Refrigerator Mothers

Older Comments on Refrigerator Mothers

• Posted 01/03/11 by Robyn
  This documentary was amazing, being the mother of six children, one with Autism and another with Asperger's I found this film to be both honest and well researched. I am lucky that as a mother I missed the whole Refridgerator Mother blame game, but I still had my share of doctors and professionals who refused to listen when I needed help understanding what was happening. It's about time that people became more aware of the needs of both the people and their families afflicted with Autism. This documentary whould be seen by all people working with kids.
• Posted 12/06/10 by jo friz
  documentary was amazing however buffering was awful.
• Posted 09/28/10 by Robin Nemeth
  Yes, but will they ever admit that it's iatrogenic? Thank you for this movie.
• Posted 03/08/10 by Dr Zorg
  Autism shouldn't be blamed on mothers. There are plenty of other things mothers should be blamed for eg fat children etc
• Posted 12/11/09 by "Droopy"
  Here is part two of my thoughts (as well as some addressed directly to what I see as the New Bettelheim threat, a new menace called "Neurodiversity), as said in another forum: Something else people don't talk about is what this does to the rest of families, the fathers and children, the siblings who are led to believe their wife/mother were cold hearted monsters and the whole impact this sort of thing really had on everyone... This is one of many parts of why I've kept to our family's privacy (or had until my privacy was summarily violated by Neurodiversity and Baggs to do as they've done), is my mother, who's been traumatized quite enough in her life and wishes to have no more of it, and my wish to respect that. You Neurodiversity 'hip college kids" and flat out frauds, at some point you need to develop consciences, begin to understand the full impact of everything you do, the real lives of real people, all of us, Autistics and parents alike, that you violate and ravage with your stupid senseless self serving propaganda, and for what? So you can have a little fame, a little undue sympathy thrown your way, a few goodies and your tap into desperately lacking supports and services that we, the severely disabled need in order to function and survive? You are so incredibly shallow and self serving, narcissistic and callous to the real situations of others and the damage you cause us that its just mind blowing.. He claimed to be helping us, and now you claim the same Why did Bettelheim do this to us? (and I say "us" because it was our whole families who were impacted), and why do you do this now? What must he have been thinking? What are you thinking?
• Posted 12/11/09 by "Droopy"
  I have Kanner's Syndrome Autism/Autistic Disorder (severe autism, not "Aspergrs"), and other challenges, but I am able to type and express myself on the computer and with my communicator (and its really me typing, I don't use facilitated communication so there is no doubt it is me and these are my words) and I live independently with suports in my own apartment. Here is part one of my thoughts (as well as some addressed directly to what I see as the New Bettelheim threat, a new menace called "Neurodiversity), as said in another forum: It took me two days to watch this movie due to the fact it was very emotional to me to see. I saw my own mother and what I know she was put through in each of these women, and I still feel very badly for what they did to her. I was born in 1964. I still have records in my possession where a doctor described my father as 'a milktoast sort of man" and talked about how my mother 'was a dominant woman' -- this all being said while I lay in a coma on a ventilator because of a serious self injurious act... sorry, lots of memories and emotions really were drawn up by this and this is the thing I see Neurodiversity doing to parents all over again, on the forum boards and everywhere they blindly attack, telling them its their (the parents) failings, they are wrong every way they turn, and 'let me tell you how to raise, let me tell you about your child" you see.. I have something in common with each of these parents I encounter online and now in this movie, and that is that I have two parents too, and I remember that and I know that any of these could have been mine as well. and I see another, like Bettelheim, performing a massive hoax on these parents and Autistics, I see someone who claimed to have such hardships in instituations where they simply never were (Bettelheim was never in the camps, and someone else has never spent one year in any institution), I see the parallels, I see the false clutching to Judiasm and the horror that real people such as my grandparents faced (Bettelheim's 'like in a concentration camp' and her/their "ballastexistenz") and I know this is going somewhere really bad, and fast, and people are being and are going to be really hurt by all of this before its over, just as they were back then.
