That’s very common. Adults aren’t really expecting to have interests in common with children, and already expect kids to have a lower level of social ability and to not pick up on things - especially the younger ones. So they are already making allowances and having to be more direct than usual when talking to a kid, and it isn’t a big effort to extend this a little further. They may not even notice. None of that is true for peers: they expect other kids to have similar interests, and social skills on a par with their own. It’s a much bigger challenge. And I think adult-child interactions tend to be a little more formalised: there are limited roles each can play, so it’s easier to learn how to act.
I’m not sure about my daughter. Sometimes she seems to be fine, other times struggling. And I can’t really take what she says at face value. One day she’ll say she made a new best friend, the next that no one would play with her and everyone was mean to her. On Sunday she went to the birthday party of an old friend from nursery, and she seemed to be joining in with the other kids fine. At the park she was telling older kids what to do, which was kind of obnoxious, but maybe it’s normal for 5?
She also generally regularises irregular past tense verbs, which I thought was a stage kids got through at a younger age than this?
I would expect a lot of people could be in this type of situation, like me…
My birthday was very close to the border of what year to start school. My parents were given a decision on when to start me. I was ahead academically but behind socially.
But, how may could give things like these?:
I was tested by a psychiatrist (I think before autism was a thing). My mom told me he was holding me a certain way and he said that most kids would be bothered by it and would try to get away, I was sitting there like nothing was wrong.
2nd grade, I remember a meeting with my teacher and my parents. We were putting on a play and I was the only one who couldn’t skip, and they were discussing what to do about it since that was part of the play.
3rd grade, major issues with the teacher and eventually changed teachers. She thought I wasn’t trying to work on handwriting, I was frustrated/mad because I couldn’t do any better.
High school. Tooks a test on different things. I was high on academic things, very low on motor skills.
20s. Co-worker made frequent comments because I sat like a pretzel (his words)
I still can’t see how people could go around wearing glasses on the time (any maybe can’t see because I don’t). How can a person go around with those hanging on their face without being constantly bothered.
But, if I take a hot plate out of the microwave, I have a few seconds to move it to the table, before it starts hurting.
I have as little light as possible. I’m frequently sitting in the dark.
While watching a musical I can’t see how people can listen to certain singing voices. It’s painful to listen to it. I need to leave the room.
And so forth.
Can the neurodivergent people relate?
I’m given to understand from parents who have more typical kids than I do that this is reasonably age-typical, and that “no one would play with me and everyone was mean to me” often means “I wanted to play something in a very specific way and other people wanted to do something else.”
It was the way he did it, totally out of his normal character. Think of Hannibal Lector saying “Hello Clarice” (which is, incidentally, the same buddy’s mom’s middle name).
[quote]Did you eventually learn to read and send signals appropriately in a romantic as well as non-romantic context?
[/quote]
I have devoted my life to learning how to communicate, and I believe I have gotten better than most NTs. The primary reason for that is that I can tell when what I’m saying isn’t getting through, and I know how to ask when people are saying things that don’t make sense.
I can tell when people mean something different than what they say, but unless I know that person really well I’m not always able to tell exactly what. The concept of romance eludes me, though. People are nice. I’m nice back. Suddenly, I got someone saying we’ve been dating for three months.
On flirting: Well, I went to stem grad school and most if not all of us were probably vaguely neurodivergent (and if not, had gotten used to dealing with vaguely neurodivergent people). At one point a (female) friend of one of the other students was visiting and I immediately had a strong visceral negative reaction to her, which surprised me, as I generally like people until given a reason not to. It took me a while to untangle why I’d had this reaction to her, and then I realized it was because she flirted with the guys and touched them, and I was really not used to that.
Recently our family was watching Jurassic Park, and there’s a scene where the chaos-Jeff-Goldblum guy is totally hitting on the woman scientist. It was interesting because both my husband and I sort of burst out laughing at how obvious he was being, while it clearly went right over the heads of our kids. So we had to explain it to them, especially the teen girl. She’s got a natural defense against being hit on in the sense that she hates being touched, so if anyone did try to touch her as part of a flirting effort she’d probably punch them, but it’s still good for her to know these things.
