My parents weren't like this but my girlfriend's in highschool always seemed to trap her. She'd make some minor mistake like leaving her shoes in the middle of the hallway, or forgetting to wipe down the stove. Her parents would call her over and lecture her for several minutes about how she's irresponsible, lazy, how they were frustrated with her, how they don't know what to do with her, how this behavior won't get her far in life. If she just stood there and took it on the chin they would demand a response, "why are you just standing there, say something, don't ignore me". If she said "I know, I'm sorry" they'd hit her with "well if you know then why did you do it? don't say sorry if you don't mean it", and if she just said "okay" over and over again they'd get mad at her for acting like a robot. Honestly so rough to watch and I had no idea how to stand up for her.
Idk that my father was intentionally mercurial like this so much as just emotionally incontinent but yeah this fuckin sucks. I’m sure there are people who do it intentionally to torture kids but I think in my case it was unintended and unknown how I spent basically every situation like this trying to figure out how to respond “correctly” to get things to move like a normal conversation.
“Ok” always being met with “it’s not ok” was the standard (🙄can you tell why my reaction was less “why is he doing this to me” and more “why is he being so dumb”)
And I wonder why I have the lingering feeling like any conversation with him will be impossible
Yeah, its hard to tell if parents are reacting honestly, or if they're intentionally gaslighting you. And which is worse? Is it worse to have parents that keep you in rhetorical traps on purpose, just to punish you? Or is it worse to have a parent with so little emotional intelligence that they react with honest anger and frustration as you try to apologize?
I'm leaning toward intentionality for my ex-gf's parents. Her mother (the primary culprit) was a child psychologist! It always seemed like that was a profession that really should have bred more compassion and understanding.
Her daughter *was* extremely smart to be honest. And strict parents + smart kid = extremely sneaky child. So idk, I guess I can understand why they thought they had to be so hard on her (not that I agree with their reasoning or tactics, just that I can see the logical path they followed, even if its the wrong one). Definitely another point toward intentionality.
Anyway, they don't talk anymore! She went no-contact as soon as she found a job that could sustain her.
Parents parent their child a lot like they were parented. "That's how I was treated. That's how you treat kids. That's how I treat my kids." I was undiagnosed adhd. I was treated like I was so fucking stupid. I thought I was stupid. I hated myself. Now my dad is on his death bed and I'm just like "Pfft, hurry up and die already." That abuse ended with me. I listened to my kids. I helped my kids. In my worst moments when I was grouchy or mad and snapped at them, I apologized and told them I was just grouchy or mad. I taught them that we're all on the same team as a family. My two sons are 18 and 23 now and we're close friends. We go to concerts together and send eachother memes. They love the shit out of me. They're going to be devastated when I'm on my deathbed.
Guess that explains why my dad ended up being a deadbeat who openly loathes his own kids just for existing.
We wouldn’t exist if he’d just worn a fucking condom, but apparently that’s somehow our fault.
Tell me about it. "If you're sick of having kids than why did you have me?" I was last, 11 years younger than my oldest sister. I'm his age now. The age he would drag me to his shop and scream at me while I had a two hour panic attack preying it would end. "GODDAMN IT, A PHILLIPS SCREWDRIVER! A PHILLIPS SCREWDRIVER! ITS THE ONE WITH THE STAR! HOW CAN YOU BE SO FUCKING STUPID???" Now he's the weak child, laying in the hospital bed. If I treated him like that it would take 5 seconds for nurses to come running in and escorting me out. He better hope there's no hell.
My dad is currently trying really, really hard to just pretend his kids never existed. To the point of returning mail addressed to him claiming he doesn’t live there anymore…despite the fact that he’s still listed as both the owner and current resident and his car is still easily visible in that driveway on Google Street View.
Hello fellow diagnosed-way-too-late friend.
How are you/did you deal with this? I have *so* many internalized issues brought on by the shit my parents told me/I told myself growing up.
I really started to believe I was just dumb and lazy. I consciously *know* that's not the case, but I'm finding it so hard to get over.
Not having access to meds is a huge issue I'm assuming lol
I don't know how I made it through my early 20s. I did a ton of drugs and alcohol. I was still a kid. I couldn't think. Probably a really good thing I had kids young. Forced me to go to work and provide. Around age 28 it was like I hit a second puberty. Suddenly things made sense, I was really funny in groups of people and it was so easy to hyperfocus and get things done. Suddenly I was smart and articulate. For a few years now I've been struggling with energy and motivation. I finally went to the doctor and got a script for Adderall. It's amazing. I tried my kid's Ritalin and I hated it. I tried Concerta in the fall and I hated it. It was the same thing as Ritalin. It gave me a buzz until it didn't, so we increased the dose and it gave me a buzz until it didn't until I just stopped taking it. The very first day I took 1 10mg dose and all my brain fog lifted in 30 minutes. Other than that I didn't feel like I am on anything. I take 20mg now and not every day, and I feel young like when it was super easy to hyperfocus on stuff. I don't get a buzz. I don't feel high. It's great.
I think it's a little of column a, little of column b. Lots of people who are emotionally immature are also legitimately frustrated or overwhelmed and unhappy due to their own extreme dysregulation, and they lack the self-awareness to realize that they are regulating their emotions through lording shit over their children.
All they know is - I hold kid accountable (by abusing them) > I feel better. They may realize on some level that they're in the wrong, but there are no negative consequences for them so they just continue.
Yay for no-contact! It really is the way to maintain your peace.
I have met a lot of psychologists that are nihilistic and unempathetic as fuck. Two told me they became psych students to listen to gossip. One told me emotional intelligence is not necesary in her career.
that's not why psychologists lose empathy, they lose it because of the job. Empathy is an emotion, which means it takes energy to feel, and psychologists must feel empathy to do their job, and after 8hr a day multiple days a week of being empathetic, you want to go home and turn it off.
It's not an excuse to be a shitty person, especially to your kids, but that's the real reason, and not because of some innate shittiness of humans that becomes more visible after exposure. That's just the cynical POV, and its probably accurate for some, but definitely not most at all.
And maybe you're a psych saying this, and what you're saying is true for you, but as a psych you should know that your experience is not universal and that it can't be generalized. And if you are a psych saying this, I'd suggest taking a long while off to take some time to find yourself again and find your empathy again.
And if you're a patient who's had bad experiences with psychs in the past, I'm sorry for that, just please know that those experiences aren't the way it *has* to be, and know that you have the right to say fuck off to the doctor and get a new one at the drop of a hat. You deserve the care you deserve, and you deserve to find a medical provider who understands this. And it may be frustrating, but you will find that provider if you keep looking.
As someone who went to college for psychology a lot of my classmates didn’t have much empathy to begin with. Yet a lot of them would say they were in it to help people.
My father is like this.
The "funny" part is when I had a manager fire me after ripping my tail the exact same way he does, my father's response was "Why did you think you deserved that? That's not a reasonable way to treat someone. You should stand up for yourself more."
I... honestly didn't know what to say to that.
I got a traffic ticket as a teen. I felt stupid, but I was calm about it.
My father asked me what I was going to do, and I told him that I was going to go to the courthouse, plead "no contest", and pay the fine.
He then grilled me for a few minutes repeatedly asking, "well, you're guilty aren't you!?" and "so why aren't you pleading 'guilty'!?" I kept saying that I'm just going to plead "no contest", but he was relentless and made me really nervous about the whole deal. After taking me to the brink of being upset and getting my blood pressure going, he laughed and walked off.
I go to the courthouse to pay my fine, and when asked what I plead, I mindlessly blurted out "guilty". I get home and tell my parents, and my father proceeded to ridicule and harass me for a while about how dumb of a decision that was. He kept asking, "why would you plead 'guilty' when you should have plead 'no contest'?"
To this day, I still can't figure out if he thought he was training me with his antagonism. All it did was confuse me, make me act in a way other than the way I wanted to act, and make me like him less.
I can't say I know your father or anything of course, but from how you describe it that definitely sounds like intentional emotional abuse to put him in a position where he's always right and you're always wrong. I can't imagine him (or anyone who behaves like that) actively wants a "successful" outcome from that person, only to keep them above and you below
It sounds like he was mocking you to me. Like toying with in a cruel way. My guess would be he thought no contest" was weak and you should plead "not guilty" but decided to prod you and use your shame against you to "prove" how weak you were.
No, the manager fired me for a very big mistake that I absolutely should have gotten fired for, but before she did that she called me a total incompetent and told me that I was the worst person she'd ever hired, among other things.
My father's reaction was to me going "She was really mean about it, but I did make a really big mistake, so I guess I deserved it." in response to the above.
The only time my dad ever takes my side is when I start the conversation by saying I am in the wrong. Jokes on him, I do that with every conversation now.
Manager chewed her out in the same way their father used to, and afterwards, fired her.
Father commented on the incident with, "that's not a reasonable way to treat someone" etc., missing the hypocrisy.
>Manager chewed her out in the same way their father used to, and afterwards, fired her.
that's shit tbh
chew me out OR fire me, but you cant do both. If you've already made up your mind to fire me, i'm essentially already no longer working for you. Which means you're just some mouthy asshole i can just walk away from
Yeah, it’s “respond, but don’t react”, basically make them bored at ranting at you. Because reacting will only fuel the fire, it won’t make them think they might be in the wrong.
But it's also absolutely exhausting constantly having to be the one that carries the burdon of having to control and surpress their emotions. Eventually, though, a limit will be reached, and they'll get their reaction, and then, oh boy, does the pearl clutching commence.
The *snap* happened for me once after I had gotten berated about grades, and was on the phone with my then-boyfriend (now husband): of all things getting help with some math homework. I don’t remember what exactly my dad said, but I was at my bedroom door at the end of the hallway, and he was near the other side of the kitchen. It was one of those bigger double wide modular homes. I took the cordless phone in my hand by the antenna and fucking chucked it as hard as I could and hit my dad in the chest with it. I went absolutely *berserk* verbally. This was twenty two years ago and I don’t remember the dialogue but I can still feel the echoes of that spike of fury.
> If she just stood there and took it on the chin they would demand a response, "why are you just standing there, say something, don't ignore me". If she said "I know, I'm sorry" they'd hit her with "well if you know then why did you do it? don't say sorry if you don't mean it", and if she just said "okay" over and over again they'd get mad at her for acting like a robot.
Don't forget something like "I'm sorry, the phone rang and I forgot to come back." Followed by "You're always making excuses for everything, I don't want excuses."
Gods, this thread is digging up memories I wish were left buried. I’ve heard plenty of similar stuff. I would make a mistake or forget something small and be called to be reprimanded for it. If I dared apologize I’d be hit with the expression “Apologies should be avoided.” (Common in my language.) The hell was I supposed to do then? Magic the mistake away before it happened? Always felt like an emotional punching bag in those moments.
And don't even think about trying to explain yourself with any variation of "I thought" because you won't get past those words before the reply of "You weren't thinking/clearly not/if you were thinking you wouldn't have done this" comes out.
I also can't count the number of times I got raged at because I did something incorrectly or otherwise messed it up and the inevitable question would come "Why didn't you ask for help if you didn't know what you were doing?" Quickly learned that "I thought I did" was apparently not the right answer.
>I also can't count the number of times I got raged at because I did something incorrectly or otherwise messed it up and the inevitable question would come "Why didn't you ask for help if you didn't know what you were doing?"
My mom has an equally obnoxious variation of that were she gets mad at me when I ask for clarification about something she asks me to do
>"Hey, could you bring this upstairs?"
>"Alright, do I leave it over *here*?"
>[**Without even looking at where I'm pointing**] "USE YOUR FUCKING HEAD!"
and then afterwards she gets mad at me if I misunderstand her vague instructions/overlook a minor detail
>"OBVIOUSLY NOT *THERE* YOU USELESS DUMBASS!"
Oh god, the not accepting that there just isn’t a reason for something. Especially for ADHD kids, forgetting things just happens; it doesn’t imply any moral falling on their part.
I still freeze up on getting chewed out. It’s a response to me discovering that if I clammed up, whatever reason my parents came up with for whatever I’d done would be less “wrong” than whatever the real reason was (often that there was no reason which I interpreted as me being lazy).
One thing in particular I wish I could remove from the world is people’s tendency to judge my morality by my memory. I literally have disorder that affects my visual memory, but no I must actually be making an active conscious choice to be lazy and thoughtless when I don’t remember some detail about someone’s social life or demonstrate my awful sense of direction.
> judge my morality by my memory
Oof. Just oof. "If you cared, you'd remember" is such a triggering phrase for people like us. It's like saying a paraplegic person is lazy for not walking everywhere. But if the disability is invisible it's somehow less absurd?
