Always saying "sorry"

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We live in a rural area and are only aware of a few autistic children. Caleb, who is nine has what we thought was a tic as he says "sorry" many times throughout the day. 99% of the time he has nothing that he did which would require 'sorry". Two other autistic children in the area do the same thing. Why is this ( it makes me sad)? Paul

It does seem sad to me.

Either they are

1. overly self-conscious

or:

2. They are echolalic

or:

3. It might symbolize something else which they are not able to verbalize.

I don't know specifically what your child means by this, but remember many autistic kids have pragmatic issues. My son is verbal but he uses words atypically sometimes.

To him sorry, might be: (not necessarily in this order)

1) The typical usage where he is sorry he did something or didn't do something.

2) He is sorry something did not turn out the way he expected or wanted. For example he might say, "I am sorry you said that," if I veer off his script or say something he does not want to hear.

3) He may be applying one of these usages to something in the near or far past he is currently remembering.

I understand this now only because he is getting better at explaining what he means. Even a year or two ago, I wouldn't necessarily know this. I might get a perplexing one-word statement and have no clue what it means. They get better at explaining idiosyncratic speech as they begin to understand that what we think they mean differs from what they appear to be expressing and as their expressive skills improve.

I appologize very often because I am never sure if someone is offended, upset, or annoyed by something I did, no matter how small. It makes more sense to appologize for something I might have done to offend someone, as I didn't mean to, than to let them be offended.

Girl_Kitten; how do other people respond when you apologize? The generic, polite- oh don't worry, it's nothing?
Or they don't know what it is for and want more explanation?

I have a grand daughter who lives with me, a sweet girl and we are not sure if her frequent sorry's are more from life with her mother (who made bad choices and has gone away for a year and a half this time) and now she's with us and we are more giving. We try to explain, she doesn't need to apologize for having normal everyday teenager needs, going out to eat, my being Taxi dad so she can do things with friends, etc.

I used to apologize all the time because I wanted to be a good caring person so I always apologized when I made a mistake, when I thought I did something wrong, when I would accidentally kick someone or bump them, etc. and when anyone would be mad at me. Other kids always thought I was mean and selfish so I started apologizing all the time and then it was irritating my mom and other people so I cut back on it.

It could be they are copying other people. I was an adult when I learned that telling someone "I am sorry you feel that way" or "I am sorry you took offense" "I am sorry your feelings were hurt" is not a real apology. It's just them shifting their blame on you and telling you it's your fault you feel that way and your responsibility how you feel, not them being sorry for what they did.

Also people can tell if your apology is genuine or not so that is another reason why saying sorry all the time annoys people. They may be picking up you don't really mean it or can tell you are just saying it but you don't understand why.

I apologize a lot for any possible offense, or if there's anything I've recently done that I think, in retrospect, might have been thoughtless. I apologize genuinely, not from a "Sorry you took offense" way of shifting blame to the offended party--I really do want to be liked and not hurt people, but don't always realize that something I said was "a bit not good" until everybody in the room stops talking and turns and stares at me. Yikes!! !! And oh, how I hate to be stared at.

I think people realize that I am genuinely sorry, because they don't seem to act annoyed by all the apologizing. People that know me well generally don't say anything, they just smile and nod, or say "don't worry about it." My wife will sometimes say IT'S OKAY, PLEASE STOP APOLOGIZING since she's something of my reality check on my behavior. I also tend toward excessive politeness in the hopes that it will make up for unintentional faux pas (please, thank you, do you mind, etc.).

Saying sorry is supposedly part of being Canadian. I must say sorry twenty times when in a public place, but could be just a nicer-sounding reaction to my personal space being invaded a lot or bumping into someone.

I've told my mom that when I'm shopping in a store I feel like I get in everyone else's way, but she said she feels like everyone else is getting in *her* way. Strange...

I used to apologize a lot as a kid. At the time, I was unaware I did it and I don't think I would have been able to tell anyone why I did it, but now that I am an adult, looking back, I was always aware on some level that I wasn't like other kids. Because I could never figure out what I was doing "wrong," I think I just took to saying sorry a lot. Then there was the fact that I perceived my father as blaming me for everything that ever went wrong, and I wanted to preempt the criticism by accepting blame and showing atonement before having to hear the criticism.

And I grew up in Minnesota. There is a cultural tendency toward such things as apologizing for everything. I think it is a much more common trait among those that I know from Minnesota than those I know from the East Coast, where I now live.

I never had this issue, but my brother did growing up. I don't remember much of it, I was consumed by my own struggles.

He has turrets, OCD, and generalized anxiety disorder. He had low self esteem, low self confidence, and was bullied a lot. He almost dropped out of school because of the bullying. He had a habit of saying sorry whether he did anything wrong or not. Sometimes he'd say sorry a few times in a row. My parents and I would encourage and support him. At some point my parents got fed up with it. Shortly after, they made a sign with some encouraging words that was put on the ceiling over his bed. He would see those encouraging words every day. Over time, he quit saying sorry and his self confidence and self esteem improved. Some other factors contributed but I don't remember them.

This.

But then I also get told I didn't do anything wrong, or whatever I did was so small that I didn't need to say "sorry " about it, that I say "sorry" too much or about the wrong things.

And later they are angry with me for doing something that I didn't know was wrong, still don't understand what was wrong with it, and won't apologize because the only thing I can figure is wrong with what I did was that it was different from what some Allist thought I should do. I even get scolded for wanting something different from what the Allist thought I would want or for not wanting whatever they thought was best for me. Do they ever ask what I want or tell me outright what they want? Rarely. For some reason they expect me to guess...

So I say "sorry" all the time because I am always feeling that I have done something wrong, something the NT's don't like, or failed to do the thing they thought I should. I think sometimes they make me feel this way by their constant signals of disapproval, but other times I think I'm just anxious and self-conscious to the point of near paranoia.

That might not be what it is with your child but I felt for him when I read this thread title and the op. I'm not exactly a child anymore, but sometimes I feel like one. I get treated like a child a lot because of my poor grasp of social situations. I can't walk into a room full of people without feeling like I've probably done something wrong within minutes.

Eye contact with people who think that everybody is neurotypical makes it worse.