Does your family understand autism?

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My parents say things like:
- "go to Tesco's and buy yourself some food" - the Tesco's is massive, has very bright lighting, is always crowded and noisy, and I cannot go there at all. Last time I did I had a meltdown and had to stand outside.
- "I booked us tickets to go to an opera" - operas are loud, the seating area is crowded, and there is no freedom to leave until the end. When my dad said he booked the tickets, I outright refused and said that I'm an adult and he can't force me. Thankfully my uncle took my ticket so I didn't have to suffer. Even if I took Clonazepam I would still freak out in an opera.
- "you should do university full-time, stop messing about with part-time" - I do part-time not only to protect my mental health, but also because I get so agitated at university, even with a support worker with me all the time, that I can only attend three days a week (part-time) as five days a week would probably make me go catatonic. Also I find it harder to process information in lectures and need a lot of time at home to process each lecture. I am good at learning, but the uni style of learning is hard for me.
- "you should look at people's faces, it helps you work out what they are feeling" - firstly, eye contact is petrifying. Secondly I cannot read facial expressions, a typical autistic symptom.
- "you are so insensitive" - I try to say things right but I am a very frank and honest person. I don't like messing about in conversation, I will get to the point, whether people like it or not.

Your experiences?

Same over here pretty much.It likely doesn't help that I have a rather expansive definition of family as well, no telling how long it might be until they decipher me..

My dad does. My mom... eh. She thinks she does, but she really doesn't. Both my parents though, they don't realize how hard it is to control my emotions or that it's hard to do any daily living skills.

It depends on the situation. My father is not involved much and my mother tries her best. The things she has never and will never understand include sensory issues, my anxiety sparked by sensory issues, and the fact that I just don't connect like she does with others.

"I just don't make friends very easily."
"Oh psh! Of course you could if you tried a bit harder!"

My family has accepted the fact that I do not have a lot of friends. They tried to push me towards befriending many when I was in high school, but by now they understand I will likely never have a large social circle around me and that this fact does not bother me as much as it bothers them. They still always insist, even after coming to term with my lack of friends, that I do socialize on occasion and engage others (even strangers) in pleasant conversation. I've become quite a good conversationalist and learned how to do small talk quite well as a result of this. They have taught me to appear social, even when my life isn't actually very social.

What I am trying to say is... they accepted my flaws and taught me how to work with what I got and improve myself in other ways. I'm hugely thankful for them to have handled things the way they handled them. Though I must say, my lack of a social life has been a lot harder for my father then it has been for my mother and the rare times that I would go out and get drunk with friends, he would always be so proud that I could tell in my heart he wished I could do it more often.

They are understanding, they really are. But at the same time they had their problems with my situation and in some ways they still do. I'm glad for the times they pushed me out of my comfort zone to try things I otherwise wouldn't have, though. They helped me in their own ways.

Just now, I asked my dad to cook an scrambled egg for me. He said no and told me to do it myself.......when he knows damn well I can't cook for s**t. -_-

A scrambled egg is probably the easiest thing you can possibly make. Watch your parents when they cook you something and learn some of the basics. I am a very bad cook myself (one of the reasons I have a special lady friend is so she can cook for me lol) but even I know how to make scrambled eggs. It's ridiculously easy.

Your father telling you to scramble your own egg has absolutely nothing to do with him 'not understanding autism' and this observation is, therefore, hugely off-topic and irrelevant. Unless you have serious motor skill problems that would make you burn down the house if you attempted to make scrambled eggs, there is really no excuse here why a 25 year old grown man could not make himself an egg.

I think you need to learn a thing or two about different ASDs. Executive functioning is a huge thing for people with autism. My autism affects my daily living skills and how I do things. I really wish you would stop judging people you don't know. It pisses me the frick off.

Sorry dude but scrambled eggs, really? Like, of all things you could have difficulty with cooking, this is by far the easiest. You break an egg or two, you mix the liquid egg a bit, put oil in a pan and then put the egg in. You let it cook for a while and then you start breaking the omelette in the pan into little pieces. You wait until it's ready to eat and turn off the fire. Done! Scrambled eggs á la sassy Loki.

I suck at cooking, I really do, but making an egg is extremely simple and I've been to a restaurant where people with Down's Syndrome worked in the kitchen and as waiters, and they made dishes ten times as complicated then that. I remember being very impressed at how they could do these things as I am such a lousy cook myself, and I got even more impressed thinking of how hard it must have been for them to learn this.

It's something you can learn fairly easily, unless you literally cannot hold a pan without dropping it because of a severe motor skills dysfunction. Otherwise, making scrambled eggs really shouldn't be an unovercomeable hindrance.

Go learn about f*****g autism spectrum disorders before talking to me. Seriously. The next time you talk me, I'm ignoring your sorry ass because you don't understand a SINGLE THING about autism. People with autism do have problems with daily living skills. Maybe you don't, sure... but there are people out there who do. It really pisses me off that you can't understand that. You may think you know everything about it, but you don't. So just do me a favor and stop judging people of what they can and can't do. You don't know me. You don't know how hard it is for me to function. Why don't you come to my house, spend time with me for a month and then see what you think. Otherwise, shut the f**k up and leave me alone.

There's really no reason to be so rude to me, I didn't mean it in a bad way at all. It's just that I have autism myself and I really see how some more complicated technical things may be problematic, but making eggs is something that can be learned quite easily. It goes as follows:

-Get a pan
-Get eggs
-Put oil in pan
-Break eggs in pan
-Keep on fire a bit
-Turn off fire
-Scoop scrambled eggs on plate
-Done!

Have you ever watched as your parents made scrambled eggs and then tried to make it yourself? Have you ever attempted to try and maybe messed up? The latter happened to me once when I was a teenager and forgot I had an egg on the fire, the whole kitchen smelled awful and it was hard to clean up. Discouraged me from trying for quite some time but next time I tried again and improved.

If you ask your father or mother to make you scrambled eggs, please do yourself a favour and go into the kitchen with him and see how they do it, so that next time you will perhaps be able to do it yourself. You can have someone watch over you while you do it the first few times so that you will be less anxious, and gradually do more and more yourself until you are able to make it fully independently. Good luck!

PS: I am really trying to understand the issue and trying to be constructive and it was in no way my intention to come across as blunt or uncivil, but I am trying to understand and it sounded to me at first like you didn't even try making scrambled eggs before, giving up before you even tried and just assuming you would not be able to do it. Correct me if I'm wrong but that was my impression and if I insulted you in any way I am very sorry. I am autistic myself so I know how the simplest of things can be troubling and a matter of trial and error, but through trial and error you often learn and improve the most in my experience.

Charloz, I know you mean well and you want to help LokiofSassgard and I really appreciate your effort to try to help but you are not helping. I know you don't see or understand or realize this, but what you are doing in this conversation is actually bullying her, not helping her. Please back off. And she is a girl not a dude.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9fUi1EYq6Rs

That is a very powerful video Walrus, thank you for posting that.

The woman in that video appears to have some form of OCD, with the constantly opening and closing of unrelated items like the micro wave. It seems like autism in combination with some other issues, which I will not specifically name as I am not a trained professional able to make such diagnosis. Still, though, the video shows a woman who is severely autistic and impaired in ways that the average Asperger's or HFA person would not suffer from unless there's other issues at hand.

Um... I doubt she has OCD. People with autism, especially severe autism, do stuff like that all the time. They do it for stimulation. I've seen videos of some of them running their hand under the faucet while it's running. This is a form of sitmming, and it's usually a calming thing for them. It's common for an autistic person to do things explained in the video you see.