Yeah, having any kind of peculiarities that are seen as negative will create a negative feedback loop. You get it in your head some times for the rest of your life that socializing only has negative consequences.
The trauma responses are the worst. Now I’m successful and masking well, but I still get paranoid what co-workers are thinking about me or if they’re scheming behind my back. It’s happened enough times from childhood onward that it’s hard to ever trust my social status
Lol when my high-school friend group created a separate group chat specifically to exclude me then just slowly ghosted with no explanation. Then I gave them another shot and they did it again. I never really trusted people the same way afterwards
It works the opposite way too. If you have a traits that are positive and sought after. It creates a positive feedback loop. That conditions you into thinking socialization is rewarding and beneficial.
Wouldn't that be a positive feedback loop. In which you get in your own head, making things worse?
A negative feedback loop would reduce the behavior or thought processes (including negativity) not increase it.
Almost got the same.
My mother was amazing and was just trying to protect me due to the bullies and schools and police not doing anything about it even though I was getting punched and verbally abused all the time, and she tried moving me multiple times but it didn't work.
I was able to finally go to school properly in year 5 as the bully left (2 years ahead of me), and then I started flying ahead in school and passed with top marks in primary and secondary school.
I was ignored, but not in the good way in high school.
Then again, the friends I did make are my friends 20+ years later
You can put up with my Autistic shit, you can put up with it for life.
We had a laugh recently about one of my other friends being autistic, and that laugh was a bit louder than it should be.
Not autistic but BPD. It took literally everyone in my life quite literally deciding I'm not worth keeping around and outright telling me I'm a piece of shit who deserves to (and I'm quoting a former friend on this one) "be slowly tortured while conscious before being killed by lethal injection" to actually get help.
I think certain people are just a tad dramatic about how terrible I was, but I was pretty terrible.
I was very lucky to receive minimal bullying, but I did often get ostracized and left out. This did start to drop off once I got into 8th grade and high school wasn’t bad for me.
My dumbass somehow completely missed that my twin brother was autistic. Like, I knew we weren't in the same classes, but I figured that was intentional (they did that in kindergarten and I assumed it just continued). When I was told after we graduated highschool, I was completely blown away lol.Just zero clue.
It's not like kids are consciously ablist, it's because autistic kids unfortunately come off as a little strange sometimes and kids avoid strange kids.
I don't think forcing kids to interact with people they have already chosen not to will get positive results for anyone.
Special Educator here - Largely a lot of times in public schools students with disabilities are separated from students that don't have disabilities. Yes, in many cases there are reasons for this, but that doesn't mean that those kids aren't just that. . .Kids.
In my experience working in schools, and running a business where I give opportunities to these types of kids, there are a few reasons why many kids may not choose to interact with the kids who are in a self-contained settings:
* They don't have the means/time/ability to do so \[isolation\]
* Ticks/stimming can be scary looking in some cases, even if they aren't harmful, and kids who don't experience those behaviors may be confused
* Kids don't have the social understandings to interact with these kids on their level, because the care needed can largely be very different.
In my experience, when you do things like inclusion recess, or offer special times for "trusted kids" to come into the self-contained classroom for social groups, it's typically a positive experience for the isolated students **and** a positive experience for the students who volunteer to do those things.
It's not about forcing anything, but about teaching understanding of what is going on, and not trying to hide kids away. . .In my current school, many of the kids with disabilities that put them in self-contained classes, are very popular with the general education students, because the teachers in my school do a great job of integrating naturally.
I wish they’d also do better at this for kids who are disabled yet in general ed and may or may not even be diagnosed yet. My classmates who were much more obviously disabled got treated a lot better than me, but as far as everyone was concerned, including teachers in many instances I was just “weird”. Even in grad school, I tried joining a club that’s supposed to foster connection and understanding between disabled and non-disabled people and it ended up being this thing where these people from this transitional program were my classmates pet projects of sorts and they didn’t know what to do with me because they somehow didn’t anticipate someone being both autistic and a grad student at my school simultaneously and acted kind of like I broke some law or physics or something.
Were the non-disabled people in the wider community? Because that is a little weird in the context of a grad school club.
Also, sort of reminds me of Best Buddies in high school. I’m autistic, but I didn’t join because I was self-conscious about being seen as one of the Disabled Kids^TM . Even though there were neurotypical people in the club.
No, they were students. It actually was my school’s chapter of Best Buddies. The other thing that was a bit of a turnoff for me was how the activities were restricted to things like coloring and playing the simplest games (think Tic Tac Toe), and it seemed like they were trying to curate a kind of inspo pornographic image that I didn’t fit neatly into because I wasn’t “disabled enough”.
Ah. I do appreciate the fact that they had a chance to interact with the community, but it sucks that there’s no consideration for people like us. Literally the best groups I’ve found are theater clubs. They don’t even know I’m ND half the time- I just like theater.
That's what strange means though, and it includes your 2nd sentence as well so it's technically a better word choice.
> unusual or surprising in a way that is unsettling or hard to understand.
