Questions for NTs

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I'm posting this here mainly because I assume that if there are NTs around, this is where they would be.


I know there are a lot of AS parents here as well at NT ones. The thread about parents being diagnosed after their children was an interesting one to read through. I have four children, two of whom are diagnosed- one with AS and one PDD-NOS. As I've done my research I've realized that I have a lot of those traits, but I have always considered myself to be NT because I have and maintain a lot of friendships and really enjoy being around people.

But as I read through some things on the general board I start to identify with so many things I read that I second guess myself. Some things that are mentioned there as AS traits I always thought were just part of the general human experience. So here are my questions:

-Do you ever think about your eye contact or remind yourself to make eye contact? Does eye contact ever make you feel uncomfortable?
-Do you ever need to mentally remind yourself of accepted social protocol or does it truly come so naturally that you never need to think about it?
-Do social events ever make you anxious? Isn't it just normal to hope that you will know someone there or have someone to sit with or feel nervous about blending into a new crowd or meeting new people?


Or maybe it's just that those who are diagnosed with AS feel that all of these things come naturally to NTs and therefore assume that NTs don't exerience those same anxieties? In the end I suppose it doesn't matter one way or the other. I'm just curious.

Interesting questions. Who knows at this point in my life what has been learned and what was natural to me. I'm not super social, although I very much enjoy being around people. I grew up shy, not knowing how to jump into a conversation. I don't always "catch" everything going on around me.

And yet ...

I just don't see myself as struggling with things in the way my husband and son do. I would never have originated the thought that there were social cues I must be missing. My son, however, can see that there is a silent code he is unaware of, and it frustrates him. I've never felt that way, just more like I'm not "gifted" socially.

Like everything else, even among NT's there is a spectrum. After all, we all know people we would describe as "natural born networkers" or for whom "there are no strangers, only friends that haven't been met yet." Even among NT's, those who are THAT socially gifted are considered somewhat rare.

I do sometimes I wonder if I've pegged myself correctly (I consider myself "some AS traits but mostly NT") but it's purely acedemic, and there are clear differences between myself and those who more fully identify as AS. Many similarities, too, but also clear differences. While I can find overstimulation tiring, it doesn't get me edgy. I can still think very clearly when overloaded. I can see when a conversation has turned into two pillars just facing off, and look for an entirely new angle. etc. It's really difficult to say where the lines are, exactly.

My daughter is having social issues at school now (or was, before break), and I found myself second guessing our assumption that she is NT. But then the kids talk like they did a few days ago, where my son mused unprompted about this secret world everyone around him seemed to understand that he didn't. He noted that it seemed everyone else naturally knew the social cues, except for him. My daughter said simply that she could read the social clues, and offered to help him. It was cute.

Hmmm...well, as an example it seems like I often say things that are somehow shocking to people. I say it, and they raise their eyebrows and laugh an uncomfortable laugh. I gather they think the comment was rude or "over the top", but afterward I still don't really know why. In my mind most people are never honest enough. They don't say things that everyone in the room can clearly see and it irritates me at times. It's like when they talk about "the elephant in the middle of the table" but it seems like there are lots and lots of elephants that nobody talks about out loud. Once in a while I dare to bring one up and perhaps that is one of those unwritten rules that I don't have: The "don't talk about that out loud" rule. Once in a converstation with my mom I said, "To be frank..." and she immediately interrupted with, "Well, that's putting it lightly!"
So I've gathered that I must be too honest or rude and I try to think about what comes out of my mouth before I say it. I bite my tongue a lot.

But in my eyes everyone has a different personality and I have always imagined that everybody learns social skills from the feedback they receive from others. If you do A and people freak out, then A must not be OK so if you want to fit in, don't do it, right?

To some degree all behavior is learned. But even then, someone like my son fights it. He takes the negative feedback and argues it. The thing about tact, for example, elludes him. In his mind, what is wrong with speaking the truth?

If I've said something that makes someone uncomfortable, I usually notice and figure out why. I think, lol - I wouldn't know if I miss it, would I? But I'm not usually baffled on the why, unless there really is news that no one has gotten around to telling me yet, and anyone can fall prey to that.

Going back to my son - he doesn't look for or accept feedback or body language. If he wants to hug you, he'll hug you, even if you stand stiff as a board or try to pry him off. He won't accept that what he wants isn't also what you want. He is learning over time, of course, but he has never been able to "take a hint," as they say. We have to actively teach him to look for these signals, and we have to constantly remind him. My NT daughter, on the other hand (and she is 3 years younger than him), will challenge it right off if she believes a reaction is inappropriate. If she tells a story that she is all excited about, and I don't respond with excitement, she'll get all upset that I'm not excited. My AS son wouldn't notice or care if I was excited; it only matters to him that he is excited and gets to talk about it. But my daughter is instinctively looking for that reciprocal reaction. Does that make sense?

