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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]As a parent with an Asperger's non-conforming child, my advice is to stop feeling "shame" and do something already.

There is clearly something going on with your child and you have to get to the bottom of it without coming from a place of anger or shame. Rope in the ped, who can recommend a psychologist. Call the school counseling office if you want them to get involved. Help your child instead of castigating her.
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OP, I totally get your feelings as a parent, but you are making your kid's behavior into a big pity party for yourself.  Stop internalizing your dd's actions.  Parenting is not about controlling our kids, it is about guiding and helping them become healthy confident adults.  You can't force her to be 'good', but you can support her and enforce consequences and help her through whatever difficulties she is having right now.  It may be hard, but you have to stop thinking of this in terms of how it defines *you* as a parent.  It is just MS, hopefully you can help her before there are permanent effects.[/quote]

I'd give OP a break here.  She is going through one of the stages of grief when one has a child with problems.  I just made up these special stages but surely shame is one of them, precisely because people have a tendency to zero right in on the parents and blame them for whatever their child is or does.  A parent in this position engages in many questions about what one might have done wrong, second guesses many past decisions, and in general tortures him or herself.  It is not the bad parents who feel shame; it more often is the good ones.

I'd also encourage a good nonjudgmental talk with the daughter, leaving all of OP's feelings out of it as I agree this conversation has to be about the daughter, not the parents.  Try to pinpoint what is going on--bullying, teachers, academic boredom, mental distress, possible drugs, some trauma the parent is unaware of.  It's hard to throw a professional into the mix when you really don't have the first clue as to what might be going wrong.  I'd definitely avoid at this point any authoritarian, tough love approach.

Trauma can be a very, very big issue with girls.  I have a daughter myself with what all the mental health professionals think is something rooted in trauma.  She won't talk to me about it. Her psychiatrist just sent me a note saying she strongly suspects this, but can't get her to open up at all.  It is a large cause of mental health and drug abuse problems.  [/quote]

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