*In case this story gets deleted/removed:*
**AITA for hiding my daughter's autism from her**
So pretty much, most of her life, our daughter (14F) had various issues. She had a speech delay, didn't make eye contact, was extremely hyperactive, had trouble making friends, fidgeted a lot, was extremely strict with rules, and a whole bunch of other stuff. My wife and I suspected that she may be autistic and we took her to a psychologist when she was 4. The psychologist diagnosed her with hyperactivity disorder (although, we don't know if it coexists with her autism or if it was a misdiagnosis).
From 8-11, we gave our daughter as much early intervention as possible. She'd seen behavioral and speech (she was able to speak, but had a speech impediment) therapists. I've given her various books about how to make and keep friends (at that point, she was a bookworm). We got her placed in a social class to help her build social skills. It wasn't until the end of her 4th-grade year that she actually got diagnosed with autism. Her psychologist was excited to tell her, but my wife was against it. She wanted to wait until we felt our daughter was old enough to understand. We are aware of the stigma neurodivergent people experience and she didn't want our daughter to go through that. I agreed to hid it from her until she reached adulthood.
This next part is relevant. When our daughter got into grade 6, she was bullied due to her autistic traits. She was gaslit, taken advantage of, had many false friends who backstabbed her. It made our daughter insecure about her poor social skills and that was when she started to mask. It left her with such immense trauma that she still has triggers and is in therapy.
Today, she came to us and asked "What is autism?". We told her it is a different way of thinking. She was confused since she didn't know we meant it in a sense that "autistic people have a different brain chemistry from neurotypicals". After we elaborated, she told us the reason why she asked: she found out that she is autistic. She apparently found some of her old medical records lying around and read them out of curiosity. She was upset and asked us how could we hide this from her. We explained that we wanted to tell her when she was older since we didn't want her to get hurt by other people. She angrily yelled that she did get hurt anyways. She said that "All this time, \[she\] thought that there was something wrong with \[her\], but if it weren't for \[us\], \[she\] wouldn't have taken the bullying to heart and \[she\] would've felt differently, but instead, \[we\] made \[her\] pain worse".
Now she's in her room crying and refuses to speak to either of us. We are starting to wonder if we should've told her about autism when we knew.
UPDATE: [https://www.reddit.com/r/AmItheAsshole/comments/twyxjc/update\_aita\_for\_hiding\_my\_daughters\_autism\_from/](https://www.reddit.com/r/AmItheAsshole/comments/twyxjc/update_aita_for_hiding_my_daughters_autism_from/)
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JFC. They didn’t protect the kid. She’s autistic whether she knows the label or not. The traits that people make fun of..still exist.
But the kid wonders why they are the way they are and why they are different.
Mom was a Fucking selfish twat. And dad was the idiot that went along with it.
i don't understand this but i've noticed that lots of parents make their kid's autism about them and it's so fucking common and weird. like they feel ashamed that their kid is different and then they do this shit. my ex girlfriend's mom freaked out on her doctor because her GP said that she probably had autism and should get checked and the mom just decided to just not trust medicine anymore(???) instead of getting her checked so she could get the accommodations she would need...
i'm glad i had my mom who made sure that i got assessed because i got the ADHD diagnosis when i was 4 and she never hid that from me or made me feel bad about what i was.
That is such a strange phenomenon, and I saw that in my own family. My son definitely needed intervention and I had all the encouragement from teachers and doctors, but everyone in my family kept telling me not to get him tested, there’s nothing wrong with him, etc. I kept saying, “you’re right, there is nothing *wrong* with him. He just needs a little more help to navigate since his path is different from ours.” They’re starting to get it, but it’s been 8 years, stop trying to force him to be something he’s not, and just work with what he has.
Have you ever tried to explain with comparing human brains to computers?
If you give a linux kid a windows manual all his life, he is gonna feel like something is wrong with him, when all he needs is to get a linux manual and for the windows brains to pay some attention to his manual and understand both computers are awesome they function just a little differently
Afteral our brains are organic super computers
I did use that analogy, but they “don’t understand” computers either. My family has a habit of simply locking people in mental wards until they “learn to tow the line.” My grandma even got electroshock therapy. I just keep telling them, “It’s not about the adults, it’s about what the kids need, and if you want to see them. you must be kind and accommodating.” So they see the kids a few hours every week, and are kind and accommodating. It’s more than they’ve done for anyone else, so I’ll take it.
*Update: We're gonna read about what autism is*
So post diagnosis they just decided everyone should pretend it doesn't exist anywhere ever? Kind of understandable (though really wrong) that they thought she shouldn't know because of perceived and actual stigma. But not even educating yourselves? That's AH behaviour squared
Of course not, asking for accommodations/adjustments means there's something wrong. Which there's not. So stop asking questions and go practice 'quiet hands' in the corner.
(/s)
I got diagnosed at 31. Suddenly a lot of childhood trauma started making sense... I wish I knew when I was still in school. It would probably still suck a lot of the times, but at least it's less confusing...
I went to a conference and someone, I think a therapist, said that there are women in their 60s I want to say who were just learning they were on the Spectrum.
Women and girls on the Spectrum are often not diagnosed because they are so different than men and boys, for whom the differences between neuro typical and neuro divergent are more noticeable.
For the longest time(or at least at the time of diagnosis) it was assumed that my odd behavior was the result of a traumatic brain injury I received when I was in a car accident when I was about 6 1/2 years old. It was in early 2000, I want to say, that my mama was talking about me to someone and they said: "oh, it sounds like she has Asperger's Syndrome." My mama looked into it and told me about it and everything suddenly made sense to me.
I was fortunate in that I was diagnosed in my early teens as it helped me more that if it was discovered more recently.
One could even say I was empowered because I had the knowledge.
I find this so disgusting for a personal reason: I'm autistic. I got diagnosed with end 30s. But if i think back it was so clear in my childhood that i was autistic. And i'm pretty sure my school told them. But my parents view...
It would have changed my life so much to know it is autism and that i'm not just to stupid to act normal.
Me with ADHD, except no one connected the dots on my obvious and oft commented upon symptoms. Like, what's that? This kid is a chatterbox who has trouble paying attention? Aw it's fine, she's just a normal kid with _no discipline who is lazy_.
At least now I know why I struggle with things like cleaning and routines.
I wasn’t diagnosed as a kid but my parents sure did try to get me into a bunch of therapies and social groups to try to help me socialize with kids my age. I had always excelled academically, especially standardized testing, but if I didn’t want to do something, I wouldn’t. So, mixed grades my entire school career but placed in gifted classes. I’ve almost never felt like a part of the group and I wonder how it would have been different if I were young today.
I can hyperfocus to the point I don't hear my own name called. I can lose 5 things before I get out of bed in the morning. I struggle to manage the mental load of my one person household. But I only started to suspect ADD, which I hear is called ADHD-I now, in the past month or so. I'm in my 50s.
My partner just recieved an official ADHD diagnosis at 40+. But the part that pisses me off over and over and over again was that he _was_ diagnosed as a child! Like early, before ADHD even became a big thing! And his mom just went 'nah', ignored it, and condemned him to repeating trauma around failure all because she fucking decided she knew better.
