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this post was submitted on 09 Oct 2023
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Autism
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I'm not naive (or arrogant) enough to think I know everything my kids are thinking and neither am I suggesting their lives are 100% perfect but all of them (on the spectrum or not) are all pretty forthright, confident adults. When they were teens they of course went through some shit related to their being autistic, but none of that was because they were autistic, it was down to how other people/situations made them feel because they were autistic. I'm as sure as any parent can ever be that I've never detected any kind of prolonged resentment or unhappiness at the fact of their autism.
We never taught them that 'autism is a superpower' because it isn't. Sometimes it has advantages and sometimes there are disadvantages and describing someone elses life as superpowered puts an unrealistic expectation of happiness and accomplishment on them. By the same token, neither are their lives a ruin and my life as their parent most certainly wasn't ruined.
That's a meaningless distinction. The end result is identical.
It would be foolhardy to say that you--an assumed neurotypical person--need to be close, personal friends with everyone in your life. You select your friends--and they select you--based on how well you fit each other. The fundamental problem is that autistic people, broadly speaking, don't fit with neurotypical people. A high-functioning autistic person will eventually realize that, and realize just how utterly alone they are in life. They will realize that the people they think of as friends will never think of them as a friend. Their social circle, if they're lucky, might consist of a small handful of people with overlapping interests, but are not an actual social support network.
I discovered this in 2014 when I failed to complete a suicide, and lost 95% of the people I believed were friends.
I am functional on a surface level. I have a job, I'm mostly self-sufficient, I'm married to someone that is also likely neurodivergent after having been in an abusive relationship for over a decade. I've noticed that the less able we are to mask, the more our social circle contracts. We can not reasonably expect that people will life us, or include us in their social circles.
I disagree, its not in my opinion a meaningless distinction at all. A difficulty in cognition might prevent a person from reading War And Peace. Thats a direct result of having a learning disability. Someone with a visual disability who cannot access audio books or braille versions of War And Peace is not being affected by their disability but by the fact an accessible version is not available.
You might argue the end result is the same - an inability to read War And Peace - but the point is that for the person with a visual disability the situation is fixable if society is prepared to make the effort.
In regards to your situation you've had terrible experiences but they are not down to the fact youre autistic, they're down to the fact your NT 'friends' weren't really friends at all. I'm sorry they let you down but I'm pretty sure I could find similar stories where nobody in the story was autistic.
Autism is a disability. A person with an IQ of 50 simply isn't going to be able to understand War and Peace; you can't dumb the book down sufficiently for someone to understand if they're going to struggle all their life to be able to put on shoes that lace instead of using Velcro. People with dyslexia can listen to audiobooks; there's no audiobook version of deep, fulfilling friendships and social support networks, because people on the autistic spectrum are going to have a hard time offering neurotypical people the what they need. A person that's on the autism spectrum is never going to be able to have social interactions in the same way that neurotypical people can, and those social interactions are necessary to being able to function in society. Some people on the spectrum may be able to appear normal on a surface level and will be able to get by, but it's fucking exhausting. People that have the misfortune to be lower functioning than I am may not be able to mask effectively at all.
That's without even getting into constrained interests, difficulty with coordination and forming positive habits--I still struggle to remember to brush my teeth daily in my middle age--or executive dysfunction.
I never claimed autism wasn't a disability. The fact that autistic people are disabled in some ways isn't in question. But its neither just a disability or - like all disabilities - something that isn't disabling by virtue of the world its part of rather than its intrinsic nature.
For example, you say an autistic person cannot experience social interaction in the same way as a non autistic person. True. But the non autistic person can, with very little adjustment, be aware of that. My kids have good relationships with NT friends and whilst they might not experience them in the same way as NT friendships, they still find them fulfilling.
Those people are likely your kids' best friends. Your kids are likely not their best friends.
Aside from marrying someone that is also neurodivergent, it is unlikely that your children will ever be the best friend of another person. They may be the friend that offers the most help, the person that always shows up to the party with lots of food and a keg, the ones that are always there with tape, boxes, and a truck when someone needs to pack up and move, the one with a spare couch when someone needs a place to stay for a couple days. ...But not the best friend. If they're very, very lucky, they'll end up married to someone else that is also neurodivergent; otherwise, they may end up married to someone that is neurotypical, and will be taken advantage of and/or abused by their partner for their entire life.
That's what you're missing.
Social interactions end up being lopsided, and can never be anything but.
There's a possibility of all that, sure. But there's also a possibility of none of that. My autistic kids relationships with their friends is different than my non autistic kids relationships with their friends. I'm not sure I'd describe it as lopsided but I see what you're getting at. Be that as it may, neither of them, as far as I can tell, are unsatisfied or unhappy with their various relationships. And certainly not to the point where either they or I would describe their lives as 'ruined'.
I didn't start to realize how lopsided it all was until I was into my 20s, and then started to realize how much I was missing in life because of a disability. If your kids are younger than, say, high school, it they probably haven't come to that realization yet.