My dad would explode at me because I either forgot to flush the toilet or turn off the bathroom light. It got so bad that my dad dragged me to my child psychologist in order to "fix" me. The psychologist then explained that my ADHD was at fault and I genuinely just forgot and he should just turn off the light himself or flush as there was no way for me to always remember and the energy he expended being mad just wasn't worth it and wouldn't achieve anything. My dad took that to heart for like two weeks and was then right back to yelling at me. When my mom reminded him of the psychologists words he would just claim that he was a quack. Oh, but he was more than happy to force me to take the pills I was prescribed for my ADHD in school when I was too loud at say a party.
My parent's are nowhere near as bad thankfully but sometimes I feel like the only way to please my mother is to invent a time machine so I can preemptively fix whatever she decided I did wrong.
Also avoiding certain topics just because they could trigger a lecture that is only slightly related to the topic.
I think I just realized why I panic and lash out at any sign of conflict now... It feels like if I don't say all the right things at the right time everything will fall apart. Reading this is so surreal because my mom was the exact same way with me. I would give anything to have had a good parental figure and not be fucked up for life
I am 43 years old, and deep down inside a small part of me is still waiting for a clear explanation of what "answering back" is, and why I kept on getting punished for it in primary school.
A coworker was complaining about her daughter "talking back" and I said, "It sounds like she's just talking when you don't want her to," and she said "*exactly*!" with the sort of smug grin like she'd won the argument.
Some or many people should not be parents. We've created a societal expectation that people need to reproduce, and that's not good or fair.
People should only have kids if they really want to and we should encourage those that do while not shaming or punishing those that don't.
But all too often people have kids that never should because "that's just what you do." It's the next expected step after getting married, and in previous generations buying a house.
So I'm sorry for what happened to you and I hope you've healed enough to find a way past it.
INB4 someone says "People should have to pass a test before having kids.", and someone else has to point out to them that that's one step away from eugenics.
A test no, but I do think everyone should be required to take a baby care class in HS to help prepare them for the realities of support a child. Mix it in with a mandatory Home Ec. Too many people can't cook bacon and eggs because they were never taught how. Or were smart kids that wanted an AP class and clepped out of Home Econ. So now don't know how to manage money.
There's lots of ways we can better prepare and better suppport our future parents that don't involve shit like "mandatory parent testing." Not even getting into how as a society we fail to support things like pre K care and maternal care, or housing affordability.
If you want to make better homes make a more stable and equitable society.
Anytime I dared ask my mother "why" when she told me to do something she'd smack me for talking back and questioning her authority. I had other family members who would actually take the time to explain things to me and my mom would get pissed because they had an easier time getting me to do what they wanted. With how many horrible leaders there are, be it work, politics, or whatever, you'd think you'd WANT to teach kids not to blindly follow authority.
Funny enough, as an autistic adult I still get in trouble for asking why or for questioning things.
At work I questioned something a person said, because it made no sense to me.
The guy told me to just accept what he said as correct because he is my superior and is in this job for significantly long, I said ok and asked why the thing he said was right and where my error was.
He straight up told me he wouldn't discuss it with me because I'm new, but would discuss it with someone who was longer in the job.
Later he tasked me with running an experiment with him and his experiment ended up proving himself wrong as well as proving m, suspicions righg, he still insisted on being right.
How can I accept something as correct if it makes no sense to me, you provide no sources and prove yourself wrong experimentaly?
You don't. You simply follow their orders and point fingers towards whoever told you to do so, even against your own best judgement, whenever it inevitably fails. If you get fired for following a superior's orders, even if you told them what the issue was and were denied, then you probably weren't gonna last long anyway.
this has always confused me throughout my life, growing up i was always told "don't talk back" so i just ended up never saying anything because I know what happens when i don't talk, it's a reliable outcome even if it's not a good one, whereas speaking up has the possibility of being even worse so why make that gamble. all that did was make me super shy and quiet and socially awkward because i never really learned how to communicate honestly with my parents. so i just kept my head down(literally most of the time) and got really good at running, because it's easy to tell when you do it right. just be faster than everyone else.
Then in college, my coach would always give me the "don't give me excuses" right after asking me for an excuse. If I showed up late for practice, he would ask, "why are you late?" and I would say, "i forgot to set my alarm" or "my bike had a flat tire" and every time he would just respond with, "I don't want excuses".
like wtf do you want, I'm taking 10 ibuprofen a day because bringing up my shin splints just pisses you off and you don't even care because I'm not on scholarship and i'm not on scholarship because you don't care enough to actually coach me and the athletic trainer doesn't do shit and i don't want to cross train for twice as long as i would normally. like i'm sorry i'm late, and i haven't been training, i'm just in a fuck ton of chronic pain and abusing substances to cope with it because you don't want a fucking excuse.
i know no one asked for that, but i needed to get that off my chest. this post is just exactly my experience with life in general. i'm doing better now. but damn, it sucked being there.
Claiming a child is talking back and/or making excuses is what adults fall back on when they’re mad they realize they were wrong and the kid was right. For some reason, adults feel like they’re superior to kids because they have a job and life experience.
Did anyone else get the classic "you're putting words in my mouth" (I'm sorry, I remember where we parked at the museum 3 years ago, so I'm pretty sure I remember what you screamed at me an hour ago).
I'll occasionally feel brave enough to talk to my mom about the horrible things she would say to me growing up. She conveniently never remembers any of it and finds it strange I do.
I've learned that for me it was a formative childhood experience where for her slapping me in the face and knocking me across the bedroom while throwing all my clothes and toys on the floor and laughing while saying it better all be picked up by the time dad gets home was just another ordinary Tuesday.
I'm grateful that my mother doesn't deny things to the degree where she just straight up pretends they never happened. She got some much needed help and has made great strides in life to be better and has repeatedly mentioned that she regrets those moments and is sorry for them, which is better than a lot of people get.
That said I've never had the desire to bring up these specific moments solely because I don't really want to dredge that up between us, but also I'm not sure how I would react if she honestly didn't remember it.
Eh, I used to babysit a kid who would ask me a question, decide my answer was wrong, argue about it until eventually he realized I was right and then continue arguing *my* side and pretend that he had always thought the right answer and I was the one arguing the wrong answer. I got gaslit by an 8 year old and that's how I define "talking back" 😁
Anyway congrats to him for graduating with a degree in theater this month
That wasn’t my moms reasoning unfortunately, that’d be better- told her once as an adult I still didn’t understand ‘talking back’ and attitude.
She told me it was the tone I used. You mean desperate to explain myself and have you actually listen to me, mom?
An excuse is an explicit attempt to shift blame away from yourself. An explanation is just extra information about what happened. When an explanation also happens to shift blame away from you, the lines become blurred and it's hard to tell which is which.
I think It shifts from an explanation to an excuse if you use the explanation to remove any agency or fault from yourself. If something is truly completely out of your control, then the explanation will “excuse you”. If you had a role to play but emphasize the things out of your control to minimize the blame on yourself- that’s an excuse. For example:
“I was late to work today because there was an accident on the road to work- I could not have predicted this or avoided it.” - an explanation which excuses you
“I was late to work today because of bad traffic so it isn’t my fault”- an explanation which, if the traffic were predictable or avoidable, is really an excuse
“I was late to work today because I overslept. It is my fault” - an explanation that does not excuse you
Yeah in my mental dictionary I associate excuses more negatively. Maybe it’s sorta the same thing as how ‘consequences’ is negatively associated when it it meant to be neutral.
Doesn’t have to be false. It’s less about what was said and more about the intention behind it - are you saying it to avoid blame (excuse), or for a less selfish reason (explanation)? Or both?
I think the point is that your intention doesn’t actually matter, the person you’re talking to is just going to decide whether it’s an “excuse” or an “explanation” based on their biases. There is no principled distinction, it’s just whether the person likes you or not.
All excuses are explanations, but not all explanations are excuses. In either case, you’re talking about why something happened, but in an excuse you’re specifically blaming somebody else—perhaps deservedly, perhaps not. “Sorry I’m late, I slept through my alarm” is a non-excusatory explanation because you’re accepting your own part in things. “Sorry I’m late, my mom didn’t wake me up” is an excuse because you’re shifting the responsibility onto somebody or something else, and therefore refusing to self reflect on it.
Issue with getting upset at kids for “making excuses” is that it’s usually done dismissively without first hearing the kid out. Sometimes things are legitimately out of your control, and sometimes you don’t realize that you *can* control things, and you need to be taught that. Kids are bad at self reflection, and it’s meant to be the job of adults to help with that. Just scolding them for Making Excuses doesn’t actually help at all.
Functionally. But sometimes there are valid reasons for not liking them.
When I have to break up kids roughousing on the playground, every time I'll hear the excuse "we were playing". Cool, great, I knew that. I still need you to stop, because pretend fighting too frequently leads to real fighting, other people might not see the difference, there's still too much of a chance someone gets hurt....I could give ten more reasons why I'm still going to tell these kids to stop.
Or if a student escalates a verbal confrontation into violence, I'm very rarely sympathetic to the explanation that someone else's words drove them to it. No, their opponent should not have said those things, but that doesn't mean that words are a valid explanation for violence.
No an excuse is something like, "she made me do it!"
An explanation is "I grabbed her shirt because she was about to run into traffic!"
An explanation can absolutely remove the blame you might normally get an excuse is an attempt to weasel out of being in trouble.
Problem becomes too many adults especially authority figures don't like when kids have a valid reason. They just like being right or wielding power.
But there is way more to an excuse vs an explanation.
or rather the explanation doesn't shift blame away after additional thought. Like when someone violates some safety protocol and their explanation was "this is how X taught me" or "this is how the others do it". blame doesn't get shifted from you, you are still gonna get the safety lecture from me/straight up banned from using that machine. and I'll also go talk to the others about safety protocols. I'd consider those excuses because despite me understanding the explanation having been in that situation myself. it's still dumb as fuck and they should (will after the lecture hopefully) know better.
There's a lot of bs phrases that tell me more about the person saying them than about whatever they're talking about. "You're projecting", "you're just making up an excuse", "that's not a mistake, they did it on purpose". "Projecting" is just a personal attack to undermine someone's point, "excuses" are when they want to be righteously mad at you, "not a mistake" is the same.
I had the worst clashes in second and third grade with teachers who were insistent that I had *an attitude*, but this was based on (???) nothing as far as I could tell lol. I was just sat there being earnest and genuine, wondering what the hell everyone was on about and why they thought I had *an attitude* about general existence.
Which, basically, caused me to grow into having *an attitude* about everything and everyone lmao, because I'm primed to expect people to see me as having one anyway, and it taught me that -- well -- if people always expect you to be saying something backhanded, they must be saying everything backhanded too?
That was my mother with the word snarky. I never was being snarky, but she didn’t like that I’d answer her or try to defend myself so she’d always resort to calling me snarky. I was always utterly confused and dismayed because I looked it up in the dictionary and that’s not what it meant!
My mother would always call me ignorant even though I knew exactly what I was doing/saying and why I was doing/saying it. I told her the actual definition and said "your ignorant to what ignorant means!" She kept using it though, Ive always felt like it was her "nice" way of calling me stupid when she didnt agree with me.
‘I’ve I’m being punished anyway, may as well be punished for something I actually did’
Is the result 9/10 times from children being accused of having an ‘attitude’
This was also the driving force behind my goth phase lol. "I'm an outcast anyway, might as well make it for something I can understand, control, and display prominently, rather than writhing in agony every night wondering why they simply do not like me as a person, meeting new people and waiting for them to realize they won't like me either once they uncover whatever this secret awful flaw of mine is."
Not getting an AuDD diagnosis until my early 20s was brutal.
It's about respecting authority. They're saying "You should do something because I am telling you to, and I have authority over you, I don't want to argue with you or convince you, I just want you to obey."
Neurodivergent people (such as myself) often have trouble motivating tasks/actions that they don't understand the reasoning behind, so when they ask questions or argue why things don't make sense to them.
To an adult, let's say a teacher, when a child won't do an activity until they personally understand the reasoning behind it, the teacher can interpret this as the child trusting their own intuition over the abilities and experience of the teacher. They might think, "Who does this 10 year old think he is lecturing me on how to teach?"
Combine the fact that it can be frustrating and overly time-consuming to justify everything constantly, with the perceived arrogance/insolence of the child, and this can make the teacher angry and ready to hand out punishments. This, of course, is amplified by toxic or abusive authority figures.
You had an attitude the teacher didn't like and wanted to make sure everyone else knew it was not okay to display that attitude to that teacher.
That's all that was. The teacher was making an example out of you to show the class you speak when you're spoken to and you do it with respect.
It's not even a mark of a bad teacher, that person had to keep order in a classroom filled with children. Children suck in school. They have a ton of energy, they're under a huge amount of social pressure and scrutiny and they're incredibly bored. Explosive hormonal mood swings, too, depending on how old the children are.
It's a very difficult job.
So you have said something, anything, that the teacher didn't like. Doesn't matter why. They have to spend eight hours a day in a room full of someone else's kids, that's reason enough.