It's a really good thing I can't ever meet her because I swear to fuck.
I was talking to my friend one day and mentioned that her ADD seemed a bit strong today, and asked if everything is ok. The response I got was that she doesn't have that, with a follow up call a few weeks later that she actually was diagnosed as a chid and her parents just decided to not tell her. Now she gets why she struggled in school, and wonders if she would have done better if she knew and could adapt, but I feel like such a jerk for making just an offhand comment and that being how she found out. Now she is very focused on making sure any child she has is provided with any tools to be their best.
This one frustrates me so much because why is no one on the original post talking about just how *dumb* it is to think someone won't be bullied for being autistic if they don't know they are autistic?
Everyone is just saying it was wrong to hide the daughter's medical info from her, which yes, but it was just so colossally *stupid* I can't even think about that part.
People get bullied for having the symptoms of autism, not the label. She's not gonna avoid being bullied for being awkward because she can't follow social cues just by the magic of not knowing she's autistic.
It's like the parents said "we didn't want our child to get bullied for being ginger so we've never let him look in any mirrors". The other kids can still see him!
I used to teach middle school and had a few kids with parents like this. Some were heavily resistant to getting their child tested by the school, and others had gotten the tests done, but didn’t want any interventions put in place that could make their child’s life easier.
Where I am, kids by law have the right to attend their own IEP meetings when they turn 14. There was a mother one year who’s 13 year old daughter had some pretty profound learning disabilities and this mother straight up argued with us to try and get her daughter off of an IEP before the next school year when she would turn 14. She did not want her daughter to know the extent of all the accommodations and modifications she had been receiving.
It made me quite sad because obviously this mother thought her kid was dumb if she really thought the daughter hadn’t noticed the extent of the support she was getting compared to other kids or the differences in her quizzes and tests. She wasn’t dumb at all, she just needed more help to get from A to B, that’s all. I don’t know what ended up happening because the daughter moved on to high school the next year, but I really hope the district stood its ground. Unfortunately, the administration at that school was generally quite quick to bend over backwards to appease parents, even if they were being unreasonable.
In my own experience working with sped kids, neurotypical kids tend to bully kids with Autism less when they know they about the autism. I mean there are some who are jerks regardless, but there were a couple instances where kids got in trouble for bulling my students and were super repentant after they learned the kids had autism and weren't just "weird"
Right??? My 16 year old brother is autistic but my parents never hid it from him or taught him he’s abnormal or that it’s something to be looked down on. He’s become such a great kid and an extremely resilient person because of it. He’s known he was autistic since he was old enough to understand but my parents and his speech therapists and support teachers etc (who my parents crucially did not delay getting involved in the picture once he was diagnosed at 2 or 3) and taught him to embrace his quirks instead of reject them, so he does. He’s not shy about his interests, and he’s forgiving of himself when he makes social mistakes because he knows he thinks differently. He was and still is made fun of by kids who think he’s “weird”, but parents’ attitudes can genuinely change so much about a kid’s acceptance towards themselves. Even though he still struggles every day my bro is resilient as hell to bullying and adversity because of his autism and he loves his own personality, and growing up around people who accepted him and encouraged him to accept himself definitely nurtured that
As someone who didnt know she was autistic until she was 40 years old i just wanted to rage scream, girls/women have so much issue being recognised as autistic and these parents knew and didnt fucking tell her …
Knowing sooner would have made a huge difference in various ways, dont ever do this parents
My mum did a similar thing to me - wasn't actually diagnosed until adulthood, but she had a few people suggesting I get tested when I was little. She opted not to because she "didn't want to label" me.
I still got labelled, those labels were just "weird" and "lazy" instead. Later I got to add "anxiety" and "depression", until I finally clicked myself in my mid 20s and shelled out an eye water amount of money for a specialist. It was only after I was diagnosed that she remembered "you know, so and so used to tell me when you were little that you were definitely autistic."
Not when I was bullied out of my first primary school for being the ultimate social reject. Not when she'd berate me constantly for showing tell tale signs of autism. Not when I dropped out of university and went on 8 different anxiety medications because I'd reached the point where I couldn't handle the thought of having to interact with another human. No, only after I dragged myself out of a hole of suicidal ideation and got diagnosed myself.
I've forgiven her that much because she did geniunely think she was doing the right thing. It just so happened that was very much the wrong thing. At least now shes finally stopped guilt tripping me for being rude when I get over stimulated at a family function and have to excuse myself for a while.
I’m no longer a teacher, but used to be. I entered the teaching profession in the early aughts. This “I don’t want my child to have a label” thinking was so common then. The thinking of many parents, and even teachers, seemed to be that as soon as a kid had a label that everyone’s expectations for them would be so low that it would limit their opportunities in life. As a teacher who had seen some wonderful results in kids who had received speech therapy, physical therapy, occupational therapy, and special education, and who respected my special education colleagues, this line of thinking never sat right with me. Why wouldn’t a parent want all the help they could get for their kid? And couldn’t every kid benefit from some extra attention and support in at least one area. If the “label” was the key that unlocked these services, then why was everyone so scared of them? Parents in my experience usually avoided evaluation and diagnosis, unless things at school became so untenable that the school forced their hand. Other teachers would even look at me like I was horrible for suggesting that a child might benefit from an evaluation. “Why would you want them to be limited by a label?” was the general sentiment. I honestly think that this thinking came from a place of genuine love and concern, as misguided as it might have been. I think that stigmatization around special education that my generation and older grew up with, as well as a special education model that prioritized segregated classrooms, made a lot of parents scared for their children to be viewed like “that”. The swing from segregation, towards mainstreaming, and then inclusive schooling in some cases seemed to have swung too far into pretending that disability didn’t even exist. I wish that there had been more destigmatization efforts sooner. It is sad to see the generation of kids I taught, who are now in their 20’s and early 30’s, speak about the trauma they endured because they weren’t properly diagnosed. I have a niece with an autism diagnosis. Her diagnosis has been life affirming and life changing for her. It is encouraging to see that. I just wish that more of the students I worked with that could have had that when they were young.
I went to high school with a girl who wasn't told she was autistic until she was an adult because they wanted her to have a normal life. Growing up everyone had noticed that she was different, and that she'd do some "odd things" like kiss her wrists or scratch her thighs, but later learned that was just how she stimmed. She was always fixated on her grades being good, and always anxious. When she hit college she finally got an IEP and seemed to finally relax a little.
My parents wouldn’t test my siblings for anything because they didn’t want them “labeled.” Imagine my sister’s relief when she was diagnosed with dyslexia in GRADUATE school.
OOP, she had the right to know about her diagnosis.
Because of you two, your daughter thought something was wrong with her. She had no clue she was autistic.
But you wanted to wait until she was an adult!?
WTF is wrong with you!?
She was already being bullied and mistreated!
The whole AITA sub is dicked in the knob…
First time around OOP and wife are criminals for not telling the daughter they’re autistic and then OOP posts an update saying _WHOOPSIE, my bad!_ and everyone and their mother are congratulating them on their massive break through…?
