THREE CHARACTERISTICS OF AUTISM YOU DIDN’T KNOW ABOUT
Autism has a lot of characteristics. And as the saying goes “if you’ve seen one person with autism, you’ve met one not all of them”. With this being said, some people with this brain condition exhibit all the characteristics while others only exhibit a few. So, today I want to talk about some of those characteristics you don’t know or know very little about. But before I do that, I first want to explain what autism is in case I never did.
What is Autism?
Autism is a complex neurobehavioral condition that includes impairments in social interactions, developmental language, and communication skills, combined with rigid repetitive behaviours.
Now that I have defined our mental condition, let me provide reasons why I want us to look at these characteristics. Understanding these characteristics will help us better understand how people with autism function or operate, and how their brains are wired because trust me when I tell you this, an autistic brain is wired very weird but in a special way.
At a glance, you’d think these individuals are stupid, rude, aloof, and inconsiderate, but they are not. It’s the uniqueness of their brains that make them appear like that. But who can blame those who judge them, after all, sometimes a thing is as it appears, right? Or so they say. But did you also know that knowledge begets understanding? What I mean is that there is no way you can ever understand something without knowing about it first.
If you look at it like me, this is where the word ‘awareness’ came from. You know first, then understand, and then become aware. Understanding and awareness come before knowledge. Do you agree or do you agree?
So, today for you to understand and instead of being aware — be acceptive, and probably sympathetic, you need to know about these characteristics about people with autism. As I said, there are quite a few/ or a lot but I have chosen these because I know that they can make the life of an autistic individual a living hell if we don’t know about them.
These are the THREE characteristics I’d like to talk about:
· People with autism are literal
· They affect proximity
· They have mind blindness
To help you understand how each one works, I am going to break them down one by one, let’s start with the first: what do I mean when I say.
Autistic people are literal.
Ever heard of the saying that goes like this ‘eat an elephant one bite at a time’? That’s an idiomatic way of saying something, right? What this proverb means is that: to do something one step at a time or to do something in steps rather than all at once. That’s a figure of speech, and normal people often understand this kind of talk but people with autism don’t. To them all this is literal.
So, you can’t say that to an autistic person because you won’t like how they will respond to you. After all, the first question they’ll ask you is where the elephant is and how they are supposed to eat it. And they’ll ask you in a literal form. I know a lady who has autism and has struggled severely growing up because of this characteristic. She was often perceived as stupid and rude.
One time she was chatting with a friend on social media and that other person asked her where she was “texting from” (meaning where she was from), and she said, “from my phone”. Rude and silly, wouldn’t you agree? But she wasn’t being either. She thought that’s what she was being asked. So, now you know that people with autism are literal. Don’t take offense if they respond offensively because they reply as they understand.
Word of advice
Avoid using idioms, metaphors, and or figures of speech because you might regret it. Imagine cheering your autistic child at their soccer game and tell them to “break a leg or break something”, they’ll start doing a serious breaking of legs and things and they’ll tell you that you told them to, which you would have by the way — unwittingly.
Never tell them to pull up their socks when you want them to improve on something because they’ll tell you they’re not wearing any socks. Never say something like “by the way, what’s your name because I didn’t catch it?” Before they tell you their name, they’ll first tell you they didn’t throw it and you’d be pissed off and be less interested.
They affect proximity.
Before I explain this characteristic, let’s first look at the term itself proximity: it means closeness or the state of being near as in space, time, or relationship. Everybody likes their space, right? Especially when interacting with someone you don’t know.
Imagine this scenario: you go to a store and find a consultant on the floor, you ask them for help on what you’re looking for and they come so close to you that if you were the same height, your faces would touch. Imagine that; someone speaking so close to your face, taking up all the space and leaving you nothing.
What if you’re with your spouse or partner? What would they say is going on between you and that sales assistant? Wouldn’t they think that you are flirting? Wouldn’t that make you uncomfortable if not irritated? Well, people with autism are like that, and they don’t even know that this is wrong. They don’t know the meaning and importance of personal space. They are like that.
Now, the reason I gave you a store scenario is that this lady once worked at a store, and this is how she dealt with her customers daily. Some started avoiding her because to them she looked like she was flirting but she wasn’t. Her “offensive” act was harmless to her. She meant no harm at all, but she was not even aware.
Word of advice
Try to be polite about addressing the proximity situation — that’s if you ever find yourself in it.
They have mind blindness.
Mind blindness is almost the same as common sense but differs a little because the latter means an ordinary sensible understanding; it’s one’s basic intelligence that allows for plain understanding and without which good decisions or judgments cannot be made.
Again. I’m using my lady friend as an example. At the store where she used to work, her department got a daily sales print-out they called ‘clique view’. Now, this paper was always printed in a portrait colour. One day this paper got printed as a landscape with colour. But because the lady was used to the paper being a portrait, it looked completely different to her to the point she couldn’t read it.
Sometime later, the same ordeal happened, this time the paper was printed in black and white, but it was a portrait. Again, the paper blinded her because even though it was a portrait, it didn’t have colour.
She was used to a coloured portrait printed paper because that’s how it was from day one, and that’s how her autistic brain registered it. This process is called mind-blindness because a normal person would apply “common sense” and that common sense would tell them that this was still the same print-out just colourless.
This lady was perceived as stupid and “lacked common sense”. She was not respected at work as a result because of these characteristics.
Word of advice
It’s not that people with autism don’t have common sense but their brains function differently from the rest of us. Imagine how easier this lady’s life would have been if people knew she had autism and that people with autism are like this. How many autistic people have been mistreated, misjudged, and misunderstood because we lacked knowledge about how they are wired?
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