Why is it so hard for NT's to comprehend special intrests?

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From what I expirenced it's not....unless everyone else likes them. I liked meerkats YEARS before Meerkat Manor got so popular and now that Meerkat Manor is so insanley popular, it's okay for me to like them. I've had special intrests in other animals such as manatees but none were ever as strong as my meerkat special intrest. I think I lost intrest in manatees because the local zoo got an exhibit for them and destroyed the original aquarium they had since the 30's to make the manatee house. It was my favorite exhbit and it's destruction lead to the death of my special intrest in manatees. They FINNALY got meerkats again but they keep them in the cat house. Arrrr! That is tottaly encouraging the ignorant thought that they are felines. I moved from Cincinatti to San Antonio so I will probably never get to see them anyway but I don't really care because if I can't go in and interact with them and touch them, it's no diffrent than watching them on TV.

Step you dont have to share but maybe we can give ideas if we happened to know what this special interest is.

I am a mother with AS. I do exactly what your son does. My family find my immersion in my special interests to be very difficult at times. But they have also reached a point of understanding that my special interest is on par with a human being in its level of importance in my life. It is my closest friend. And yes, the situation in a family requires balance and a cognitive working through by the AS person of others' needs for respite from out interests.
I know this intellectually but I still struggle with it.

At the same time, it is hard having AS and trying to "connect" with people - and often the only way we know how to do this is via a meeting point over our special interests. We talk about it at times, muse over it, ponder it, sing it, hum it and discuss it hoping someone will understand the level of our intensity, our rapture, our ecstatic relationship with the special interest....

My life is littered with attempts to explain something about my special interests to other NT people - who simply do not fully comprehend the ASD individual's relationship with the special interest. Often, it is assumed the special interest is like reading a book or pursuing an interest like an NT does in a lounge room of an evening...as if it is the pursuit of a quiet hobby or interlude at the end of a day. But it is not. It has quite a different quality to it than that. It is the greatest friend and the greatest supporter. It is more than a special interest. It is a being with its own existence that lives within us. It is a source of love, a source of ecstasy and a source of deep and abiding and enduring "friendship" that I personally cannot acquire with other human beings.

It breaks my heart when I see this is simply not fully and adequately understood by others who do not have an ASD.

I dont have a problem with talking considering what my special interest is. So I hear about other things throughout my life and talk about those.

Hi thewrll, ideas would be great. For the last several years his special interest is in trains (ages 3-7 it was vacuum cleaners!). Since we live in a small house, his dad built him a loft style bed with a real train layout underneath it and his room is decorated with train posters and crossing signs.

He used to live somewhere that was a hub for trains and trainspotting was one of his favorite things to do. But after his mom died he moved to be with us full time and we (unfortunately) live somewhere geographically isolated (no road system) and we don't have any trains. This has been really hard on him but in the past year we've taken him on several trips (which required air travel) specifically for him to be able to ride trains and talk with conductors and engineers (he wants to be an engineer or a break man when he grows up.)

I check out lots of books and movies about trains for him from the library. Both my husband and I have even read up on trains too so we can understand what the heck he's talking about as his understanding level and fascination is on a very technical level. We are thinking of getting him a train simulator game, but he's only just turned 10 and we don't want him to be online too much.

And Millie, it's not that I don't understand the passion and joy that my stepson gets from trains, I am proud of him for his intelligence and the level of expertise he has achieved about trains and I think he's a super kid.

It's that I require down time. And that is impossible when you live with someone who can't stop sharing about an exclusive interest. We used to have rules like "no train talk (or whistles sounds which he likes to make when he gets excited) at the dinner table". From reading from some of you about how horrible it made you feel as children to be told you couldn't talk about your interest, I'm trying to be more flexible about this...but sometimes I feel like I will go mad if he doesn't give us a break now and then.

neither is texting or gabbing on a cellphone 24/7 but those are okay, huh? i guess because those involve texting and talking about OTHER PEOPLE. funny how things work.

I actually appreciate the balanced and objective way you appraise your family situation. If that is any indication of future well-being for your stepson, then things look really good.
I am also really thrilled to hear that you and his dad have read up on trains and that his dad constructed the train layout, loft bed and the room is full of posters. This is great to read! thank you for outlining the situation in more detail and clarifying the family issues. It sounds as if you are all doing well with it. YOu see, you sound here like you are meeting him halfway and that is all we need.

First does he like to collect trains. There was a guy on a show called pack rats who only collected a certain model of trains. Also does he have any cds of just train sounds so maybe instead of whistling he can listen to train sounds like from this website http://www.railsusa.com/traingear/Train-Sounds.html. I just have never really experienced what your son has gone through so I dont know. Maybe as he gets older you can try to set a certain period of time like say dinner he can just talk about trains. And also when he spends time on the internet he can find other train enthusiasts who are like him. And when he is on the computer get speakers that have headphones so if he is listening just to train noises he can listen to them without bothering you. I just know when I kept getting computers my world opened up. And if I had any say in the matter I would push him towards engineer. I dont know how good of a living a break man has and when you are an engineer you can travel the us or world and he can tell you about all the sights hes seen.