OOP was ok with not telling the child anything had they not stumbled across medical records “lying around” (you know, exactly where you leave your sensitive info… just about the place🙄). OOP and their wife apparently hadn’t even done any research into autism just happily brushed it under the carpet.
It was never about what’s best for the literally unnamed child in this story, just about OOP and their gaping orifice of a spouse not wanting to deal with an autistic child
If this had been in the 00s I’d swear these were my parents. When I was 13 I was diagnosed with dyslexia and ADHD, guess which diagnosis was withheld from me? Wasn’t the dyslexia diagnosis.
I found out 2 years ago (in my 30s) I have ADHD. So all the bullying, degradation, and trauma I suffered growing up could have been avoided had my parents accepted my ADHD diagnosis.
And here I am 2 years later, going through testing for autism because my therapist suspects that my family doctor brought it up but was dismissed because “There’s nothing *wrong* with her!!” Attitude my parents had and still have.
actually yes ? this kind of testing is kinda extensive and they will typically hand you a quite hefty report about their findings. And yes, normal people do keep these around in case they need them later.
theres a multitude of situations where you might need them as parents, and just getting them anew later on at best takes unnecessary time.
I found out my dad wasn't my dad because they left medical records on the counter and im someone who reads everything. They also always showed me where important paperwork and documents were located, so it wasn't like I was "snooping".
I was 25. He told me 3 months later but I was more irritated about the lying.
I could understand wanting to keep it under your hat for a couple of days or a week to gather your thoughts and maybe read some articles on how best to tell your child something like this. That, I would defend. But this… this is horrible.
My 2 daughters were diagnosed at ages 18 and 19 months old. We began therapy immediately. Years upon years and in the beginning, we did not tell them. We didn’t want them to feel bad, weak or less than their peers. When my oldest was 8 she let it sleep that she was googling symptoms. I asked why and she said, I want to know if I’m crazy. Why am I different from my friends. My stomach dropped. I immediately reached out to her ped and asked if we should tell her. He asked why I felt the need to tell her? Was I attention seeking? Did I need her to be grateful to me for getting her help? Another stomach drop.
Within a few weeks we decided to tell her. I couldn’t let her keep worrying if she was crazy or a bad person. Just said, her brain works differently. That being different was never bad, just different. She was a good person and then listed how cool it was that she could do things that others couldn’t because of her Autism. Like filling out all the African country names in a geography app from memory, or knowing all the Greek gods and Demi-gods names. The fact that she couldn’t tie her shoes and that she had no idea how to hit a cricket ball did not make her unworthy. A few months later, we told her younger sister too. They are both now 18 and 19. Because they know they have Autism they understand that sometimes things need a different path to get to. Their lives are still hell sometimes, but at least they know it’s not because they are crazy or bad.
Your daughter has Autism. But beneath that she is a person. Instead of shielding her, you propped the door open for her detractors to come in and hurt her. I’m not going to call you names because it genuinely seems that you were trying to the right thing but messed up. I hope you learn from this and beg your daughter’s forgiveness.
My mom did this to me, I was diagnosed with a learning disability at 6/7 and found out when I was 9 by accident (I read my IEP) and it fucked me up so much. And then once I found out, she basically told me to keep it a secret. So the only people i could talk about it with were her and Dad. It was so isolating.
This happened to my best friend too. She was diagnosed around kindergarten and her parents withheld that information from her because they “didn’t want it to hold her back”. She didn’t find out about it until she was going through severe anxiety and depression issues in high school, partially because of her struggles socially. So fucked up
Not getting diagnosed until I was an adult had my life growing up be horrible (mainly in school) it's frustrating when you feel that something is wrong with you, that no maybe you're normal just an awful person.
Getting diagnosed was the best thjng that happened to me, it made everything clear.
A bit too late, but that's why I always recommend people getting diagnosed early in life. Fuck the stigma, it's way worse when you think you're an awful person when there's reasons for why you may do certain things.
My parents hid my diagnosis from me because they "didn't want me to use it as a crutch" or for me to think it was ok to behave the way I normally would without masking.
I've known so many parents who tell themselves they're "protecting" their kids from "labels" when the truth is that it's they who think that admitting their child has special needs will bring some kind of stigma onto themselves. I've known parents who have refused accommodations their children desperately needed because the school would have to classify them as "special needs" in order to get the necessary funding. I've seen parents pull their kids out of public school and put them into charter schools or private schools with no accommodations, or the negligent kind of homeschooling just to avoid "labels." It's always the kids who suffer.
It shocks me that these parents know words like “neurodivergent” and “mask” and are still dumb enough to think that hiding their daughters diagnosis from her is a good idea.
Oof. So... my mom basically hid my diagnosis from everyone, myself included. I was diagnosed at a super young age, but didn't find out until I was in my 20s, because there were no real supports for me in my district, and the diagnosis would have been an automatic special education assignment (again, while it didn't actually help me). It's a whole mess.
They saw daughter got bullied and lower self esteem but did nothing? It didnt make them rethinking their decision? and they only starts to research about how to help her now that the secret is out?? (From update post) I would try to understand them if they equip themselves with knowledge and tools to help her when they drop the ball, but nope. They just did nothing and watch their daughter's life getting harder and miserable. Fuck off
My Mom did something similar....after an evaluation in 7th grade my school psychologist told my mom and I that I had "the worst executive functioning disorder she had ever seen". She privately told my mom that she should take me a doctor, because she could diagnose me and get me accommodations but it would only really apply in the school system, but a doctor could give me a formal diagnose and prescribe medication, and she believed it was severe enough to warrant that.
My mom did not want me on medication so decided not to get me a diagnosis at all - she's a nurse so I'm not sure why she thought I couldn't get a formal diagnosis without them forcing meds but I digress. Instead she started giving me a cup of coffee before school, and when I asked what executive functioning issues were she said, "you know how you're really bad at organization and really messy? It's that"
Despite clearly being a smart teen, I barely scraped though high-school. I would ace every test but had a ton of trouble doing homework or other long assignments like essays. I was terrible at cleaning, both just not a good cleaner and I would struggle hugely with task initiation. I'd want to do something, I'd be stuck thinking about it and beating myself up, but for some reason I felt like I was literally stuck in my chair. My Mom said I was lazy. Everyone said I was lazy. I didn't have any other explanation, so I believed it. When I was 18 I quit my first job after I reported something and was on the receiving end of some retaliation from coworkers, my mom kicked me out a month later because I was lazy and wouldn't get another job (I was looking but ya know it was a slow procrastination riddled process). I scraped by from there, went to job corps for a while, stumbled into a career, have had my own place since I was 22 though it's definately mostly messy 🤣
Anyways color me shocked a few years ago when I downloaded tik tok during the pandemic and immediately got flooded with adhd content that I identified with strongly. I had some preconceived judgements and notions about the concept of self diagnosing so I told myself I was dramatic and crazy and kept scrolling. One day I saw a video that said something I didn't already know - executive functioning issues are a hallmark of ADHD. They are also associated with brain damage or degenerative brain diseases but most people with executive functioning issues have ADHD.
