Do you ever feel like you don't have common sense?

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My mother just doesn't seem to get it. Once I was having an argument with my niece, and my mother kept making faces at me, which I did not notice. The next day she told me she was making faces to indicate I should stop the arguing. And I said something like "I can't see a lot of stuff like that. That's part of being autistic."



Yeah, I agree.

It is true I do not leave said glass dripping wet. I drop it enough without making it slippery and annoying. I'm actually pretty fortunate. I've had this glass for over 15 years, drop it all the time and so far no breakage. I have a replacement on the day it finally shatters, too. But I will be sad and upset.

That's a shame that she doesn't realise that. I can't read facial expressions either, even if someone is clearly very angry with me. I need someone to say 'I am very angry with you'. I am always asking my boyfriend if he is angry, or unhappy because I can't tell.




That's great you've had it so long. I drink out of plastic cups at home. One has bunnies on it and the other has Minnie Mouse. This must look ridiculous - I am a grown woman - but I really don't care. I am quite clumsy too, I doubt a glass would survive 15 days with me, never mind 15 years. I also like to buy replacements for things I love so I know I won't be completely without them even though I find the transition from the original object to the new one quite upsetting. I wish your glass a long life

I am sure I read at least some facial expressions, but people can't really hint at me. They need to say it straight out or I'll probably not understand it, and I won't realize I didn't understand it. I remember once at the supermarket we were splitting up, so my mother held out the car keys, and I didn't even notice until she said "Take these."



It's a promotional glass from Red Robin. It's not very flashy, though.

I do have my first ever teddy bear in my bed, though. I found it at just the right time, as it had been packed away for a long time. I'm still a bit frustrated that I ended up losing most of my stuffed animal collection just before a move. I guess what I mean is, I don't think drinking from a bunny or Minnie cup makes any adult look ridiculous.

I'm told I don't have common sense all the time, which stands to reason since I'm not even sure what common sense is. As far as I can tell, it's magic. In an intro programming class, we were told computers only know what you tell them explicitly; well, so do I. NTs seem to know things they've never learned - I suppose that's "common sense".

I think one of the hugest problems of autism/Asperger's is the lack of neurologically typical common sense. It's no wonder that people seem to "blame" you all the time, if you do things/don't do things that NT's would normally do, they get freaked out by your Aspie/Autistic behaviour and tell you that you should have done something else instead.

In these kind of situations, why not ask, "What should I have done, if I were normal, like you?" If you understand what you have done/haven't done and why this was considered odd behaviour, hopefully this will help your family/friends to communicate with you better and for you to develop some NT common sense.

Sometimes I lack common sense, and other times I don't. Sometimes when I do use my common sense, and somebody else is being criticised for not using their common sense, I feel more happier in myself. Like last week-end I was going out for the day with my mum, her sister and my cousin. Before we got in the car, my cousin (who is a 20-year-old NT) was shoving her purse and her mobile in her pockets and then couldn't find something else she needed, and my aunt yelled, ''why can't you just take a little handbag that goes over you, like Jo has got?'' And I looked down at myself and felt I was actually doing the right thing for once, being all organised with a nice handbag over me with all my needed stuff already in it, and so I got the chance to look critically at my cousin, but from an NT point of view instead of my usual, unique Aspie point of view.

Anyway, back on topic, yeah sometimes I lack common sense in some things, thoughts what most other people would naturally think. I feel I am not on other people's wavelengths, which sometimes feels really patronizing. And also I sometimes open my mouth before I actually do something, which gets people moaning back at me. For example, if I'm cold and I've got a T-shirt on, I would just sit there and whine, ''I'm cold!'', and if there is a jumper within reach other people say, ''then put a jumper on then!'' I suppose if you're cold, the common sense is to put a jumper on if you haven't already. If you're cold and already have a jumper on, then you can complain more. Common sense is easy really, you just got to get the hang of it by observing other people's behaviour.

I associate common sense with practicality and associate practicality with thrift and thrift with BORING. I wanted one of those cute Fiat cars but DH talked me out of it because the bland white compact sedan we wound up with (for about the same price) has lots of trunk space and stuff like that. I'm sure I'll be glad of it one day, but right now I'm not. But hey, at least we have transportation, right?