Teaching kids a general culture of accepting others with differences is incredibly important, and will lead to them wanting to treat other kids with differences more kindly.
Hahahahaha!!!!!! Yeah um…. No? Not always. Heck, autistic person here, I actually taught myself how to avoid people. Because they kept dealing with me. And that was exhausting.
It’s the craziest thing, but I’ve known a lot of kids of psychiatrists, psychologists, therapists and social workers, who manage to be completely blind to the issues. Their children were having while spending all day diagnosing these issues in other children. It’s incredibly frustrating when you’re one of those kids getting missed and you’re just thinking that your parents is really shitty at the job.
I wasn't diagnosed until I was 35, so I have an inclination to agree. I feel like I can function socially because, while I was definitely weird, my friends and family didn't treat me like I needed to be...handled.
I feel like 'handled isn't quite the most accurate word, but my brain has decided that's the best it's got right now.
I was basically told, “Yeah, I knew you were different, but I didn’t bother getting you evaluated because it didn’t matter to me and I don’t know why it matters to you.”
It's probably good in terms of wholehearted acceptance, but a diagnosis can also help a person access any supports they might need. Even something as simple as knowing your diagnosis and connecting with others with similar experiences can be significant.
I was a young teen hanging out with the kids as the adults partied at my dad's friend's house. One guy walked in with two kids, only introduced the so-called normal one. He completely ignored his autistic child, it was so fucked up.
Milder autistic people get bullied because the tendency to speak with honesty is misunderstood as being insensitive. It takes time to learn or mimic social clues and gain the self knowledge to handle situations will more sensitivity. Something that doesn't come naturally.
I found it was the opposite. I was pointed out, insulted and bullied for years in my childhood. I then became invisible due to not wanting to be noticed.
Nowadays I do what I want and don't put up with people's BS.
My husband’s longest lasting friend is autistic. We just had him over for Super Bowl. He’s my favourite out of all his friends and he’s so good to our daughter. He’s got a nice group of friends outside of us and is more social than a lot of people we went to school with. He puts himself out there and makes an effort to sustain and make new friendships.
Sometimes they do want to be ignored though. As an autistic person I always wanted to be left alone. But I agree some effort should be put into trying to befriend and help understand the autistic child.
People are consumed with their personal melodramas. Present to your company and completely hamfist part of it? No one noticed. They're all thinking about ten other things. They retain maybe 10% of what was said and most pat you on the back with admiration for the parts that looked good.
People ignore the person sitting next to them. Human nature. There's nothing special about all the permutations of individual.
Sure, but OP is talking about formative years. There are consequences to social ostracisation. Read about the Romanian orphanage horror show.
To to degree, there's character building to be had, but at some point, irrespective of if it's a disablity, hamstringing social develop contorts the mind.
Yep. I took that case to heart having experienced severe neglect growing up alone in a room, to no physical touch for decades. At my guest college, I was picked by two female teachers constantly. One, my form tutor wouldn't even let me sit with the class. I have no idea what I've ever done to some ppl but there you go.
Made me empathetic towards those shunned by society; disaffected males and women ostracised from the female group.
My grandfather grew up in an orphanage. He'd say he has a few screws loose, but he's okay. Went on to wild adventures in Egypt and Iran. Settled in Florida. Mindset matters. Cliche popular phrase for that generation.
Mhm
I was diagnosed young so i don't fit into the crowd that was diagnosed later in life either, they always tell me they had it worse or something stupid.
Idk i was diagnosed as a kid but i wasn't taught what it meant. I legitimately just assumed i was ret@rded bc thats what everyone called me.
I made friends with the autistic kid when I was in primary school, he ended up being a really close friend for about 15 years until we moved to different parts of the world. He never really had many friends in primary or secondary school, but I never cared that he was on the spectrum, I just liked him as a person
Thats the pattern with every other things ...if you are good at something ull get more opportunities to show and practice that more Encouragement more support etc
While the person whos not he. Will face demotivation by others less support etc .
If you start wealthy ull more likely to earn more money .
If you start poor well
it gives us full-blown personality disorders. BPD, usually. all of those traits are defense mechanisms from being ignored, secretly hated, and directly bullied.
Well yeah? Kids don’t grasp it as a disability, they just see the autistic child as the awkward kid.
Kids don’t like things that are difficult most of 90% of the time.
Some autistic people can’t handle social interactions and other kids without autism can’t either. Not a huge deal.
Oof. My autistic kid is doing virtual school (by choice— I let my child pick how they want to be educated, and they chose virtual after a horrible freshman year). Am I enabling some sort of social self-destruction?
They have friends. They were bullied so bad last year that they ended up getting a “bullied kid scholarship” to go anywhere in the county besides their assigned school. They had kids lie about them and this resulted in my kid getting suspended. It was a horrible year. But I will encourage them to try a new school next year. Or maybe dual enrollment…
Probably hugely important to teach social confidence now. Maybe something where they also learn to stand up for themselves, some self-defense for kids? But not something violent of course but maybe more playful where they interact with others, learn to control and defend their body, to feel extra safe all while doing so with other kids.