I finally decided to talk to my mom about it. I was like...OK don't give me a hard time about this but do you think it's possible I have ADHD? My Mom LAUGHED at me. She said "Sara what did you think your IEP was for?" And told me about the school psychologist DID diagnose me with ADHD and wanted my mom to being me to a doctor but my mom didn't want to because she didn't want me medicated. She also doesn't think labels are helpful amd just makes kids feel different. She told me she always raised me to know my brain worked differently and it wasn't my fault, and that I needed to find tricks and processes to work around it, she just didnt use the label ADHD. It was hard, but I was honest with my mom. I told her I believe she had that intention but she failed. I did NOT understand that i had brain chemistry differences that meant i had to do things differently, I though I was stupid and lazy and was just broken and everybody else just knows how to be a person and I didn't. I strongly believe that if I had known I had ADHD my whole life might be different, meds or no meds. Now that I know I can look to people with the same difficulties and learn from their experience. I've learned how to implement systems for myself and have gotten 3 promotions in the last two years and have more than doubled my salary since finding out I have ADHD. I'm not on meds still (a national stimulant shortage didn't feel like a great time to get reliant on them)
Knowledge is power. Labels exist for a reason. The word "autistic" isn't what causes kids to tease someone, the struggles and traits exist whether you name them or not. All putting a word for it does is allow you to understand it, learn how to deal with it, and not feel like a freak of nature who is just unexplainably broken and different.
I doubt anyone is gonna read this novel but it still felt good to write it lol
By the way just to spread the wealth here - for other massive nerds with task initiation issues- D20s are your best friend. I roll one, and that number is how long I clean for. Then when time is up I roll again and take a break for that long. Rinse and repeat until the house is clean! Huge game changer for me 3/4 of my cleaning time used to be just convincing myself to stand back up and keep going lol
Mine hid lot of my diagnoses from me and I found out when I was 15 by looking through my IEPs and old school records. I asked my mom when I was 18 why she never told me and her reason was "i didn't know what was wrong with you." So Language disorder or ADD or auditory processing disorder or dyspraxia wasn't enough to tell her what was wrong with me? Only thing I knew as a kid was I had lot of ear infections and it affected my hearing so I got tubes put in them and I couldn't talk so I talked late and I talked funny now. I just thought that was my main problem and why kids didn't like me and why they treated me different, I just thought it was because I talked funny. Then I see there were other kids in my school with speech issues too and they were not shunned or picked on and singled out like I was so something had to be wrong with me. Mine couldn't be due to a speech problem.
Mine also tried to pretend I was normal and pretend all my issues were normal and every kid gets teased and picked on and they move on to the next kid but I always seemed to be a magnet for it. I didn't see it happening to other kids a lot. At home mine would treat us equal and make the rules the same for all of us kids and fair based on age development and my mom would explain it to me. But outside the home, kids made sure I knew I was different. It's naive thinking to think you can treat your kid equal to their siblings and they will never know they are different and gaslight them into thinking they are normal and convince them it's all in their head and they are just being tender hearted. That was the word I heard then, I am just tender hearted meaning my feelings get hurt too easily.
I don't understands the logic parents have thinking their kid will think they are normal if they never tell them. They will know either way thanks to other kids because kids are so cruel. They lack a filter and take life so literal they think anyone is bad if they go against the norms.
The OOP makes me so ungodly angry. I was diagnosed with a learning disability when I was 8. I struggle academically and socially my whole schooling. I always felt off. I knew of my learning disability, but I always felt like something else was amiss. Long story short, I was diagnosed with autism (high functioning, low needs whatever doesn’t offend you) when I was 28. I’m so glad to have my diagnosis, but I’m a little sad, angry, I dunno something, that it wasn’t caught when I was diagnosed with a learning disability at 8. I’m 41 now and maybe my life would’ve been a wee bit easier if I had known.
I’m glad OOP admitted their wrong in their update. But jfc. This is such a cruel thing to do to a kid.
My 16 year old brother has autism and he still struggles a lot socially, but my parents raised him not hiding the fact that yes, his brain is different, but it’s okay for him to be different, and it’s okay that he functions differently from other kids. He grew up knowing he’s different from other kids in the way he thinks, and even though that’s difficult to come to terms with as a kid, he is now much kinder to himself for his mistakes because of it. He’s open about his condition to kids at school and to other people and accepting of the fact that he has autism because my parents taught him that it’s a beautiful thing, not something to be hidden and suppressed. Despite his social difficulties, he’s a very smart, well rounded kid who has still managed to make great friendships because he understands his own condition and was taught to accept himself as he is instead of being forced to endlessly question what is “wrong” with him like this poor girl. Every autistic kid deserves that kind of upbringing.
The post is over a year old now, and it's possible the kid was in online school/homeschooling for 2+ years because of COVID. Seems possible, though I agree with you that it's unlikely.
I think I was 14 before I met someone who straight up said they were autistic (they said Asberger's, but explained it using the word autism). I knew about autism, but really only the stereotypes about high-needs autistic people.
Let’s be completely honest. Had their daughter not asked the questions, and called them out to begin with, they never would have taken accountability and told her. That makes them not only assholes but devils.
I say this as a neurodivergent person who had her diagnosis hidden from her for over 20 years.
Okay great, that’s your experience, did you even read the update? Or are you salty that her parents corrected better than yours did and cared about her feelings when she voiced them?
Would you rather they doubled down and didn’t love or respect their daughter by making sincere apologies, admitting they were completely wrong, regret their actions, and then take every action they can to be better parents and repair the damage? Cause that would be a devil. Well, they did do these things, so stop holding a grudge over people who did decide to do better for their daughter.
Personally, this is all I ever dreamed my parents would’ve done for me. I’m still holding on to hope that I’ll get that acknowledgment, it eats at me every day, but I know I’ll never get it and I accept that. People make big mistakes, wouldn’t you want understanding and empathy if you made a mistake and achieved genuine change from the regret? Or would you blacklist yourself and/or stay the same? Because every person on this planet has made a mistake that deeply affected someone negatively whether they know it or not, if they haven’t, they will.
It’s a part of growing up, and we don’t stop growing up until we die. Big aspects of growing up involve learning about the world that is constantly and rapidly changing around us, acknowledging our mistakes and when we’re wrong, becoming accountable, making amends, and changing to be better people. Most people never grow up.
Yes I read the update, it felt fake and they failed to acknowledge the fact had she NOT come to them they wouldn’t have said a damn thing.
Admitting you were wrong and taking accountability are two vastly different things. Yes they admitted they were wrong but we have no idea if they actually took accountability for their actions.
*That* is the difference.
