lightbulb moment

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My ds is staying the week at Grandma's (btw- I miss him like crazy and we go get him tomorrow-can't wait!) Anyway... I guess Grandma took him to see Transformers today. So, I asked him what it was about and he said, "I really can't say..." Meaning, he didn't know how. In my reading, I found out this is very common for Aspies. I never understood before why he wouldn't just tell me what the movie was about. Just wanted to share.

I know how you feel. I have had many of those light bulb moments myself in the past year. It used to make me sad, but now it is more a happy feeling because it finally makes sense and my sons are understood!

Thank you for sharing.

Before I learned not to do it anymore, whenever I asked my aspie son how he felt about a particular issue, his lower lip would start quivering because he had no idea what to tell me.

oh, wonderful!! I am so glad you are starting to understand!
we really don't know what to say. . so sometimes we are so frustrated we try to answer literally, and then try to answer so you won't think less of us, then try to answer so you will know we love you, then try to answer because we LOVED the movie but it is all a big jumble inside still.

Then all the pictures need to be sorted into words and the bottleneck that can be becomes so narrow only a quivering lip can express all that need to realate to another person.

and then we are so clueless as to what is happening inside of us, we really don't understand other people don't have these issues.

I have basically learned that if my sons like something they will talk and talk and talk about it and I listen until they have talked as much as they need. If there is no discussion of whatever it is we were doing I know that it didn't have an impact or wasn't worth the time it would take them to mention it to me. To be honest, when my NT son watches anything or goes with friends, he will babble for hours and analyze everything and it very nearly drives me nuts!! I find myself trying to find a way to get him to be quiet after awhile. Food doesn't even work. I much prefer quiet contemplation.

My son had a universal response for everything, well, actually two:
"good!"
and, a little more elaborate:
"It was good!"

If pressed, he would get really frustrated, sometimes able to recall one point in the activity or movie and repeat it verbatum, but not really answer the question of "how was it". or "did you like it".

I have been ridding a lightning bolt since our DX in January. he is now 12.

I've learned to stop asking, 'How was your day?' because I often get met with a blank stare!

I now ask, 'What did you do today?' Then I get an answer.

Helen

Great, wait a while and, after he has processed the movie, he will say out of the blue,
"Mommy do you know what Optimus Prime did?" Then get ready you may learn more about Transformers than you ever thought possible.

Sport_Rulz doesn't normally answer, but will preceed to tell you everything that happened in the movie.

Although questions like how are you? he'll normally not answer and then change the topic.

But, if there is a topic other boys are interested in that he has no interest or doesn't like, to protect his image he tells them I wont let him watch x show, movie, ect..

This is so like my son - he gets very upset if I try to ask him whether he liked something or not. He will reply "How am I supposed to know" "I don't know" or "I guess so" .

He truly needs a lot of time to process any experience, movie, etc. in order to be able to verbalize his thoughts about it. Like another poster said if it's something he truly loves it will happen instantly.

He told me once last year (he's 10) that he likes to sometimes go to bed a little early so he can think about and "process the day". I have learned to never expect an immediate response from him - invariably he will go to his room or wander around the basement while he thinks.

I am totally new here but I wanted to say my dd does this as well. She is five. I was hoping she would outgrow this with age. I think she has AS. I describe it as lacking a natural flow with words. She has a huge vocab and she is pretty verbal but when you ask her a question, you usually get a few words in her response. She does not go into to any detail and she doesnt offer you a "story." I wish I could get her to talk to me more, I would LOVE to know how her day went...

Maybe he is not realizing that you might not know what Transformers is about, could be resulting in him trying to find some sort of brilliant eureka type of insight as to the meaning of Transformers rather than saying that it is about a group of good robots trying to stop the bad robots from taking over the world. I have run into this myself. Someone asks me to explain something and I start trying to come up with some esoteric all encompassing definition rather than just summarizing or clarifying it. Asking me my favorite movie results in my brain trying to compile and rate every movie that I like and I can't come up with an answer, but asking me to name a movie that I like a lot, I can easily come up with several.

Maybe try asking him to tell you part of the story or something that happened in the movie. Sometimes we just need a nudge on where to start like a question of who is the bad guy and what did he do.

This is totally like my son.

Whenever we do anything...go to Disneyland, go to school, ANYTHING - if I ask my son how it was, he typically says "GOOD" in a pretty matter-of-fact, flat voice. That's it. No elaboration necessary. Later on, as time goes by - I can always tell if he really liked something because out of the clear blue sky he'll begin to tell me a detail about something that happened, and then you can't stop him.

I know not to ask him what a movie was about, because if I do - he'll just tell me the entire movie - not leaving out one single detail. Oddly enough though, he sticks to the facts, there's no analyzing of characters or telling how someone FELT. Of course now I know that's because he's an Aspie.

Interestingly enough, at school they take AR tests for reading. I think a lot of US schools do that now, where they read a book and then take a test about it. The test isn't based on comprehension as much as it is based on reading for detail. My son does very well on those tests. However, ask him what a particular story is about, and he doesn't know how to share it. He just relays exactly what he just read. I'm sure that's going to be an issue when it comes to 4th grade and summarizing.

Yup, that's my DD. You have to ask specific questions to get more than a flippant "Good" or "Fine" or anything else from her.

She spent the near 2 weeks she stayed at her G-pa's across the country mostly writing and coloring about elves and fairy-tale creatures. I would call and ask her if she was having fun and she'd always say, "yes", but my dad was afraid she was bored. I told him he needed to ask her if she was bored and she would tell him. It's hard explaining her personality to people who just don't "get it", and it's hard as an Aspie myself, being able to draw my daughter into conversation about things that don't interest me in the slightest. LOL!

I'm 27, and my response to nearly everything is still "ummm... yeah", until a few days later, then I can talk about what happened, but I will still not say whether or not I enjoyed something.

My son's response is "What's that supposed to mean?" or he just shrugs, lol.