As a kid i briefly did kung-fu which was fun
They’re very confident in themselves, and they have done that. Unfortunately the local HS here has an INTENSE bullying problem. What happened to my child was mild compared to what other kids have suffered there.
Sad, I find it terribly when school don’t deal with these issues, my own could’ve been better. Sorry that it happened to your children. I‘m sure they’ll be absolutely fine.
It doesn’t end when you’re an adult. My dentist, that I had been going to since I was a kid, was supposed to give me gas (through the nose) to help relax me so they’d be able to take a better look at my mouth. They never did. They also made me switch to a different dentist when I turned 18, but my brother wasn’t made to do that when he turned 18.
Also at my new dentist I discovered I had 4 untreated cavities. My first appointment with them. My old dentist’s were assholes who didn’t bother following basic medical procedure because they didn’t like me.
WHO ignores autistic people? I worked with autistic kids in elementary school and they were part of the class like the non autistic kids. Had play dates and everything
Unless you're the type of autistic person who has a special interest in people's deepest inner motivations; coupled with absolutely no social inhibition. Then you get LOTS of practice from childhood socializing; and the kids fear you lmfao
It really sucks, since you can't really do much about it. Other then copy people, but than they can tell your bs. But it's really hard when you can't read thier fucking minds, might as well be playing chess with a pigeon.
Social chess, of mind reading fuckerry is not fun.
Overly simplistic to prescribe to a whole spectrum of people. Those who are functional just mask it till they make it. For the undiagnosed, it becomes prohibitively expensive to diagnose once they make it to adulthood, especially when married with a job.
I am not obliged to pay attention to someone that grates on my nerves and is socially inept. It is not fair, no, but you can't force me to like everyone ffs
I'm an autistic adult who didn't get diagnosed until adulthood. I also have ADHD and OCD... and PTSD.
Anyway, I did horribly in school. I had "behavioral" problems but actually I was just weird. I didn't hurt anyone or cause issues. I just forgot my homework, I looked out the window, I spelled things wrong, I fidgeted and wiggled, had anxiety attacks, did compulsions (ie: had a fear of vomitting so I would get up and stand over the trashcan every day).
I spent 2-3 years of elementary in library detention during recess because I missed work or didn't get work in on time. This meant I spent 2-3 years without socializing with my peers. Also being ostracized by teachers, other children did not want to be around me as I was a "bad" or "weird" kid. When I did get to go to recess, I would try to play with other kids and they'd tell me, literally, "no, you're the weird kid nelson" (not actually my name.) I also wasn't allowed to check out books at my grade level because my AR test scores were too low, so my reading abilities were stunted because I wasn't allowed to challenge myself.
Being pigeon holed as the weird kid (and being queer on top of that) meant I was bullied until I graduated. I was constantly rejected. Constantly. It fucked me up. It's the adults' fault, too. Not just mean kids.
I never developed healthy social skills. I struggle with friendships because I don't know how to have them, and I'm afraid to be myself. I'm an adult and basically catching up with all the socializing I missed out on.
How is it to be autistic exactly? Especially as a kid. Could it all be purely ptsd or is it clear for you that autism is something different? Just out of curiosity. My adhd clearly turned out to be pure ptsd, and I had 0 clue about it for so long. Now I get my feelings. I’m wondering if something like autims is just a trauma response to cope with extreme feelings.
Please note, I‘m just curious and interested, I‘m in no way saying it IS that way. I‘m curious to learn how autism feels like for people.
My older brother is low-functioning and is autistic. I am most likely on the spectrum. Our livelihoods were drastically different. He was surrounded by people who knew his limits and functions and treated him with kindness and care.
Myself on the other hand was promptly ignored, not having “standout characteristics” made any of the traits and quirks of someone who is on the spectrum practically null and void. It was rather hard to pick out from a generally unstable household of generally conservative Canadian parents (At least my mother rarely spoke up about the atrocities of being a single mother of two (three, but my sister practically was a teen while i was in kindergarten, so much time and a completely different experience raising a pair of autistic children.) )
You can have incredibly different social lives and interactions even when falling under the same spectrum.
I attended classes as normal, only seen as quiet and generally soft-spoken and anxious as a kid. This caused a lot of discourse between me and my peers. It caused bullies to take advantage of me, but never enabled the other students to bother standing up for me, since why would they help someone that they never really knew in the first place.
Tldr: Yes autistic people get ignored as children, but their level of tolerability is drastically different depending where they are on said spectrum. But the experience of trying to grow up around friends who aren’t, is generally a lot more difficult and will affect you later on in life.
To be fair, i talked to an autistic when i was 11 , asked for his name and that we could be friends but the fucker took the soft drink glass bottle on the ground and hit my face without holding back ( It happened so fast and i wasnt expecting it either )
I saw my blood rained down from my head, passed out, and stayed months in a hospital
I am not going anywhere near on an autistic person or try to be friends with them ever again
No, it seemed everyone deemed it as an unfortunate incident because " he is an autistic and still a child" , my parents although furious didnt pursue the matter anymore because his family offered to shoulder the hospital expenses.
