04-12-2007, 06:39 PM
I originally posted this as a PM to MomMagnus as a way to try to help her understand the way her child thought, but it got so detailed that I figured it would be good to post right here as well.
I am a 22 year old aspie and it's my experience that the only possible way to truly teach an aspie to live a productive life is to intimately understand how they think. Now with NTs this isn't a problem, since most parents are NT with NT children, they already know how their kids think, at least in terms of basic nature shared by all people.
But that nature isn't shared by all people. Aspies have a far different nature, and I hope to give you some insight into it.
I'm not going to give you any suggestions on what to do, that's not my place. I only hope you can come up with truly good ways to help your child grow up based on what I'm about to tell you.
You might also want to show this to your child’s teachers.
The very first thing you must know is that NTs see their surroundings from an emotional perspective. You see something and you feel fright, disgust, awe, want, etc. and you react accordingly.
An Aspie does not see things like this. An Aspie sees things from a purely logical, purely analytical perspective.
I'll use myself as an example. When I was four to six I used to love grilled cheese sandwiches. But I couldn't understand why anyone else called them grilled cheese sandwiches. That wasn't their proper name, it was something esoteric and misleading.
When I thought of the words 'grilled cheese sandwich', I would imagine some one grilling a piece of cheese and then sticking it between two slices of bread. But that wouldn't work because the cheese would melt and fall through the grill. So the entire concept behind the name was fatally flawed. That name shouldn't even exist.
A grilled cheese sandwich is essentially cheese and toast. And that's how I thought of it, as the sum of its parts. And so I called it cheesetoast. I got upset whenever someone used the name grilled cheese sandwich because in my mind that was not only misleading, but a culinary impossibility.
Another example was my reaction to spiders. Most people avoid spiders from afar and freak when they get too close.
That action is pure instinct driven emotion. But I didn't have that. Seeing everything from an analytical perspective, when I saw a spider, I had to know everything I could about it just because it was so different from myself. As a small child I would pick up spiders in my bare hands and watch them crawl over my hands and arms.
Then I saw a much larger spider with ornate black and red markings. That was obviously much more interesting and much more worth my time. I wanted to play with the black widows like I did the ordinary house spiders, but my mother wouldn’t allow it and got very angry when I tried to argue with her, making me very angry, until we would both explode screaming at each other.
Then one day my mother explained to me that black widows were poisonous, and that if one bit me all my muscles would cramp stiff and my throat would swell up so I could barely breathe. That's when I understood why I wasn't allowed to play with them.
I never tried to touch a black widow after that. I would only watch them from at least a foot away.
At five I saw authority the same way that most forty year olds did, as something only valid when backed up with a solid reason. When my mother would give me an order without explaining why, I only thought, “Why the hell should I do that? I was never given a reason for it.” But if she did explain why, I was usually quite content to follow her commands.
This naturally got me into a hell of allot of trouble with teachers. I was always questioning and correcting them because to me that was the logical thing to do.
If I’ve already read through Stellaluna nine times on my own, why should I read it again just to be ‘taught how to read’? If that’s all there is to it, than I already know how to read, so let me do something else, and if you insist I don’t, show me so by giving me something harder.
But no, I don’t know how to read because I’m only five. So I have to read Stellaluna even though I’ve already memorized every single line in the book!
When I try to argue this point I’m punished for it. The principal explains to me that maybe I am a good reader, and that maybe I have read Stellaluna nine times on my own, but I have to respect the authority of the teacher. Well, to me there’s no such thing as authority for it’s own sake! Anyone who claims to be an authority has to back it up with some kind of reason that makes sense.
Now they could’ve just said that if I was allowed these concessions, than all the other students would demand them as well, and that would make the job of the school incredibly difficult, than I would’ve understood that, and gone along with what they asked of me. But they never told me this! They never even considered telling me because they never imagined that I could understand such a thing!
Most NTs spend their lives in search emotional satisfaction. But aspies are just the opposite, we spend our lives searching for the answers to ‘how’ and ‘why’, from an almost purely rational standpoint. The way we see the world is centered around that, and any attempt to relate to us is given a far greater chance if taken from that perspective.
All this comes about from a perspective of pure linear analysis. This ‘rationality to a fault’ is what quite often drives us to conflict with authority figures, because we don’t accept them at face value.
What upsets us the most, at least when we’re children, are things that don’t seem rational.
If I am ahead of my class in math, and behind my class in history, I should be sent to different classes that meet my skill level. But instead I’m kept at my current placement. That’s irrational to me, and it makes me very upset. The reasons they give about state standards and regulations seem even more irrational. That puts me from upset to downright pissed.
At arts and crafts time I’m given a box and told to pretend its something else like a space ship or a mysterious cave. Why am I being told to do this? How the hell can a cardboard box be anything more or less than a cardboard box? And why is everyone else going along with it?
If I want to imagine myself flying in a space ship or exploring a cave I could just conjure up the images in my mind. Space ships and caves built of pure imagination are far more real than ones built out of cardboard boxes.