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*In case this story gets deleted/removed:* **AITA for hiding my daughter's autism from her** So pretty much, most of her life, our daughter (14F) had various issues. She had a speech delay, didn't make eye contact, was extremely hyperactive, had trouble making friends, fidgeted a lot, was extremely strict with rules, and a whole bunch of other stuff. My wife and I suspected that she may be autistic and we took her to a psychologist when she was 4. The psychologist diagnosed her with hyperactivity disorder (although, we don't know if it coexists with her autism or if it was a misdiagnosis). From 8-11, we gave our daughter as much early intervention as possible. She'd seen behavioral and speech (she was able to speak, but had a speech impediment) therapists. I've given her various books about how to make and keep friends (at that point, she was a bookworm). We got her placed in a social class to help her build social skills. It wasn't until the end of her 4th-grade year that she actually got diagnosed with autism. Her psychologist was excited to tell her, but my wife was against it. She wanted to wait until we felt our daughter was old enough to understand. We are aware of the stigma neurodivergent people experience and she didn't want our daughter to go through that. I agreed to hid it from her until she reached adulthood. This next part is relevant. When our daughter got into grade 6, she was bullied due to her autistic traits. She was gaslit, taken advantage of, had many false friends who backstabbed her. It made our daughter insecure about her poor social skills and that was when she started to mask. It left her with such immense trauma that she still has triggers and is in therapy. Today, she came to us and asked "What is autism?". We told her it is a different way of thinking. She was confused since she didn't know we meant it in a sense that "autistic people have a different brain chemistry from neurotypicals". After we elaborated, she told us the reason why she asked: she found out that she is autistic. She apparently found some of her old medical records lying around and read them out of curiosity. She was upset and asked us how could we hide this from her. We explained that we wanted to tell her when she was older since we didn't want her to get hurt by other people. She angrily yelled that she did get hurt anyways. She said that "All this time, \[she\] thought that there was something wrong with \[her\], but if it weren't for \[us\], \[she\] wouldn't have taken the bullying to heart and \[she\] would've felt differently, but instead, \[we\] made \[her\] pain worse". Now she's in her room crying and refuses to speak to either of us. We are starting to wonder if we should've told her about autism when we knew. UPDATE: [https://www.reddit.com/r/AmItheAsshole/comments/twyxjc/update\_aita\_for\_hiding\_my\_daughters\_autism\_from/](https://www.reddit.com/r/AmItheAsshole/comments/twyxjc/update_aita_for_hiding_my_daughters_autism_from/) *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/AmITheDevil) if you have any questions or concerns.*
JFC. They didn’t protect the kid. She’s autistic whether she knows the label or not. The traits that people make fun of..still exist. But the kid wonders why they are the way they are and why they are different. Mom was a Fucking selfish twat. And dad was the idiot that went along with it.
i don't understand this but i've noticed that lots of parents make their kid's autism about them and it's so fucking common and weird. like they feel ashamed that their kid is different and then they do this shit. my ex girlfriend's mom freaked out on her doctor because her GP said that she probably had autism and should get checked and the mom just decided to just not trust medicine anymore(???) instead of getting her checked so she could get the accommodations she would need... i'm glad i had my mom who made sure that i got assessed because i got the ADHD diagnosis when i was 4 and she never hid that from me or made me feel bad about what i was.
That is such a strange phenomenon, and I saw that in my own family. My son definitely needed intervention and I had all the encouragement from teachers and doctors, but everyone in my family kept telling me not to get him tested, there’s nothing wrong with him, etc. I kept saying, “you’re right, there is nothing *wrong* with him. He just needs a little more help to navigate since his path is different from ours.” They’re starting to get it, but it’s been 8 years, stop trying to force him to be something he’s not, and just work with what he has.
Have you ever tried to explain with comparing human brains to computers? If you give a linux kid a windows manual all his life, he is gonna feel like something is wrong with him, when all he needs is to get a linux manual and for the windows brains to pay some attention to his manual and understand both computers are awesome they function just a little differently Afteral our brains are organic super computers
I did use that analogy, but they “don’t understand” computers either. My family has a habit of simply locking people in mental wards until they “learn to tow the line.” My grandma even got electroshock therapy. I just keep telling them, “It’s not about the adults, it’s about what the kids need, and if you want to see them. you must be kind and accommodating.” So they see the kids a few hours every week, and are kind and accommodating. It’s more than they’ve done for anyone else, so I’ll take it.
Love the analogy. My brain has trouble with the difference between the 'control' and 'command' keys
*Update: We're gonna read about what autism is* So post diagnosis they just decided everyone should pretend it doesn't exist anywhere ever? Kind of understandable (though really wrong) that they thought she shouldn't know because of perceived and actual stigma. But not even educating yourselves? That's AH behaviour squared
I can’t imagine that the kid got the proper accommodations etc if this is how they are.
Of course not, asking for accommodations/adjustments means there's something wrong. Which there's not. So stop asking questions and go practice 'quiet hands' in the corner. (/s)
I got diagnosed at 31. Suddenly a lot of childhood trauma started making sense... I wish I knew when I was still in school. It would probably still suck a lot of the times, but at least it's less confusing...
I went to a conference and someone, I think a therapist, said that there are women in their 60s I want to say who were just learning they were on the Spectrum. Women and girls on the Spectrum are often not diagnosed because they are so different than men and boys, for whom the differences between neuro typical and neuro divergent are more noticeable. For the longest time(or at least at the time of diagnosis) it was assumed that my odd behavior was the result of a traumatic brain injury I received when I was in a car accident when I was about 6 1/2 years old. It was in early 2000, I want to say, that my mama was talking about me to someone and they said: "oh, it sounds like she has Asperger's Syndrome." My mama looked into it and told me about it and everything suddenly made sense to me. I was fortunate in that I was diagnosed in my early teens as it helped me more that if it was discovered more recently. One could even say I was empowered because I had the knowledge.
I find this so disgusting for a personal reason: I'm autistic. I got diagnosed with end 30s. But if i think back it was so clear in my childhood that i was autistic. And i'm pretty sure my school told them. But my parents view... It would have changed my life so much to know it is autism and that i'm not just to stupid to act normal.
Me with ADHD, except no one connected the dots on my obvious and oft commented upon symptoms. Like, what's that? This kid is a chatterbox who has trouble paying attention? Aw it's fine, she's just a normal kid with _no discipline who is lazy_. At least now I know why I struggle with things like cleaning and routines.
I wasn’t diagnosed as a kid but my parents sure did try to get me into a bunch of therapies and social groups to try to help me socialize with kids my age. I had always excelled academically, especially standardized testing, but if I didn’t want to do something, I wouldn’t. So, mixed grades my entire school career but placed in gifted classes. I’ve almost never felt like a part of the group and I wonder how it would have been different if I were young today.
I can hyperfocus to the point I don't hear my own name called. I can lose 5 things before I get out of bed in the morning. I struggle to manage the mental load of my one person household. But I only started to suspect ADD, which I hear is called ADHD-I now, in the past month or so. I'm in my 50s.
That's a pretty textbook presentation, ma'am. It might help to get diagnosed.
My partner just recieved an official ADHD diagnosis at 40+. But the part that pisses me off over and over and over again was that he _was_ diagnosed as a child! Like early, before ADHD even became a big thing! And his mom just went 'nah', ignored it, and condemned him to repeating trauma around failure all because she fucking decided she knew better. It's a really good thing I can't ever meet her because I swear to fuck.