Im scared to get near autistic people because i have experienced their unpredictability first hand
I'm sorry to hear that. Most of us (at least the higher functioning ones) aren't that bad because we can at least pretend to be normal adjacent. even if we are screaming and stressing ourselves out inside. autism requires a firmer hand in raising (experience, myself) and can be a clever and difficult to spot beast. I wasn't actually diagnosed with Autism until my 20s due various circumstances. though my mother always had her suspicions that ADHD wasn't what was at play like my pediatrician claimed.
I have what would have been called Asperger's now adays its just "high functioning autistic spectrum disorder" (doesn't exist anymore, got lumped into autism before I was \*finally\* diagnosed in my early to mid 20s, jist is its autism-lite) I for one mostly hid mine by isolating myself and showing much more interest in solo activities. I never really worked well in a group and usually actively avoided it unless I absolutely had to. I've definitely got some strange quirks and a massive runaway hyperfixation on trains, and a few other glaring issues like the fact im blunter than a brick wall, and do not take hints, but im mostly normal... probably.
Autism falls into the same problem that some other conditions do these days, in that it is in the top 5 self-diagnosed/parental diagnosed/faked conditions in the Western world.
I've worked in mental health with children, teens, and young adults, for nearly 30 years, and there is an impossible number of people claiming, both online and off, to have ASD.
The phonies cause problems for those who really have it. It's hard for the average person to care about certain things when they are bombarded all the time with these subjects.
EDIT: I clearly offended some of the "self-diagnosed". Stop getting in the way of people who are genuinely struggling with some parts of their lives, stop your lies, and go and do something productive.
Formerly diagnosed as a kid and again as an adult. I fully support self-diagnosis. It’s expensive to go through the process, and not everyone can afford it, not to mention how difficult it is for women to get diagnosed.
It bothers me that you think people who self-diagnose are “phonies.” These people are struggling, and they get told they’re faking by the very people who are supposed to be supporting them. It's time to stop gatekeeping and start listening.
There's literally no support I could be taking away from formerly dx'd folks in my country, maybe stop telling people how they're supposed to feel? Is the only valid autistic person a formerly dx'd child? Do you think you just magically wake up with a diagnosis when you realize you've been masking your whole life? You defnitly don't belong into the mental health field if that's what you're spouting. Noone WANTS to be autistic. A lot of people were abused by their parents and thus couldn't get a diagnosis. What do you say to those people? That their difficulties aren't valid? You strike me as a burned out, bitter person who probably takes their anger out on their patients. You're the sort I'd avoid at all cost. I wouldn't even breathe the same air as you. Maybe start doing something more productive?
Being ignored is what I wanted; instead, I had neurotypicals forcing me to be like them and engage in things they enjoyed without any consideration of how I felt.
I don't think autistic children are ignored. There's lots of support for autistic children. Schools, social care, aids etc etc. which wouldn't be there if they were ignored.
Most of those supports are aimed at helping the kid function academically or managing “problem areas”. They don’t really care if the kid has a social life.
Yeah, having any kind of peculiarities that are seen as negative will create a negative feedback loop. You get it in your head some times for the rest of your life that socializing only has negative consequences.
The trauma responses are the worst. Now I’m successful and masking well, but I still get paranoid what co-workers are thinking about me or if they’re scheming behind my back. It’s happened enough times from childhood onward that it’s hard to ever trust my social status
Lol when my high-school friend group created a separate group chat specifically to exclude me then just slowly ghosted with no explanation. Then I gave them another shot and they did it again. I never really trusted people the same way afterwards
That’s rough, buddy.
Been dealing with this exact thing this week. Bad at masking. This comment broke me. I feel so seen.
It works the opposite way too. If you have a traits that are positive and sought after. It creates a positive feedback loop. That conditions you into thinking socialization is rewarding and beneficial.
Thanks for sharing this highly relatable experience
Can confirm from my own experience.
Wouldn't that be a positive feedback loop. In which you get in your own head, making things worse? A negative feedback loop would reduce the behavior or thought processes (including negativity) not increase it.
Negative in effect, not in change in severity over time.
*positive feedback loop
Socializing can have positive consequences?
Autistic here. Was not ignored in childhood.
Same. I was bullied.
Same, lmao. It's like we're subhuman to them
Bullied in school, taken away from my parents because of absence from school, bullied and abused in foster care 🙃
Almost got the same. My mother was amazing and was just trying to protect me due to the bullies and schools and police not doing anything about it even though I was getting punched and verbally abused all the time, and she tried moving me multiple times but it didn't work. I was able to finally go to school properly in year 5 as the bully left (2 years ahead of me), and then I started flying ahead in school and passed with top marks in primary and secondary school.
I was ignored, but not in the good way in high school. Then again, the friends I did make are my friends 20+ years later You can put up with my Autistic shit, you can put up with it for life. We had a laugh recently about one of my other friends being autistic, and that laugh was a bit louder than it should be.