Thanks for the understanding Millie, sometimes I feel like nothing we do is going to be enough...but we are trying.

Thewrll, thanks for the links to the train sound CDs. He does like listening to train sounds. He and I listened to a bunch of train whistle audio files online and when we found one that he really liked, I burned the sound (recorded about 30 times in a row) onto a CD and then we bought him a CD alarm clock so he wakes up to the sound of the train whistle. He really likes that.

He also loves songs about trains or riding the rails. His uncle that he lived with for 5 years, was also a rail fan and this uncle died several month after his mother died so it was a double whammy. My husband has set it up so that on my stepson can do a radio show of train songs at our local NPR station, on his uncle's birthday. He's really looking forward to that as well.

Also, I like the idea of him being able to communicate online with other rail fans, but I worry about that too because he's so young and I'd hate for him to have some kind of creepy experience with a child predator or something. He has his own laptop and we don't have a filter on it but we're usually in the same room with him when he's using it but I still worry, as he's only just turned 10.

Having a set time for him to be able to talk about trains is a good idea too, though maybe *after* dinner!

Anyway, those are some really helpful suggestions...thank you!

Same reason Aspie's can't understand why NT's want to be around people so much.

Many great answers have been said already yet i'll give another story of personal experience. My younger sister had a special interest a while back... spongebob squarepants. She was eight then, and after she heard the song "Best day ever" she sung it all the time when she was not talking about spongebob. Everyone even my mom and step father (her dad) could't stand it and even screamed at her a few times to shut up, only me and my older brother have had special interests to the point of my younger sister that we could understand her and even though I loathe spongebob him and me would sing along once and a while with her.
Around her same age I discovered geodesics and would babble on and on, and had the same experiences as her (my brother's was/still is lol playing music) by being told to be quiet. I don't think it's a matter of no or low amount of love but of no understanding how powerful these things are to us, only other people like ourselves can understand how we feel of our interests.

I almost feel sad for the other members of our family (NT's) who have to hear all three of us hahahaha!Three out of us six are aspies.

Because some don't understand that AS need as much their Special interests as NT need social interactions (or even more), and don't understand AS have "different minds"?
Anecdote :
A student I know from last year passed on TV lately, because he has created a very good blog about regional politics, a subject by which he has always been fascinated - when he gets bored, he draws electoral maps : a AS-like interest, thus, even though he is NT. It was shown in a reportage. Then during the interviews the journalist comes back to the question of why and how this particular interest, and he answers : "But don't worry, you know, I do other things ; like everybody else, I go out with friends, I watch football, etc...", to put in balance his "not cool" interest (in regard to social standards for his age) with normal occupations, in order not to be considered as strange, or a freak. He wouldn't surely have felt obliged to add it, were his interest seen as "cool" and "normal", and its intensity "healthy"...

Perhaps a better question would be;

Why is it hard for NTs to comprehend NON-SOCIAL special interests?

Have you ever heard a group of them, 'doing lunch' talking about the latest or the upcoming party........like it was actually important.


In fairness, people on 'RightPlanet.net' might ask the equivalent question about us not understanding social special-interests.

and in all honesty, with a business, a family a special needs child and a reasonable exercise program, I really don't know how I would fit in a 'social' life that would actually qualify as social to an NT............EVEN if I wasn't autistic.

I think the answer is that we just don't understand each other and we are the tiny minority.

They say we are bad at noticing that NTs are bored with our talk about special interest.

Do NTs notice when we are bored with their smalltalk? And if not, what does that show? I mean, they're supposed to be able to read mimicry and body language?

Just wondering.

It seems to me that they often don't notice.

They never notice (what many with AS see as) the redundancy of their small talk etc, for the same reason that most of us don't notice when we slip into a monologue. They are behaving 'normally' for them and we are behaving normally, for us.

The difference is that many/most of us know we are 'different' and some of us are able to maintain an awareness and act on that awareness.

We're just geeks to them and I'm fairly certain they don't want to abbreviate their small talk to listen to the a lecture about Scientific research into crop production in Tzarist Russia

Good answer. I just think it's ironic that they mention it as a trait of "disorder" and not reading body language, when we do it, when they themselves do something similar: not noticing that the other one is bored.

Maybe they just can't imagine that anyone can be bored with smalltalk? Cf. the lack of Theory of Aspie Mind, as mentioned before in this thread.

It hits me that NTs in fact often show some of the very same traits towards aspies as they claim we show towards them. Eg. also lack of understanding / empathy(?).

It's just never noticed by them because they are the majority, and hence it's "okay", in opposition to when we show the traits towards them.