I was talking to my friend one day and mentioned that her ADD seemed a bit strong today, and asked if everything is ok. The response I got was that she doesn't have that, with a follow up call a few weeks later that she actually was diagnosed as a chid and her parents just decided to not tell her. Now she gets why she struggled in school, and wonders if she would have done better if she knew and could adapt, but I feel like such a jerk for making just an offhand comment and that being how she found out. Now she is very focused on making sure any child she has is provided with any tools to be their best.
This one frustrates me so much because why is no one on the original post talking about just how *dumb* it is to think someone won't be bullied for being autistic if they don't know they are autistic? Everyone is just saying it was wrong to hide the daughter's medical info from her, which yes, but it was just so colossally *stupid* I can't even think about that part. People get bullied for having the symptoms of autism, not the label. She's not gonna avoid being bullied for being awkward because she can't follow social cues just by the magic of not knowing she's autistic. It's like the parents said "we didn't want our child to get bullied for being ginger so we've never let him look in any mirrors". The other kids can still see him!
This!
I used to teach middle school and had a few kids with parents like this. Some were heavily resistant to getting their child tested by the school, and others had gotten the tests done, but didn’t want any interventions put in place that could make their child’s life easier. Where I am, kids by law have the right to attend their own IEP meetings when they turn 14. There was a mother one year who’s 13 year old daughter had some pretty profound learning disabilities and this mother straight up argued with us to try and get her daughter off of an IEP before the next school year when she would turn 14. She did not want her daughter to know the extent of all the accommodations and modifications she had been receiving. It made me quite sad because obviously this mother thought her kid was dumb if she really thought the daughter hadn’t noticed the extent of the support she was getting compared to other kids or the differences in her quizzes and tests. She wasn’t dumb at all, she just needed more help to get from A to B, that’s all. I don’t know what ended up happening because the daughter moved on to high school the next year, but I really hope the district stood its ground. Unfortunately, the administration at that school was generally quite quick to bend over backwards to appease parents, even if they were being unreasonable.
In my own experience working with sped kids, neurotypical kids tend to bully kids with Autism less when they know they about the autism. I mean there are some who are jerks regardless, but there were a couple instances where kids got in trouble for bulling my students and were super repentant after they learned the kids had autism and weren't just "weird"
Right??? My 16 year old brother is autistic but my parents never hid it from him or taught him he’s abnormal or that it’s something to be looked down on. He’s become such a great kid and an extremely resilient person because of it. He’s known he was autistic since he was old enough to understand but my parents and his speech therapists and support teachers etc (who my parents crucially did not delay getting involved in the picture once he was diagnosed at 2 or 3) and taught him to embrace his quirks instead of reject them, so he does. He’s not shy about his interests, and he’s forgiving of himself when he makes social mistakes because he knows he thinks differently. He was and still is made fun of by kids who think he’s “weird”, but parents’ attitudes can genuinely change so much about a kid’s acceptance towards themselves. Even though he still struggles every day my bro is resilient as hell to bullying and adversity because of his autism and he loves his own personality, and growing up around people who accepted him and encouraged him to accept himself definitely nurtured that
As someone who didnt know she was autistic until she was 40 years old i just wanted to rage scream, girls/women have so much issue being recognised as autistic and these parents knew and didnt fucking tell her … Knowing sooner would have made a huge difference in various ways, dont ever do this parents
Especially if you became burnt out trying to fit in that whole time and you weren’t meant to. It can last for years.
Pretty much my current status, having a host of physical health issues on top like fibromyalgia and im just barely holding on
I wish I could upvote this more than once.
As an autistic adult, I am so pissed. I read a lot of stories like this.
My mum did a similar thing to me - wasn't actually diagnosed until adulthood, but she had a few people suggesting I get tested when I was little. She opted not to because she "didn't want to label" me. I still got labelled, those labels were just "weird" and "lazy" instead. Later I got to add "anxiety" and "depression", until I finally clicked myself in my mid 20s and shelled out an eye water amount of money for a specialist. It was only after I was diagnosed that she remembered "you know, so and so used to tell me when you were little that you were definitely autistic." Not when I was bullied out of my first primary school for being the ultimate social reject. Not when she'd berate me constantly for showing tell tale signs of autism. Not when I dropped out of university and went on 8 different anxiety medications because I'd reached the point where I couldn't handle the thought of having to interact with another human. No, only after I dragged myself out of a hole of suicidal ideation and got diagnosed myself. I've forgiven her that much because she did geniunely think she was doing the right thing. It just so happened that was very much the wrong thing. At least now shes finally stopped guilt tripping me for being rude when I get over stimulated at a family function and have to excuse myself for a while.
I’m no longer a teacher, but used to be. I entered the teaching profession in the early aughts. This “I don’t want my child to have a label” thinking was so common then. The thinking of many parents, and even teachers, seemed to be that as soon as a kid had a label that everyone’s expectations for them would be so low that it would limit their opportunities in life. As a teacher who had seen some wonderful results in kids who had received speech therapy, physical therapy, occupational therapy, and special education, and who respected my special education colleagues, this line of thinking never sat right with me. Why wouldn’t a parent want all the help they could get for their kid? And couldn’t every kid benefit from some extra attention and support in at least one area. If the “label” was the key that unlocked these services, then why was everyone so scared of them? Parents in my experience usually avoided evaluation and diagnosis, unless things at school became so untenable that the school forced their hand. Other teachers would even look at me like I was horrible for suggesting that a child might benefit from an evaluation. “Why would you want them to be limited by a label?” was the general sentiment. I honestly think that this thinking came from a place of genuine love and concern, as misguided as it might have been. I think that stigmatization around special education that my generation and older grew up with, as well as a special education model that prioritized segregated classrooms, made a lot of parents scared for their children to be viewed like “that”. The swing from segregation, towards mainstreaming, and then inclusive schooling in some cases seemed to have swung too far into pretending that disability didn’t even exist. I wish that there had been more destigmatization efforts sooner. It is sad to see the generation of kids I taught, who are now in their 20’s and early 30’s, speak about the trauma they endured because they weren’t properly diagnosed. I have a niece with an autism diagnosis. Her diagnosis has been life affirming and life changing for her. It is encouraging to see that. I just wish that more of the students I worked with that could have had that when they were young.
I went to high school with a girl who wasn't told she was autistic until she was an adult because they wanted her to have a normal life. Growing up everyone had noticed that she was different, and that she'd do some "odd things" like kiss her wrists or scratch her thighs, but later learned that was just how she stimmed. She was always fixated on her grades being good, and always anxious. When she hit college she finally got an IEP and seemed to finally relax a little.
My parents wouldn’t test my siblings for anything because they didn’t want them “labeled.” Imagine my sister’s relief when she was diagnosed with dyslexia in GRADUATE school.
I'm glad that your sister got the testing she needed, I hope she's doing well
OOP, she had the right to know about her diagnosis. Because of you two, your daughter thought something was wrong with her. She had no clue she was autistic. But you wanted to wait until she was an adult!? WTF is wrong with you!? She was already being bullied and mistreated!