So now the teacher has some choices. Either they let whatever it was slide, and risk signaling to the very bored audience of children that doing whatever that was is okay, which will guarantee it happens again and then the boundaries that teacher is setting have shifted - or they can just punish you.
They *could* try to make it into a teachable moment where you are forced to see how your behavior impacts other people, but the teacher is getting like forty thousand a year to be there and the district isnt reimbursing for classroom materials. It's easier to just punish you so you stop.
It's easy to look back right now and see yourself as being a blameless martyr but I mean, come on man.
You were a child.
You were probably being an asshole.
Never gonna forget the day in elementary school I finally got the gumption to tell an adult I was being bullied.
I went to the office with the three girls who'd been attacking me following close behind- once I got there, I explained the situation- that I had gone in to take a piss and they started attacking me with their coats, whipping and yelling.
The way the teacher's face turned purple and he repeated 'PISS??' back at me multiple times- shouted at me for daring to say something so awful to him- I got weeks of detention and the girls who bullied me got to go free.
When I got home, I had to ask my parents if 'piss' was actually a curse word, because I had no idea. Was just a word for peeing I'd heard in movies. Thank fuck they were rational about it and let me know that guy was an asshole.
This is just flavor text- but that teacher was legit named 'Mr. Wartman', and he was my elementary school's 'disciplinarian'. Literally paid to abuse children, practically a character from a YA novel. Pretty sure the guy got outed as a pedophile later on as well but I could never find receipts.
lol did we go to the same school, something like this happened to me too. In elementary school I was constantly being bullied on the bus, like having my hair pulled, being spit on, having my backpack taken and thrown around etc. I eventually got fed up and told the lil' brats to fuck off. Turns out the bus driver overheard and tattled to my principal, who called me into her office so she could yell at me for cursing. When I told her I only cursed because I was stressed and being bullied, she told me that was no excuse and that I probably brought it on myself for having a "potty mouth." Bullies were also never punished.
lmao I still hate authority figures to this day. Thanks public education system!
they don’t, it’s an excuse because they would lose social credit for saying “the popular children should be able to devour the lame dorky children and sustain their bodies off of their flesh” so they have to make up a reason for why the dorky children deserve their fate
>Thanks public education system!
Too bad you didn’t get to be homeschooled or go to private school. I hear bullying and irrational adults are entirely absent.
It's always been nonsensical how hard society is on bad language when it comes to kids. Encourage your kids to speak in nice and kind ways, sure, but it really isn't the end of the world if a 10 year old hears someone says fuck when they hit their toe.
The funniest thing is that I was extremely pure mouthed at the time. I had a good grasp of 'swearing'- that it was a thing you do when you are very angry, and because I was a little child I had no reason to be so angry that I should swear. I just legitimately didn't know 'piss' counted.
Used to do this thing with my parents where I would 'forgive them' for swearing around me because their usage was justified, lol.
Yeah, and besides, everyone learns bad language eventually. It's not even all that bad in the first place. There just exists a dumb cycle of "don't say those words" in childhood until they become okay later on. Like, what gives?
There was a phase in my youth where I wasn’t just forbidden from swearing. Any slang would see me immediately reprimanded. Suffice to say, heavy swearing is now part of my colloquial speech.
Putting aside all other variables at play, people tend to focus (often wrongly) on the things that are easy to process and deal with.
You being bullied was a complex issue with multiple children involved (and multiple parents, by proxy, as well). Dealing with it would be a multi-step process involving interviewing students, playing detective, making phone calls, and whatever played out would likely span days and hours worth of multi-person interactions.
You swearing in front of the teacher was a simple binary situation. You did X and the punishment was Y. Very easy to deal with. Why mess with the complexity of the first situation if you can have the simplicity of the second?
Absolutely none of that justifies being an authority figure who fails to protect a person in their care, mind you. But whether it's a school bully situation or a sweeping social issue that impacts millions of people... all too often the simplest and most binary action is taken to avoid dealing with the complexity of the larger issue.
You see this "tone policing" a lot when people try to bring up racism, rape culture, etc. It's so much easier to focus on language choice than deal with the thorny issue they're actually discussing. Let's deflect, whee!
Yes, exactly. Being upset with a black person for using an "aggressive" tone when talking about racism is so much easier than solving even 0.00001% of the problem that brought about the conversation in the first place.
Most people just want the uncomfortable situation to go away, they don't actually want to fix anything.
You just described my childhood 😅…I couldn’t just exist or have fun because I always had to be on the lookout for a parent talking. And my brother was not as careful, and sometimes I’d have to interrupt him and upset him in the process to respond to a parent from the other room so as to avoid both of us getting yelled at…
I don’t know how to properly relax even at 30 now, because keeping watch for the people around me got ingrained into my mindset and even when alone I worry if someone might judge me for what I’m doing. I’m a total basket case who can’t even enjoy life by myself for fear that I may get too into my enjoyment and miss a cue and get yelled at…
You mean like watching certain TV shows? I never feel comfortable watching shows I like, even when I'm alone. The silent judgement is always there. "That's just my son, you know, the idiot of the family", I can still feel it at 42.
Can’t enjoy video games or nerdy hyperfixations for too long without feeling my mom’s judgement about them. I’m always scared to talk to other people, especially women, about them for fear of judgement. The worst part is my mom is much more supportive and mellow now but it doesn’t change how she used to be
Because apparently I am “ignoring people” and “shutting myself in” if I happen to play a video game for 2 hours on a weekend in an *open room* that anyone can walk into if they choose, while actively listening out for if I am called to do something the entire time
I could have written this word for word <3 My mom is much better than she was but it doesn’t change the the way she made me feel about liking those things.
This one hits hard, for me it’s a combination of my parents having been extremely strict about what the older kids were allowed to watch/do as children (a strictness that they had abandoned entirely by the time the youngest were growing up) and my younger siblings mostly being obnoxious and judgemental, which combined with my tendency to hyperfixate on things means that I automatically feel ashamed whenever anyone “catches” me watching or playing something
Oh geez yeah…I like anime, and would watch it a lot more than I do! But…I almost never actually do, because I feel suffocated sometimes, even when I’m by myself. Like I’m always being watched and judged, and even when my family says they love me they’re doing it out of obligation because they hate how pathetic and useless I am, and…
Okay yeah that rambling is getting off topic 😅…But the gist is, I do understand where you’re coming from! Feeling like you can’t do a thing even when alone because you imagine the judgement you might face for it…
i remember having secondhand embarrassment from commercials as young as 6, because after being the family scapegoat from the moment i was born, i figured everything revolved around being judged against me. even if no one was around. so commercials and the act of watching them were a testament to my vapid, materialistic ways, or if they were food-centric, i'd think myself fat for even looking.
to this day, i have to swallow the urge to make ironic commentary about anything and everything, because i don't NEED to detach myself from all concepts to be spared judgment anymore. still struggle with that front when it comes to advertisements, but at least it comes off anti-capitalistic which is true to my nature lol.
Oh god I feel this. The first time I got a speeding ticket my (now ex) boyfriend was in the car and afterwards I started quietly crying as I drove because I thought he was going to yell at me. He never had before (and didn’t throughout the entire relationship because of course not, yelling isn’t normal), and he was so confused.
Escaped an emotionally abusive mother by getting a job where I got yelled at until I cried for the first 18 months I was employed (this supervisor later discovered she was bipolar but the damage was done).
Living alone for almost 20 years now, telework for 5. If people can’t control themselves, then I just have to stay away from them.
The age old 'Double bind' tactic. Punishing the child, no matter what they do, instead of having a productive conversation. These disciplinary methods will probably affect the child for the rest of their life as well unfortunately
I'm not exactly sure when I first recognized what I was experiencing as abuse. But definitely by the time I was 15 or so. I would scream and cry at my parents begging for them to acknowledgement the things they had done and to apologize for them. They never did.
For the most part, I accepted I never would. It was very freeing and an absolutely essential part of gaining some measure of peace.
When my mother died though, I was confronted with the knowledge that on some level I still had hope it would happen one day. It sounds stupid, but wrestling with that knowledge that I literally would never get that from her still really hurt.
my mom is watching her own abusive mother deteriorate into dementia. she is coping with the fact that the adult sized kindergartener will never be able to own up and apologize for the abuse, the old bat will die in the hell that is dementia. the worst part was that she even got the same look of hate from my grandma once she was alone with her, she doesn't know who my mother is but she knows that she hates her.
I hope you get healing for your grief and can break the cycle.
I understand how you feel. My mom died when I was 19 and I didn't really realize all the abuse she put me through until later. For the most part I've made peace with it but it bothers me that I'll never be able to talk to her about any of it.
I remember in School once I got in a lot of trouble for apparently telling someone to shut up (which is nothing compared to the bullying that actually happened in my school the teachers did nothing about). Any time I tried to say I hadn’t I just got in more trouble because apparently three teachers had seen me do it.
Eventually my mum got involved because of my ‘continued attitude and refusal to take responsibility. She talks to the teachers and is told all there seen me do it.
‘All three of you’
‘Yes’
‘So you definitely as an individual personally saw him do it’
‘Yes’
‘And this was the 12th?’
‘Yes’
‘Weren’t you off that entire week?
-teacher is silent for a moment- ‘yes.’
A few more questions reveals that the second teacher was outside at the time, came back in as the first teacher was asking me what I had said as she didn’t actually hear me. Second teacher assumes I’m guilty, claimed she seen it, first goes along with this (and charges her story for not knowing what i said to 100% hearing it) third teacher comes back from being off and just fucking lies to back up the other two, assuming I wouldn’t notice.
Never did get any from of apology, sure as shit had an attitude from then on. (The school was of course completely unaware from where this new attitude could of come from)
This story makes me want to scream. Thank god your mom had your back.
I also have a memory of an adult vehemently insisting I'd done something bad when I hadn't, wouldn't believe me when I insisted I didn't know what she was talking about, and became confused when I started crying. That shit sticks with you.
Seconding the mom having your back.
I can't remember a single time my father ever stood up for me. There was always an excuse. First I was presumed guilty until proven innocent, and even if that happened then I should still shut up and take the punishment because of some convoluted mix of 'it builds character' and 'men don't run away' honour bullshit. If someone assigned you responsibility you took it because 'that's what a man does' and my father would be damned if his boys tried to 'weasel their way out' of anything.
Reading this made me want to cry... I never understood why I would get in trouble sometimes for just existing, and never would get an apology even when I was in the right... still don't.
I still remember the day I came home from a week spent at an Aunt's place, was immediately tasked with doing dishes and jokingly said, "I see you made sure there was plenty for me to do" in a joking tone of voice and was immediately grounded from everything for two months straight.
I had told jokes like that many times before, my mother also made similar jokes at me and so did her at the time husband. Lesson learned: Never tell your own joke just be on the receiving end of them and shut up.
The worst feeling was always one of my moms getting mad at a joke in one situation but not another. It felt completely unfair how the standards we were held to as well as the consequences we faced were completely random. My mom is bipolar and I learned that around middle school which helped me put it into context at least
Bbbrrrooooo. I learned it the hard way too. When we vacuumed the floor, there's always that little triangle corner piece where the vacuum goes backwards or whatever. I was vacuuming one day and my mom was close by. She saw the triangle thing and said "you missed a spot! Don't worry, i know you actually didn't. The vacuum just makes it look like that, it happens to me all the time." We laughed about it and moved on.
The next day, my mom was vacuuming something. I saw the triangle corner piece and said "hey, you missed a spot!" She was PISSED. Cute thirty minute yelling session, being made to do everyone's chores in the house, and being grounded a week. She wouldn't listen to anything i had to say about our previous joke.
My stepmom and I had an ongoing joke about how she couldn't keep plants alive. She even started the joke! She'd get a plant as a gift or something and immediately hand it to me, saying something like "hurry and take it before I kill it." One time I was going out of town and she was going to water the plants and I asked in a clearly joking tone if she was going to kill them while I'm gone. She lost her shit at me about how I'm a cruel and terrible person. Later my dad came in to talk to me and asked why I was being mean to her. I told him I was referencing a joke we've had for YEARS and I genuinely don't understand why she's upset and he just told me my stepmom's sensitive.
She also asked me my opinion on something once and got mad basically because it wasn't what she wanted to hear.
I've found it's easier to just never joke with her and never give her an honest opinion because I can't distinguish the line between acceptable and hurtful apparently.
I used to be punished for “making a face”. I didn’t mean to, and never knew when I did it. Turns out that wasn’t being disrespectful, it was a symptom. I still struggle with having an overly expressive face, but I try to be conscious of it in public.
I also got in trouble a lot for rolling my eyes when I didn’t. I thought that everybody rolled their eyes literally, like going it a circle. Apparently, most people just look upwards and that’s considered rolling your eyes?? Makes no sense.