I really had a hard time doing the things that girls were generally supposed to do to get boys to like them. Flirting felt unnatural and some of them were highly intelligent young women who played down their intelligence to appeal to guys. I hated that. I wouldn’t do it. I decided any man I married would have to be at least as smart as me. That was reinforced by the three months I spent dating a complete dumbass.
My husband is as smart as me if not smarter. I’m sort of annoyed that he might be smarter because I’m competitive like that. But I’m smart in ways he isn’t, and we have strong shared interests, like clinical psychology, as well as different interests that create stimulating conversation when we can share, “oh I learned this thing today” and that “let’s talk about what I learned today” is a huge part of our relationship.
I don’t know if I am autistic but I’ve always been attracted to socially awkward men so there’s probably a lot of overlap.
It doesn’t make you weird. It makes you rigid and judgemental, but not weird. Weird implies anomalous, rare. People who are rigid about time expectations are everywhere, it is a cultural thing. If you lived in Mexico, or many other hot countries, you’d be weird, because you’d be unusual for the culture.
This bears on neurodivergence quite a bit. Many autistic people are over-conscientious (like me) and hyper-responsible. I start hyperventilating if I think I’m not going to able to bring the brownies to the potluck that I said I was going to. I’m much more forgiving of others’ failures (autistic people are also hyper-empathetic) – I have great difficulty forgiving my own, no matter how insignificant.
But ADHD folks often have extreme challenges being somewhere on time. Their brains don’t work that rational sequential way that makes time management simple to the normies. They don’t start preparing in time, they get distracted while they are preparing, they have great trouble deciding which thing is important to do now and which thing can just as well wait. So they are often late, and the people who find planning both soothing and virtuous are standing there getting more and more upset because now things are no longer going in a predicted way and that makes autistic people very agitated.
It’s not anything like as simple as you might think.
I wanted to respond to this, or at least the gist of what you’ve been saying, because I’ve been thinking about it. My approach in life is very problem-solving oriented, and I believe that in order to solve the problem you first have to define it. However, I was talking to my Aunt, who is also an ADHDer with some autistic traits, and who also has a long trauma history starting in early childhood. We both have different interests and strengths, but our brains work in very similar ways. We struggle with the same things. So when I talked to her about this, she said, “I’m not sure there is actually a way to know why we are the way we are.”
I don’t like that idea but it may well be true. Furthermore I’ve been discussing this with my husband and we were questioning whether addressing a given challenge necessarily requires knowing the source of that challenge. I’ve been trying to segment my issues into clusters based on various diagnoses, but at the end of the day who knows whether my intense perseveration is PTSD, ADHD, anxiety or all three. So what potential is there in defining the issue more narrowly and looking at solutions for just that thing? For example, I look for solutions for people with time blindness, or working memory, or some other narrowly focused issue, as opposed to “solutions for people with ADHD.”
I was thinking about this because “sensory issues” can be characteristic of a number of different disorders and also no disorder at all. There’s a movement of people who identify as “Highly sensitive people” who don’t have any particular diagnosis, but they just, you know, feel things intensely, get easily overstimulated and prefer silence and solitude. This isn’t a medical diagnosis nor is it treated like one. It’s just a community of people who want to exchange tips and tricks for navigating an overstimulating world. (I relate very strongly to this profile, even if I don’t know the exact cause.)
I don’t know if that makes sense. But it might be a good approach in cases where differentiating diagnoses is not possible. A different approach to solving the problem, I guess.