• Posted 11/25/09 by Audrey Rasmusson
  I have two teenaged autistic children. If only decades had not been wasted blaming it on Mother instead of doing research to help improve the functioning of autistic children, how much better their futures might be today. Audrey Rasmusson Pittsburgh, PA
• Posted 11/25/09 by Tammy
  Sad, so very sad that those mothers did not get the help and understanding they needed. The medical community does not have all the answers to everything that we face today and it's sad that one mouth claiming to know it all back then damaged so many lives. Let that be a warning to all of us today.
• Posted 11/25/09 by Barbara Rhyneer
  What a beautifully done film. My son is 4 1/2 and PDD-NOS/mildly autistic. It spurs me to begin a support group-I think many of these mothers would have appreciated someone to talk to... as I would.
• Posted 11/22/09 by crystal
  Kind of makes you wonder what we are being told now that in 50 years will be as invalid/cruel as the information and blame placed on being "a cold mother"
• Posted 11/22/09 by ken
  If the definition of refridgerator mothers was accurate ,...then my mother would have had 6 autistic children. Yet not one of us was autistic to any degree.
• Posted 11/22/09 by acehogan
  Autism, unbeknown to medicine is an epigenetic disease. this diseases are related to defieciencies in methylating vitamins and certain amino acids during fetal development. Epigenetic abnormalities result in the activation or inactivation of contributory genes, resulting in behavioral traits consistent with autism. See research on agotti mice to clearly inderstand the influence of these methylating agents on pleuripotent cells. Without these nutrients paired agotti mice deliver 100% FAT, YELLOW, DIABETIC, CANCEROUS, VORACIOUS EATING, SHORTLIVED MICE. WITH NUTRITIONAL SUPPLEMENTS 100% SMALL HEALTHY BROWN MICE ARE DELIVERED. Numerous other medical conditions including several cancerous states have the same epigentic type changes. Regarding the blame on refrigerator mothers, this stems from the ignorance of the accuser. A common flaw possessed by medical pesonnel is to "Blame the messanger". Especially when they are unable to demonstrate a "scientific" cause. Medicine does not posses all the knowledge. in fact we remain a very primitive science when compared to physics chemistry, cellular biology etc. Most of our biomarkers are no longer valid/precise enough for excellence in dx and tx. Autism is not a Psychosocial disease, it is a developmental disorder due to epigenetic changes that occur during gestation. These changes are due to nutritional deficiencies that occur during specific phases of development. Finally the extraordinary mental abilities possed by some autistic individuals give us insight into the next stages of intellectual development. A form of extrasensory perception where knowledge is extracted instananeously without counting calculation etc. REFRIGERATOR MOTHERS DONOT EXIST
• Posted 11/20/09 by kendy
  This film is certainly a "must see" (on the lighter side - dosent the black gentleman look strikingly similar to shaquille o'neil?)
• Posted 07/15/09 by Melissa
  This film broke my heart. How many times have I asked myself what I could have changed, what I did wrong to have a child with autism? Our doctors, friends, and other parents of autistic children have all said that it's not a "refrigerator mother" issue, but as a parent you still wonder. The women in the movie are not feeling sorry for themselves. They live incredibly difficult lives that people without special needs children cannot possibly understand. You can read about something or watch a show about it, but that doesn't equate with living it. Those women blame themselves enough without the medical community adding to their burden.
• Posted 07/04/09 by Dagny
  Larry is a regular poster on all the autism-related question on the public Yahoo! health answers forum.... while debating me over the cause of autism, he called me a "refrigerator mother" more than once. Me, who he has never met, ever, diagnosed my child's autism and blamed me for it. So, take his hatefullness and idiocy with a grain of salt.
