“Autistic people, in general, _____” or “Autistic people, in general, don’t _____.”
Is there anything that accurately goes in the blank (aside from things that are true of all people)? That is, what if anything distinguishes autistic people from non-autistic people?
The answer here is pretty simple. Restricted, repetitive behavior that interferes with daily functioning, and persistent deficits in social communication. That’s what autism is.
https://www.autismspeaks.org/autism-diagnostic-criteria-dsm-5
(Sorry for using an autism speaks link.)
A. Persistent deficits in social communication and social interaction across multiple contexts, as manifested by the following, currently or by history
B. Restricted, repetitive patterns of behavior, interests, or activities, as manifested by at least two of the following, currently or by history (examples are illustrative, not exhaustive; see text):
C. Symptoms must be present in the early developmental period (but may not become fully manifest until social demands exceed limited capacities or may be masked by learned strategies in later life).
D. Symptoms cause clinically significant impairment in social, occupational, or other important areas of current functioning.
E. These disturbances are not better explained by intellectual disability (intellectual developmental disorder) or global developmental delay. Intellectual disability and autism spectrum disorder frequently co-occur; to make comorbid diagnoses of autism spectrum disorder and intellectual disability, social communication should be below that expected for general developmental level.
ETA: People diagnosed with autism are typically assigned one of three Support Levels.
Support Level 1 - some support needed - what used to be Asperger’s and would today be considered “high-functioning.”
Support Level 2 - “substantial support needed.” My son is Level 2, was in special education for two years, currently requires half-day therapy five days per week, speech, OT, and feeding therapy. Because of early childhood intervention will most likely live independently.
Support Level 3 - so called “profound” autism, sometimes presents with intellectual disability, usually non-verbal. This is someone who likely needs care for life.
Support Levels can change over the course of a person’s life. Within a couple years I think my son will be Level 1. But we did not know that when he was first diagnosed.
This got me thinking. If someone says they are in pain, I may not feel anything. Or, I may be over-empathetic. I recently mentioned a kitten that I found outside. I was almost in a panic mode trying to come up with something to do for it. Or, I cannot kill a spider, or will save a bug that is in trouble.
Maybe my issue is that I don’t feel normal empathy. I will either have too much, or not enough. This does go along with my sensory issues, some things that bother others may not bother me, but some things that don’t bother others will bother me.
[quote=“Spice_Weasel, post:220, topic:1020602, full:true”]
I really think it’s wrong that autistic people, in general, don’t feel empathy.
{/quote]
I think it’s undeniably wrong. I mentioned earlier in this topic that when I was a kid, I did not have much empathy. But I went through EMDR therapy in my 30s, and now I can’t turn it off.
I really wish I could turn it off sometimes.
Well you’re not alone. I spent a lot of time researching the history of my ancestors in Ukraine because I had to know what they were doing during the Holodomor and the Holocaust. And then when I started learning about what the people who lived in Europe during that time had been subject to, I couldn’t stop imagining myself in those situations. The most brutal emotion on the planet is shame, and had my relatives been involved in any atrocity, that’s an emotion I would have had to deal with.
That being said, I’m pretty sure I have some distant cousins living in Siberia right now.
I have a good friend whose dad is a professional clown. Clowns are creepy. Ever since I saw a movie called The Ghoulies in the 80s, I get creeped out by clowns. I thought it was an odd profession for a middle-aged man, but then I found out what he makes.
DJs don’t make that kind of money.
I bought a pair of Loop earplugs, they are really nice. They take the edge off without losing out on much. What I like best about them is you can get a lanyard that attaches via a magnet around your neck so you can wear them all day and put them in only when you need them.
I find them helpful for my son’s most annoying YouTube videos, his squealy days (boy, does he squeal), the people outside mowing my lawn, and I’m currently working up the courage to wear them to my husband’s large family events. Starting with a wedding…Usually the weddings are like 500 people, this will be a paltry 200. I might actually enjoy it more this time around.
I posted about this in mini-rants, but:
We met last week with my son’s BCBA, he is doing so well, we are set to discharge in August, as well as graduate from speech and OT. Hooray, I think. It’s going to get easier from here.
Well, he’s been getting more defiant at home lately - nothing violent, just incredibly willful, what I imagined to be typical for a five year old. In particular he’s been resistant to attending daycare, saying he wishes there were no other kids and he finds it too distracting. On three occasions he refused to move and made us late. As a consequence he didn’t get videos those days.
Picked him up from daycare tonight and got a list of all the terrible things he did apparently all in one day. Screaming, coloring on books and tables, knocking over toys, pushing and kicking kids. Stuff that is way out of character.
As soon as he read the list himself, he said he didn’t feel well. We reviewed the list together and I reiterated half a dozen times why he can’t do these things. He said he wouldn’t do them anymore. I don’t know that he really understands why they are wrong.