I also think personally I’m having a harder time accepting the idea that my PTSD affects my life so pervasively. I don’t want it to. In some ways I feel like my problems are less valid, maybe because we have such an impetus in this society to just get over hard things. It’s hard to get over hard things when they actually influenced your brain development. In other ways I start worrying that the bulk of my personality is my trauma. And I don’t want to be defined by that. I find it very unsettling. And I’m at a place in life where I thought I was less affected than ever before. So looking at all this stuff as new problems related to trauma feels like losing progress.
These are all sensory sensitivities, which are common in ASD and I think in ADHD too. You get used to wearing glasses, but I still avoid certain types of clothing because I can’t stand how they feel. I often sit on one foot because it feels more comfortable. I’m not usually bothered by voices, but I find loud noises like the hoover unpleasant.
Motor issues. I had a friend at university who was diagnosed with
dyspraxia. AFAIK it’s not part of the diagnosis for either autism or ADHD, but it’s something that often co-occurs with them. I have terrible handwriting, but my biggest problem is proprioception: I’m always covered in bruises because I have no idea where my body is in space, so I’m constantly bumping into things in my own house. It really sucks.
It sounds like you have something going on, but I’m not qualified to say what.
Yeah, that’s pretty plausible from what I’ve seen. I was really hoping she’d have made some good enough friends that she could have playdates. I don’t think it’s good for her for me to be her playmate, and it would be nice if she could have another child to play with sometimes so I can get on with things. It’s a bit worrying that after a full school year, she still hasn’t managed that.
Lol, seriously? And was that a good thing or a bad thing?
My son asked me the other day if he would have anyone to talk to after we died, and it about broke my heart. He had one friend at daycare but the kid moved classrooms and now there’s no reason for him to enjoy being there, really. I can tell he longs so much to connect with other kids. I’m really hoping kindergarten produces at least one friend.
It’s good for him to make friends, but it’s also good for us, because being your child’s only social outlet is exhausting. He wants us to play with him and answer his questions every second of every day. And being one of those, uh, sensitive people, I get overtaxed very quickly.
Oh, it definitely hasn’t been a good thing, and it’s not a unique experience. If I’m dating someone, I prefer to be aware of it. But it only went that far one time. But perhaps that’s where our lack of alignment on this comes form. I was apparently inadvertently flirting a lot before I got to the age where people aren’t constantly flirting with each other. It still happens, just not nearly as much, as I try not to have much of a social life.
My experience working at a school with several ASD students is that classmates are hesitant at first, but often end up being really impressed by the talents a lot of ASD kids have. One rising 6th grader draws/writes comics that are amazing, and classmates like seeing them. They also really look out for him, and a couple consider him a good friend. It sounds like your son has a good chance at connecting in kindergarten, especially if there are a couple of quirky kids in the class (which seems to be the case in my experience).
First one very recent. A mom and four year old in for annual check up after a recent neuropsychology work up. Kid did not quite fit into the ASD diagnosis and instead came out with … four labels? Social anxiety. Pragmatic language deficit. I forget the other two. The box didn’t exactly fit. Recommendations? Exact same as if he was labeled ASD. Based on his results. He off course needs ST and OT and social experience. Will he eventually get an ASD label? Dunno. Maybe with interventions will go the other way. Mom understands we have reason to be optimistic such is the case. And would be with a single unifying label as well. He is uniquely him.
Years back - my youngest is adopted from China so I attracted a large number of international adoption families, and we’re part of groups of such families. A couple of them had autistic traits. Reactive Attachment Disorder (RAD) or ASD? Symptoms could be exactly the same. It seemed to me that the RAD label was always attached because of the history. But are adopted kids unable to have autism? Of course not. Did it matter much? Nope. Again same interventions. Based on their individual personalized assessments and needs. The interventions didn’t vary based on needing to know if it was all neglect trauma, all genetic, or some mix.
Hmm. So is it that you offer playdates and she says, “no, I can’t possibly play with that kid”? Because otherwise, it seems to me that the parent, unfortunately, often has to be the one driving the playdates at this age (though I know some kids, especially girls, will ask for them even at this age). My more-NT kid did ask for playdates with particular kids, but it was often the kind of thing where he and the other kid would plan a playdate but not actually inform any adults, so the playdate didn’t actually happen.
