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Parent Despair & Autism

Parent Abuse & Autism

What about parental abuse? Most of the time you will read about child abuse but what about when the child abuses the parent? This happens a lot when the child has a medical / mental condition. Autism is a good example of this, all be it that the child may not be aware of his / her actions the point remains that the 'abuse' the parent goes though on a daily basis may be taken without complaint until the parent accepts the inevitably of their predicament.

Autism and Despair Parent

That's a total different way of looking at it. I can't imagine what you and your wife go through but I can see what you mean by parental abuse.

Parent Despair & Autism Health & Special Psychology

I think the key factor about abuse is that the 'guilty' party is aware of what he/she is doing. Children with autism and other mental conditions are not aware that they are causing their parents strife. So I won't call that abuse, yes I agree the parents are going through strife but it is not intentional. If the child is normal by other means though, then I fully agree with you that there is parental abuse.

Autism and Despair Parent

I agree with lordryoko. By definition, abuse is related to motive and awareness. Since children with mental related conditions or unawareness (like in the case of autism) are NOT aware of the extend of their behavior, it cannot be called "parental abuse" because the child is not inflicting the pain on purpose or he is completely unaware of its consequences.

Autism and Despair Parent

Interesting take. Why is it that when mental persons kidnap someone and abuse them that the victim is often referred to as having been abused? If the 'abuser' was unaware of his act then by what you are saying it was not abuse? Are we then saying that the victim was wrongly labelled?

In the case of being bi-polar, schizophrenic or slightly autistic but in all cases aware to a point when one does know if they are subjecting another to abuse then how do you refer to that if they at times have a mental condition - a part time abuser? I am not being sarcastic, I am genuinely interested to know because I do not think it is so cut and dry.

Parent Despair & Autism

I also agree with you JB but a lot of these so called mental cases justify their actions with this same mental condition. Think about it, they all hide and do their actions. Why do they hide and do it? They know that it is wrong. What they all try to do is justify what they are doing and we all hear the same stories. They were abused themselves as children, they have a mental condition (many of them tell their victims they are sick) and so on. So again we go back to the awareness part. They know what they are doing, they just blame it on their mental condition.

Parent Despair & Autism

JB:

You are mixing apples and oranges. First of all, your question was about children and parents. I am not sure why you are mixing up adults with mental illnesses who happened to have committed serious crimes. A person can STILL be a victim of a horrible situation without having to be labelled as "abused".

You can't. The people you are mentioning have good times and bad times and since you cannot be inside their brain figuring out exactly how they think, it is useless to try to find out exactly when they are capable of understanding. What I'm more concerned is why do you seem to want to LABEL the child as an ABUSER? Your last comment "part time abuser" is very disturbing. I am hoping parents who have special needs children that they take care of with their whole mind and soul (and all the pain and challenges that comes along with it) will NEVER see their kids as abusers. It's wrong and it can only creates feelings of resentment towards the child and like the saying goes "I cannot remember what you said, but I remember how you made me feel". Let's watch out that folks.

Parent Despair & Autism Psychology Special & Health

My interest is not in labeling the child as an abuser. I already said in my first post that I am quite aware that the child is unaware of what they are doing. What I am trying to do is give a perspective of what parents of special needs children have to go through. The feeling of hopelessness, depression and exhaustion can feel like abuse, however it will seem that for some of you I were better off labeling the Thread "Parent Victim & Autism" but I do not see that fitting well.