I’m wondering if ADHD could be a factor. I know he has it but I don’t want to medicate him unless absolutely necessary.
I am of course now terrified for kindergarten.
This is what Level 2 means. He just has no concept of why this stuff is inappropriate.
I don’t know if it’s the same thing. It’s probably different. When I was a kid, I engaged in behavior like that without even being aware I was doing it, and it frequently came as a surprise when I was reprimanded.
A lot of the stuff he did we’ve hammered in relentlessly that he is not to do, however we haven’t really talked about what makes a good friend, so we’ll start there.
I think the place is just a bad fit for him. I would hate it, personally, with all those screaming kids. And the staff are not equipped to deal with autism. So we have to figure out some alternative, maybe. We are talking to the instructor today to see if they can find a quiet place for him when he needs to regulate.
I’m trying not to catastrophize. Take it seriously, but not catastrophize.
His current special interest is his stuffed Lightning McQueen squashmallow. He calls it Beep Beep. He has five of them plus one at therapy. I told him to treat people the way he treats Beep Beep. Hopefully he won’t take that to mean going around sniffing them.
I think kindergarten may be a different story because he has an IEP and they are committed and will know what to do.
Oh man that’s tough.
My ASD child had a tough time with daycare too for the same reason… too many kids, too loud. She was the type who just closed down when she was overstimulated, though, instead of acting out, so although the daycare was concerned (they even had her tested for selective mutism, but no, the tester determined it was just overstimulation) we didn’t have as much of the acting-out issue.
We put her in TK/junior kindergarten instead of the last year of preschool, which she liked much better. Much quieter, more structure and more predictable. It was a private school so even quieter and smaller than a public school. I will warn you though that we did see an uptick in behaviors that year because of the particular kind of rigidity my kid has: the kids were learning how to write, doing art projects, etc., and whenever her writing or art or whatever did not conform exactly to what she thought it ought to look like, she’d melt down. (Although this was actually what led to her getting her diagnosis, so you are well ahead of the game here!) Maybe your son will not have exactly that kind of problem. And I am sure the IEP will help. Anyway, the diagnosis led to her having a part-time aide in the class for a year to help with emotional regulation, after which she did not need the aide any more.
For second grade, we also ended up moving her to a tiny gifted school, because being bored in math (her math skill has always been off the charts) was becoming a bigger problem and starting to get tangled in with the emotional regulation. …But that’s a whole other story that we can discuss if you find yourself in that place later on.
I should have added to my last post that this same kid is now in a large public high school and is thriving. She actually has zero in-school social or emotional support (we discussed them with the counselor and made the decision to wait and see… and it turns out she doesn’t need them! Though I still do quite a bit of at-home coaching for social and sometimes emotional stuff) and she is doing great and is happy.
But yeah, this part was really the toughest. I remember this age (5-6) being possibly the worst, because developmentally I think she was trying to become more independent but emotionally didn’t have the tools that a NT kid would have at that age. It got gradually better after that every year. Up until 8th grade I wasn’t sure she would be OK in high school, and now she totally is and for the first time I feel like I can see the pathway to how she can become a functional independent adult. (I mean, I always hoped for it and thought it was likely to happen, I just couldn’t see it.)
It’s a long haul, but there’s hope!
Ugh, my kid has this too.
But your post really made me feel a lot better. This is probably a hard age for any kid.
We’ve had about a billion conversations with him about this daycare incident so hopefully he really gets it. I can hear my husband talking to him about it right now and my son seems pretty engaged and interested in the conversation, so here’s hoping.
Oh good, I’m glad it helped!
I was actually going through old email for another reason and I thought I’d look to see if I’d written anything about my kid at age 5. And I found this written to my best friend two months after her birthday: “[Kid] has gone right into her 5-year ‘I have my own life and you can’t tell me what to do!’ phase.” Ha! I also mentioned offhand in the email something about that being age-typical, so I think I must also have talked to other parents and heard that it was developmentally appropriate (but as I said, probably somewhat harder for us because our kids don’t have all the emotional regulation tools that a NT kid would have at that age to tone down the rest of the phase).
I wonder if letting him know this (daycare) is not for forever and he’s going to be starting school soon and you’re hoping that it will be a better fit for him, and he just has to stick it out there for a little while longer, would be useful? I told my kid that a lot as we were figuring out the process of moving schools, but she was also a couple of years older and I don’t remember whether she could understand that kind of thing at age 5.
Just a question for the group.
Are there any good articles on task/information overload or dealing with constant interruptions? Or even better yet, both at the same time?
There are a lot of sensory overload articles out there, but that’s not quite what I’m dealing with, I don’t think.
Our company is going through a billing conversion, and it’s pure hell. Basically, what we are dealing with right now is a constant barrage of interruptions, people asking for help, with an ever growing list of tasks. I typically overcome task overload by keeping lists, but I’ve gotten to the point where I need to make a list to keep track of my lists. And I don’t have time to make a list when there are constant interruptions, so tasks are getting missed.