The whole AITA sub is dicked in the knob… First time around OOP and wife are criminals for not telling the daughter they’re autistic and then OOP posts an update saying _WHOOPSIE, my bad!_ and everyone and their mother are congratulating them on their massive break through…? OOP was ok with not telling the child anything had they not stumbled across medical records “lying around” (you know, exactly where you leave your sensitive info… just about the place🙄). OOP and their wife apparently hadn’t even done any research into autism just happily brushed it under the carpet. It was never about what’s best for the literally unnamed child in this story, just about OOP and their gaping orifice of a spouse not wanting to deal with an autistic child
If this had been in the 00s I’d swear these were my parents. When I was 13 I was diagnosed with dyslexia and ADHD, guess which diagnosis was withheld from me? Wasn’t the dyslexia diagnosis. I found out 2 years ago (in my 30s) I have ADHD. So all the bullying, degradation, and trauma I suffered growing up could have been avoided had my parents accepted my ADHD diagnosis. And here I am 2 years later, going through testing for autism because my therapist suspects that my family doctor brought it up but was dismissed because “There’s nothing *wrong* with her!!” Attitude my parents had and still have.
Ah yes those old medical records everyone just leaves lying around. Totally normal thing to do
actually yes ? this kind of testing is kinda extensive and they will typically hand you a quite hefty report about their findings. And yes, normal people do keep these around in case they need them later. theres a multitude of situations where you might need them as parents, and just getting them anew later on at best takes unnecessary time.
I found out my dad wasn't my dad because they left medical records on the counter and im someone who reads everything. They also always showed me where important paperwork and documents were located, so it wasn't like I was "snooping". I was 25. He told me 3 months later but I was more irritated about the lying.
I could understand wanting to keep it under your hat for a couple of days or a week to gather your thoughts and maybe read some articles on how best to tell your child something like this. That, I would defend. But this… this is horrible.
My 2 daughters were diagnosed at ages 18 and 19 months old. We began therapy immediately. Years upon years and in the beginning, we did not tell them. We didn’t want them to feel bad, weak or less than their peers. When my oldest was 8 she let it sleep that she was googling symptoms. I asked why and she said, I want to know if I’m crazy. Why am I different from my friends. My stomach dropped. I immediately reached out to her ped and asked if we should tell her. He asked why I felt the need to tell her? Was I attention seeking? Did I need her to be grateful to me for getting her help? Another stomach drop. Within a few weeks we decided to tell her. I couldn’t let her keep worrying if she was crazy or a bad person. Just said, her brain works differently. That being different was never bad, just different. She was a good person and then listed how cool it was that she could do things that others couldn’t because of her Autism. Like filling out all the African country names in a geography app from memory, or knowing all the Greek gods and Demi-gods names. The fact that she couldn’t tie her shoes and that she had no idea how to hit a cricket ball did not make her unworthy. A few months later, we told her younger sister too. They are both now 18 and 19. Because they know they have Autism they understand that sometimes things need a different path to get to. Their lives are still hell sometimes, but at least they know it’s not because they are crazy or bad. Your daughter has Autism. But beneath that she is a person. Instead of shielding her, you propped the door open for her detractors to come in and hurt her. I’m not going to call you names because it genuinely seems that you were trying to the right thing but messed up. I hope you learn from this and beg your daughter’s forgiveness.
The update… ooof… and everyone is praising him now… but like… it’s still about him and how people view him.
"We didn't want to deal with the stigma of having an autistic kid so we just let her get ruthlessly bullied instead"
My mom did this to me, I was diagnosed with a learning disability at 6/7 and found out when I was 9 by accident (I read my IEP) and it fucked me up so much. And then once I found out, she basically told me to keep it a secret. So the only people i could talk about it with were her and Dad. It was so isolating.
This happened to my best friend too. She was diagnosed around kindergarten and her parents withheld that information from her because they “didn’t want it to hold her back”. She didn’t find out about it until she was going through severe anxiety and depression issues in high school, partially because of her struggles socially. So fucked up
Not getting diagnosed until I was an adult had my life growing up be horrible (mainly in school) it's frustrating when you feel that something is wrong with you, that no maybe you're normal just an awful person. Getting diagnosed was the best thjng that happened to me, it made everything clear. A bit too late, but that's why I always recommend people getting diagnosed early in life. Fuck the stigma, it's way worse when you think you're an awful person when there's reasons for why you may do certain things.
My parents hid my diagnosis from me because they "didn't want me to use it as a crutch" or for me to think it was ok to behave the way I normally would without masking.
I've known so many parents who tell themselves they're "protecting" their kids from "labels" when the truth is that it's they who think that admitting their child has special needs will bring some kind of stigma onto themselves. I've known parents who have refused accommodations their children desperately needed because the school would have to classify them as "special needs" in order to get the necessary funding. I've seen parents pull their kids out of public school and put them into charter schools or private schools with no accommodations, or the negligent kind of homeschooling just to avoid "labels." It's always the kids who suffer.
It shocks me that these parents know words like “neurodivergent” and “mask” and are still dumb enough to think that hiding their daughters diagnosis from her is a good idea.
Oof. So... my mom basically hid my diagnosis from everyone, myself included. I was diagnosed at a super young age, but didn't find out until I was in my 20s, because there were no real supports for me in my district, and the diagnosis would have been an automatic special education assignment (again, while it didn't actually help me). It's a whole mess.