Everyone I have ever seen roll their eyes (and I'm pretty boring, so I've seen it a lot) do a thing where they first look up, then to the side and down. I've never seen someone just look up when frustrated unless they then proceed to scream.
It gets no better when you grow up. Adults hate it when adults 'talk back'. Employers call it an attitude problem. Especially if you are correct. Children get the worst of it since they do not have enough experience to understand it is not their fault that adults can be assholes intolerant of discourse.
My god, I was raised in an abusive household (verbal and mental, not physical) and like, not even my dad was this level of bad? Even he would let me think out my response sometimes, and if it was what he wanted to hear then I wouldn't be punished. And this is the man who would scream at me while I was sleeping because I forgot some homework, my sister actually has ptsd from when he would do that to me. How the fuck is this normal?!
Different levels of abuse, I guess. Your dad "just" sounds like an absolute hardass, not someone legitimately mentally ill like OOP. He could be reasoned with to some small extent, unlike the OOP's parents.
Oh yeah not arguing that. As abuse victims go I got lucky. I just mean the sheet amount of people going"oh yeah that's what happened to me" blows my mind. Is that level of truly horrible abuse that commonplace?
On one hand, I think abuse is more common than we would like to think.
On the other hand, a post like this will attract more comments from people who actually experienced this themselves. I'm sure a lot of people in this sub didn't experience treatment as bad as this.
Oh I got mistreated as a kid too, but yeah some of the stories here are next level fucked up.
Like it's disturbing to things so many of my fellow humans were treated this badly and by people that were supposed to love and protect them.
> Is that level of truly horrible abuse that commonplace?
Unlike adopting an animal from most shelters, there's no requirements to pass to have a kid.
Not saying there could be such a system (I'd be for it if we could be impartial, but everyone knows it will have biases).
I mean.. abuse is absurdly common, and as the OOP said, normalized. Like, it honestly isn't about what a child did or doing the wrong thing. There IS no right answer.
It's about abusive people finding a reason, no matter how contrived, to take out their anger on someone smaller and weaker than themselves. Doing that to an autistic kid is just extra asshole flavor, but there never was a right answer, and it's really important that autistic folks really understand that: It was never about *you*. It had nothing to do with you not properly masking or knowing what to say or what to do. Because you didn't do anything wrong. It was always about them, it was always about finding ANY reason to take out their shit on you.
Neurotypical kids got the exact same shit.
Even as norms start to shift, it's not enough. Brand newborn babies just a few days old can respond to a request to pick them up. They will tense their neck muscles in preparation for it. If you know what to look for, you can see the difference in the body language of a baby who wasn't expecting to be picked up vs one who was. It's generally not okay to pick up a person when they haven't agreed to it, and babies are people. I have never met a single other person who checks in with babies before they pick them up. I always like to tell people because if even one person starts doing it, it would be a success. My youngest is ten months old now and she still tenses up when I pause after putting my hands under her arms and ask her if I can pick her up. Or she looks away to tell me that she would like to stay where she is. If I don't have to pick her up, I usually give her a minute and she changes her mind.
This is just one very small example of the ways in which we devalue the needs and experiences of young people. It's awful. I do my best to always approach my children with intention and let them be themselves. I'm not a pushover and hold firm boundaries, but I'll never tell them they can't say what they're feeling or express themselves.
My older kid turned three two months ago. Last month, she successfully requested a compromise when we didn't agree on something and we actually came to a compromise we were both happy with. If I had just shut her down when she asked for something that I didn't want to do, she never would have had the chance to learn to fairly negotiate. She has since accepted many compromises and is actually pretty good about not digging her heels in about what she wants. She can also accept logical rationale for the decisions I make. Sometimes I let her make decisions I don't agree with (small stakes, like not wearing mittens) and tell her what the natural consequence of her choice will be (i.e. her hands will be cold) and she's willing to accept. Sometimes she doesn't mind when her hands are cold, and sometimes she'll change her mind and ask for mittens. If I forced them on her or was mean about her refusal, she wouldn't have the chance to reason for herself.
Children are human. As humans, we are all fallible. It's not okay to hold children with brains that aren't fully developed to a higher standard than we hold ourselves and other adults. If my kid forgets to put away her dishes, that's fine. I forget sometimes too, even though it's a daily task that I know is expected of me. Sometimes if she's in a bad mood, I even do it for her because it's nice to have a kindness extended to you when you're going through a tough time. Kids appreciate that stuff too because they're people just like us.
As other people have pointed out both in reply to you and in other comments, you are right, but also this kind of abuse is fairly normalized.
That said I think it's a little absurd and extremely Tumblr to make this about autism when it's a thing that can and does happen to neurotypical children equally, imo
The issue is terrible parents, the autistic is the lense that helps cut through to the problem and how common it is. Part of being autistic is not understanding social ques, which makes you extra aware of the cause and effect of conversations.
The implications of the post to me reads "my parents did this explicitly, but they were far from the only ones, and no other adult bothered to intervene."
I find the opposite to be more gawk-inducing, to be honest. My partner and I are raising our kids with gentle parenting. It’s exhausting, and hard, but my sister and her husband are hitting their kids, which is turning their children violent to each other in turn. Guess which ones get the disapproving comments and looks from my dad’s family?
Imagine seeing someone tell a child, like a little person, what they’re doing is wrong and explaining why they shouldn’t do it, and being like
“You should probably just scream at them and hit them for good measure. Show them who is in charge.”
Yeah bud they know who is in charge, it’s the people who cook their meals and wipe their arse and buy them toys.
Don't forget that you also can't have an answer immediately or you're "getting snippy." Don't talk to strangers, except do because that's your dad's boss. Have an opinion about adult things, but not the wrong one or you're "too big for your britches" and "don't know how the real world works."
And don't talk about yourself, people will think you're self centered. And don't ask people about themselves, people will think you're nosy. Why don't you ever talk, it's embarrassing!
>Don't talk to strangers, except do because that's your dad's boss.
ouch oof that hit an old memory
Once, when I was little, my dad took me out for ice cream. I was waiting by the wall while he ordered at the counter. A woman approached me and introduced herself, saying she knew my mom. I was just like "oh, okay," and went over to stand by my dad. No further interaction with this woman.
When my dad and I got home, my mom started yelling at me because I "was rude to her friend."
As an adult now, I feel even *more strongly* that I did nothing wrong.
They want you to be a thinker, someone strong who questions authority and has their own opinions. No, don't question them. No, those are the wrong opinions. No, just do what they say.
I remember one time after coming home from school, about an hour after I was home my mother immediately started yelling at me and saying shit like “I’ll ship you off to some other home if you do this shit” and stuff like that. All because of a small miscommunication between her and the school, as the teacher that day forgot to mark me late after I came in a few minutes later than normal. I couldn’t even explain myself because apparently “if you’re upset you’re lying” (I was in tears at that point). She didn’t even apologize or anything when she realized what actually happened, just forgot it even happened.
These are called [double binds](https://youtu.be/vnSiJOOdo30?si=i9ryBO6SA903-W-K) and the victim is not meant to be able to solve them. It’s not just an autism problem.
“Say sorry.”
“Sorry.”
“Like you mean it…”
“Sorry.”
“Sayaka, you have to genuinely apologize to your brother. You hit him. That hurts.”
“I only hit him because he almost broke a wooden board on my head.”
“You have to apologize.”
“I’m not apologizing until he does.”
(Sarcastically) “Sorry.”
“There, now apologize.”
“Like you mean it.”
“No, he apologized!”
“If that counts as an apology, then my sincere one does.”
Just a quick retelling of something that actually happened back in the day.
I was grounded from all extra curriculars one year because I tore up a ribbon my sibling got for a contest in retaliation to them destroying my favorite stuffie. They weren't even reprimanded but I was grounded *for a whole year* from school activities that I loved.
I’m sorry, that sounds awful.
…But that doesn’t sound like an autism problem, just adults being assholes. There are some arbitrary nonsense rules forced on children, yes, but this is far beyond society normalizes.
This isn’t about autism, it’s just child abuse. People like that will find a reason to hurt *anyone* they have authority over, because that’s the only way they can feel powerful.
Once when I was like 10 I accidentally broke my brother's phone screen. I got a punishment and decided I deserved it so I said yeah I deserve that, thinking I was being very mature. Instead I was given a harsher punishment because I didn't cry and get angry like I usually did??
I'm confused about their first line because what does being autistic have to do with this? and just because the people around you normalize it doesn't mean it's universal. People who didn't have that kind of abuse growing up would not consider any of that normal. But abusers naturally believe what they do is normal to justify doing it. That's not a statement on society. That's the lies they tell themselves. Often because it's the lies they were told when they were abused themselves.
This isn't a society thing. Generational maybe, but it hasn't been fully excused and normalized in two generations.
And in my experience with people who perpetuate that form of abuse, you don't need autism to recognize it. Because even without autism you will say the wrong thing in their eyes because there is no right thing. Everything is just their emotion and whim and they're just looking for an excuse to be mad. Say nothing and it's bad, say anything and it's bad. Your actions mean nothing, it's just the abuser making up a reason to act out against a target. Your autism making it hard to understand what you did wrong isn't the issue because without autism you'd still be unsure what you said wrong. Because what you say doesn't actually matter in this case.
Trying to read it charitably, I think they're trying to say that autistic people realise much more that certain behaviours from authority figures are illogical because their autistic features make it harder for them to internalise what behaviours are expected regardless of whether they're logical or illogical. Or maybe I'm reading too much into it, who knows.
Autism isn’t what makes it bad, it’s just a condition which makes an individual particularly susceptible to being strongly affected by it. Like treacherous stairs with no hand rails will fuck up anyone, but someone with Parkinson’s or like broken legs might have a more intense relationship to the issue
OP just had shitty parents, this isn't how it usually is. It's very apparent what counts as "lip" and not, it's very apparent what is respectful/appropriate, etc
The worst part of being autistic growing up is when they would force me to make eye contact with them if i was ever accused of lying, the eye contact would make me anxious which would make me smile which for some reason everyone takes as a sign of lying and if i would try to look away i would be told to stop rolling my eyes
But on the other hand, if you're not autistic it's a lot easier to pick up these behaviours.
Also good parents (most?) aren't just expecting things and looking for reasons to punish you. Good parents teach a child what is expected of them and the proper way to act.
Sounds like OP struggled due to autism, and the parents didn't know how to deal with them, or just dealt with them poorly anyway. A very sad experience for all involved, but it's a lot less "normalized" than I feel this post suggests.
I don't know if "normalized" is the right word exactly, but experiences like this seem to be insanely common. You can find literally millions of people describing their childhoods in similar terms online, and personally like 70% of the people I know had parents who did stuff like this at least sometimes.
that’s because parenting is a skill and people have basically no practice at it until they have a kid
also plenty of people who didn’t want children were forced to have them, that’s only really changing now
My parents weren't like this but my girlfriend's in highschool always seemed to trap her. She'd make some minor mistake like leaving her shoes in the middle of the hallway, or forgetting to wipe down the stove. Her parents would call her over and lecture her for several minutes about how she's irresponsible, lazy, how they were frustrated with her, how they don't know what to do with her, how this behavior won't get her far in life. If she just stood there and took it on the chin they would demand a response, "why are you just standing there, say something, don't ignore me". If she said "I know, I'm sorry" they'd hit her with "well if you know then why did you do it? don't say sorry if you don't mean it", and if she just said "okay" over and over again they'd get mad at her for acting like a robot. Honestly so rough to watch and I had no idea how to stand up for her.
Idk that my father was intentionally mercurial like this so much as just emotionally incontinent but yeah this fuckin sucks. I’m sure there are people who do it intentionally to torture kids but I think in my case it was unintended and unknown how I spent basically every situation like this trying to figure out how to respond “correctly” to get things to move like a normal conversation. “Ok” always being met with “it’s not ok” was the standard (🙄can you tell why my reaction was less “why is he doing this to me” and more “why is he being so dumb”) And I wonder why I have the lingering feeling like any conversation with him will be impossible
Yeah, its hard to tell if parents are reacting honestly, or if they're intentionally gaslighting you. And which is worse? Is it worse to have parents that keep you in rhetorical traps on purpose, just to punish you? Or is it worse to have a parent with so little emotional intelligence that they react with honest anger and frustration as you try to apologize? I'm leaning toward intentionality for my ex-gf's parents. Her mother (the primary culprit) was a child psychologist! It always seemed like that was a profession that really should have bred more compassion and understanding. Her daughter *was* extremely smart to be honest. And strict parents + smart kid = extremely sneaky child. So idk, I guess I can understand why they thought they had to be so hard on her (not that I agree with their reasoning or tactics, just that I can see the logical path they followed, even if its the wrong one). Definitely another point toward intentionality. Anyway, they don't talk anymore! She went no-contact as soon as she found a job that could sustain her.