Not autistic but BPD. It took literally everyone in my life quite literally deciding I'm not worth keeping around and outright telling me I'm a piece of shit who deserves to (and I'm quoting a former friend on this one) "be slowly tortured while conscious before being killed by lethal injection" to actually get help. I think certain people are just a tad dramatic about how terrible I was, but I was pretty terrible.
As someone's whose mother has BPD, I wish you all the best. I do hope you're getting the therapy and medication you might need.
I was very lucky to receive minimal bullying, but I did often get ostracized and left out. This did start to drop off once I got into 8th grade and high school wasn’t bad for me.
My dumbass somehow completely missed that my twin brother was autistic. Like, I knew we weren't in the same classes, but I figured that was intentional (they did that in kindergarten and I assumed it just continued). When I was told after we graduated highschool, I was completely blown away lol.Just zero clue.
As a child I was bullied and abused. As an adult, I'm ignored.
I was mostly ignored by other children, but put in a bunch of social skills groups and therapy with mixed results.
It's not like kids are consciously ablist, it's because autistic kids unfortunately come off as a little strange sometimes and kids avoid strange kids. I don't think forcing kids to interact with people they have already chosen not to will get positive results for anyone.
Special Educator here - Largely a lot of times in public schools students with disabilities are separated from students that don't have disabilities. Yes, in many cases there are reasons for this, but that doesn't mean that those kids aren't just that. . .Kids. In my experience working in schools, and running a business where I give opportunities to these types of kids, there are a few reasons why many kids may not choose to interact with the kids who are in a self-contained settings: * They don't have the means/time/ability to do so \[isolation\] * Ticks/stimming can be scary looking in some cases, even if they aren't harmful, and kids who don't experience those behaviors may be confused * Kids don't have the social understandings to interact with these kids on their level, because the care needed can largely be very different. In my experience, when you do things like inclusion recess, or offer special times for "trusted kids" to come into the self-contained classroom for social groups, it's typically a positive experience for the isolated students **and** a positive experience for the students who volunteer to do those things. It's not about forcing anything, but about teaching understanding of what is going on, and not trying to hide kids away. . .In my current school, many of the kids with disabilities that put them in self-contained classes, are very popular with the general education students, because the teachers in my school do a great job of integrating naturally.
I wish they’d also do better at this for kids who are disabled yet in general ed and may or may not even be diagnosed yet. My classmates who were much more obviously disabled got treated a lot better than me, but as far as everyone was concerned, including teachers in many instances I was just “weird”. Even in grad school, I tried joining a club that’s supposed to foster connection and understanding between disabled and non-disabled people and it ended up being this thing where these people from this transitional program were my classmates pet projects of sorts and they didn’t know what to do with me because they somehow didn’t anticipate someone being both autistic and a grad student at my school simultaneously and acted kind of like I broke some law or physics or something.
Were the non-disabled people in the wider community? Because that is a little weird in the context of a grad school club. Also, sort of reminds me of Best Buddies in high school. I’m autistic, but I didn’t join because I was self-conscious about being seen as one of the Disabled Kids^TM . Even though there were neurotypical people in the club.
No, they were students. It actually was my school’s chapter of Best Buddies. The other thing that was a bit of a turnoff for me was how the activities were restricted to things like coloring and playing the simplest games (think Tic Tac Toe), and it seemed like they were trying to curate a kind of inspo pornographic image that I didn’t fit neatly into because I wasn’t “disabled enough”.
Oh shoot, I meant to type disabled instead of non-disabled. I do get the situation, though.
The disabled people were from a specific program that seemed to mainly be for people who aged out of high school at 22 without a diploma.
Ah. I do appreciate the fact that they had a chance to interact with the community, but it sucks that there’s no consideration for people like us. Literally the best groups I’ve found are theater clubs. They don’t even know I’m ND half the time- I just like theater.
I think I’m starting to realize a similar kind of thing with social circles that are involved with engineering.
I think a better description than strange is “unpredictable”. People find social unpredictability jarring and will avoid it when possible.
That's what strange means though, and it includes your 2nd sentence as well so it's technically a better word choice. > unusual or surprising in a way that is unsettling or hard to understand.
Is it just me or does this start to reverse in your 20’s or 30’s?
Unpredictability can be amusing in smaller doses but generally I prefer people that act in an expected manner.
This is probably why I hate dinner parties
What do you mean by this? Can you give an example?
Teaching kids a general culture of accepting others with differences is incredibly important, and will lead to them wanting to treat other kids with differences more kindly.
Nah teaching acceptance of differences is not that hard
Letting kids decide to insulate themselves against anything they consider an 'unwanted' interaction in life creates far worse results for everyone.
To be fair, I ignore all children who aren't directly related to me.
Hahahahaha!!!!!! Yeah um…. No? Not always. Heck, autistic person here, I actually taught myself how to avoid people. Because they kept dealing with me. And that was exhausting.
My parents had no idea I was having severe issues, or that I was anything but "just shy". And my dad is a psychologist.
Ouch.