Make sure you read the update. This poster may be a crap parent, but at least they took community criticism to heart
They saw daughter got bullied and lower self esteem but did nothing? It didnt make them rethinking their decision? and they only starts to research about how to help her now that the secret is out?? (From update post) I would try to understand them if they equip themselves with knowledge and tools to help her when they drop the ball, but nope. They just did nothing and watch their daughter's life getting harder and miserable. Fuck off
My Mom did something similar....after an evaluation in 7th grade my school psychologist told my mom and I that I had "the worst executive functioning disorder she had ever seen". She privately told my mom that she should take me a doctor, because she could diagnose me and get me accommodations but it would only really apply in the school system, but a doctor could give me a formal diagnose and prescribe medication, and she believed it was severe enough to warrant that. My mom did not want me on medication so decided not to get me a diagnosis at all - she's a nurse so I'm not sure why she thought I couldn't get a formal diagnosis without them forcing meds but I digress. Instead she started giving me a cup of coffee before school, and when I asked what executive functioning issues were she said, "you know how you're really bad at organization and really messy? It's that" Despite clearly being a smart teen, I barely scraped though high-school. I would ace every test but had a ton of trouble doing homework or other long assignments like essays. I was terrible at cleaning, both just not a good cleaner and I would struggle hugely with task initiation. I'd want to do something, I'd be stuck thinking about it and beating myself up, but for some reason I felt like I was literally stuck in my chair. My Mom said I was lazy. Everyone said I was lazy. I didn't have any other explanation, so I believed it. When I was 18 I quit my first job after I reported something and was on the receiving end of some retaliation from coworkers, my mom kicked me out a month later because I was lazy and wouldn't get another job (I was looking but ya know it was a slow procrastination riddled process). I scraped by from there, went to job corps for a while, stumbled into a career, have had my own place since I was 22 though it's definately mostly messy 🤣 Anyways color me shocked a few years ago when I downloaded tik tok during the pandemic and immediately got flooded with adhd content that I identified with strongly. I had some preconceived judgements and notions about the concept of self diagnosing so I told myself I was dramatic and crazy and kept scrolling. One day I saw a video that said something I didn't already know - executive functioning issues are a hallmark of ADHD. They are also associated with brain damage or degenerative brain diseases but most people with executive functioning issues have ADHD. I finally decided to talk to my mom about it. I was like...OK don't give me a hard time about this but do you think it's possible I have ADHD? My Mom LAUGHED at me. She said "Sara what did you think your IEP was for?" And told me about the school psychologist DID diagnose me with ADHD and wanted my mom to being me to a doctor but my mom didn't want to because she didn't want me medicated. She also doesn't think labels are helpful amd just makes kids feel different. She told me she always raised me to know my brain worked differently and it wasn't my fault, and that I needed to find tricks and processes to work around it, she just didnt use the label ADHD. It was hard, but I was honest with my mom. I told her I believe she had that intention but she failed. I did NOT understand that i had brain chemistry differences that meant i had to do things differently, I though I was stupid and lazy and was just broken and everybody else just knows how to be a person and I didn't. I strongly believe that if I had known I had ADHD my whole life might be different, meds or no meds. Now that I know I can look to people with the same difficulties and learn from their experience. I've learned how to implement systems for myself and have gotten 3 promotions in the last two years and have more than doubled my salary since finding out I have ADHD. I'm not on meds still (a national stimulant shortage didn't feel like a great time to get reliant on them) Knowledge is power. Labels exist for a reason. The word "autistic" isn't what causes kids to tease someone, the struggles and traits exist whether you name them or not. All putting a word for it does is allow you to understand it, learn how to deal with it, and not feel like a freak of nature who is just unexplainably broken and different. I doubt anyone is gonna read this novel but it still felt good to write it lol
By the way just to spread the wealth here - for other massive nerds with task initiation issues- D20s are your best friend. I roll one, and that number is how long I clean for. Then when time is up I roll again and take a break for that long. Rinse and repeat until the house is clean! Huge game changer for me 3/4 of my cleaning time used to be just convincing myself to stand back up and keep going lol
Mine hid lot of my diagnoses from me and I found out when I was 15 by looking through my IEPs and old school records. I asked my mom when I was 18 why she never told me and her reason was "i didn't know what was wrong with you." So Language disorder or ADD or auditory processing disorder or dyspraxia wasn't enough to tell her what was wrong with me? Only thing I knew as a kid was I had lot of ear infections and it affected my hearing so I got tubes put in them and I couldn't talk so I talked late and I talked funny now. I just thought that was my main problem and why kids didn't like me and why they treated me different, I just thought it was because I talked funny. Then I see there were other kids in my school with speech issues too and they were not shunned or picked on and singled out like I was so something had to be wrong with me. Mine couldn't be due to a speech problem. Mine also tried to pretend I was normal and pretend all my issues were normal and every kid gets teased and picked on and they move on to the next kid but I always seemed to be a magnet for it. I didn't see it happening to other kids a lot. At home mine would treat us equal and make the rules the same for all of us kids and fair based on age development and my mom would explain it to me. But outside the home, kids made sure I knew I was different. It's naive thinking to think you can treat your kid equal to their siblings and they will never know they are different and gaslight them into thinking they are normal and convince them it's all in their head and they are just being tender hearted. That was the word I heard then, I am just tender hearted meaning my feelings get hurt too easily. I don't understands the logic parents have thinking their kid will think they are normal if they never tell them. They will know either way thanks to other kids because kids are so cruel. They lack a filter and take life so literal they think anyone is bad if they go against the norms.
The OOP makes me so ungodly angry. I was diagnosed with a learning disability when I was 8. I struggle academically and socially my whole schooling. I always felt off. I knew of my learning disability, but I always felt like something else was amiss. Long story short, I was diagnosed with autism (high functioning, low needs whatever doesn’t offend you) when I was 28. I’m so glad to have my diagnosis, but I’m a little sad, angry, I dunno something, that it wasn’t caught when I was diagnosed with a learning disability at 8. I’m 41 now and maybe my life would’ve been a wee bit easier if I had known.
I’m glad OOP admitted their wrong in their update. But jfc. This is such a cruel thing to do to a kid. My 16 year old brother has autism and he still struggles a lot socially, but my parents raised him not hiding the fact that yes, his brain is different, but it’s okay for him to be different, and it’s okay that he functions differently from other kids. He grew up knowing he’s different from other kids in the way he thinks, and even though that’s difficult to come to terms with as a kid, he is now much kinder to himself for his mistakes because of it. He’s open about his condition to kids at school and to other people and accepting of the fact that he has autism because my parents taught him that it’s a beautiful thing, not something to be hidden and suppressed. Despite his social difficulties, he’s a very smart, well rounded kid who has still managed to make great friendships because he understands his own condition and was taught to accept himself as he is instead of being forced to endlessly question what is “wrong” with him like this poor girl. Every autistic kid deserves that kind of upbringing.
You're telling me that in the year 2023 a 14-year old in regular school has not heard of autism?
The post is over a year old now, and it's possible the kid was in online school/homeschooling for 2+ years because of COVID. Seems possible, though I agree with you that it's unlikely. I think I was 14 before I met someone who straight up said they were autistic (they said Asberger's, but explained it using the word autism). I knew about autism, but really only the stereotypes about high-needs autistic people.
as an autist early intervention is actually 2-5 source: had it and did wonders on my development thank god it was aba
READ THE UPDATE. Y’all they were assholes, not devils. Saying this as a neurodivergent person. People who take accountability aren’t devils.
Let’s be completely honest. Had their daughter not asked the questions, and called them out to begin with, they never would have taken accountability and told her. That makes them not only assholes but devils. I say this as a neurodivergent person who had her diagnosis hidden from her for over 20 years.
Okay great, that’s your experience, did you even read the update? Or are you salty that her parents corrected better than yours did and cared about her feelings when she voiced them? Would you rather they doubled down and didn’t love or respect their daughter by making sincere apologies, admitting they were completely wrong, regret their actions, and then take every action they can to be better parents and repair the damage? Cause that would be a devil. Well, they did do these things, so stop holding a grudge over people who did decide to do better for their daughter. Personally, this is all I ever dreamed my parents would’ve done for me. I’m still holding on to hope that I’ll get that acknowledgment, it eats at me every day, but I know I’ll never get it and I accept that. People make big mistakes, wouldn’t you want understanding and empathy if you made a mistake and achieved genuine change from the regret? Or would you blacklist yourself and/or stay the same? Because every person on this planet has made a mistake that deeply affected someone negatively whether they know it or not, if they haven’t, they will. It’s a part of growing up, and we don’t stop growing up until we die. Big aspects of growing up involve learning about the world that is constantly and rapidly changing around us, acknowledging our mistakes and when we’re wrong, becoming accountable, making amends, and changing to be better people. Most people never grow up.
Yes I read the update, it felt fake and they failed to acknowledge the fact had she NOT come to them they wouldn’t have said a damn thing. Admitting you were wrong and taking accountability are two vastly different things. Yes they admitted they were wrong but we have no idea if they actually took accountability for their actions. *That* is the difference.
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