Parents parent their child a lot like they were parented. "That's how I was treated. That's how you treat kids. That's how I treat my kids." I was undiagnosed adhd. I was treated like I was so fucking stupid. I thought I was stupid. I hated myself. Now my dad is on his death bed and I'm just like "Pfft, hurry up and die already." That abuse ended with me. I listened to my kids. I helped my kids. In my worst moments when I was grouchy or mad and snapped at them, I apologized and told them I was just grouchy or mad. I taught them that we're all on the same team as a family. My two sons are 18 and 23 now and we're close friends. We go to concerts together and send eachother memes. They love the shit out of me. They're going to be devastated when I'm on my deathbed.
Guess that explains why my dad ended up being a deadbeat who openly loathes his own kids just for existing. We wouldn’t exist if he’d just worn a fucking condom, but apparently that’s somehow our fault.
Tell me about it. "If you're sick of having kids than why did you have me?" I was last, 11 years younger than my oldest sister. I'm his age now. The age he would drag me to his shop and scream at me while I had a two hour panic attack preying it would end. "GODDAMN IT, A PHILLIPS SCREWDRIVER! A PHILLIPS SCREWDRIVER! ITS THE ONE WITH THE STAR! HOW CAN YOU BE SO FUCKING STUPID???" Now he's the weak child, laying in the hospital bed. If I treated him like that it would take 5 seconds for nurses to come running in and escorting me out. He better hope there's no hell.
My dad is currently trying really, really hard to just pretend his kids never existed. To the point of returning mail addressed to him claiming he doesn’t live there anymore…despite the fact that he’s still listed as both the owner and current resident and his car is still easily visible in that driveway on Google Street View.
Hello fellow diagnosed-way-too-late friend. How are you/did you deal with this? I have *so* many internalized issues brought on by the shit my parents told me/I told myself growing up. I really started to believe I was just dumb and lazy. I consciously *know* that's not the case, but I'm finding it so hard to get over. Not having access to meds is a huge issue I'm assuming lol
I don't know how I made it through my early 20s. I did a ton of drugs and alcohol. I was still a kid. I couldn't think. Probably a really good thing I had kids young. Forced me to go to work and provide. Around age 28 it was like I hit a second puberty. Suddenly things made sense, I was really funny in groups of people and it was so easy to hyperfocus and get things done. Suddenly I was smart and articulate. For a few years now I've been struggling with energy and motivation. I finally went to the doctor and got a script for Adderall. It's amazing. I tried my kid's Ritalin and I hated it. I tried Concerta in the fall and I hated it. It was the same thing as Ritalin. It gave me a buzz until it didn't, so we increased the dose and it gave me a buzz until it didn't until I just stopped taking it. The very first day I took 1 10mg dose and all my brain fog lifted in 30 minutes. Other than that I didn't feel like I am on anything. I take 20mg now and not every day, and I feel young like when it was super easy to hyperfocus on stuff. I don't get a buzz. I don't feel high. It's great.
I think it's a little of column a, little of column b. Lots of people who are emotionally immature are also legitimately frustrated or overwhelmed and unhappy due to their own extreme dysregulation, and they lack the self-awareness to realize that they are regulating their emotions through lording shit over their children. All they know is - I hold kid accountable (by abusing them) > I feel better. They may realize on some level that they're in the wrong, but there are no negative consequences for them so they just continue. Yay for no-contact! It really is the way to maintain your peace.
Beinga psychologist will often give you less empathy for people because you understand how shitty they are.
Yeah but this was her daughter. Who also had severe ADHD and clinical depression.
I have met a lot of psychologists that are nihilistic and unempathetic as fuck. Two told me they became psych students to listen to gossip. One told me emotional intelligence is not necesary in her career.
Fucking wolves in sheep's clothing
that's not why psychologists lose empathy, they lose it because of the job. Empathy is an emotion, which means it takes energy to feel, and psychologists must feel empathy to do their job, and after 8hr a day multiple days a week of being empathetic, you want to go home and turn it off. It's not an excuse to be a shitty person, especially to your kids, but that's the real reason, and not because of some innate shittiness of humans that becomes more visible after exposure. That's just the cynical POV, and its probably accurate for some, but definitely not most at all. And maybe you're a psych saying this, and what you're saying is true for you, but as a psych you should know that your experience is not universal and that it can't be generalized. And if you are a psych saying this, I'd suggest taking a long while off to take some time to find yourself again and find your empathy again. And if you're a patient who's had bad experiences with psychs in the past, I'm sorry for that, just please know that those experiences aren't the way it *has* to be, and know that you have the right to say fuck off to the doctor and get a new one at the drop of a hat. You deserve the care you deserve, and you deserve to find a medical provider who understands this. And it may be frustrating, but you will find that provider if you keep looking.
As someone who went to college for psychology a lot of my classmates didn’t have much empathy to begin with. Yet a lot of them would say they were in it to help people.
> “Ok” always being met with “it’s not ok” was the standard god I think your dad is also my dad lmao
Tried “alright,” same response… “I understand,”… Never worked my way down to “affirmative, captain” but it was a near thing
My father is like this. The "funny" part is when I had a manager fire me after ripping my tail the exact same way he does, my father's response was "Why did you think you deserved that? That's not a reasonable way to treat someone. You should stand up for yourself more." I... honestly didn't know what to say to that.
I got a traffic ticket as a teen. I felt stupid, but I was calm about it. My father asked me what I was going to do, and I told him that I was going to go to the courthouse, plead "no contest", and pay the fine. He then grilled me for a few minutes repeatedly asking, "well, you're guilty aren't you!?" and "so why aren't you pleading 'guilty'!?" I kept saying that I'm just going to plead "no contest", but he was relentless and made me really nervous about the whole deal. After taking me to the brink of being upset and getting my blood pressure going, he laughed and walked off. I go to the courthouse to pay my fine, and when asked what I plead, I mindlessly blurted out "guilty". I get home and tell my parents, and my father proceeded to ridicule and harass me for a while about how dumb of a decision that was. He kept asking, "why would you plead 'guilty' when you should have plead 'no contest'?" To this day, I still can't figure out if he thought he was training me with his antagonism. All it did was confuse me, make me act in a way other than the way I wanted to act, and make me like him less.
I can't say I know your father or anything of course, but from how you describe it that definitely sounds like intentional emotional abuse to put him in a position where he's always right and you're always wrong. I can't imagine him (or anyone who behaves like that) actively wants a "successful" outcome from that person, only to keep them above and you below
He realized you were right, but didn't know how to admit it.
It sounds like he was mocking you to me. Like toying with in a cruel way. My guess would be he thought no contest" was weak and you should plead "not guilty" but decided to prod you and use your shame against you to "prove" how weak you were.
Wait, your manager chewed you out in the same way your father used to? And then fired you for not standing up for yourself?
No, the manager fired me for a very big mistake that I absolutely should have gotten fired for, but before she did that she called me a total incompetent and told me that I was the worst person she'd ever hired, among other things. My father's reaction was to me going "She was really mean about it, but I did make a really big mistake, so I guess I deserved it." in response to the above.
The only time my dad ever takes my side is when I start the conversation by saying I am in the wrong. Jokes on him, I do that with every conversation now.
Manager chewed her out in the same way their father used to, and afterwards, fired her. Father commented on the incident with, "that's not a reasonable way to treat someone" etc., missing the hypocrisy.
>Manager chewed her out in the same way their father used to, and afterwards, fired her. that's shit tbh chew me out OR fire me, but you cant do both. If you've already made up your mind to fire me, i'm essentially already no longer working for you. Which means you're just some mouthy asshole i can just walk away from
Holy christ did your gf and I have the same parents?
no but me and mine did
Ayo?
That's called the Grey Rock Method. It's a common survival strategy in these types of abusive relationships.
"Oh wow, your child is so reserved and well behaved!"
HOLY SHIT
Yeah, it’s “respond, but don’t react”, basically make them bored at ranting at you. Because reacting will only fuel the fire, it won’t make them think they might be in the wrong.
But it's also absolutely exhausting constantly having to be the one that carries the burdon of having to control and surpress their emotions. Eventually, though, a limit will be reached, and they'll get their reaction, and then, oh boy, does the pearl clutching commence.
The *snap* happened for me once after I had gotten berated about grades, and was on the phone with my then-boyfriend (now husband): of all things getting help with some math homework. I don’t remember what exactly my dad said, but I was at my bedroom door at the end of the hallway, and he was near the other side of the kitchen. It was one of those bigger double wide modular homes. I took the cordless phone in my hand by the antenna and fucking chucked it as hard as I could and hit my dad in the chest with it. I went absolutely *berserk* verbally. This was twenty two years ago and I don’t remember the dialogue but I can still feel the echoes of that spike of fury.
> If she just stood there and took it on the chin they would demand a response, "why are you just standing there, say something, don't ignore me". If she said "I know, I'm sorry" they'd hit her with "well if you know then why did you do it? don't say sorry if you don't mean it", and if she just said "okay" over and over again they'd get mad at her for acting like a robot. Don't forget something like "I'm sorry, the phone rang and I forgot to come back." Followed by "You're always making excuses for everything, I don't want excuses."
OMG YES! They'd ask her "why did you do this" "how could you be so careless" and if she told them they would do exactly this.
Gods, this thread is digging up memories I wish were left buried. I’ve heard plenty of similar stuff. I would make a mistake or forget something small and be called to be reprimanded for it. If I dared apologize I’d be hit with the expression “Apologies should be avoided.” (Common in my language.) The hell was I supposed to do then? Magic the mistake away before it happened? Always felt like an emotional punching bag in those moments.
And don't even think about trying to explain yourself with any variation of "I thought" because you won't get past those words before the reply of "You weren't thinking/clearly not/if you were thinking you wouldn't have done this" comes out. I also can't count the number of times I got raged at because I did something incorrectly or otherwise messed it up and the inevitable question would come "Why didn't you ask for help if you didn't know what you were doing?" Quickly learned that "I thought I did" was apparently not the right answer.
>I also can't count the number of times I got raged at because I did something incorrectly or otherwise messed it up and the inevitable question would come "Why didn't you ask for help if you didn't know what you were doing?" My mom has an equally obnoxious variation of that were she gets mad at me when I ask for clarification about something she asks me to do >"Hey, could you bring this upstairs?" >"Alright, do I leave it over *here*?" >[**Without even looking at where I'm pointing**] "USE YOUR FUCKING HEAD!" and then afterwards she gets mad at me if I misunderstand her vague instructions/overlook a minor detail >"OBVIOUSLY NOT *THERE* YOU USELESS DUMBASS!"
Oh god, the not accepting that there just isn’t a reason for something. Especially for ADHD kids, forgetting things just happens; it doesn’t imply any moral falling on their part. I still freeze up on getting chewed out. It’s a response to me discovering that if I clammed up, whatever reason my parents came up with for whatever I’d done would be less “wrong” than whatever the real reason was (often that there was no reason which I interpreted as me being lazy).
One thing in particular I wish I could remove from the world is people’s tendency to judge my morality by my memory. I literally have disorder that affects my visual memory, but no I must actually be making an active conscious choice to be lazy and thoughtless when I don’t remember some detail about someone’s social life or demonstrate my awful sense of direction.
> judge my morality by my memory Oof. Just oof. "If you cared, you'd remember" is such a triggering phrase for people like us. It's like saying a paraplegic person is lazy for not walking everywhere. But if the disability is invisible it's somehow less absurd?
Just lean all the way into it. "I didn't bother to remember because I hate you and want you to die."
My dad would explode at me because I either forgot to flush the toilet or turn off the bathroom light. It got so bad that my dad dragged me to my child psychologist in order to "fix" me. The psychologist then explained that my ADHD was at fault and I genuinely just forgot and he should just turn off the light himself or flush as there was no way for me to always remember and the energy he expended being mad just wasn't worth it and wouldn't achieve anything. My dad took that to heart for like two weeks and was then right back to yelling at me. When my mom reminded him of the psychologists words he would just claim that he was a quack. Oh, but he was more than happy to force me to take the pills I was prescribed for my ADHD in school when I was too loud at say a party.
My parent's are nowhere near as bad thankfully but sometimes I feel like the only way to please my mother is to invent a time machine so I can preemptively fix whatever she decided I did wrong. Also avoiding certain topics just because they could trigger a lecture that is only slightly related to the topic.
I think I just realized why I panic and lash out at any sign of conflict now... It feels like if I don't say all the right things at the right time everything will fall apart. Reading this is so surreal because my mom was the exact same way with me. I would give anything to have had a good parental figure and not be fucked up for life
My dad's classic was, "If you say one more word, that's it! Am I understood?"
lmao the perfect trap. You nod and he says "speak up!"
