For those adults on the spectrum. What is something your parents did when you were a child that you appreciated? Something you didn't appreciate?

My mother is a special education teacher, a really good one. She can help most non-reading autistic kids and have them at a 1st or 2nd grade reading level in a year. I'm an autistic adult and was very fortunate to be raised by her. I think the things that helped me the most were in my early years. When I was little she would always touch me to desensitize me and that I was raised to not act up for the things I wanted and to work hard. I probably threw a lot of tantrums when I was young, but my mother was not submissive to them. Her autistic students at school, ages 4-10, arrive in her class acting up because that's how they manipulated their parents. Autistic children do have agendas and its important to understand not every meltdown is because of their disability but because they want something. If you give in to their behavior early on, and then try to put them in school, it's not going to be pretty. And that is what my mother deals with and corrects. She teaches children that have meltdowns in school because thats how its works at home. She does not put up with those behaviors and makes its very clear that for the child to get what he/she wants they must do the assignment before they can have it. It works for all her students, even nonverbal, who are used to manipulating their parents by screaming/crying/throwing things/running but are then faced with an unwavering brick wall that is my mother. She says the hardest thing for these parents to understand is that their disabled child knows exactly what they're doing when they act up and that they need to be firm with them and not baby them all the time. The proof is is the pudding, as most of her students learn they can't get away with anything early on, and so then my mother can actually teach them something. By the end of the year they make drastic improvements with they're speaking, reading and fine motor skills and can function in a classroom environment. I owe it to my mother that I completed high school and am now starting college without an IEP. That I can have a full time job and live on my own. But the only thing that lacked in my upbringing was learning social skills, but its something that I was able to observe and learn.

/r/autism Thread