My kid is now going into fifth grade, and one of his classmates just moved to the other side of the state, and he wanted to know when we’re going to visit there (which we do occasionally). It dawned on me that he wanted to visit the classmate, even though he never asked at all to have a playdate with that kid last year (we had a couple of playdates anyway that the kid’s mom and I made happen because we like each other). Ugh, communicate better, kiddo! I would have tried harder to make more playdates happen if you’d just told me you wanted them!
I have a question. I scored very high on the test 150, I was socked because I am very empathetic. When I see real hurt in a person I actually get a little choked up. I thought about this for several days and then I realized something. Even though I empathies I have a poor perception of how the pain must feel and then I go into this mode of trying the break the pain down to the finest detail. In my mind if a person knows what is causing the pain they should do sopmething to fix it. My empathy can wear out fairly quickly. Isn’t this fairly normal?
I really think it’s wrong that autistic people, in general, don’t feel empathy. Some of them have a harder time with it, but I know some deeply empathetic autistic people. As for my son, I don’t know how much he feels others’ pain but he seems concerned with it. He’s a sensitive kid and he’s always looking for ways to connect.
There are also different kinds of empathy. My husband determined that he doesn’t often feel other people’s emotions, but he is deeply concerned with them. This is why he’s so good in a crisis. He can recognize someone’s extreme emotion without feeling it, but because he cares in a more abstract way, he can respond to it with calmness and clear-headedness.
In a way that I cannot. I feel other people’s emotions so intensely that I become just about as useless as they are. I also spend a lot of sleepless nights having intrusive thoughts about what it would be like to experience a war crime or all manner of heinous shit. I read about stuff in the papers and I can’t stop thinking about it. I can’t stop thinking about these guys deported to a torture prison in El Salvador. Not in some kind of abstract way but in the sense that I imagine myself there and I experience terror.
I dunno whether I’m just wired that way, or PTSD, or what.
It wasn’t the most enjoyable hour I’ve spent. Wish I’d had some earplugs; that many children shrieking at once is LOUD. But I did get to see her interacting with other kids. Mostly they seemed friendly to her, and she seemed shy and/or standoffish.
She went straight onto the dance floor, but then seemed to lose her confidence and spent a bit of time clinging to me. Later she went back on after they played a song she liked, and a couple of her classmates grabbed her hands and started jumping/dancing around in a circle. She joined in but seemed a little reluctant.
There was a guy DJing (makes me wonder what sort of person enjoys DJing for primary-aged kids. It’s a job that would not suit just anybody) and he had the children line up to do limbo. My daughter got in near the start of the line, and another girl in her class pushed in front of her (I think). So she left the line and came to me crying. She refused to get back in line behind this girl, and I didn’t want to order someone else’s kid to move. It was awkward. Eventually a bigger boy kindly offered to let my daughter go ahead of him.
No, it’s that there are a lot of kids in her class, I don’t really know any of them or their parents, and I don’t know which to ask. When she was in nursery she made friends with a couple of girls (took her a long time there too) and she did ask for playdates (and I wanted her to have some) so I talked to their mums and managed to set up a couple of playdates for her.
I don’t want to try and arrange something unless I know she likes the other kid and they like her, and I wasn’t sure about that until recently. But she does seem to have become friendly with another little girl, so I talked to her mum today and suggested meeting up sometime during the holidays. She didn’t exactly seem enthusiastic - this woman never seems to talk much - I don’t know if she’s shy or not interested or what - but I’ll try messaging her when I know our plans.
My daughter doesn’t do the endless questions thing, but I did as a child. In retrospect, I suspect I just wanted to talk to my mum, and didn’t know a better way to interact. It might be that if you modelled having a more normal back and forth conversation with him, he’d ease up on the questions. Not that I know how to do that, but it’s a thought.