My husband has told me in the past it's common sense and my office clerk used to tell me to use my common sense. But when I look around online and read about stupid things people do like dumb consumer reports or dumb 911 calls, it makes me realize I do have common sense. So anyone who tells me I don't have common sense, don't listen to them.

To be fair, everyone lacks common sense.

I'd say this whole common sense shows a lack of theory of mind. When people tell you something is "common sense" they are thinking because they know it that you should somehow automatically know it too.

This confuses me too. I'm told I lack common sense all the time by NTs and I remember back in HS nobody would ever actually accept help from me because they figured I was too dumb to be of any use (a science project in chemistry class comes to mind. A kid took me as his partner because he was grade younger then me and didn't know anyone else besides me. He did everything during the project and wouldn't let me do a single thing and then when we were done with the experiment itself, he would go off by himself to answers the questions despite the fact I needed his help answering them).

But its funny, you hear about NTs lacking common sense all the time on the internet. They're the driving force behind practically every meme I see online.

I spent most of my early life either reading books, playing music or watching tv. When I started working as an adult, I was shocked to discover I lacked common sense. Lost my first real job because of this character deficit. Honestly putting a cup of coffee on the copying machine is just asking for a wet copying machine (and an unhappy boss). So I decided to rectify this character defect by trying to figure out what common sense was and then acquiring it. Took a while but I think it boils down to making a whole lotta mistakes and then learning from them so as not to repeat the same mistakes. The bonus of course is by learning also from other people's mistakes, we attain wisdom. For example, we all learned as children that a hot stove will burn if we touch it. Which also then means that a hot radiator will burn and boiling water will scald. So anything burning hot will hurt if we touch it. But then how many times in the course of our lives will we grab the lid off of a boiling pot without first grabbing an oven mitt or tongs? Or walk in bare feet on concrete, asphalt or on beach sand on a hot, summery day?

So IMO common sense is all relative to whether you're thinking at the moment you're about to make a mistake.

Here's some examples from my childhood:

I remember my bicycle break being loose. I ignored it for days and days. The break finally fell off completely, went between my wheel and I went straight over the handle bars and broke 3 adult teeth, broke my arm and was lucky not to break my jaw or something else. Is this a complete lack of common sense or intertia?

Another great example from around the same age, it snowed, I was due to go to scouts at 8pm. My mum told me that they called to say we'd be clearing driveways and doing odd jobs at 10 instead. So two hours later at 10pm (when it's dark and snowing heavily) I put on my coat to go and clear driveways. Of course it was supposed to be the next morning at 10am. Common sense or ToM issues?

Jason.

Contrary to what Wing writes in her paper ("those with the disorder are lacking in common sense"), I have lots of common sense.

I put thought into everything I do.

Well, I'm not talking about what a professional may have written, but rather how you perceive your own actions, or whether others have interpreted your actions as lacking in common sense. I realize those are two different things.

One example Temple Grandin used was an autistic man who had a strict routine about laundry. When the dryer broke he just switched to putting the wet clothes in his dresser drawers instead of changing his routine. I know I've done things that probably didn't make sense as opposed to changing my routines, and I know that others have interpreted things I've done as not making sense because they don't understand my reasons. I think these two concepts overlap but are not the same, at least for me.

I'd put the clothes on a clothesline. Wet clothes don't go in a place for dry clothes.

That's how I'd go about it; rules take the place of a routine if there's no routine there.

My mother has taught me a lot of things though.

A sense of something that is common.

For ages I'd do things like it's "my first day on earth." A famous mother qoute.

I bet I'd take the crown for a lack of this substance.

"Rake the leaves in a circle" my mother asked. Literally, I would rake 'in a circle'. What she meant was making a pile here and making a pile there - a "circle", etc. I needed more info. but what went through my head to literally dragged the rake in a circumference sweeping motion?

Or my grandmother commented that she's going swinging tonight. I had this picture in my head of her in a porch swing at home, "swinging" and took that literally. and at 28 years old.

Dissecting the latter, I thought it through: no one on earth would ever make the proclamation of "they were going to swing in a swing." Maybe a kid, but not someone in their 70s- C'mon.

I think why 'it doesnt click', is a lack in feeling it or an emotion connected to the event ( as mentioned in thread). It's all data to me. If I took the time to think it through I don't fumble with it, but it's not instinctive and over the years I have broadened my "common sense" through this trial and error.