Sorry to hear you had a bit of a crappy thanksgiving . This time of year is always a major challenge for my daughter too . too many people , too much going on and generally way too much pressure to have a wonderful happy time , it ' s enough to make the best of us crack up ! One of the things I know my daughter finds especially difficult is that everyones being so damn nice ! Don ' t get me wrong , it beats everyone being jerks , but when the whole experience is mostly just emotionally draining to the point where you can ' t even pretend you ' re having a decent time anymore , it makes you feel doubly bad . Seriously though , don ' t feel guilty , you obviously tried pretty hard to take part and i ' m sure they appreciate how difficult it is for you . What you said about your mother mollycodling you struck a bit of a chord with me , because I know I ' m guilty of doing this to my daughter too at times . She ' s 15 now and occasionally I go over board trying to help and I have to check myself . It ' s probably true that most mothers are guilty of smothering their kids at times , but it ' s easy to get carried away with this when your kid has aspergers . There are some things that my daughter still needs my help with , and some things she may always struggle with . so I have to remind myself that there ' s also plenty of things she can and should do herself now she ' s older . I guess i don ' t need to tell you that your mother probably does these things because she loves you and cares . but . I know that doesn ' t make it any easier for you to deal with . I don ' t know you or your mother or anything about your relationship with each other . but i do know that I would never want to embarrass or belittle my daughter . I really really hope that if i ever I made her feel the way you described feeling , that she would wait for us to be alone and then gently tell me that I was embarrasing as hell . Then we ' d laugh about it and I ' d be sure to remember not to do that to her again . Like I said , i don ' t know how you and your mother interact , but I would bet anything that she would be mortified to think she made you feel dumb , and I think she would prefer you to tell her when it ' s just the 2 of you , and in the nicest way possible rather than letting her carry on doing it . Obviously I could be totally wrong about this , but I thought I would offer you my insight from the viewpoint of a loving mother . Because in many ways we are all the same . We just want our kids to be happy .