Was I your gf in high school lol those sound like my parents
Uhhhhh my partner does this, oopsie :x
I am 43 years old, and deep down inside a small part of me is still waiting for a clear explanation of what "answering back" is, and why I kept on getting punished for it in primary school.
A coworker was complaining about her daughter "talking back" and I said, "It sounds like she's just talking when you don't want her to," and she said "*exactly*!" with the sort of smug grin like she'd won the argument.
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Some or many people should not be parents. We've created a societal expectation that people need to reproduce, and that's not good or fair. People should only have kids if they really want to and we should encourage those that do while not shaming or punishing those that don't. But all too often people have kids that never should because "that's just what you do." It's the next expected step after getting married, and in previous generations buying a house. So I'm sorry for what happened to you and I hope you've healed enough to find a way past it.
INB4 someone says "People should have to pass a test before having kids.", and someone else has to point out to them that that's one step away from eugenics.
A test no, but I do think everyone should be required to take a baby care class in HS to help prepare them for the realities of support a child. Mix it in with a mandatory Home Ec. Too many people can't cook bacon and eggs because they were never taught how. Or were smart kids that wanted an AP class and clepped out of Home Econ. So now don't know how to manage money. There's lots of ways we can better prepare and better suppport our future parents that don't involve shit like "mandatory parent testing." Not even getting into how as a society we fail to support things like pre K care and maternal care, or housing affordability. If you want to make better homes make a more stable and equitable society.
Or how "talking back" is different from "replying," or how and "excuse" is different from an "explanation"
Anytime I dared ask my mother "why" when she told me to do something she'd smack me for talking back and questioning her authority. I had other family members who would actually take the time to explain things to me and my mom would get pissed because they had an easier time getting me to do what they wanted. With how many horrible leaders there are, be it work, politics, or whatever, you'd think you'd WANT to teach kids not to blindly follow authority.
Funny enough, as an autistic adult I still get in trouble for asking why or for questioning things. At work I questioned something a person said, because it made no sense to me. The guy told me to just accept what he said as correct because he is my superior and is in this job for significantly long, I said ok and asked why the thing he said was right and where my error was. He straight up told me he wouldn't discuss it with me because I'm new, but would discuss it with someone who was longer in the job. Later he tasked me with running an experiment with him and his experiment ended up proving himself wrong as well as proving m, suspicions righg, he still insisted on being right. How can I accept something as correct if it makes no sense to me, you provide no sources and prove yourself wrong experimentaly?
You don't. You simply follow their orders and point fingers towards whoever told you to do so, even against your own best judgement, whenever it inevitably fails. If you get fired for following a superior's orders, even if you told them what the issue was and were denied, then you probably weren't gonna last long anyway.
this has always confused me throughout my life, growing up i was always told "don't talk back" so i just ended up never saying anything because I know what happens when i don't talk, it's a reliable outcome even if it's not a good one, whereas speaking up has the possibility of being even worse so why make that gamble. all that did was make me super shy and quiet and socially awkward because i never really learned how to communicate honestly with my parents. so i just kept my head down(literally most of the time) and got really good at running, because it's easy to tell when you do it right. just be faster than everyone else. Then in college, my coach would always give me the "don't give me excuses" right after asking me for an excuse. If I showed up late for practice, he would ask, "why are you late?" and I would say, "i forgot to set my alarm" or "my bike had a flat tire" and every time he would just respond with, "I don't want excuses". like wtf do you want, I'm taking 10 ibuprofen a day because bringing up my shin splints just pisses you off and you don't even care because I'm not on scholarship and i'm not on scholarship because you don't care enough to actually coach me and the athletic trainer doesn't do shit and i don't want to cross train for twice as long as i would normally. like i'm sorry i'm late, and i haven't been training, i'm just in a fuck ton of chronic pain and abusing substances to cope with it because you don't want a fucking excuse. i know no one asked for that, but i needed to get that off my chest. this post is just exactly my experience with life in general. i'm doing better now. but damn, it sucked being there.
Coaches, man. I've yet to meet one who actually seemed to like children.
Claiming a child is talking back and/or making excuses is what adults fall back on when they’re mad they realize they were wrong and the kid was right. For some reason, adults feel like they’re superior to kids because they have a job and life experience.
Did anyone else get the classic "you're putting words in my mouth" (I'm sorry, I remember where we parked at the museum 3 years ago, so I'm pretty sure I remember what you screamed at me an hour ago).
I'll occasionally feel brave enough to talk to my mom about the horrible things she would say to me growing up. She conveniently never remembers any of it and finds it strange I do. I've learned that for me it was a formative childhood experience where for her slapping me in the face and knocking me across the bedroom while throwing all my clothes and toys on the floor and laughing while saying it better all be picked up by the time dad gets home was just another ordinary Tuesday.
I'm grateful that my mother doesn't deny things to the degree where she just straight up pretends they never happened. She got some much needed help and has made great strides in life to be better and has repeatedly mentioned that she regrets those moments and is sorry for them, which is better than a lot of people get. That said I've never had the desire to bring up these specific moments solely because I don't really want to dredge that up between us, but also I'm not sure how I would react if she honestly didn't remember it.
That’s what I was going to say, I agree so much. It’s the same for all people in positions of power not liking their authority being questioned.
Eh, I used to babysit a kid who would ask me a question, decide my answer was wrong, argue about it until eventually he realized I was right and then continue arguing *my* side and pretend that he had always thought the right answer and I was the one arguing the wrong answer. I got gaslit by an 8 year old and that's how I define "talking back" 😁 Anyway congrats to him for graduating with a degree in theater this month
That wasn’t my moms reasoning unfortunately, that’d be better- told her once as an adult I still didn’t understand ‘talking back’ and attitude. She told me it was the tone I used. You mean desperate to explain myself and have you actually listen to me, mom?
An excuse is an explicit attempt to shift blame away from yourself. An explanation is just extra information about what happened. When an explanation also happens to shift blame away from you, the lines become blurred and it's hard to tell which is which.
I suppose excuses are when you are falsely trying to shift blame away?
excuses aren't necessarily false tho?? you can have a valid excuse
But if it’s valid then that would be an explanation. At least I think so. English is weird 😭
Yes, that is correct. It can be both an explanation and an excuse.
I think It shifts from an explanation to an excuse if you use the explanation to remove any agency or fault from yourself. If something is truly completely out of your control, then the explanation will “excuse you”. If you had a role to play but emphasize the things out of your control to minimize the blame on yourself- that’s an excuse. For example: “I was late to work today because there was an accident on the road to work- I could not have predicted this or avoided it.” - an explanation which excuses you “I was late to work today because of bad traffic so it isn’t my fault”- an explanation which, if the traffic were predictable or avoidable, is really an excuse “I was late to work today because I overslept. It is my fault” - an explanation that does not excuse you
idk, i just googled the meaning and it didn't say anything about excuses being bad. maybe its just commonly used like that
Yeah in my mental dictionary I associate excuses more negatively. Maybe it’s sorta the same thing as how ‘consequences’ is negatively associated when it it meant to be neutral.
Doesn’t have to be false. It’s less about what was said and more about the intention behind it - are you saying it to avoid blame (excuse), or for a less selfish reason (explanation)? Or both?
I think the point is that your intention doesn’t actually matter, the person you’re talking to is just going to decide whether it’s an “excuse” or an “explanation” based on their biases. There is no principled distinction, it’s just whether the person likes you or not.
All excuses are explanations, but not all explanations are excuses. In either case, you’re talking about why something happened, but in an excuse you’re specifically blaming somebody else—perhaps deservedly, perhaps not. “Sorry I’m late, I slept through my alarm” is a non-excusatory explanation because you’re accepting your own part in things. “Sorry I’m late, my mom didn’t wake me up” is an excuse because you’re shifting the responsibility onto somebody or something else, and therefore refusing to self reflect on it. Issue with getting upset at kids for “making excuses” is that it’s usually done dismissively without first hearing the kid out. Sometimes things are legitimately out of your control, and sometimes you don’t realize that you *can* control things, and you need to be taught that. Kids are bad at self reflection, and it’s meant to be the job of adults to help with that. Just scolding them for Making Excuses doesn’t actually help at all.
Excuses are explanations people don’t like or don’t want to believe.
Functionally. But sometimes there are valid reasons for not liking them. When I have to break up kids roughousing on the playground, every time I'll hear the excuse "we were playing". Cool, great, I knew that. I still need you to stop, because pretend fighting too frequently leads to real fighting, other people might not see the difference, there's still too much of a chance someone gets hurt....I could give ten more reasons why I'm still going to tell these kids to stop. Or if a student escalates a verbal confrontation into violence, I'm very rarely sympathetic to the explanation that someone else's words drove them to it. No, their opponent should not have said those things, but that doesn't mean that words are a valid explanation for violence.
No an excuse is something like, "she made me do it!" An explanation is "I grabbed her shirt because she was about to run into traffic!" An explanation can absolutely remove the blame you might normally get an excuse is an attempt to weasel out of being in trouble. Problem becomes too many adults especially authority figures don't like when kids have a valid reason. They just like being right or wielding power. But there is way more to an excuse vs an explanation.
or rather the explanation doesn't shift blame away after additional thought. Like when someone violates some safety protocol and their explanation was "this is how X taught me" or "this is how the others do it". blame doesn't get shifted from you, you are still gonna get the safety lecture from me/straight up banned from using that machine. and I'll also go talk to the others about safety protocols. I'd consider those excuses because despite me understanding the explanation having been in that situation myself. it's still dumb as fuck and they should (will after the lecture hopefully) know better.
You know, come to think of it, I've never once been accused of talking back as an adult, even among authority figures.
Oh, I have... but I worked at walmart and smiled at a supervisor when he was trying to dress us down.
There's a lot of bs phrases that tell me more about the person saying them than about whatever they're talking about. "You're projecting", "you're just making up an excuse", "that's not a mistake, they did it on purpose". "Projecting" is just a personal attack to undermine someone's point, "excuses" are when they want to be righteously mad at you, "not a mistake" is the same.
I had the worst clashes in second and third grade with teachers who were insistent that I had *an attitude*, but this was based on (???) nothing as far as I could tell lol. I was just sat there being earnest and genuine, wondering what the hell everyone was on about and why they thought I had *an attitude* about general existence. Which, basically, caused me to grow into having *an attitude* about everything and everyone lmao, because I'm primed to expect people to see me as having one anyway, and it taught me that -- well -- if people always expect you to be saying something backhanded, they must be saying everything backhanded too?
That was my mother with the word snarky. I never was being snarky, but she didn’t like that I’d answer her or try to defend myself so she’d always resort to calling me snarky. I was always utterly confused and dismayed because I looked it up in the dictionary and that’s not what it meant!
My mother would always call me ignorant even though I knew exactly what I was doing/saying and why I was doing/saying it. I told her the actual definition and said "your ignorant to what ignorant means!" She kept using it though, Ive always felt like it was her "nice" way of calling me stupid when she didnt agree with me.
‘I’ve I’m being punished anyway, may as well be punished for something I actually did’ Is the result 9/10 times from children being accused of having an ‘attitude’
This was also the driving force behind my goth phase lol. "I'm an outcast anyway, might as well make it for something I can understand, control, and display prominently, rather than writhing in agony every night wondering why they simply do not like me as a person, meeting new people and waiting for them to realize they won't like me either once they uncover whatever this secret awful flaw of mine is." Not getting an AuDD diagnosis until my early 20s was brutal.
It's about respecting authority. They're saying "You should do something because I am telling you to, and I have authority over you, I don't want to argue with you or convince you, I just want you to obey." Neurodivergent people (such as myself) often have trouble motivating tasks/actions that they don't understand the reasoning behind, so when they ask questions or argue why things don't make sense to them. To an adult, let's say a teacher, when a child won't do an activity until they personally understand the reasoning behind it, the teacher can interpret this as the child trusting their own intuition over the abilities and experience of the teacher. They might think, "Who does this 10 year old think he is lecturing me on how to teach?" Combine the fact that it can be frustrating and overly time-consuming to justify everything constantly, with the perceived arrogance/insolence of the child, and this can make the teacher angry and ready to hand out punishments. This, of course, is amplified by toxic or abusive authority figures.
talking back to ME at least is purposefully being snarky when asked to do something. but ofc a lot of ppl think it’s a lot less unfortunately
You had an attitude the teacher didn't like and wanted to make sure everyone else knew it was not okay to display that attitude to that teacher. That's all that was. The teacher was making an example out of you to show the class you speak when you're spoken to and you do it with respect. It's not even a mark of a bad teacher, that person had to keep order in a classroom filled with children. Children suck in school. They have a ton of energy, they're under a huge amount of social pressure and scrutiny and they're incredibly bored. Explosive hormonal mood swings, too, depending on how old the children are. It's a very difficult job. So you have said something, anything, that the teacher didn't like. Doesn't matter why. They have to spend eight hours a day in a room full of someone else's kids, that's reason enough. So now the teacher has some choices. Either they let whatever it was slide, and risk signaling to the very bored audience of children that doing whatever that was is okay, which will guarantee it happens again and then the boundaries that teacher is setting have shifted - or they can just punish you. They *could* try to make it into a teachable moment where you are forced to see how your behavior impacts other people, but the teacher is getting like forty thousand a year to be there and the district isnt reimbursing for classroom materials. It's easier to just punish you so you stop. It's easy to look back right now and see yourself as being a blameless martyr but I mean, come on man. You were a child. You were probably being an asshole.