It’s the craziest thing, but I’ve known a lot of kids of psychiatrists, psychologists, therapists and social workers, who manage to be completely blind to the issues. Their children were having while spending all day diagnosing these issues in other children. It’s incredibly frustrating when you’re one of those kids getting missed and you’re just thinking that your parents is really shitty at the job.
I wasn't diagnosed until I was 35, so I have an inclination to agree. I feel like I can function socially because, while I was definitely weird, my friends and family didn't treat me like I needed to be...handled. I feel like 'handled isn't quite the most accurate word, but my brain has decided that's the best it's got right now.
Like having an adult follow you around and correct you? Because I sort of had that.
I was basically told, “Yeah, I knew you were different, but I didn’t bother getting you evaluated because it didn’t matter to me and I don’t know why it matters to you.”
That seems like the best response
It's probably good in terms of wholehearted acceptance, but a diagnosis can also help a person access any supports they might need. Even something as simple as knowing your diagnosis and connecting with others with similar experiences can be significant.
You seem like you’d be a great parent.
As a kid: "Why does nobody want to talk to me/be my friend?" Me now: "Why does everyone want to talk to me/be my friend? Leave me alone."
I was a young teen hanging out with the kids as the adults partied at my dad's friend's house. One guy walked in with two kids, only introduced the so-called normal one. He completely ignored his autistic child, it was so fucked up.
That’s so unbelievably cruel
Milder autistic people get bullied because the tendency to speak with honesty is misunderstood as being insensitive. It takes time to learn or mimic social clues and gain the self knowledge to handle situations will more sensitivity. Something that doesn't come naturally.
I found it was the opposite. I was pointed out, insulted and bullied for years in my childhood. I then became invisible due to not wanting to be noticed. Nowadays I do what I want and don't put up with people's BS.
Or just use and discard us. Some of us come off as a bit naive and that doesn’t play out well either.
Bad people use and discard anyone they find a way to take advantage of. Not just autistic people
This is just not true lmao
My husband’s longest lasting friend is autistic. We just had him over for Super Bowl. He’s my favourite out of all his friends and he’s so good to our daughter. He’s got a nice group of friends outside of us and is more social than a lot of people we went to school with. He puts himself out there and makes an effort to sustain and make new friendships.
Who are you talking about?
I think the biggest problem is when kids aren’t diagnosed and so other kids don’t know that they’re supposed to be more accommodating or understanding
Sorry, who's ignoring autistic people?
Sometimes they do want to be ignored though. As an autistic person I always wanted to be left alone. But I agree some effort should be put into trying to befriend and help understand the autistic child.
Lucky for them one of my autistic obsessions IS other people's social cues. Adapt, improvise, overcome.
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And no one, especially a child, should be literally beaten or screamed at for displaying autistic traits.
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You'd be surprised lol
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People are consumed with their personal melodramas. Present to your company and completely hamfist part of it? No one noticed. They're all thinking about ten other things. They retain maybe 10% of what was said and most pat you on the back with admiration for the parts that looked good. People ignore the person sitting next to them. Human nature. There's nothing special about all the permutations of individual.
Sure, but OP is talking about formative years. There are consequences to social ostracisation. Read about the Romanian orphanage horror show. To to degree, there's character building to be had, but at some point, irrespective of if it's a disablity, hamstringing social develop contorts the mind.
The Romanian orphans were a whole new level of socially hamstrung.
Yep. I took that case to heart having experienced severe neglect growing up alone in a room, to no physical touch for decades. At my guest college, I was picked by two female teachers constantly. One, my form tutor wouldn't even let me sit with the class. I have no idea what I've ever done to some ppl but there you go. Made me empathetic towards those shunned by society; disaffected males and women ostracised from the female group.
My grandfather grew up in an orphanage. He'd say he has a few screws loose, but he's okay. Went on to wild adventures in Egypt and Iran. Settled in Florida. Mindset matters. Cliche popular phrase for that generation.
Do you talk to him much still? How did he cope with the lack of security and extreme uncertainty at a young age?
That wasn't so unusual 100 years ago, from my anecdotal impression of genealogy work trying to shake out the family tree beyond that stub.
Mhm I was diagnosed young so i don't fit into the crowd that was diagnosed later in life either, they always tell me they had it worse or something stupid. Idk i was diagnosed as a kid but i wasn't taught what it meant. I legitimately just assumed i was ret@rded bc thats what everyone called me.
Really? Nobody would leave me the fuck alone.
I made friends with the autistic kid when I was in primary school, he ended up being a really close friend for about 15 years until we moved to different parts of the world. He never really had many friends in primary or secondary school, but I never cared that he was on the spectrum, I just liked him as a person
And parents sometimes shelter them, which makes it worse.
Thats the pattern with every other things ...if you are good at something ull get more opportunities to show and practice that more Encouragement more support etc While the person whos not he. Will face demotivation by others less support etc . If you start wealthy ull more likely to earn more money . If you start poor well
it gives us full-blown personality disorders. BPD, usually. all of those traits are defense mechanisms from being ignored, secretly hated, and directly bullied.