Gee, that really made me think.
I was always painfully shy as a kid and have chalked it up to the fact that we moved around and I had to start new schools too many times.
I have issues with anxiety, so I just figure I have extreme social anxiety. I want to be social, I just find that I can't think of much to say. My husband used to refer to me as anti-social, but they didn't call it social anxiety then. I was just weird to him.
But there are times when I remind myself to make eye contact, even though i feel uncomfortable. It's just that I'm uncomfortable talking to people sometimes. It doesn't hurt or anything I've heard described here.
As far as I know, I have no other AS traits. Not that it would be a bad thing, but unfortunately
I'm not a genius like my son! If only I could talk to him on his level!

As an NT parent, I do sometimes think about eye contact. It has often made me nervous-but usually in situations where I felt safety was an issue (e.g., someone giving me the evil eye in a bad neighborhood). I do get nervous at social situations, and I do have to think, a lot, about what is proper to say and so on. Sure, I have learned the right things to do, but to say it all comes naturally is a joke! At least for me. What I would give to be smooth and slick like the lead character in the movie "Thank You For Smoking."
Hope this helps

Hi (reminded self to do that)
I've just read through another thread here about getting a dx of ASD after your child has, so its on my mind wether the traits I see in myself and did see before my child was dx etc are anywhere on the spectrum or if I'm NT etc , I think I may have something else all togehter tbh , a combination of ocd(thoughts only), anxiety disorder and high arousal i think its called or is it low am not sure - means slow to adapt to change anywayor soemthing about how i respond to change- my sister said i was liek that once totally out the blue the other things come from a medically certified episode of anxiety and how I generally feel and also the ocd thing from a therpaists comments once but I never followed up on it. I've trouble sleeping since young and generally feel on edge at any unexpected event. Am i NT I've no clue basically- I was looking into aspergers autism even befreo I had my son. Knowing I have a high IQ(150+) but never having suceeded in life at work barely scraping through uni etc and having some not typical relationships with people eventaully I did a online Emtional Q test which marked me very low. but to get to the point and your questions

I do find myself checking eye contact sometimes I realise through a whole conversation I've not made any with a third party to the convo then I'll look at them to long and get nervous and pretty much look at my lap for awhile- usually the only conversations I'm having are with school meetings though so I'm nervous from the get go already- when speaking with family etc I think I make 'normal' eye contact.
Going to social occasions(consist of school emetings only really things I really must go to - not aprties events etc), well I'd rather not go to any, but once I'm actually there I think I do okay though I chat too much , its the aftermath that gets me and puts me off going to anymore in future, I typically think back through whole conversations wondering why I said this or that or why another person said this or that to the point it affects sleep (which is poor already) and raises anxiety for days. On the other hand I don't think I'm shy at all . When doing night classes etc I'd no bother walking into a room full of strangers on my own nor answering questions etc , it feels liek these occasions though with groups of people are okay because they have purpose and structure and generally with classes I do well so am confident to start with.
On saying that though the bad period of anxiety I had was from a academic course, it was stupid really I had to do a talk for the frist time ever (how i got all the way thourgh school and uni without ever having to stand up and do this I dont know) but anyway it was a postgrad course and I struggled for 2 weeks writing the talk making slides etc - i did the talk got okayish marks for it 60 odd % i think then I just couldnt face going back to the course it felt like I would rather die than go back but there were finacial implications etc to just dropping out so after putting head under covers for awhile I went to doctor eventaully who sat asking me questions and weirdly feeling my pulse and she signed me off for two weeks and asked that i thought carefully about what I'd be giving up leaving the course etc but then i left anyway- even after the 2 weeks I just knew there was no way I could go back and to this day I still dont really know why but I do know it was what i HAD to do at the time.

I still look back furthur to my middle school days though and I don't see the problems my son has in them , I was confident had few close friends but could talk with anyone got along with most peers etc did well in sports - somewhere along the way events happened and i changed vastly from a happy 12 yr old whose breezed through school academically and physically with the world at her feet to this so i dont think its spectrum related but NT not so sure.

I am content and at a place where if not put under too many pressures at once i can cope with things and if not I am good at faking being 'alright' I'm intensly private and dealing with school social services etc is much more stressful than looking after my son, he is my strength to deal with it though I just worry sometimes I'm avoiding situations and doing things that maybe would help him

Thanks for the replies. It does make me think that a lot of NTs have some of the same social issues as some people on the spectrum. (If you are on the spectrum and reading this please realize that I am not implying that life isn't harder for you if you are facing big struggles...it's a complicated issue.)

