Understanding

[Ylva]

This article
Signs of Asperger's Syndrome | POPSUGAR Moms

Lists this point:

3. Social difficulties are another key sign of Asperger's syndrome. Reading body language may be hard, as well as taking turns or holding a conversation. As Eliana F. shares: "Group work at school is also hard for him, as he does not understand waiting his turn or accepting others point of view." Similarly, Colleen notes: "My son is very social, but he doesn't engage in two way conversations. He just talks and talks." As a result of their social difficulties, children with Asperger's syndrome may seem isolated from their peers.

And it reminds me that people abuse the verb "understand" a lot.

Conceptually, nothing social has ever been difficult for me, and I'll venture a guess that the same holds true for any of you. As a child, I would sometimes forget something that had lower priority, such as "sharing" being lower on my list than "sating hunger", but it was there like a phrase in my passive vocabulary whose meaning I knew but didn't keep in my consciousness at all times. But if they demanded to know whether I "understood" it, I assumed they mean "know the reasons to perfection", and so I would say "no" expecting them to tell me. They never did, and I still don't know what they thought they were asking.

Nowadays I'd say I understand it from an anthropological point of view, which is the only useful way to understand the reasons behind so-called social concepts: as behaviours analogous to genes, that evolved over time, of which the most adaptive survived. Now that is understanding. In elementary school I only knew about the existence of social mores and the fact that they were adhered to.

I guess it's not the NT adult's fault that they don't know what they mean by "understand". Their condescension does harm anyway.

 

[pax]

I wouldn't worry too much about a site called "pop sugar mums"

 

[Kari Suttle]

In general, sites seem to speak of the symptoms of aspergers syndrome and/or high functioning autism in terms of absolutes, which at least for me i find to be too...black and white, i guess. Like yes i can have difficulty reading body language and with anything remotely social, but those symptoms come and go depending on various factors like my mood, how stressed i am, and my general state of health.

Take something that happened today, for example. I'm a cashier, have been for two years, and only two times have i been recently asked to have a newbie job shadow me for a few hours so they could learn how to do everything. The first time it was the middle of the day, i was literally like a half hour from my lunch break, so i was stressed, tired, and hungry which meant i was either shuttdown or damn well close to it. Even though the supervisor who'd assigned the newbie to me had told me to teach the girl all the little things that the computer video things don't, i couldn't. I knew, afterwards, all the little things i had the opportunity in that short time to show her, but at the time i was overloaded already before the supervisor even brought her over to me.

BUT TODAY i was in a good mood and just got off my last break. I wasn't actually even asked to tutor the new girl i ended up doing it of my own accord cause some not so observant supervisor put the new girl on a register all by herself when she'd only had a few hours of job shadowing, if that, not the supposedly mandatory three days of job shadowing. I was on self checkout though and it was slow enough that i could help her and keep an eye on my people. I was proud of myself, i wasn't the best teacher ever but i did great considering my attention was horribly divided between her and my actual assigned 'register', the self checkout lanes.

 

[Suzanne]

Understanding is even difficult for us to wrap our heads around, well, probably those of us, who later in life, find out they are aspergic and so, very difficult to explain and sudden "ah that is a point" or something, gives a better understanding. This is also why I am refusing to go to a psychologist, because I do not like them having control of my mental life. Because they have been "trained" to do their work, they have a key to my brain and depending on what they say, will determine my reaction and continuous reaction and quite frankly, I do not want or need that control. Some people in my life, recognise I am aspergic and that is good enough for me.

I really find reading how an aspie should be, that it feels like clashing symbols and do believe, I have been guilty of it myself and so, I stop reading and just learn off my aspie commarads on here and NT's who I can bounce off with: do you do that etc? And love our 2 regular nts on here.

It suddenly, out of the blue hit me (how can blue hit one? Ah yes, blindness lol), sorry, I digress. Because of marriage really, I have learned the art of not panicking quite so much when a request is thrown at me. I used to go into a panic and then try to anticipate the quickness of nts.

Just the other day, I was in the back seat of a car, with an older woman and she was looking at a map. I put my mask on and pretended to go along with her; not too bad, for she was doing all the talking and all I was required to do, was nod or something. Well, she suddenly points to 2 areas and asks me which one do I think would be better to go to? Now, in the past, I would freak out, which would in turn, cause the person to look at me, as if I am from out of space and then, ignore me. But I detected she was playing mental games like: mmm should we go here or here, with amusement in her voice and so, I was able to follow along, but I noticed her look that if I had not played to a lack of understanding the social banter, she would have reacted negative with me.

I find myself not wanting to be around nts and surround myself with aspies.

 

[AsheSkyler]

I often understand what I'm told just fine and always have, I just have no other response to give other than what I'm familiar with because I don't like going with cliché remarks like "oh, that sucks".