Starting conversation~halfway through a thought?

Post Reply New Topic

My daughter has been increasingly doing this.

She will look to me, and say something totally random and offtopic, and expect that I know what she is talking about. I have to root around asking questions to get to the bottom of what she is saying. Now that she is a little older, I can say "you have just started halfway through a sentence, can we start at the beginning?", but when she was younger she would throw a mad fit if I didn't understand what she was talking about.

Anyone else have any experience with this?

Why don't you understand!! !! !! !

I don't get NT's ,, how can you not 'OBSERVE' the trigger to a conversation on my level - how is it that you all your minds are just sitting their blowing in the wind (The scene of Homer simpson thinking comes to mind).


Soo this is an Aspie trait too is it?

--I'm unsure if this is aspie or just a marked higher value for observing.

-With most people I have learnt that yes - they have no idea where my conversation had stemmed from, or how I was able to truncate it to it's most rudimentary traversal of information... but there are NT's out there that can handle my train of thought.... these are the people I tend to like.

-My mum usually doesn't know where I pulled that one from (I have learnt to respect that, I'm sure your child will too)

-In engineering classes, it was an advantage to be able to piont out the next topic or current train of thought pertaining to the matter at hand... the people that couldn't keep up, always slowing the rest of us down with asking .. uh what was that? , what are you talking about? were usually frowned upon. Expect your duahgter to be a really good team worker amongst intellectuals, or a brilliant anyliser amongst artists. (an artist will accept observations spawned off thier train of thought)


Triggers include.....

Simple object placements .. eg you place a bottle of milk on the counter, her sentence : the cat has nice furr today doeant she, her sentence truncated : nice fur (you were supposed to see her body language which was associating the milk to the cat and the acceptance that you understand that she is about to talk to you, she may be reading your body language as a que to talk about subject matter pertaining to milk and the cat on the ground opposite it)
Simple Enviromental Changes (The NT thing would be to comment on the weather) The AS will observe changes in thier surroundings, and presume you saw what they did.... tree make a crack sound in the wind... comment: we should park the car away from the tree. comment truncated: park the car thier., or even just PARK, or even just a simple whimper under the breath and a small finger movement pionting to where you should park the car.... AS people that know that they understand body language (better than NT's) will communicate on an entirly different level - your duaghter is actually more evolved. There will be a piont when the world is all AS that we won't even have to whimper, and our body language cues will be so subtle you'd think we had ESP (Actually we may start just plain old using ESP and leave all the NT's behind)

Cues you should watch out for to help feel at one with an AS sufferer... I presume both Static and Dynamic states...

In-animate Objects
Encironment - includes all facets of the environment from texture to sound.
Entities (Body Language, Animal Language, even Robot and Plant langauage - the hippies would love me for that one)
Text (bulletin boards, posters, newspapers, anything in the visual field to both observers)


Not being harsh - (I am an ASPIE so I have an excuse) just pionting out that not everything has to be blamed on a condition, sometimes it's the people that don't have the condition which are behind the 8 ball. Yes - its'not socially acceptable - she will learn, just ask 'what are you talking about?'

My wife (NT) is a great one for the context-free references too. In the middle of a conversation, she'll just switch subjects totally out of the blue and start talking about something completely different, with no context whatsoever, and expect me to automatically figure out that she's changed the subject and what the new subject is.

At least she sometimes realizes she's doing it, as I stare at her with obvious blank incomprehension. Sometimes the light dawns twenty or thirty seconds later; sometimes I have to ask her what on earth she's talking about.
"Well, wasn't it obvious?"
"Actually, no, it wasn't. Not in the least."

To begin, I have to say, I am finding it quite difficult to participate in a parental discussion board where "NT's" are constantly being BASHED for our lack of understanding.

Would I be here if I had all the answers? Would I be here if I wasn't trying desperately to understand? Can I not post a question to other parents, to discuss experiences, tools and coping mechanisms, without being bombarded by someone suffering with Aspergers trashing my post?

I understand that all communication styles vary, that people's individual perception is key in how they think, relate or communicate with others.

