Would you socialise with LF autistic people?

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It would be nice to try socializing with someone who wouldn't try to make me speak NT.

Yeah.

Right now I've got a t-shirt covering the bottom half of my monitor Too bright.

It's possible. I mean I've read all these accounts like mine and like kfisherx' and others and I think there's some level of compatibility, although it's not necessarily automatically across the board.



Is it kind of like he's watching out of peripheral vision? I was reading something somewhere that some autistic people find it hard to look directly at things - it talked about eye contact and looking at faces in addition to watching television and was kind of interesting. When I talk to people my default is to keep them in my own peripheral vision, although I do try to at least look at or near their face.



You know, I feel the same way. I actually vaguely wondered about autism around the time I knew that boy and his family. Another friend of mine told me that her brother - who was someone I knew in high school - was diagnosed with AS, and she listed some things I did. When I looked up information it was all medical and clinical and told me nothing, and I let it go. It took reading other autistic people's writing for me to understand what was going on.

This boys parents weren't there. I should say that I was speaking very gently to the boy but realise in the few seconds I had his attention that any amount of interaction he was having was enriching. Just because he doesn't answer back does not mean he is not taking in anything.

Teachers and students make this mistake with my daughter at school when they say something and she doesn't respond back. I know she takes everything in. Just now as I'm typing on the computer she is repeating a lecture given by the teacher the day before. They will of course say this is delayed echolalia but with time she decodes language this way.

I have done and sometimes still do interact with people lower functioning on the spectrum.

In the playground event I talked about earlier with the two teenagers, the girl appeared to be the sister and the other teen was the B/F. I realised this afterward as they went back to their park bench and re-commenced their pashing.

Obviously the sister was supposed to keep an eye on her brother but was a convenient excuse for her to spend time with her B/F rather than her brother. I feel sorry as the LFA boy was being left to fend for himself while his sister was busy doing other things. But at the end of the day I as a stranger am answerable to a 16 yr old given responsibility to look after her brother. I suspect part of her response to me was she didn't see what transpired and felt guilty, sought of a knee jerk reaction for display purposes. She may also want to give space because she doesn't want to have to explain stuff to people (like me).

I sometimes have to explain when my daughter decides it's easier to to use physical interaction (i.e. pushing) if she wants to go down th slide). The parents look at me as if I have't taught her discipline. I apologise and get her to move on as it's too much hassle to explain her diagnosis to somebody who isn't going to be sympathetic. Luckily she has improved over the last 6 months and is much more accommodating.

Thank you. It never occurred to me that it might be too bright.

The first time I noticed something odd about the way he watched television, he was holding his ear up to the speaker, and I thought he couldn't hear, but then I noticed that he was looking out of the side of his eye at the screen, and it had nothing to with with the speaker at all, because I see him doing this with objects also. He does this thing with his eyes, that looks like he's looking at his bangs; I saw a Youtube video of a little boy wit autism doing the exact same thing. I thought holy crap he's stimming with his eyes!! We have to keep his tv in the floor, because he kept knocking it off the tv stand. He positions his body on top of the tv and hangs upside down in front of the screen, and he can watch tv like that for...forever it seems.

I'm not real keen on looking people in the eye for too long. I'm always afraid they're going to think I'm trying to assert some kind of dominance over them or that I'm being creepy, so I try to look away from time to time.

Oh, yeah, stimming with eyes. I did a lot of that as a child, not so much as an adult. I used to just stare at things until patterns emerged and other odd ways of looking at things involving squinting and I don't even remember everything now.



I really don't know how long I should look. I mean I've heard people say about three seconds but I can remember that during a conversation? Not usually. I glance mostly.

A lot of the time when people talk about "low-functioning" they will pick out very young children, not remembering that those children will grow up into adults, and as they grow, learn useful skills. You simply can't assume that a young child who is non-verbal will not learn to speak (80-90% do) or that what he can't do now, he'll never be able to do.

I understand of course that autism can be extreme, and that it can come along with other severe disabilities. But that does not mean that autistic people do not learn.

And I still do not like the assumption that you cannot interact with someone who is severely disabled and extremely autistic. I have never heard of anyone for whom that is not possible.

I've heard people say, "But you don't understand how severe his autism is!" all the time. As though being very autistic created an unbridgeable gap between him and the rest of the world. It doesn't. It might take creativity, but there can always be communication--if only by watching behavior and being in the same world together.

I would honestly give a low functioning autistic person a chance and socialize with them. It doesn't really bother me that they are lower functioning than I. If we can find an activity or subject that both of us enjoy, then I wouldn't care that they are low functioning. Of course it would depend a lot on the individual and how well we'd "click" together, but I see no reason why it would be a major problem that they are lower functioning than I. I'm very patient and open minded.

I also find it so silly when neurotypicals don't give me a chance and don't bother to get to know me just because my social skills are not as good as theirs, so I wouldn't do that to someone whose social skills are worse than mine. I'd try to look past their difficulties and actually get to know them better. If I like people's personality or have something in common with them, then I don't really care if they're behind me in development in some aspect.

I assume 'pashing' means making out (British term?).

And I think you read it pretty well, that she wasn't paying attention and then kind of jumped back in and overdid. I am often very good at reading situations after the fact. During the time, I'm developing less exact (less perfectionist) skills, such as whether or not the person wants to talk or not, and natural course of time for the conversation, which tends to be shorter than I have been doing it.

As far as explaining to other parents, what about a phrase that invites ping-ponging conversations such as 'My daughter is on the spectrum'?

When I was playing live poker in Las Vegas (broke even, recommend for social skills, very much not rec'd as attempt to make money because of natural variance), I developed a method in which my eyes would be pointing toward where the dealer was going to put the cards but I was really paying attention to the players in my periphereal vision. I would kind of 'fuzz' out my vision.

I would soften my vision. (I'm near-sighted and later on, wearing a pair of eye glasses one prescription out of date also kind of accomplished this at my work at a dept store)

So, softer vision kind of combined with scanning the entire eye slit area.

Yes apologies - making out....



I seriously believe most parent's have no idea. On my daughter's first day of school she ran at full speed and pushed over a little boy. The boy's parents and extended family clan converged and I sensed trouble. Luckily they were quite friendly and were happy to laugh it off....but I felt compelled to explain that my daughter has autism. Remarkably nobody in this group had ever heard of this condition. The effect of telling them was that the mother inquired why my daughter wasn't in a special school!

So in future I keep this information to myself as it just invites trouble,

Last edited by cyberdad on 09 May 2011, 2:26 am, edited 1 time in total.

I don't think I could, to be honest. I'm very emotional and empathetic. Most LFAs are logical and aren't. There would be no connection.

since both of those things are insults, i don't think that will help. anyway, since when are LFAs ret*d? not the last time i checked!

There are LFA older teenagers that I have met who never developed much mentally and aren't expected to develop further. What very little attempt they sometimes make to communicate and their extremely poor ability to use and manipulate the objects in their environment usually gives the impression that they are not completely all there. Not all the LFA kids are going to be like Carly Fleischmann someday when they get older. Some of them just don't have anywhere near the capacity. That being said, I have met extremely low function kids who are probably a lot more intelligent than they get credit for as well. If they want to interact with you for more than to get you to give them snacks, that's great! If they don't, just create an environment for them where they are safe and content.