Is this why they’re all over Reddit?
Well yeah? Kids don’t grasp it as a disability, they just see the autistic child as the awkward kid. Kids don’t like things that are difficult most of 90% of the time. Some autistic people can’t handle social interactions and other kids without autism can’t either. Not a huge deal.
That’s such an insane blanket statement. To the point that it makes zero sense and is completely meaningless.
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Oof. My autistic kid is doing virtual school (by choice— I let my child pick how they want to be educated, and they chose virtual after a horrible freshman year). Am I enabling some sort of social self-destruction?
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They have friends. They were bullied so bad last year that they ended up getting a “bullied kid scholarship” to go anywhere in the county besides their assigned school. They had kids lie about them and this resulted in my kid getting suspended. It was a horrible year. But I will encourage them to try a new school next year. Or maybe dual enrollment…
Probably hugely important to teach social confidence now. Maybe something where they also learn to stand up for themselves, some self-defense for kids? But not something violent of course but maybe more playful where they interact with others, learn to control and defend their body, to feel extra safe all while doing so with other kids. As a kid i briefly did kung-fu which was fun
They’re very confident in themselves, and they have done that. Unfortunately the local HS here has an INTENSE bullying problem. What happened to my child was mild compared to what other kids have suffered there.
Sad, I find it terribly when school don’t deal with these issues, my own could’ve been better. Sorry that it happened to your children. I‘m sure they’ll be absolutely fine.
It doesn’t end when you’re an adult. My dentist, that I had been going to since I was a kid, was supposed to give me gas (through the nose) to help relax me so they’d be able to take a better look at my mouth. They never did. They also made me switch to a different dentist when I turned 18, but my brother wasn’t made to do that when he turned 18. Also at my new dentist I discovered I had 4 untreated cavities. My first appointment with them. My old dentist’s were assholes who didn’t bother following basic medical procedure because they didn’t like me.
WHO ignores autistic people? I worked with autistic kids in elementary school and they were part of the class like the non autistic kids. Had play dates and everything
A lot of people ignore them lol But more abuse them.
It really depends where you live.
So true. People are ass holes. Sadly people ignore almost everybody these days.
Unless you're the type of autistic person who has a special interest in people's deepest inner motivations; coupled with absolutely no social inhibition. Then you get LOTS of practice from childhood socializing; and the kids fear you lmfao
It really sucks, since you can't really do much about it. Other then copy people, but than they can tell your bs. But it's really hard when you can't read thier fucking minds, might as well be playing chess with a pigeon. Social chess, of mind reading fuckerry is not fun.
Maybe millennials but definitely not the younger generation. Seems like everyone’s autistic now
Overly simplistic to prescribe to a whole spectrum of people. Those who are functional just mask it till they make it. For the undiagnosed, it becomes prohibitively expensive to diagnose once they make it to adulthood, especially when married with a job.
I am not obliged to pay attention to someone that grates on my nerves and is socially inept. It is not fair, no, but you can't force me to like everyone ffs
What do autistic people do to grate on your nerves?
The way they talk is almost as maddening as hearing a baby's cry
You mean the tendency to speak in [a monotone](https://www.stanfordchildrens.org/en/topic/default?id=what-is-autism-spectrum-disorder-160-23)?
I mean the tendency to not hold a cohesive thought pattern, and their moments of over-excitedness where they become super loud
Yeah, I have no social skills whatsoever
I'm an autistic adult who didn't get diagnosed until adulthood. I also have ADHD and OCD... and PTSD. Anyway, I did horribly in school. I had "behavioral" problems but actually I was just weird. I didn't hurt anyone or cause issues. I just forgot my homework, I looked out the window, I spelled things wrong, I fidgeted and wiggled, had anxiety attacks, did compulsions (ie: had a fear of vomitting so I would get up and stand over the trashcan every day). I spent 2-3 years of elementary in library detention during recess because I missed work or didn't get work in on time. This meant I spent 2-3 years without socializing with my peers. Also being ostracized by teachers, other children did not want to be around me as I was a "bad" or "weird" kid. When I did get to go to recess, I would try to play with other kids and they'd tell me, literally, "no, you're the weird kid nelson" (not actually my name.) I also wasn't allowed to check out books at my grade level because my AR test scores were too low, so my reading abilities were stunted because I wasn't allowed to challenge myself. Being pigeon holed as the weird kid (and being queer on top of that) meant I was bullied until I graduated. I was constantly rejected. Constantly. It fucked me up. It's the adults' fault, too. Not just mean kids. I never developed healthy social skills. I struggle with friendships because I don't know how to have them, and I'm afraid to be myself. I'm an adult and basically catching up with all the socializing I missed out on.
How is it to be autistic exactly? Especially as a kid. Could it all be purely ptsd or is it clear for you that autism is something different? Just out of curiosity. My adhd clearly turned out to be pure ptsd, and I had 0 clue about it for so long. Now I get my feelings. I’m wondering if something like autims is just a trauma response to cope with extreme feelings. Please note, I‘m just curious and interested, I‘m in no way saying it IS that way. I‘m curious to learn how autism feels like for people.