Nothing about my post was negative. Quite simply, it was a question to other parents, looking for their experiences with "it", cuz as you have stated so clearly, this is a socially unacceptable way of communicating....And since some of the features of Asperger's is ones difficulty with communication styles (receptive, body language etc) & social cues, making it difficult for Aspies to interact with many, I thought I would ask the question to other parents, to see how they are doing with this particular aspergers trait.

Btw, I am not being harsh, either. I am being a "NT" mom, of a child on a waiting list for an assessment for asperger's and have made just a few posts, with attempts to understand my daughter better, with hopes to make her a fully functioning child/adult, whether it be asperger's or not.

Since my child doesn't have an Asperger's Diagnosis...I wasn't placing blame on any one condition.

Any parents thoughts/experiences would be helpful

Thanks Again,

Melissa

Last edited by makelifehappen on 04 Mar 2007, 11:58 am, edited 1 time in total.

uh ... we are talking about the same Asperger's, right? All my life the problem has been that I DON'T get the non-verbal communication, the body language, the significant looks, the tone of voice. Everything I've read says that this is one of the hallmarks of Aspergers. Certainly my response to a whimper and a tiny wave of a finger, if I even noticed the finger wave, would be "What? What's wrong?"

thanks alaric. I understand what you are saying about your wife, my guess is we all do that, at some point....

I do it quite a bit actually. More so because I have so many things on the go at all times that when I think of things, I have to get them off my chest, before I forget or lose the train of thought altogether.

With my daughter though, it will be totally random and have nothing to do with anything, except for what is happening in her head. As though I had been taking part of a conversation in her head, all along.

"remember mom?"

"Sophie~that is her name"

stuff like that....

I couldn't/wouldn't have a clue even if I tried....because it is so random and out of the blue that there is no possible connection to anything going on around us.

Anyhow, I am open to hear more from others,

Thanks again,

Melissa

Sorry -- (I do have an excuss - remmebrer)

-ahh really , shrug it off, as you said, alot of people do it ... it's just that some AS types (and many other afflicted/diabled groups) will do that.

heck even NT's do it

---It's why certain social groups get along the way they do.... eg rappers in harlem - I dunno what they're sayint, I dunno where they get thier social cues from, I dunno thier body language.... they are communicating on a different level to me.

-Imagine your child(ren) became rappers - then you may have no hope of ever understanding them!


Yes the half sentence thing looks obvious on a child in thier set environment.... but I think this is one of those sysmptom that won't last for very long, or at least won't be all that much of a hindrance to normal development. (even an infant makes the assumption that you understand them crying (once they have built up a library of responces to situations thyre'in eg. need food, better cry, the food lady understands that, maybe as a aspiring child she is testing new techniwues of communication, and yeah she's gotten addicted to reading cues without forethought to you actually being on her wavelength))

Melissa,
I completely agree with you on the issue of us parents and NTs being bashed. I am undiagnosed and I've been bashed too. While some people may be better at giving insights with their experiences, not all of them have the ability to.

I used to do this when I was a child. My Mom would always say 'how did you come up with that?' or 'where did that come from?' After a while, I took into doing my random statement and then I'd actually give her my train of thought. And when I got older, I changed the order of things- giving her my train of thought and then making my statement. It helped not only with conversation skills, but also with being able to organize my thoughts in my head.

Now, my almost 3 year old has started doing this... but I'm just so thrilled that he's making the effort to talk. In the last few weeks he's actually jumped from one word statements to some very brief sentences. He's also uses echolalia. What he'll do is quite interesting. He'll say something like 'that was totally wicked' in the middle of something else, and he actually means, "I like the Incredibles, I'd like to watch the movie now - do you remember the part where the kid says, 'That was totally wicked'?"
His language skills are too young for me to ask him 'where did that come from' like what my parents did with me- but I'm sure in time we'll be working on that.

my hubby and i have gotten to the point that we'll be thinking the same thing, or notice the same thing about something...and then say a random statement about it at the same time.

The answer my friend