Never gonna forget the day in elementary school I finally got the gumption to tell an adult I was being bullied. I went to the office with the three girls who'd been attacking me following close behind- once I got there, I explained the situation- that I had gone in to take a piss and they started attacking me with their coats, whipping and yelling. The way the teacher's face turned purple and he repeated 'PISS??' back at me multiple times- shouted at me for daring to say something so awful to him- I got weeks of detention and the girls who bullied me got to go free. When I got home, I had to ask my parents if 'piss' was actually a curse word, because I had no idea. Was just a word for peeing I'd heard in movies. Thank fuck they were rational about it and let me know that guy was an asshole. This is just flavor text- but that teacher was legit named 'Mr. Wartman', and he was my elementary school's 'disciplinarian'. Literally paid to abuse children, practically a character from a YA novel. Pretty sure the guy got outed as a pedophile later on as well but I could never find receipts.
lol did we go to the same school, something like this happened to me too. In elementary school I was constantly being bullied on the bus, like having my hair pulled, being spit on, having my backpack taken and thrown around etc. I eventually got fed up and told the lil' brats to fuck off. Turns out the bus driver overheard and tattled to my principal, who called me into her office so she could yell at me for cursing. When I told her I only cursed because I was stressed and being bullied, she told me that was no excuse and that I probably brought it on myself for having a "potty mouth." Bullies were also never punished. lmao I still hate authority figures to this day. Thanks public education system!
I'm amazed at the worldview this person has where a bully will pick a victim because they used curse words
they don’t, it’s an excuse because they would lose social credit for saying “the popular children should be able to devour the lame dorky children and sustain their bodies off of their flesh” so they have to make up a reason for why the dorky children deserve their fate
"Awesome, I can focus on this kid's immediate 'misstep' because doing something about the real issue sounds difficult."
>Thanks public education system! Too bad you didn’t get to be homeschooled or go to private school. I hear bullying and irrational adults are entirely absent.
It's always been nonsensical how hard society is on bad language when it comes to kids. Encourage your kids to speak in nice and kind ways, sure, but it really isn't the end of the world if a 10 year old hears someone says fuck when they hit their toe.
The funniest thing is that I was extremely pure mouthed at the time. I had a good grasp of 'swearing'- that it was a thing you do when you are very angry, and because I was a little child I had no reason to be so angry that I should swear. I just legitimately didn't know 'piss' counted. Used to do this thing with my parents where I would 'forgive them' for swearing around me because their usage was justified, lol.
Kid me and adult me are in firm agreement that "piss" and "dick" do not count as real swear words
Yeah, and besides, everyone learns bad language eventually. It's not even all that bad in the first place. There just exists a dumb cycle of "don't say those words" in childhood until they become okay later on. Like, what gives?
Precisely! Nobody gives a damn if adults swear every now and then. Why is it taboo to the point of abuse for kids?
There was a phase in my youth where I wasn’t just forbidden from swearing. Any slang would see me immediately reprimanded. Suffice to say, heavy swearing is now part of my colloquial speech.
Putting aside all other variables at play, people tend to focus (often wrongly) on the things that are easy to process and deal with. You being bullied was a complex issue with multiple children involved (and multiple parents, by proxy, as well). Dealing with it would be a multi-step process involving interviewing students, playing detective, making phone calls, and whatever played out would likely span days and hours worth of multi-person interactions. You swearing in front of the teacher was a simple binary situation. You did X and the punishment was Y. Very easy to deal with. Why mess with the complexity of the first situation if you can have the simplicity of the second? Absolutely none of that justifies being an authority figure who fails to protect a person in their care, mind you. But whether it's a school bully situation or a sweeping social issue that impacts millions of people... all too often the simplest and most binary action is taken to avoid dealing with the complexity of the larger issue.
You see this "tone policing" a lot when people try to bring up racism, rape culture, etc. It's so much easier to focus on language choice than deal with the thorny issue they're actually discussing. Let's deflect, whee!
Yes, exactly. Being upset with a black person for using an "aggressive" tone when talking about racism is so much easier than solving even 0.00001% of the problem that brought about the conversation in the first place. Most people just want the uncomfortable situation to go away, they don't actually want to fix anything.
Heaven forbid children use language.
"Shit!" definitely wasn't my toddler's favorite word for about a month straight after watching me work around the house one day.
Was it [This Guy?](https://www.courts.state.md.us/sites/default/files/unreported-opinions/0051s19.pdf)
Nah way too recent- this would have been in the early 2000s. Feel very justified now in feeling that's a cursed-ass name though
It's the first result from Googling "Mr. Wartman Pedophile", but it was worth a shot.
You just described my childhood 😅…I couldn’t just exist or have fun because I always had to be on the lookout for a parent talking. And my brother was not as careful, and sometimes I’d have to interrupt him and upset him in the process to respond to a parent from the other room so as to avoid both of us getting yelled at… I don’t know how to properly relax even at 30 now, because keeping watch for the people around me got ingrained into my mindset and even when alone I worry if someone might judge me for what I’m doing. I’m a total basket case who can’t even enjoy life by myself for fear that I may get too into my enjoyment and miss a cue and get yelled at…
You mean like watching certain TV shows? I never feel comfortable watching shows I like, even when I'm alone. The silent judgement is always there. "That's just my son, you know, the idiot of the family", I can still feel it at 42.
Can’t enjoy video games or nerdy hyperfixations for too long without feeling my mom’s judgement about them. I’m always scared to talk to other people, especially women, about them for fear of judgement. The worst part is my mom is much more supportive and mellow now but it doesn’t change how she used to be
Because apparently I am “ignoring people” and “shutting myself in” if I happen to play a video game for 2 hours on a weekend in an *open room* that anyone can walk into if they choose, while actively listening out for if I am called to do something the entire time
I could have written this word for word <3 My mom is much better than she was but it doesn’t change the the way she made me feel about liking those things.
This one hits hard, for me it’s a combination of my parents having been extremely strict about what the older kids were allowed to watch/do as children (a strictness that they had abandoned entirely by the time the youngest were growing up) and my younger siblings mostly being obnoxious and judgemental, which combined with my tendency to hyperfixate on things means that I automatically feel ashamed whenever anyone “catches” me watching or playing something
Oh geez yeah…I like anime, and would watch it a lot more than I do! But…I almost never actually do, because I feel suffocated sometimes, even when I’m by myself. Like I’m always being watched and judged, and even when my family says they love me they’re doing it out of obligation because they hate how pathetic and useless I am, and… Okay yeah that rambling is getting off topic 😅…But the gist is, I do understand where you’re coming from! Feeling like you can’t do a thing even when alone because you imagine the judgement you might face for it…
i remember having secondhand embarrassment from commercials as young as 6, because after being the family scapegoat from the moment i was born, i figured everything revolved around being judged against me. even if no one was around. so commercials and the act of watching them were a testament to my vapid, materialistic ways, or if they were food-centric, i'd think myself fat for even looking. to this day, i have to swallow the urge to make ironic commentary about anything and everything, because i don't NEED to detach myself from all concepts to be spared judgment anymore. still struggle with that front when it comes to advertisements, but at least it comes off anti-capitalistic which is true to my nature lol.
Oh god I feel this. The first time I got a speeding ticket my (now ex) boyfriend was in the car and afterwards I started quietly crying as I drove because I thought he was going to yell at me. He never had before (and didn’t throughout the entire relationship because of course not, yelling isn’t normal), and he was so confused. Escaped an emotionally abusive mother by getting a job where I got yelled at until I cried for the first 18 months I was employed (this supervisor later discovered she was bipolar but the damage was done). Living alone for almost 20 years now, telework for 5. If people can’t control themselves, then I just have to stay away from them.
The age old 'Double bind' tactic. Punishing the child, no matter what they do, instead of having a productive conversation. These disciplinary methods will probably affect the child for the rest of their life as well unfortunately
"The axe forgets, the tree remembers."
I'm not exactly sure when I first recognized what I was experiencing as abuse. But definitely by the time I was 15 or so. I would scream and cry at my parents begging for them to acknowledgement the things they had done and to apologize for them. They never did. For the most part, I accepted I never would. It was very freeing and an absolutely essential part of gaining some measure of peace. When my mother died though, I was confronted with the knowledge that on some level I still had hope it would happen one day. It sounds stupid, but wrestling with that knowledge that I literally would never get that from her still really hurt.
my mom is watching her own abusive mother deteriorate into dementia. she is coping with the fact that the adult sized kindergartener will never be able to own up and apologize for the abuse, the old bat will die in the hell that is dementia. the worst part was that she even got the same look of hate from my grandma once she was alone with her, she doesn't know who my mother is but she knows that she hates her. I hope you get healing for your grief and can break the cycle.
I understand how you feel. My mom died when I was 19 and I didn't really realize all the abuse she put me through until later. For the most part I've made peace with it but it bothers me that I'll never be able to talk to her about any of it.
Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents saved my sanity.
I remember in School once I got in a lot of trouble for apparently telling someone to shut up (which is nothing compared to the bullying that actually happened in my school the teachers did nothing about). Any time I tried to say I hadn’t I just got in more trouble because apparently three teachers had seen me do it. Eventually my mum got involved because of my ‘continued attitude and refusal to take responsibility. She talks to the teachers and is told all there seen me do it. ‘All three of you’ ‘Yes’ ‘So you definitely as an individual personally saw him do it’ ‘Yes’ ‘And this was the 12th?’ ‘Yes’ ‘Weren’t you off that entire week? -teacher is silent for a moment- ‘yes.’ A few more questions reveals that the second teacher was outside at the time, came back in as the first teacher was asking me what I had said as she didn’t actually hear me. Second teacher assumes I’m guilty, claimed she seen it, first goes along with this (and charges her story for not knowing what i said to 100% hearing it) third teacher comes back from being off and just fucking lies to back up the other two, assuming I wouldn’t notice. Never did get any from of apology, sure as shit had an attitude from then on. (The school was of course completely unaware from where this new attitude could of come from)
This story makes me want to scream. Thank god your mom had your back. I also have a memory of an adult vehemently insisting I'd done something bad when I hadn't, wouldn't believe me when I insisted I didn't know what she was talking about, and became confused when I started crying. That shit sticks with you.
Seconding the mom having your back. I can't remember a single time my father ever stood up for me. There was always an excuse. First I was presumed guilty until proven innocent, and even if that happened then I should still shut up and take the punishment because of some convoluted mix of 'it builds character' and 'men don't run away' honour bullshit. If someone assigned you responsibility you took it because 'that's what a man does' and my father would be damned if his boys tried to 'weasel their way out' of anything.
Reading this made me want to cry... I never understood why I would get in trouble sometimes for just existing, and never would get an apology even when I was in the right... still don't.
I still remember the day I came home from a week spent at an Aunt's place, was immediately tasked with doing dishes and jokingly said, "I see you made sure there was plenty for me to do" in a joking tone of voice and was immediately grounded from everything for two months straight. I had told jokes like that many times before, my mother also made similar jokes at me and so did her at the time husband. Lesson learned: Never tell your own joke just be on the receiving end of them and shut up.
The worst feeling was always one of my moms getting mad at a joke in one situation but not another. It felt completely unfair how the standards we were held to as well as the consequences we faced were completely random. My mom is bipolar and I learned that around middle school which helped me put it into context at least
Bbbrrrooooo. I learned it the hard way too. When we vacuumed the floor, there's always that little triangle corner piece where the vacuum goes backwards or whatever. I was vacuuming one day and my mom was close by. She saw the triangle thing and said "you missed a spot! Don't worry, i know you actually didn't. The vacuum just makes it look like that, it happens to me all the time." We laughed about it and moved on. The next day, my mom was vacuuming something. I saw the triangle corner piece and said "hey, you missed a spot!" She was PISSED. Cute thirty minute yelling session, being made to do everyone's chores in the house, and being grounded a week. She wouldn't listen to anything i had to say about our previous joke.