I had a meltdown last week, and I had another one today. Before this billing conversion, I think I’ve had two meltdowns in the last 15 years, since I started to learn to regulate information.
The symptoms of the meltdown is just me losing the ability to focus. I used to say that my brain turns into scrambled eggs. It just becomes harder and harder for me to use my brain to do anything useful until it gets to the point where I can’t anymore. When I was a kid, I used to scream when this happened, but I’ve learned that that tends to make things worse.
I could go on a forum for folks with ASD to discuss this, but I tend to find that forums like that tend to enable dysfunctional or toxic behavior
I’d just like to find something to help my boss understand what’s going on.
Pinging @Spice_Weasel because I feel like this might be something she or her husband might have resources about – unfortunately I don’t. But yeah, my ASD kid really gets overwhelmed by task overload and if you ask her to do four things at once she’ll start screaming and mentally shut down, whereas if you gave the same tasks to her one at a time she’d be totally fine. (We did a lot of work in middle school on sort of being able to go away and make lists, like you do.)
Though the situation you’re in seems honestly like a terrible thing for everyone involved, not just neurodivergent folks – I’d be surprised if you were the only one who was having problems (although I could see it affecting you the most). Your boss needs to know that you all need more support!
Thank you. My boss is the one who is working the most, and I think my biggest problem is that I just can’t keep up with my partner (peer). But my boss told me something today that did make me feel a lot better. I’m not sure if I should share because I don’t really know the difference between bragging and talking about something that made me feel good. 
But anyway, I can deal with working every day, which is I guess part of what I can do that others can’t. But if I don’t have time to wind down between working, that will burn me out in a hurry. And when a typical day consists of constant interruptions while being interrupted by an interruption, it just gets to be too much.
Yeah, can you figure out what would be most helpful for you and then ask for it? Like, would it be helpful if you could take a 5 min break every hour and be free from interruptions at that time, even if all you did was walk around the building or something? Because it is a lot to expect anyone to work all day under those circumstances. And maybe your partner is better at working under those circumstances but still.
I have trouble with this too, and I still err on the side of not sharing when I think that other people might not like it (because maybe their situation isn’t as good as mine or whatever). But it turns out that most people like to hear when good things happen to others – so yes, please share! (I think it becomes bragging when one goes on and on about it and assumes that the good things are happening because one is so great?)
Thank you.
I have been taking frequent breaks for some time. I have eye sensitivity issues as well, and I’ve begun to think over the last few years that it is related to ASD. I have a pretty bad strabismus, which I mentioned earlier in this thread, but I also have what my ophthalmologist calls “photophobia”, which sounds like is pretty common for folks with ASD.
My boss mentioned to me that my peer does more task-oriented work than I do, but she said that if she needs someone to help her get out of a bind, or if she needs someone to keep things together, I’m who she relies on.
Which means a lot to me because I’ve worked really hard on trying to become that person.
I work very well in “crisis mode”, but that is not something that is sustainable for long periods of time. We’ve been in “crisis mode” for about two weeks now.
That’s awesome. It really speaks to what a valuable worker you are and I’m so glad your boss let you know that.
Yeah, it’s really not sustainable for anyone to be in crisis mode for long periods of time! I’m sure your boss knows that too.
https://www.apa.org/topics/research/multitasking
There’s a summary of the research here. So reduced productivity occurs for the general population, not just neurodiverse folks, but both ADHD and autism can come with executive function problems that make the impact even worse. I have a really hard time switching tasks, myself.
I’m even starting to see research linking media multitasking (think switching from Twitter to email to a news feed on your cell phone) to depression and anxiety.
I enjoy reading and listening to Cal Newport, he’s a productivity guru (and also computer scientist) who wrote Deep Work. Lately he’s been hammering the cost of task-switching in his podcast, or actually what he calls “context switching,” which is anytime you jump from thinking about one project to thinking about another one. So if you are doing multiple things all related to one project, the effects are not as great as if you are switching from project to project.
And yes, brag away!
This erroneous stereotype drives me up a wall. Folks on the autism spectrum, at least all the ones I knew/know, are very empathetic. Thing is, being on the spectrum, they may show their empathy in ways that are not obvious to neurotypical people. Just one example, my niece visited with her 9 month old. My daughter, who was not very verbal and around 12 at the time, had spent a week or two several summers with my niece. So, when the niece and daughter visited, my daughter was adamant we had to go to Baby’s r Us. Couldn’t really explain why, but was very very very, very, very insistent that we go. As we often had to do, backed out the clues. My daughter knew that babies slept in a crib, we didn’t have a crib, ipso facto, we should go to Babys r Us (connected to Kids R Us) and get a crib. Not sure she quite understood, but eventually accepted that this baby didn’t sleep in a crib and everything was alright.
Saw a need, and had a constructive solution. This was total and complete empathy.