That’s irrational, and I hate it.
It’s not that I don’t want to play with other people, it’s just that the games they play don’t make much sense to me.
I’d like to play toy robot battles with other kids, but the robots always move stupidly fast and do impossible midair stunts and fly and every shot from every robot is always dodged by the other and everyone ends up arguing about who got hit and who didn’t.
Real robots in real cartoons don’t behave that way. They’re much slower, they can’t do insane ariel acrobatics, and there’s rarely any confusion as to who did and didn’t get blasted. I want to play toy robot battles with other kids, but is it so hard to ask that they give it a semblance of realism?
I don’t care if I end up losing, as long as the game has some kind of rationality to it, which it doesn’t.
A video game is much better, not because it’s solitary, but because it makes much more sense. There are ground rules laid out from the beginning. There are only certain things you can do, and you can’t break the game’s rules just like you can’t break the laws of physics.
Later on I would discover games with set rules and clear goals. Games like baseball and tag had such things. I always loved to play tag because not only was it fun, but it was also totally logical in terms of what must be done, what can be done, and what can’t be done.
Baseball was the same way. I loved playing baseball... that is I would’ve loved it if I didn’t lose my breath so easily. I so wanted to play this perfectly clear cut, rational game, except I was a very poor athlete, not too poor for tag, but poor enough for baseball.
The last subject I’ll get on is the issue of touch.
In one of my kindergarten classes I had a teacher who was overly affectionate. She always tried to sit me on her lap and hug me.
In reaction to this I screamed and struggled, which just made her try to hold me tighter. Finally I resorted to scratching and biting to get away from her and then hide under a table and cry. I was immediately sent to the principal’s office for this.
The principal could never understand this because he would always hear stories of what I’d done in class but when I got to his office I was perfectly behaved. None of them knew that I couldn’t stand being touched like that.
Actually, that’s what they assumed when my mother finally watched this take place once and said that I couldn’t stand being touched.
But the reality was different.
Not only could I stand being touched, but I wanted it. I wanted to be touched just as much as any of the other kids. The problem with what the teacher did was that it came out of nowhere. I might have been expecting it to happen, I don’t remember too well, but I certainly did not give permission.
As much as I wanted to be touched, it was only something that I could allow to happen on my own terms. If you want to give me a hug, you must first ask my permission. If I give it, than the hug is the only thing I’ve given permission for. If you suddenly add a kiss to that, than you’ve just violated the trust I gave you.
I am a 22 year old aspie and it's my experience that the only possible way to truly teach an aspie to live a productive life is to intimately understand how they think. Now with NTs this isn't a problem, since most parents are NT with NT children, they already know how their kids think, at least in terms of basic nature shared by all people.
But that nature isn't shared by all people. Aspies have a far different nature, and I hope to give you some insight into it.
I'm not going to give you any suggestions on what to do, that's not my place. I only hope you can come up with truly good ways to help your child grow up based on what I'm about to tell you.
You might also want to show this to your child’s teachers.
The very first thing you must know is that NTs see their surroundings from an emotional perspective. You see something and you feel fright, disgust, awe, want, etc. and you react accordingly.
An Aspie does not see things like this. An Aspie sees things from a purely logical, purely analytical perspective.
I'll use myself as an example. When I was four to six I used to love grilled cheese sandwiches. But I couldn't understand why anyone else called them grilled cheese sandwiches. That wasn't their proper name, it was something esoteric and misleading.
When I thought of the words 'grilled cheese sandwich', I would imagine some one grilling a piece of cheese and then sticking it between two slices of bread. But that wouldn't work because the cheese would melt and fall through the grill. So the entire concept behind the name was fatally flawed. That name shouldn't even exist.
A grilled cheese sandwich is essentially cheese and toast. And that's how I thought of it, as the sum of its parts. And so I called it cheesetoast. I got upset whenever someone used the name grilled cheese sandwich because in my mind that was not only misleading, but a culinary impossibility.
Another example was my reaction to spiders. Most people avoid spiders from afar and freak when they get too close.
That action is pure instinct driven emotion. But I didn't have that. Seeing everything from an analytical perspective, when I saw a spider, I had to know everything I could about it just because it was so different from myself. As a small child I would pick up spiders in my bare hands and watch them crawl over my hands and arms.
Then I saw a much larger spider with ornate black and red markings. That was obviously much more interesting and much more worth my time. I wanted to play with the black widows like I did the ordinary house spiders, but my mother wouldn’t allow it and got very angry when I tried to argue with her, making me very angry, until we would both explode screaming at each other.
Then one day my mother explained to me that black widows were poisonous, and that if one bit me all my muscles would cramp stiff and my throat would swell up so I could barely breathe. That's when I understood why I wasn't allowed to play with them.
I never tried to touch a black widow after that. I would only watch them from at least a foot away.