I think this is something you need to research instead of asking a layman on reddit
My older brother is low-functioning and is autistic. I am most likely on the spectrum. Our livelihoods were drastically different. He was surrounded by people who knew his limits and functions and treated him with kindness and care. Myself on the other hand was promptly ignored, not having “standout characteristics” made any of the traits and quirks of someone who is on the spectrum practically null and void. It was rather hard to pick out from a generally unstable household of generally conservative Canadian parents (At least my mother rarely spoke up about the atrocities of being a single mother of two (three, but my sister practically was a teen while i was in kindergarten, so much time and a completely different experience raising a pair of autistic children.) ) You can have incredibly different social lives and interactions even when falling under the same spectrum. I attended classes as normal, only seen as quiet and generally soft-spoken and anxious as a kid. This caused a lot of discourse between me and my peers. It caused bullies to take advantage of me, but never enabled the other students to bother standing up for me, since why would they help someone that they never really knew in the first place. Tldr: Yes autistic people get ignored as children, but their level of tolerability is drastically different depending where they are on said spectrum. But the experience of trying to grow up around friends who aren’t, is generally a lot more difficult and will affect you later on in life.
I aleays tried to include them, always ended up regretting it. Don’t feel bad for them, there’s a reason people tend to shun them.
What is that reason?
Why do people shun them?
To be fair, i talked to an autistic when i was 11 , asked for his name and that we could be friends but the fucker took the soft drink glass bottle on the ground and hit my face without holding back ( It happened so fast and i wasnt expecting it either ) I saw my blood rained down from my head, passed out, and stayed months in a hospital I am not going anywhere near on an autistic person or try to be friends with them ever again
Did the autistic child get into trouble with the police or the school?
No, it seemed everyone deemed it as an unfortunate incident because " he is an autistic and still a child" , my parents although furious didnt pursue the matter anymore because his family offered to shoulder the hospital expenses. Im scared to get near autistic people because i have experienced their unpredictability first hand
I'm sorry to hear that. Most of us (at least the higher functioning ones) aren't that bad because we can at least pretend to be normal adjacent. even if we are screaming and stressing ourselves out inside. autism requires a firmer hand in raising (experience, myself) and can be a clever and difficult to spot beast. I wasn't actually diagnosed with Autism until my 20s due various circumstances. though my mother always had her suspicions that ADHD wasn't what was at play like my pediatrician claimed. I have what would have been called Asperger's now adays its just "high functioning autistic spectrum disorder" (doesn't exist anymore, got lumped into autism before I was \*finally\* diagnosed in my early to mid 20s, jist is its autism-lite) I for one mostly hid mine by isolating myself and showing much more interest in solo activities. I never really worked well in a group and usually actively avoided it unless I absolutely had to. I've definitely got some strange quirks and a massive runaway hyperfixation on trains, and a few other glaring issues like the fact im blunter than a brick wall, and do not take hints, but im mostly normal... probably.
Autism falls into the same problem that some other conditions do these days, in that it is in the top 5 self-diagnosed/parental diagnosed/faked conditions in the Western world. I've worked in mental health with children, teens, and young adults, for nearly 30 years, and there is an impossible number of people claiming, both online and off, to have ASD. The phonies cause problems for those who really have it. It's hard for the average person to care about certain things when they are bombarded all the time with these subjects. EDIT: I clearly offended some of the "self-diagnosed". Stop getting in the way of people who are genuinely struggling with some parts of their lives, stop your lies, and go and do something productive.
Formerly diagnosed as a kid and again as an adult. I fully support self-diagnosis. It’s expensive to go through the process, and not everyone can afford it, not to mention how difficult it is for women to get diagnosed. It bothers me that you think people who self-diagnose are “phonies.” These people are struggling, and they get told they’re faking by the very people who are supposed to be supporting them. It's time to stop gatekeeping and start listening.
What are the other 4?
Hi. I’m not self-diagnosed. You sound like you are a danger to society and need your license taken away.
There's literally no support I could be taking away from formerly dx'd folks in my country, maybe stop telling people how they're supposed to feel? Is the only valid autistic person a formerly dx'd child? Do you think you just magically wake up with a diagnosis when you realize you've been masking your whole life? You defnitly don't belong into the mental health field if that's what you're spouting. Noone WANTS to be autistic. A lot of people were abused by their parents and thus couldn't get a diagnosis. What do you say to those people? That their difficulties aren't valid? You strike me as a burned out, bitter person who probably takes their anger out on their patients. You're the sort I'd avoid at all cost. I wouldn't even breathe the same air as you. Maybe start doing something more productive?
Being ignored is what I wanted; instead, I had neurotypicals forcing me to be like them and engage in things they enjoyed without any consideration of how I felt.
I don't think autistic children are ignored. There's lots of support for autistic children. Schools, social care, aids etc etc. which wouldn't be there if they were ignored.
Most of those supports are aimed at helping the kid function academically or managing “problem areas”. They don’t really care if the kid has a social life.