I'm not Aspergers. I'm Autism Level 2. I definitely feel like a male-brain but then again I don't really believe in gender roles, so I don't like to use the term.

I was never able to mask or act like an NT girl / woman. I don't even seem to have much in common with women who have Aspergers. I met all the standard descriptors for ASD without having a special set of criteria in relation to my gender.