Social Communication Website

Post Reply New Topic

The dysfunction in the relationships between us and "them," is often two-sided. Sometimes things just get to the point where both sides are reacting to the other one doing something they don't understand. And that problem needs to be addressed on both sides, becuase as I said, no matter how many rules we learn, we will always be Autistic. And really, does every slight misstep have to be taken as a horrific tragedy?

I wonder if this woman ask her son why he was resistant to looking in people's eyes to begin with? Some people here describe looking into eyes as actually painful. So do they have to follow a RULE all the time and just end up suffering in literally every conversation they have with another human being? Then who is going to deal with the problems that that causes in their lives?

I really do try to follow as many rules as I understand, but there are so many other things that play into it. I only have so much attention for one thing, trying to pay attention to the RULES causes me to make other mistakes. Sensory overload comes into it.

We need a whole new system where Autistic people can be themselves and have some energy left to be of use to the world and themselves too.

My son was diagnosed ten years ago. I have spent ten years reading books and blogs by people with autism, reading professional literature from all fields, trying to understand everything I can about autism. I don't pretend to know everything I should or to understand what it feels like, but I've certainly tried my best.



I actually do try to do the reverse, as well. Not just informally, talking to friends, or calling people out on their behavior when they act like jerks to my son, but also talking to my colleagues at the university about how they interact with socially challenged students, giving training sessions to residence hall staff, etc. I think you may have missed the section on "how this website may be used by different audiences":



I agree that a lot more could be done and said on the issue, but after all, I am a full-time professor and a full-time mother -- I can only do so much at any time. Perhaps this will be my next step....

Of course I've talked to my son about ALL of his sensory issues! My kiddo has always made a good deal of eye contact, he just didn't tend to do it at the so-called 'right' times, so I knew it wasn't actually a sensory issue for him, but a communication issue. I do realize that it IS a sensory issue for many people, and that is actually one of the reasons I wanted to share the info here. Because I get frustrated with the professionals always harping on about eye contact, as if it were really crucial. As I point out repeatedly on the site, a lot of the information that can be gotten/conveyed with the eyes IS also conveyed in other ways, through tone of voice, posture, speech style, etc. So if you have trouble with one particular way of 'reading' people and if you want to get more of their unspoken messages, you can learn about alternate ways. I do realize that those are big IFs, too.

I've just rechecked all my links, and they all seem to be working. That is, you shouldn't be getting any 404 error messages. If you get any other type of error message (e.g. "this page won't load"), then it's a server issue and I can't do anything about that. Generally, if you try reloading once or twice, you'll get it.

I don't really get the feeling that the website's about establishing rules or anything like that, or even to 'fix' people. A lot of it I read was essentially giving the NT side of things. Such as how someone normally acts if they'd likely be responsive to talking, verses how they'd likely be acting if they're not responsive to talking.
It was why I liked what I read more then most websites; it gave reason to what it was saying and explained the NT normality so you can understand it. Such as distance when in a conversation, it explained how far people usually like to stay and why they might not like you closer/further away. Whilst other sites I'd read beforehand would usually say "be at x distance."

Well I looked at again and since she fixed most of the broken links I could see more. I thought it was an ok website for somebody who is just a little socially awkward, but geared toward Autism not much help (at least not for me, but it's great if it helped you).

My problems are more along the lines of knowing the rules (by rule I don't mean she's trying to enforce something, just that she's trying to explain the rules of how supposed normal people behave). I thought for instance the part about story telling would be helpful to people who go on and on.

My problems are more weird: If I do as she says and give hyper attention to facial expressions and body language and responses, I will not be able to follow a conversation in the slightest bit. This happens to me often at work. I'm watching my bosses cues and then I can't remember what he told me to do.

I can't recognize people until I have met them several times, but they keep recognizing me and not understanding why I am looking standoffish or whatever. Usually I'm busy busting my brain trying to figure out who they are and how I should respond to them, but they think I'm mad or something.

I mean I could go on and on. Autistic people often can't tell one facial expression from another so telling them to look out for certain facial expressions is not that helpful.

I'm 53 years old and I'm exhausted from a life time of all of this. I'm ready to stop worrying so much about what everybody else is feeling, I wish somebody would care about how I feel about these things. Like I said, half way. I'm not expecting people to walk on eggshells, just a little acknowledgement that everybody is not exactly the same and we don't all have to be.

As far as I have found - this is the best website for developing social skills, making friends, dating and relationships etc.

http://succeedingsociallyaspie.com/?p=23