Then again I had to laugh as I read through because I realized that if it's true that autism is genetic, then all of us probably have at least traits strong enough that our own experiences are a little outside of the realm of the NT world at large.

When I look back on my own childhood from an "outside perspective"...
-I never really liked being in groups of kids because I had no idea what to do in play unless someone told me
-Being in new situations or having a sudden change in plans made me so anxious that I often became physically ill
-I said things that were so strange to adults that they felt the need to take me to the school psychologist to repeat the things to her...they were mostly ideas about how things worked, etc. I wish I could remember them now because at the time I had no idea why they were making such a fuss about it
-I always preferred to be with adults because kids didn't want to talk about things I liked to talk about
-My favorite thing to do was read (as soon as I was able) and collect facts about things that interested me, and before that I listened to grownups to collect those facts...my aunt repeatedly tells the story about how she took me to the grocery store and I pointed at the liver saying, "It looks just like a placenta!" I was three years old. Childbirth fascinated me.
-When I look back at photos I usually had a flat affect. I can specifically remember adults asking me if I was OK because I looked sad on a regular basis...and not being able to figure out why they thought that
-I was obsessed with bugs and spent most days creating bug habitats in jars and boxes. I had friends but they weren't impressed with the bugs and when they came over to play I preferred the bugs. My friends ended up playing with my toys by themselves if they didn't like bugs.

At any rate, I am now a fully functional, happily married mother of four so I suppose it should just give me hope for my own kids' eventual happiness.

re: reading non verbal cues- I can read the obvious but not everyone gives you the obvious. I usually feel completely in the dark as to how people perceive me. There have been times when I have said something to two people and I see them exchange a glance and I don't know why. I wonder sometimes if some of the difficulty in reading non verbal cues is that if you feel uncomfortable looking someone in the eye you're naturally going to miss things.

It is an interesting question. Since my sons were dxed, I have wavered back and forth on whether or not I think I have AS too. I certainly have a lot of traits...but how much adds up to introverted, awkward NT and how much to AS? I do think that there are many NTs who are shy, have anxiety, are not particularly socially gifted etc. Like DW said, NT can be a spectrum too.

All I know is that I don't seem to speak the same language, as the majority of people out there. I can make a very good first impression in a social setting where there are prescribed roles (parent to teacher, parent to parent, patient to doctor etc.), but over time there is always a deterioration in acquaintanceships and I almost never know exactly where things went amiss. I am intuitive about other people's feelings, almost uncomfortably so, picking up on worry, anger, distaste, excitement etc. from other people. But I don't know what to do with that information. As in, I can tell that this person seems vaguely uncomfortable around me, but I don't know how to put them at ease. I do have friends, and I value them greatly, but can go many, many months without talking to them or seeing them without even realizing it. The concept of "missing" people is a tricky one to wrap my head around. I do have sensory issues, and anxiety. I find crowds overwhelming. I do find eye contact complicated and I think about it consciously, but it does not feel painful to me. I often take humour too literally, but I get figures of speech. I definitely have obsessive interests, but this I really like about myself. As a child, I can remember voraciously reading fiction. I used the language and situations in the books, to try to figure out the social world around me in a methodical and calculated way. I often felt like an actress or a character in a book, when interacting with people. I had a gifted IQ, but then exhibited puzzling gaps in my abilities.

So yeah, a lot of AS traits, and I have struggled in my life in certain areas, BUT I don't see my struggles as being nearly as profound as those of my sons. Do I have AS, or am I just a bit of an anxious, oddball NT? I bet different psychs would say different things, and I guess it doesn't really matter at this point. Still I really relate to many of the threads here, and am grateful to have found all of the information on AS for my sons' benefits, as well as my own.

Regarding your questions...

(1) As a child I was shy and I did have to think about eye contact. It made me feel vulnerable. No problems as an adult. But it took me until about my 20's to really get comfortable with it ... especially in situations with superiors or folks I knew were judging me (i.e., presenting a paper/thesis .. not just socially).

(2) I need no reminders now. I notice aversion in others. It no longer makes me feel uncomfortable at all.

(3) On the whole, I don't love big social events, but I can fake it quite well. I take the "storm in and meet new people" approach. The clinging to familar people method just makes me feel more vulnerable.

One thing I've struggled with forever is that I BLUSH when nervous/anxious ... I am pale/fair and there is no way to hide my emotions. So I have to really psych my brain out NOT to go into fight or flight mode!