Ok so quick context here,
I really want to focus on the “explain like Im five part. ”
I’m already quite aware of what is autism.
But I have an autistic 9 yo son and I really struggle to explain the situation to him and other kids in simple understandable terms, suitable for their age, and ideally present him in a cool way that could preserve his self esteem.
In: 7421
I think almost all variations of “a cool way that could preserve his self esteem” is basically always going to benefit you, not anyone you are talking to. Regardless of how you “mean” it, it is going to come across as condescension. And if we are being honest, and not so kind, it will BE condescension.
If you can [think of/experience] your 9 year old son as “different in predictable ways, not better, not worse” then your description of himself to him, will come across as “different, not better, not worse”. If your internal monologue is “oh, poor kid, he is Autistic” then whatever you say is going to carry that diminutive pity along with it.
He is different.
He will experience some things with greater intensity.
He will almost certainly miss certain social cues.
He may be somewhat face blind, and have trouble recognizing people, which will mean he may be exerting a lot of effort to simply figure out “who am I talking to”, and so not have the mental bandwidth to figure out the right social conventions until late in a conversation.
Social conventions may be things he needs explicitly explained to him, because he may have no instinct for them. The ones that need to be explained will need to be explained REPEATEDLY because they will barely stick, because what is instinctively normal to you and most people needs to be rote memorized to him, and that memorization is hard. And keeping track of 5 social conventions (rules) that other people instinctively intuit is HARD mental work.
Depending on how severe his autism he may fall into the “Uncanny Valley” where people identify him as “a little off” but not know why. That is socially absolutely brutal, cause people will instinctively otherize him, without knowing why (we humans like our groups to be uniform along some pretty weird dimensions, and we punish difference instinctively– and then give that punishment some OTHER reason that sounds right. “Black people are lazy cadillac welfare queens!” — and those other reasons sound and feel right because we really are punishing “different”. In this context, being a LITTLE autistic is worse than being A LOT autistic, because with a LOT Autistic people KNOW why they feel funny around him, and will compensate on their own. A little autistic just looks WEIRD. And human groups punish weird.
He is going to experience some or all of these things. That will be hard for him. He needs tools to understand what he is experiencing, and how to talk about it honestly. Some things can develop coping mechanisms. Some things are best dealt with by just saying “Hey, I am autistic. I am not gonna get some things” — which will help other people have a bucket for “why is he weird” which for the mostly decent set (which most of us are) will help them moderate their need to enforce group normalcy.
Just. I am a 47 year old man, who is academically intellectually gifted, who is autistic, and was diagnosed at 43. I have never been married, almost never have a girlfriend. People at work rely on me to do a ton of work and know stuff that other people don’t, and I am good at that. When I was 9 I needed my parents to help me understand that nothing was WRONG with me. I was sitting in the back of class reading all the books on Astronomy and memorizing all the fact about planets (their density, diameter, orbital diameter, inclination, orbital period, etc. etc.) cause I was safe there, in those books. I was tall, and strong, and while my had eye coordination wasn’t GREAT, it was average, and boy could I kick or hit a ball — but I was always picked last in any sports game. I couldn’t understand why, so I thought it must be something intrinsically wrong with me.
I didn’t need someone who would tell me my social isolation was fine, cause hey I knew all these facts about astronomy, and could solve the 6th grade math contests (while also failing the classroom math I was doing). I needed tooling help with the social isolation. And to BE loved.
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