• Posted 06/25/09 by willie
  I saw only part of the film but what is clear here is not that the diagnosis refrigerator mothers is correct but that it is incorrect and based on a psychiatric diagnosis that was not only wrong but destructive to the family unit. This is precisely why many of us in the medical community have no respect, none, for psychiatry as medical discipline because quite simply it is not. Many of the people that go into psychiatry are themselves mentally unstable from past experiences just like Bettleheim. They are people trying to ameliorate their own problems so they go into psychiatry to try and figure out what is wrong with themselves so they can be made "normal". This is clearly the case with Bettleheim who was improsoned at a Nazi concentration camp. The depth of his mental and physical abuse which could range from beatings to being sodomized in a Nazi prison camp are incalcuable and should have disqualified him from entering into this field until it was determined that he himself was mentally stable. That Kanner, who proposed this absurd and bizarre deduction and called it a medical diagnosis and then popularized it among his colleagues, is mentioned in any positive context by anyone is an enigma to me and an indictment of their judgment. Larry you need proffesional help unforunatley all of these psychiatrist have abandoned psychotherapy whic itself is controve4sial in favor of psychotropic drugs whih you may actually need from what I am reading in your comments as it appears that you are quite delusional. Do you also have auditory or visual hallucinations? Were you abused? Clearly you are not seeing what the rest of us are and your experiences have distorted and thwarted your ability even to recognize that the intent of the film is to point out the absurdity of the assingment of the cause of autism to the mothers and their being cold or unloving. Therefore you could not have met any refigerator mothers as there are none. Many mothers and fathers are exhausted, depressed concerned, hurt,and fearful for their child but cold calloused and unloving? No as it has been well established that autism is in this context is a failed diagnosis.
• Posted 06/06/09 by Lyndsay West
  beautiful documentary. I was engaged for the full hour, and it absolutely gave me strength as a mother with an autistic child. I had this vision of my sons future that was quite scary, but these adults with autism are abosolutely BEAUTIFUL. They have an innocence that cannot be mimicked. I feel absolutely sadened that the mothers of these beautiful people could be blamed for their children's autism. I felt guilty myself, and if I had a professional telling me that was so, I could not look myself in the mirror nor sleep at night. I will keep these mothers and their children in my prayers, and hopefully they will keep me in theirs.
• Posted 05/19/09 by Clairwil
  Very touching. Thank you for posting this. One gift that history can give us, if we listen, is to not repeat the mistakes of the past. It is hard to believe that anyone could possibly blame the mothers for their children's disability but, sadly, it was done. This film is a lesson in love. As a person who dealt (sometimes badly) with a mother who suffered from Parkinsons for 25 years, the guilt sometimes experienced by those who are NOT disabled is a terrible burden. I have great admiration for these women.
• Posted 05/19/09 by Yvonne Barash RN
  These women are very courageous. We now know that autism is a neuroligical disorder. It is appalling to me that the one mother was misdiagnosed as "psychotic," when in reality she was simply overwhelmed with the care of her special needs child.
• Posted 05/14/09 by Mouche
  What an insiteful movie. I too was engulfed in the movie the whole hour. Some of those mothers are heros. My nephew is Autistic and I enjoy being around him. We have long conversations on "who is smarter" Godzilla or King Kong?. Most of my family and his cannot even stand to be in the same room with him for very long, but I throughly enjoy his company even more than being in the same room with his mother. She has no time for him, nor even wants to be near him. It's so sad. Thank you for a movie well done!
• Posted 05/13/09 by mary
  Very moving film, you could see the anguish in these mother's faces, yet also see the great love they have for their children.And you can see how autism also affects siblings and other family members as well.It is very unfair that these mothers had to go through having this stigma placed upon them, when it was no fault of their own for their child's affliction. It only served to make the burden they already had that much more difficult to bear. I'm glad they were vindicated and can't help but feel a bit of animosity toward the doctor who labeled these mothers in such a negative manner.I wonder if he had any children of his own? I give them a lot of credit for doing their best to raise their children while facing such daunting challenges. These were just a few who were portrayed in this film, I wonder how many more there are who also had to suffer the guilt and pain associated with the label placed upon them.......I shed tears as I watched this film. Thank you.
• Posted 04/13/09 by Mary
  What a touching film. I sat rapt for the whole hour just feeling for all the beautiful mothers who have been through so much. I really loved watching this, even though it made me cry.
