Lack of common sense.

Post Reply New Topic

I'm always being told I have no common sense, and I'm wondering if any of you guys have had to deal with this.
Here are some examples of these situations.
Scenario 1: A textiles lesson.
Teacher:*cuts piece of fabric with scissors in order to explain something I didn't care about*
"Is this piece of cloth cut straight?"
Me: "No."

It was apparently, but as the fibers make tiny bumps across the surface, my first instinct was to say no.

Scenario 2: A shopping centre with my mother.
Mum:Get me two of those will you? *gestures to the bananas*
Me: But they come in bunches of eight, shall I rip two off?
Mum: *facepalm*

Scenario 3: An ICT lesson, where my teacher is showing us a hard drive.
Teacher: Can you see?
Me: Umm....no.
Teacher: Well, come forward.
*He tells the girl sitting on a randomly placed chair to get off*
*I stand near the chair, so I have a better view*
Girl behind me: Sit down!
Me:

As he told the girl in the chair to get off, I thought this meant I couldn't sit on it either.



Any thoughts?

Yes, I've dealt with situations like this. Before I learned about AS, I sometimes thought other people were poor communicators - that they were either too vague or deliberately vague, in speaking and in writing. They obviously knew what they were trying to communicate but I wasn't getting it. I needed a little more information to make sense of what they were trying to convey.

I also wouldn't have known whether to pick up two bananas or two bunches unless this was an activity that had become routine. "A couple," "a few," and "several" would also confound me.

It's that literal thinking thing, and I don't like to make assumptions.

All the time. If I don't explicitly hear something, I usually don't know it. It's worse on some days than others, but in general I am very literal-minded in person.

.... When I was working in a daycare, another teacher asked me to get her the broom. I went into the kitchen, took the dustpan off the broom and brought it out to her. She asked where the dustpan was, I told her I took it off and left it in the kitchen. She asked why I wouldn't bring it in, and I told her she didn't ask for it.

Lesson learned- If someone asks you for a broom they also want the dustpan.

I wouldn't have even asked about the bananas, I would have taken two off the bunch- But my Mum knows better now than to not be extremely specific.

i would have done the same thing about the bananas...
i think they just want US to do all the work and read between the lines of what they say and mean...Lazy NT's

I go through the same thing, when asked a question I over think the question. Like if someone says what were doing before this, I might say uhh walked through the hall way or what do you mean?

Oh, this happens to me all of the time. I am constantly misinterpreting people's instructions. The instructions have to be 100% clear or I won't understand. My mom's learned to deal with it by giving very specific and detailed explanations.

Sometimes it's made for some humorous situations, though. My friend once told me to "park down at the bottom of the hill"... and so I did just that and walked all the way up. It was around a two mile walk uphill, I think. When I got there, huffing and puffing, she was really surprised. It turns out that she had just meant the bottom of the hill where the driveway was. Woops!

I have this problem, too. I often misinterpret instructions, or I follow the instruction given, but fail to take the logical next step, even if the logical next step seems obvious to most people without it being explicitly stated. I wish I could come up with an example. Unfortunately, I can't think of a specific example offhand, as it's been an exceptionally long work week. I've also been fighting off a sinus infection for the past two weeks, and it's not getting any better. Thus, I'm not thinking clearly enough to give specific examples right now. Suffice it to say, I've been criticized for not inferring the logical next step after following the specific instruction provided, when the logical next step is supposedly "common sense," and obvious for most people. That seems to happen to me *a lot.*

I'm also not so great at following instructions that are somewhat vague,. Even when most other people seem able to make the necessary inferences to follow these vague instructions I can't. I've had people lose patience with me because I never seem to understand what they're saying.

I'm still not 100% sure what your mother was asking with the bananas. Was she asking for two bunches? Now that I've taken several minutes to puzzle over that one, that's what seems most likely, I guess. I'm still not sure though, and I was really confused when I first read that. That reminds me of something. I remember this one time, it was breakfast in the preschool where I work. We generally cut up fruit to give to the kids with their meals. There were two bunches of bananas there, one for breakfast, and one for lunch, though my brain wasn't accessing all the information in that moment. I figured I should be doing something to help, so I volunteered to cut the bananas. The lady in the classroom I was working in that time told me that we just need to use one. I thought that seemed a little strange, but I figured she probably had her reasons. Additonally, it was a smallish class, so I figured that if I cut the pieces tiny enough, there just might be enough for everyone. Then, the lady saw what I was doing. She was somewhat used to me at that point, so she laughed and asked if I thought she meant one banana, then explained that she meant one of the two bunches of bananas.

These miscommunications happen with me all the time. I'm awful at interpeting instructions. Even when things are spelled out very specifically, I may misinterpret something or fail to process some crucial piece of information. Even so, I'm less likely to misinterpret instructions when everything is spelled out specifically. For instance, if the lady had told me to cut the bananas from just one of the two bunches, because the other one was being saved for lunch later, I would have had no trouble with those instructions. I can't for the life of me understand why she couldn't have just said that.

Why is it that the majority of NTs are so vague when they give instructions, and expect others to instinctively read between the lines? I don't mean this question as an attack; I'm genuinely curious. If any NTs are watching this thread, I truly would appreciate any insight you could offer. How do you guys work together on tasks without even any discussion, just instinctively knowing what each person's role is in a task, while I never know unless someone explains to me exactly what I should be doing??? I always seem to wind up offering help when the other person/s have "got it," and don't need help, and then get looked at like I'm an idiotic nuisance. Meanwhile, when my help is needed, I never seem to be able to figure that out, and I wind up standing around uselessly, trying to figure out what the heck I'm supposed to be doing. Otherwise, I try to help, but don't do it right, choosing the wrong part of the task to help with. Are there any NTs out there who can tell me just what I'm missing, because it gets tiring and very frustrating having others constantly look at me like I'm a useless ineffectual idiot. I really want to know.

My office clerk used to tell me I lack common sense and I needed to use it. When I said my aunt and uncle may be cheap but they weren't cheap enough to not get us a wedding present, I was told it was common sense to know that was an insult and it's to not be said to them.

I am often asking how to do things or what to you mean. I guess this is what my mother means by I process information differently. I don't really notice TBH.

It took me little while to figure out what "two of those meant" for the bananas. She meant two sets of it. Sometimes I do figure out what people meant but it's too late because I figured it out too slowly. Actually I can usually figure it out right after it's happened but I am just slow at it. I take something literal and then I realize that is not what the person meant.

I remember when I first had my baby, I was at my son's appointment and this older lady who looked to be in her 40's or 50's says to me "You don't look like someone who has just had her baby. How much weight did you gain, one pound?" I told her I had actually lost weight. She left. Then I realized later on that she meant during my pregnancy, not after. Doh. So basically I had just told her my weight had gone down during my pregnancy than up. Maybe she then thought I was fat and then I got skinny thanks to the baby. Some women do lose weight during their pregnancies and I got thinner during it but I still gained weight. So technically I did lose weight.

I don't think I've really dealt with this. My common sense is generally OK.

But let me think of something I can remember doing what involved lacking common sense/being too literal.....

I'm not sure if this is actually lacking common sense or not, but often when somebody near me is busy doing something, I'm usually standing there or sitting there watching them in silence, instead of helping them. But it's only because I know I'll just get in the way more so, like being more of a hinderence than help. But maybe it still means I lack common sense, because most people seem to know what to do to help them (if the task looks familiar enough, like moving boxes or carrying rubbish to the skip), but I wouldn't. I'd probably just pick up the wrong thing and put it in the wrong place or something. I suppose asking will help a lot.....so I don't know if this is really an example of lacking theory of mind/common sense.