My best friend in the entire world is autistic, as am I. We don't talk as much as we used to, now that I'm in college and he has a job, but we do emotionally look out for each other, reaching out and being a shoulder to cry on when the other is going through a rough patch. I can't say for certain that I'm his best friend in the whole world, especially considering that ever since he went off to college, we no longer live in the same time zone, and I wouldn't blame him for making new friends closer to home, but he's made it clear I'm still in his top three. Besides, I've met his new inner circle both in person and through online videogames, and if even half of them are neurotypical, I'll eat my hat.
Regardless of whether he considers me his best friend or not, your statement that an autistic person cannot be the best friend of another human being, or worse, anything other than the one "friend" who everyone only keeps around because they are useful, is simply false. I am deeply sorry that your experiences thus far have been so awful that they have led you to believe this, but I assure you, they are not universal. There is hope in the world. And I truly believe that even at your age, if you go looking, you'll find plenty of people for whom being autistic is a bonus in a friend rather than a detriment.
Read what I actually wrote:
The probability is that an autistic person is not going to be the best friend of a neurotypical person, which is what I was arguing in the original comment.
And my point is as follows: So?
Who cares if most people don't love you for who you are? Heck, in my book, if they do, you're doing it wrong. Making yourself inoffensive enough that more than 50% of the population is willing to be your friend and having any sense of individuality are mutually exclusive.
So WHAT if you're weird? Plenty of people are. Why care what the people who don't like you think when there are plenty of people who do? Why settle for hanging out with neurotypical people who only put up with you because you bring snacks to their DnD games when you could hang out with people who are just as weird as you and like the same things you like in the same moderately obsessive way you like them?
I just can't stand the idea that you'd treat autism as a disease that should be wiped out because neurotypical people find it annoying.
Given that the overwhelming emotion that I've seen expressed by most other people that are also on the autism spectrum is loneliness, I'd say: most people. You don't feel lonely? Good for you, I'm happy for ya. Most people that are high-functioning autistics--formerly Asperger's--express feelings of isolation, of loneliness, of wanting to have some kind of romantic connection. Not being able to find people that care about them for who they really are is a serious problem.
I'm going to make a guess and say that you've never had the moment of realization that you cared deeply for someone, that you loved someone, but that they simply didn't feel the same way about you. ..And then repeated that experience countless times.
It's like, if you're straight, then roughly 48% of all the people that you meet are at least theoretically in your dating pool, because right around 48% of people are the opposite sex and are also straight. If 1:1000 of those people would be suitable a suitable romantic partner for you, then there are roughly 163,000 suitable romantic partners in the US for you. Heck, roughly 8, 500 of them would be in metro NYC alone. So, in theory, it's 'easy' to find a potential romantic partner. If you're gay or lesbian, that drops to roughly 2% of all people to start (roughly 4% of all people are gay or lesbian, and it's a roughly equal split by gender), which means that your potential nationwide pool is 7,000. If you're trans? Well, that's even lower then.
If you're on the autism spectrum--which is about 2.8% of people in the US--you're going to have a much, much harder time finding people that you can connect with in the first place, just because you're outside of the acceptable range for friendship for most people. Yes, there will be some people, but far, far fewer, and consequently harder to find. If your constrained interests are not a 'popular' one with people that are on the spectrum? Well, good luck then; you may never find someone that you can share a deep connection with.
So, yes, if I had been given a choice to have been born neurotypical, I absolutely would have taken that.
First, I'm sorry for what you've been through. But from my personal experience, I know that I have three friends who have autism and/or ADHD. In each case, I did not know this until they told me. If I can't even know who is autistic without them telling me, how can I treat them differently?
Now I understand that it is possible that some behaviours of mine could make my autistic friends uncomfortable, while not affecting my other friends. But if I am doing something like that, it is out of ignorance rather than malice, and I would of course adjust my behaviour if asked to.
So I don't get why you think autistic people 'don't fit with neurotypical people'. I have friends who speak other languages, and autism is also, in a sense, speaking a different 'body language'. With some effort, we should be able to improve communication.
The fact that you just aren't understanding what I'm saying is demonstrating my point. You aren't able to understand my point of view, and think that everything can just be solved by people working harder. It's the same kind of belief that says that depressed and anxious people can be cured by just thinking happy thoughts and touching grass.
Can you be more specific? Why cannot autistic people fit in with others? Is it that others recognise them as being different and exclude them? Or is it that there are differences in the way we speak or behave that make you uncomfortable? And if it is the latter, what in particular should we change?
Yes 95% of your friends aren't your best friends. They have their own struggle and hardships to deal with. So yes, in your situation both side needed to focus on themselves.
Lastly before being worried about the general population not including you in their social circles, did you ask yourself why you would be in their circles ? Because you were colleagues ? Or neighbour. I also am in a situation were I have virtually no friends and it fucking hurts. Loneliness fucking hurts, it ache the minds and psychology its among the worst pain I ever felt.
Though in the past years I've looked not for others but for things that passionated me first. And there I found people which liked me and that I liked. Some people are wildly different than me, others are likeminded but we connected. I don't know my classmates but I have a few friends among my martial arts club. And I am not unhappy of the lack of connexion I have with my class, I don't think we'd really fit. Despite the social constructs that claims a student's first circle must be his class, I don't, and its fine, I just look elsewhere for people, in place where I fit.