• Posted 04/03/09 by erin
  Larry your comments are ugly and hateful. What is the point of posting here if only to be hurtful. People who are dealing with this condition need love and support, not criticism or condemnation. If you had ever spent time with anyone who lives with an autistic family member I doublt you would be so quick to judge. It takes an extraordinarily strong parent to raise an autistic child today in 2009, I can only imagine what these mothers in 40s, 50s, 60s etc suffered without any social support. It's not about their own self-pity or self-esteem. It is about having no resources in place for care or help. The majority of parents wouldn't leap at a chance to institutionalize. No one wants to admit they are incapable of raising their own. That's primal to us as humans. Bettelheim's speculations caused decades of insult and distress on what was already a horribly painful situation. These mothers had every right to be angry with him.
• Posted 04/03/09 by Larry
  The mothers in this film are repulsive. So full of self-pity. It may be true that they aren't to blame for the autism, but we will never know; because that is reseaerch path that is now blocked for political reasons. This in spite of the fact that 100 percent of children in some Romanian orphanages turned out autistic. The one thing they had in common was that the staff is so overworked they didn't have time to hold the babies. Anyway, it was Leo Kanner who first noticed the prevalence of autistic children with cold parents. He was the one who coined the term "refrigerator mother." It's impossible to assign cause and effect or blame. Kanner thought that maybe refrigerator mothers were autistic themselves and that was evidence of autism being genetic. Also, he didn't profess to know whether the coldness was in response to unloving autistic babies. Who knows. I do know one thing though. I have met refrigerator mothers. They are horrible loveless beings who don't give a #### about their autistic children. They would just as soon institutionalize their children as cure them. All they care about is their own self-esteem. That's why they get so angry at Bettelheim.
• Posted 11/30/08 by Lisa Simkins
  So sad what those mothers were told that it was there fault! I really feel for them! My friend has a child with Autism, he is a wonderful boy! I enjoy his spirit, and the love he exudes! I am in his circle of support, and this movie helped me to want to be even more supportive of my friendand their family. They work hard to advocate for him, and also other children who have autism. The parents of Autistic children are the real heros. Forging ahead to find solutions to the enormous challenges they face every day. Thanks for the post!
• Posted 11/22/08 by Elizabeth Samol
  BEAUTIFUL! I have a 10 yr old nephew "Hunter" that has Autism, unfortunalty my brother(Hunters Dad) lives in Montana, and I live in New York, so I never get to see him. I am trying to understand autism, learn about it, so one day I can have a relationship with Hunter. God Bless all of you, and your right"someday you will see Paul as himself without this disease, in Heaven!"
• Posted 11/22/08 by Sherrie Logan
  I would like to know what the machine is called and where i can get one that the young man was using in the film.
• Posted 11/21/08 by Gabriele
  What an amazing film--I have a 9 yo son with Autism and I thank god that even with all the challenges we still face every day we do not have the added burden of what these poor mothers & families had to face in the 50's and 60's. We will all continue to fight for the rights of our children and giving them the best that we can in their lives. Thank you for posting this important film.
• Posted 11/21/08 by patty jarbo
  God bless all of you who took the time to film this wonderful movie. As a gtandmother of autistic children i can feel the pain and love that all of us feel in this situation. I also noticed and made the comment to my daughter when michael was in her arms as to how angelic he was. Thanks again to all of you! patty
• Posted 11/21/08 by Tammy
  This was an incredible movie and I have nothing but admiration and respect for the mother's and their adult children who took part in this amazing production! As a mother caring for a severely autistic teen I thank these brave individuals who have paved the path for all parent's now following in their footsteps. Individuals living with autism teach us every day how to love each other as we should and be better people and I thank them all for enriching every life they touch! Thank you very much!!!!
• Posted 11/20/08 by LaJoy
  Thank you for putting this on your site for people to see. I have a son who had PDD. He is doing so well, if re-evaluated he may not even be on the spectrum anymore!! This film broke my heart - I cried so much - I cried for the children, for the mother's and father's and what they had to go through. I am so busy fighting my fight and tearing down my walls and kicking down my doors...... I never thought about who dug the trenches!! Thank you!
• Posted 11/19/08 by Selene Bush
  This is an amazing movie. I never knew that any of this happened. Thank God we have wised up on the truth about autism. What heroic women these mothers were who endured this humiliation. Thank you for this film.