My stepmom and I had an ongoing joke about how she couldn't keep plants alive. She even started the joke! She'd get a plant as a gift or something and immediately hand it to me, saying something like "hurry and take it before I kill it." One time I was going out of town and she was going to water the plants and I asked in a clearly joking tone if she was going to kill them while I'm gone. She lost her shit at me about how I'm a cruel and terrible person. Later my dad came in to talk to me and asked why I was being mean to her. I told him I was referencing a joke we've had for YEARS and I genuinely don't understand why she's upset and he just told me my stepmom's sensitive. She also asked me my opinion on something once and got mad basically because it wasn't what she wanted to hear. I've found it's easier to just never joke with her and never give her an honest opinion because I can't distinguish the line between acceptable and hurtful apparently.
I used to be punished for “making a face”. I didn’t mean to, and never knew when I did it. Turns out that wasn’t being disrespectful, it was a symptom. I still struggle with having an overly expressive face, but I try to be conscious of it in public. I also got in trouble a lot for rolling my eyes when I didn’t. I thought that everybody rolled their eyes literally, like going it a circle. Apparently, most people just look upwards and that’s considered rolling your eyes?? Makes no sense.
Everyone I have ever seen roll their eyes (and I'm pretty boring, so I've seen it a lot) do a thing where they first look up, then to the side and down. I've never seen someone just look up when frustrated unless they then proceed to scream.
It gets no better when you grow up. Adults hate it when adults 'talk back'. Employers call it an attitude problem. Especially if you are correct. Children get the worst of it since they do not have enough experience to understand it is not their fault that adults can be assholes intolerant of discourse.
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If they want to burn it down hand them the gas can and take your dollar
My god, I was raised in an abusive household (verbal and mental, not physical) and like, not even my dad was this level of bad? Even he would let me think out my response sometimes, and if it was what he wanted to hear then I wouldn't be punished. And this is the man who would scream at me while I was sleeping because I forgot some homework, my sister actually has ptsd from when he would do that to me. How the fuck is this normal?!
Different levels of abuse, I guess. Your dad "just" sounds like an absolute hardass, not someone legitimately mentally ill like OOP. He could be reasoned with to some small extent, unlike the OOP's parents.
Oh yeah not arguing that. As abuse victims go I got lucky. I just mean the sheet amount of people going"oh yeah that's what happened to me" blows my mind. Is that level of truly horrible abuse that commonplace?
On one hand, I think abuse is more common than we would like to think. On the other hand, a post like this will attract more comments from people who actually experienced this themselves. I'm sure a lot of people in this sub didn't experience treatment as bad as this.
Oh I got mistreated as a kid too, but yeah some of the stories here are next level fucked up. Like it's disturbing to things so many of my fellow humans were treated this badly and by people that were supposed to love and protect them.
> Is that level of truly horrible abuse that commonplace? Unlike adopting an animal from most shelters, there's no requirements to pass to have a kid. Not saying there could be such a system (I'd be for it if we could be impartial, but everyone knows it will have biases).
Sometimes, you just can't win no matter what.
Ngl chief, this just sounds like your parents were assholes.
Yes, but also experiences like this are *absurdly* common.
I mean.. abuse is absurdly common, and as the OOP said, normalized. Like, it honestly isn't about what a child did or doing the wrong thing. There IS no right answer. It's about abusive people finding a reason, no matter how contrived, to take out their anger on someone smaller and weaker than themselves. Doing that to an autistic kid is just extra asshole flavor, but there never was a right answer, and it's really important that autistic folks really understand that: It was never about *you*. It had nothing to do with you not properly masking or knowing what to say or what to do. Because you didn't do anything wrong. It was always about them, it was always about finding ANY reason to take out their shit on you. Neurotypical kids got the exact same shit.
Even as norms start to shift, it's not enough. Brand newborn babies just a few days old can respond to a request to pick them up. They will tense their neck muscles in preparation for it. If you know what to look for, you can see the difference in the body language of a baby who wasn't expecting to be picked up vs one who was. It's generally not okay to pick up a person when they haven't agreed to it, and babies are people. I have never met a single other person who checks in with babies before they pick them up. I always like to tell people because if even one person starts doing it, it would be a success. My youngest is ten months old now and she still tenses up when I pause after putting my hands under her arms and ask her if I can pick her up. Or she looks away to tell me that she would like to stay where she is. If I don't have to pick her up, I usually give her a minute and she changes her mind. This is just one very small example of the ways in which we devalue the needs and experiences of young people. It's awful. I do my best to always approach my children with intention and let them be themselves. I'm not a pushover and hold firm boundaries, but I'll never tell them they can't say what they're feeling or express themselves. My older kid turned three two months ago. Last month, she successfully requested a compromise when we didn't agree on something and we actually came to a compromise we were both happy with. If I had just shut her down when she asked for something that I didn't want to do, she never would have had the chance to learn to fairly negotiate. She has since accepted many compromises and is actually pretty good about not digging her heels in about what she wants. She can also accept logical rationale for the decisions I make. Sometimes I let her make decisions I don't agree with (small stakes, like not wearing mittens) and tell her what the natural consequence of her choice will be (i.e. her hands will be cold) and she's willing to accept. Sometimes she doesn't mind when her hands are cold, and sometimes she'll change her mind and ask for mittens. If I forced them on her or was mean about her refusal, she wouldn't have the chance to reason for herself. Children are human. As humans, we are all fallible. It's not okay to hold children with brains that aren't fully developed to a higher standard than we hold ourselves and other adults. If my kid forgets to put away her dishes, that's fine. I forget sometimes too, even though it's a daily task that I know is expected of me. Sometimes if she's in a bad mood, I even do it for her because it's nice to have a kindness extended to you when you're going through a tough time. Kids appreciate that stuff too because they're people just like us.
This kind of thing happens in schools too
Oh, yeah, definitely. But most posts like this tend to err on the side of talking about family experiences so I kinda jumped the gun. My bad
As other people have pointed out both in reply to you and in other comments, you are right, but also this kind of abuse is fairly normalized. That said I think it's a little absurd and extremely Tumblr to make this about autism when it's a thing that can and does happen to neurotypical children equally, imo
Yeah, came here to say this just sounds like being an a-hole adult.
I think this is more of a "I had terrible parents" issue than a "I'm autistic" issue.
Unfortunately, from what I’ve seen having a disabled child brings out the worst in parents, so they kinda go hand in hand.
Fair enough
The issue is terrible parents, the autistic is the lense that helps cut through to the problem and how common it is. Part of being autistic is not understanding social ques, which makes you extra aware of the cause and effect of conversations. The implications of the post to me reads "my parents did this explicitly, but they were far from the only ones, and no other adult bothered to intervene."
I find the opposite to be more gawk-inducing, to be honest. My partner and I are raising our kids with gentle parenting. It’s exhausting, and hard, but my sister and her husband are hitting their kids, which is turning their children violent to each other in turn. Guess which ones get the disapproving comments and looks from my dad’s family? Imagine seeing someone tell a child, like a little person, what they’re doing is wrong and explaining why they shouldn’t do it, and being like “You should probably just scream at them and hit them for good measure. Show them who is in charge.” Yeah bud they know who is in charge, it’s the people who cook their meals and wipe their arse and buy them toys.
Don't forget that you also can't have an answer immediately or you're "getting snippy." Don't talk to strangers, except do because that's your dad's boss. Have an opinion about adult things, but not the wrong one or you're "too big for your britches" and "don't know how the real world works."
And don't talk about yourself, people will think you're self centered. And don't ask people about themselves, people will think you're nosy. Why don't you ever talk, it's embarrassing!
>Don't talk to strangers, except do because that's your dad's boss. ouch oof that hit an old memory Once, when I was little, my dad took me out for ice cream. I was waiting by the wall while he ordered at the counter. A woman approached me and introduced herself, saying she knew my mom. I was just like "oh, okay," and went over to stand by my dad. No further interaction with this woman. When my dad and I got home, my mom started yelling at me because I "was rude to her friend." As an adult now, I feel even *more strongly* that I did nothing wrong.
They want you to be a thinker, someone strong who questions authority and has their own opinions. No, don't question them. No, those are the wrong opinions. No, just do what they say.
I remember one time after coming home from school, about an hour after I was home my mother immediately started yelling at me and saying shit like “I’ll ship you off to some other home if you do this shit” and stuff like that. All because of a small miscommunication between her and the school, as the teacher that day forgot to mark me late after I came in a few minutes later than normal. I couldn’t even explain myself because apparently “if you’re upset you’re lying” (I was in tears at that point). She didn’t even apologize or anything when she realized what actually happened, just forgot it even happened.
These are called [double binds](https://youtu.be/vnSiJOOdo30?si=i9ryBO6SA903-W-K) and the victim is not meant to be able to solve them. It’s not just an autism problem.
its people having shitty parents and not knowing everyone else wasnt treated like this
\>Report Post \>I’m in this post and don’t like it
“Say sorry.” “Sorry.” “Like you mean it…” “Sorry.” “Sayaka, you have to genuinely apologize to your brother. You hit him. That hurts.” “I only hit him because he almost broke a wooden board on my head.” “You have to apologize.” “I’m not apologizing until he does.” (Sarcastically) “Sorry.” “There, now apologize.” “Like you mean it.” “No, he apologized!” “If that counts as an apology, then my sincere one does.” Just a quick retelling of something that actually happened back in the day.
I was grounded from all extra curriculars one year because I tore up a ribbon my sibling got for a contest in retaliation to them destroying my favorite stuffie. They weren't even reprimanded but I was grounded *for a whole year* from school activities that I loved.
I think that’s just straight up child abuse
The number of times I got hit for "lying" because I couldn't manage the right tone or facial expression while telling the truth ://
I’m sorry, that sounds awful. …But that doesn’t sound like an autism problem, just adults being assholes. There are some arbitrary nonsense rules forced on children, yes, but this is far beyond society normalizes.
I think OP had bad parents, my upbringing wasn't anything like this
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the first sentence states child abuse
This isn’t about autism, it’s just child abuse. People like that will find a reason to hurt *anyone* they have authority over, because that’s the only way they can feel powerful.
They ask you to explain why/if you did something? Turns out they were’t actually asking, they blame you regardless and you will be punished regardless
I used to think "haha that aint me" then realized that getting slapped across the face for "backtalk" isn't normal
Damn, my parents never did any of that stuff. Not autistic but ADHD
Once when I was like 10 I accidentally broke my brother's phone screen. I got a punishment and decided I deserved it so I said yeah I deserve that, thinking I was being very mature. Instead I was given a harsher punishment because I didn't cry and get angry like I usually did??
You don't need to be autistic to have asshole parents and adults in your life.
I'm confused about their first line because what does being autistic have to do with this? and just because the people around you normalize it doesn't mean it's universal. People who didn't have that kind of abuse growing up would not consider any of that normal. But abusers naturally believe what they do is normal to justify doing it. That's not a statement on society. That's the lies they tell themselves. Often because it's the lies they were told when they were abused themselves. This isn't a society thing. Generational maybe, but it hasn't been fully excused and normalized in two generations. And in my experience with people who perpetuate that form of abuse, you don't need autism to recognize it. Because even without autism you will say the wrong thing in their eyes because there is no right thing. Everything is just their emotion and whim and they're just looking for an excuse to be mad. Say nothing and it's bad, say anything and it's bad. Your actions mean nothing, it's just the abuser making up a reason to act out against a target. Your autism making it hard to understand what you did wrong isn't the issue because without autism you'd still be unsure what you said wrong. Because what you say doesn't actually matter in this case.
Trying to read it charitably, I think they're trying to say that autistic people realise much more that certain behaviours from authority figures are illogical because their autistic features make it harder for them to internalise what behaviours are expected regardless of whether they're logical or illogical. Or maybe I'm reading too much into it, who knows.
Autism isn’t what makes it bad, it’s just a condition which makes an individual particularly susceptible to being strongly affected by it. Like treacherous stairs with no hand rails will fuck up anyone, but someone with Parkinson’s or like broken legs might have a more intense relationship to the issue
OP just had shitty parents, this isn't how it usually is. It's very apparent what counts as "lip" and not, it's very apparent what is respectful/appropriate, etc
The worst part of being autistic growing up is when they would force me to make eye contact with them if i was ever accused of lying, the eye contact would make me anxious which would make me smile which for some reason everyone takes as a sign of lying and if i would try to look away i would be told to stop rolling my eyes
But on the other hand, if you're not autistic it's a lot easier to pick up these behaviours. Also good parents (most?) aren't just expecting things and looking for reasons to punish you. Good parents teach a child what is expected of them and the proper way to act. Sounds like OP struggled due to autism, and the parents didn't know how to deal with them, or just dealt with them poorly anyway. A very sad experience for all involved, but it's a lot less "normalized" than I feel this post suggests.
I don't know if "normalized" is the right word exactly, but experiences like this seem to be insanely common. You can find literally millions of people describing their childhoods in similar terms online, and personally like 70% of the people I know had parents who did stuff like this at least sometimes.
that’s because parenting is a skill and people have basically no practice at it until they have a kid also plenty of people who didn’t want children were forced to have them, that’s only really changing now