I'm the wife of a very high-functioning Aspie who is in therapy and dealing with feelings of neglect and lack of protection and love and interest from a mother who I am now all but convinced is on the spectrum herself. My husband even invoked Harlow's wire mother experiment tonight at dinner, which another commenter referenced. My husband doesn't think she's an Aspie, but he's struggling to come up with why she's the way she is. He can't point to any family trauma, and her sister is - in my husband's words - normal.
My mother in law is a lovely person, very loving, wants the best for her sons... but she also has no concept of why her son would want more from his life than to work at Starbucks, and as she seems to have LDs, and so does my husband, she constantly recommends things to him that are part of HER life, and can't relate to him. Someone else's comment about the way his mother saw him really hit home... My husband's mother is a school lunch lady, and she recently told my husband - who left the military and put himself through university on the GI bill + scholarships he earned - that he should "become a school janitor" because it's a secure job with benefits. He was crushed, not because he thinks being a janitor is bad but because he's told her so many times what he wants from life and she doesn't appear to listen or care. He said to me tonight "She doesn't know me at all. She doesn't know who I am." It's heartbreaking.
Now I'm putting 2+2 together. She was very strict when they were children, and because she didn't believe in modern medicine (she's Asian), she didn't take her kids to the doctor - my husband had suffered terrible sebacious dermititis (think dime sized flakes of dandruff) through school, and been teased mercilessly ... through some online sleuthing, I figured it out. She'd been putting olive oil in his hair (ew, so greasy!) for years - the answer was simply to leave dandruff shampoo on his head for 5 full minutes every day for a week. Gone. She never considered how cruel the kids at school were. He suffers terrible allergies, too - she does too, but she doesn't take allergy meds ,and wouldn't let him either.
The thing is, she's really a sweet person. She loves her boys. She talkes foldly of them to me when we've been alone, but there's no doubt she's very, very awkward talking to my husband on the phone. She talks only about what she's *doing*, never about emotions, never about hopes or dreams - for herself, or for her son. People call her "pragmatic". She's Asian, so there's also people who give her a pass, I think, for being a 'tiger mother' cliche.
In fact, thanks to all of you I now believe she is on the spectrum, and that is likely an underlying source of a nagging feeling that his mother didn't love or protect or care for him the way other mothers do... He never considered it before, but now I also know why he has such a strong bond with my own mom - for the first time, he's got something to contrast his own experience with, and it's left him feeling uncomfortable. It's hard to see him struggle with this, but I feel for the first time like maybe now there's a big piece of hte puzzle in place. THANK YOU.
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I'm the wife of a very high-functioning Aspie who is in therapy and dealing with feelings of neglect and lack of protection and love and interest from a mother who I am now all but convinced is on the spectrum herself. My husband even invoked Harlow's wire mother experiment tonight at dinner, which another commenter referenced. My husband doesn't think she's an Aspie, but he's struggling to come up with why she's the way she is. He can't point to any family trauma, and her sister is - in my husband's words - normal.
My mother in law is a lovely person, very loving, wants the best for her sons... but she also has no concept of why her son would want more from his life than to work at Starbucks, and as she seems to have LDs, and so does my husband, she constantly recommends things to him that are part of HER life, and can't relate to him. Someone else's comment about the way his mother saw him really hit home... My husband's mother is a school lunch lady, and she recently told my husband - who left the military and put himself through university on the GI bill + scholarships he earned - that he should "become a school janitor" because it's a secure job with benefits. He was crushed, not because he thinks being a janitor is bad but because he's told her so many times what he wants from life and she doesn't appear to listen or care. He said to me tonight "She doesn't know me at all. She doesn't know who I am." It's heartbreaking.
Now I'm putting 2+2 together. She was very strict when they were children, and because she didn't believe in modern medicine (she's Asian), she didn't take her kids to the doctor - my husband had suffered terrible sebacious dermititis (think dime sized flakes of dandruff) through school, and been teased mercilessly ... through some online sleuthing, I figured it out. She'd been putting olive oil in his hair (ew, so greasy!) for years - the answer was simply to leave dandruff shampoo on his head for 5 full minutes every day for a week. Gone. She never considered how cruel the kids at school were. He suffers terrible allergies, too - she does too, but she doesn't take allergy meds ,and wouldn't let him either.
The thing is, she's really a sweet person. She loves her boys. She talkes foldly of them to me when we've been alone, but there's no doubt she's very, very awkward talking to my husband on the phone. She talks only about what she's *doing*, never about emotions, never about hopes or dreams - for herself, or for her son. People call her "pragmatic". She's Asian, so there's also people who give her a pass, I think, for being a 'tiger mother' cliche.
In fact, thanks to all of you I now believe she is on the spectrum, and that is likely an underlying source of a nagging feeling that his mother didn't love or protect or care for him the way other mothers do... He never considered it before, but now I also know why he has such a strong bond with my own mom - for the first time, he's got something to contrast his own experience with, and it's left him feeling uncomfortable. It's hard to see him struggle with this, but I feel for the first time like maybe now there's a big piece of hte puzzle in place. THANK YOU.
July 11, 2016 - 5:54pmThis Comment
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