At five I saw authority the same way that most forty year olds did, as something only valid when backed up with a solid reason. When my mother would give me an order without explaining why, I only thought, “Why the hell should I do that? I was never given a reason for it.” But if she did explain why, I was usually quite content to follow her commands.
This naturally got me into a hell of allot of trouble with teachers. I was always questioning and correcting them because to me that was the logical thing to do.
If I’ve already read through Stellaluna nine times on my own, why should I read it again just to be ‘taught how to read’? If that’s all there is to it, than I already know how to read, so let me do something else, and if you insist I don’t, show me so by giving me something harder.
But no, I don’t know how to read because I’m only five. So I have to read Stellaluna even though I’ve already memorized every single line in the book!
When I try to argue this point I’m punished for it. The principal explains to me that maybe I am a good reader, and that maybe I have read Stellaluna nine times on my own, but I have to respect the authority of the teacher. Well, to me there’s no such thing as authority for it’s own sake! Anyone who claims to be an authority has to back it up with some kind of reason that makes sense.
Now they could’ve just said that if I was allowed these concessions, than all the other students would demand them as well, and that would make the job of the school incredibly difficult, than I would’ve understood that, and gone along with what they asked of me. But they never told me this! They never even considered telling me because they never imagined that I could understand such a thing!
Most NTs spend their lives in search emotional satisfaction. But aspies are just the opposite, we spend our lives searching for the answers to ‘how’ and ‘why’, from an almost purely rational standpoint. The way we see the world is centered around that, and any attempt to relate to us is given a far greater chance if taken from that perspective.
All this comes about from a perspective of pure linear analysis. This ‘rationality to a fault’ is what quite often drives us to conflict with authority figures, because we don’t accept them at face value.
What upsets us the most, at least when we’re children, are things that don’t seem rational.
If I am ahead of my class in math, and behind my class in history, I should be sent to different classes that meet my skill level. But instead I’m kept at my current placement. That’s irrational to me, and it makes me very upset. The reasons they give about state standards and regulations seem even more irrational. That puts me from upset to downright pissed.
At arts and crafts time I’m given a box and told to pretend its something else like a space ship or a mysterious cave. Why am I being told to do this? How the hell can a cardboard box be anything more or less than a cardboard box? And why is everyone else going along with it?
If I want to imagine myself flying in a space ship or exploring a cave I could just conjure up the images in my mind. Space ships and caves built of pure imagination are far more real than ones built out of cardboard boxes.
That’s irrational, and I hate it.
It’s not that I don’t want to play with other people, it’s just that the games they play don’t make much sense to me.
I’d like to play toy robot battles with other kids, but the robots always move stupidly fast and do impossible midair stunts and fly and every shot from every robot is always dodged by the other and everyone ends up arguing about who got hit and who didn’t.
Real robots in real cartoons don’t behave that way. They’re much slower, they can’t do insane ariel acrobatics, and there’s rarely any confusion as to who did and didn’t get blasted. I want to play toy robot battles with other kids, but is it so hard to ask that they give it a semblance of realism?
I don’t care if I end up losing, as long as the game has some kind of rationality to it, which it doesn’t.
A video game is much better, not because it’s solitary, but because it makes much more sense. There are ground rules laid out from the beginning. There are only certain things you can do, and you can’t break the game’s rules just like you can’t break the laws of physics.
Later on I would discover games with set rules and clear goals. Games like baseball and tag had such things. I always loved to play tag because not only was it fun, but it was also totally logical in terms of what must be done, what can be done, and what can’t be done.
Baseball was the same way. I loved playing baseball... that is I would’ve loved it if I didn’t lose my breath so easily. I so wanted to play this perfectly clear cut, rational game, except I was a very poor athlete, not too poor for tag, but poor enough for baseball.
The last subject I’ll get on is the issue of touch.
In one of my kindergarten classes I had a teacher who was overly affectionate. She always tried to sit me on her lap and hug me.
In reaction to this I screamed and struggled, which just made her try to hold me tighter. Finally I resorted to scratching and biting to get away from her and then hide under a table and cry. I was immediately sent to the principal’s office for this.
The principal could never understand this because he would always hear stories of what I’d done in class but when I got to his office I was perfectly behaved. None of them knew that I couldn’t stand being touched like that.
Actually, that’s what they assumed when my mother finally watched this take place once and said that I couldn’t stand being touched.
But the reality was different.
Not only could I stand being touched, but I wanted it. I wanted to be touched just as much as any of the other kids. The problem with what the teacher did was that it came out of nowhere. I might have been expecting it to happen, I don’t remember too well, but I certainly did not give permission.
As much as I wanted to be touched, it was only something that I could allow to happen on my own terms. If you want to give me a hug, you must first ask my permission. If I give it, than the hug is the only thing I’ve given permission for. If you suddenly add a kiss to that, than you’ve just violated the trust I gave you.
I never liked picking up spiders, though, because they looked so fragile. I was afraid I'd hurt them. I'd tip a glass over them and watch them that way...