Comment by avereveard | Hacker News Reader

Comment by avereveard | Hacker News Reader

As a neuroatypical I feel this. But also society has to happen, even if I am at the outskirts of it. As a neuroatypical parent of a neuroatypical children, I still have to guide them understanding the structures and expectations of society, and I see often time that she resents me for it, as the autor resent their upbringing.

Society just don't care, and blaming parent for trying to impart that lesson is harsh, and while I don't know and I cannot judge author own experiences, I can see the one sidedness narrative that's at play, and wonder how much of this is the narrator own issues in processing a faceted issue, writing for himself a easy way out, and I wonder what parents would write about their experiences.

Overall the post address nothing about the thing that still needs to happen to function in the society, only a long unjustified self pity trip where each paragraph ends with an "I was right all along" that doesn't actually feel like it due the onesidedness of the narrative.

> As a neuroatypical parent of a neuroatypical children, I still have to guide them understanding the structures and expectations of society, and I see often time that she resents me for it, as the autor resent their upbringing.

I think where a lot of parents go wrong is representing things as "because I said so" when in fact, there is a very good reason for what the parent is doing and explaining that reason to the child would both reduce resentment and be more valuable than the discipline being given. And the corollary to that is, if you can't explain to your child why you're doing something they don't like, maybe what you're doing isn't actually good parenting.

"Society expects this, society is probably wrong and it isn't fair, but it's not within our immediate capability to change it so we have to find ways to function around society's expectations at the current time" is a hugely valuable lesson to teach kids.

Without this explanation, your kid just has to come up with their own explanation for why you're doing what you're doing, and a lot of the time they're just going to conclude that you're wrong or you're just being mean, which unfortunately is sometimes true with some parents (I'm not saying it's true of you).

And sometimes, with the explanation, you're still going to be wrong, and you may never figure that out what you did wrong. But at least if you've explained why you did what you did, your child understands that so when they begin the process of realizing their parents aren't perfect they have some reason to empathize for the mistakes you made.

That's not how neuroatypical children operate. Explaining whys will just disconnect them.

You need extra work to embed the explanation as experiences in the field they currently relate to.

That doesn't always works, or you get caught in situation where there's just no time to go the extra mile: today conflict was because she decided running into pool of a busy parking lot was what she wanted and she would ignore / shut out me, mommy, the cars, everything else was irrelevant at that moment.

I will find out other ways to explain later on, but the fact remain that I had to act to prevent harm, and it generated resentement. We got to puddles later, but things don't cancel out that way.

> That's not how neuroatypical children operate. Explaining whys will just disconnect them.

Given "neuroatypical" encompasses a pretty wide variety of neurologies, it's pretty clear that you're speaking far too broadly here. There's no possible way you could know this. It's just plain not correct.

That might be true for your daughter, but it certainly wasn't true for me as a child.

> That doesn't always works, or you get caught in situation where there's just no time to go the extra mile: today conflict was because she decided running into pool of a busy parking lot was what she wanted and she would ignore / shut out me, mommy, the cars, everything else was irrelevant at that moment.

I'm not sure how you could read my comment and conclude I think you should calmly explain to a child that they are in imminent danger. Obviously you should get her out of danger first, then explain.

"Because I said so" means "My authority as a parent should be sufficient reason for compliance. You asking for additional justification threatens my shifgrethor." Shifgrethor -- Ursula K. LeGuin's word meaning, roughly, authority simultaneously as the bedrock of the organization of society and as a measure of personal self-worth, is widely perceived as bullshit by neurodivergents, and it mostly probably is. But it is of prime importance to normies and if you challenge it, normies will inflict severe consequences. This is such a powerful lesson parents feel the need to instill it early on.

"Normies" don't actually think it's a good moral justification, they just understand that disobedience to power has consequences.

A lot of typical and atypical people have fought and died side-by-side to fight tyrannical abuses of power.

I am neuro typical and always regarded “because I said so” as, at best, a last resort.

Your idea of normies seem to very controlling people.

Except for the times when “because I said so” means “you are about to incur risk of permanent disability or death to yourself and/or someone else, and by the time we can have a reasoned discussion about it, it will be too late.” Cars, fire, heavy machinery, electricity are not “normies” and do not care whether anyone is neurotypical.

Why do people feel the need to point out this obvious straw man as if it's some gotcha? Can we not drag the conversation down to this level, please?

No one is saying you should calmly explain to your child that they should move because they are about to get hit by a car as a Ford Explorer bears down on them at 40MPH. Get the kid out of imminent danger, and then have the conversation, obviously.

If you usually explain to your kids why you're asking them to do things, then a lot of kids are going to recognize that when you yell at them to get out of the street with no immediate explanation, there's some urgency to the situation, because you've earned the trust that you ask them to do things for a good reason. But if everything you tell them to do has no explanation, then it's just another thing you're asking them to do for no apparent reason, so there's no reason to take the request any more seriously.

I've never heard "Because I said so" used for emergency situations. It was always "Because you could get hurt/killed", "Because it's dangerous", etc.

"Because I said so" was always used in the rank-pulling, "I don't owe you an explanation due to who I am in relation to you" sense.

People are speaking faaaaar too broadly in this thread. "Normies", just like neurodivergent people, are a pretty wide group and don't all think alike--certainly they don't all put any importance on "shifgrethor".

And yeah, teaching your children how to interact with authority is obviously important. But notably, having any respect at all for authority isn't a requirement: I can obey an authority figure says even if it's stupid and terrible, if it benefits my goals. There are plenty of times in my career where I've done things I didn't agree with for bosses and clients I didn't respect, because other aspects of the job made it worth it, and they weren't worth risking my job over. Succinctly, "pick your battles".

Sure, as a parent, you need to teach your kids how to interact with authorities they don't respect, but being the authority they don't respect is a pretty terrible way to do that, and is going to have a lot of negative effects on your relationship with your child.

Explainations need to be 2-3 short sentences. Longer, and even teenagers with Ahdh may not follow or retain the explanation offered.

That's a pretty broad statement.

Obviously you need to gauge whether your child is engaged in what you're saying. Maybe you have some experience that leads you to believe this, but I would encourage you to stop speaking for all neuroatypical people. Your experience is limited.

My personal experience with ADHD is that my focus latches on to certain things, which may not be the thing I want them to latch on to, or the thing that is most urgent to focus on. But often a conversation, particularly a conflict, is the thing my focus latches on to most readily.

Good point. It is my experience with both of my teenage kids, diagnosed with adhd.

In general, it needs to be broad since it is difficult to predict if you get enough attention or not.

So starting with a very short explanation helps increasing the odds of that it will be processed.

“I think where a lot of parents go wrong is representing things as "because I said so" when in fact, there is a very good reason for what the parent is doing and explaining that reason to the child would both reduce resentment and be more valuable than the discipline being given. ” Oh boy…if kids were that reasonable I would overlook almost any other deficiency. I don’t think this isn’t what you are implying, I think the author’s parents DID explain things to him. He just didn’t like what he heard.

Admittedly due to the recent hype about adult ADHD, I got myself tested to understand that I am likely to have it to some degree. However, it proved difficult to diagnose as I found my niche to function as part of society (if you assume that a university is no ivory tower) I had a mother that actually in hindsight devoted her life pretty much to make life work for me. Before she died she actually told my to be wife to take care of me. As much as I am thankful about having people who cover my ass, I would expect it from anyone. Also the right balance between structure and 'affirmative action' is close to impossible to find. One of the most important things though my mother told me over and over as a child was that I should not compare myself to others and that I am in the end responsible for myself (also to find my place in society)

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