WHY PEOPLE WITH AUTISM REFER THEMSELVES IN THE THIRD PERSON WHEN SPEAKING

First, it’s not all people with autism who refer themselves in the third person when they speak. But it’s those who don’t have full speech. It’s not that they are non-verbal, but their speech is not full or complete — and consists of the words and names of things they hear more often. In Autism, you find three types of speakers.

Here’s how they differ:

There are those who can SPEAK although some of them acquire their speech at a later stage. Those who can speak are the ones with autism called Asperger’s Syndrome. This type of autism is labelled as a level one or mild because the symptoms are not extreme, and individuals with it are almost like you and me — well at a glance at least.

They can think independently, they can differentiate, can speak, are aware of a lot of things around them, and they can even reason. Some can even go to a mainstream school, get a degree, get a job, get married, and have a family. So, they are almost complete — that’s if I can use the term. Although at their early ages, some of them may not be independent but they find their independence as they grow and get help, of course, through several therapies.

The only minor challenge they have is that they can’t interact very well with others. And they also lack social skills and have a few sensory difficulties; especially loud noises and strong smells. They can’t understand metaphor or riddle speaking. And in most instances, they can be perceived as rude or defiant because they are literal people. Unlike a level 2 and level 3 type of autism which can sometimes be classified as moderate or severe, these individuals have motor skills and eye-hand coordination.

Then some are NON-VERBAL. Now, there’s a difference between a non-verbal autistic and one with incomplete speech. I will explain further about a non-verbal autistic on my next blog post as I will also be explaining how they communicate because they only use one word to communicate everything — every day. I will also teach about how they “compose” or come up with these words and how they use them as their Morse code SOS.

Finally, we have those who can speak but don’t have FULL SPEECH. The reason these individuals don’t have complete speech is that people with autism don’t understand spoken language hence the hardship in communicating.

That is why speaking with an autistic individual can be like speaking in a foreign language they have never heard before.

How So? Because you will speak, and they will just stare at you but not respond — that’s if you’re lucky enough they made eye contact because they don’t do a lot of that. Autistic children sometimes don’t even respond when you call out their names. Why? because even names can be words — this means they are spoken words or language and they are no exception to this impairment.

Therefore, children first need to get used to their names before they can start responding when they are called. In other words, the very same few words and names must be learned first by hearing them repeatedly. And mind you — this is not instant — but a slow and painful process for both child and parent, caregiver, or whatever the case may be. Now, individuals with this language impairment are those with a level 2 and 3 types of autism.

Their sentences are often very short — consisting of only two words — one being the word of whatever it is they are doing and the second one being their own names. These sentences are never long because as I have explained, the child needs to learn them first. And learning for a moderate or severely autistic child can be quite a cumbersome process on its own, and these children’s attention and concentration span is very poor.

Others like my son don’t have even a drop of concentration to hinge their lives on. That is why high potency of patience is the golden key when dealing with a child or adult like that. These are the culprits of the THIRD PERSON referral.

Perhaps we might want to look at what it means to refer to oneself in the third person, and here’s a definition.

According to the dictionary I use: Illeism — which is the term to describe this concept defines it as the practice of excessively referring to oneself in the third person instead of the first person. In English, the third person consists of pronouns such as ‘he’, ‘she’, ‘it’, and ‘they’, verbs such as ‘is’ and ‘has’, and most nouns. But they only use verbs and nouns.

Here’s how their two or sometimes three-word sentences are structured:

Now, when the autistics speak, they only explain what they are doing. Nothing more, nothing less because of their struggle with speech and language. If the child is hungry, they won’t say “I am hungry” but will say “Okuhle hungry.” It does happen in some cases, however, where they would use three words, but that instance only happens when they give the name of the thing they are doing.

Here’s an example: if a child is eating noodles and they know the name of their food is called noodles, then they’ll say something like: “Okuhle (that’s my son’s name which I am using as an example) eat noodles”.

But if they don’t know that what they are eating is called noodles, then they’ll just say “Okuhle eat”. If they are playing with a ball and they know the word ‘ball’, again they’ll say “Okuhle play ball” and not “Okuhle is playing with a ball”. As you can see, the last sentence is full and gives a full description of what the individual is doing with what.

Remember, they only use two words: one that gives a description of what they are doing [verb] and the other being their names as the doer of whatever that is [noun]. Follow this: what is the child doing? He or she is hungry. In this sentence, ‘he’ or ‘she’ and ‘is’ are pronouns, and ‘hungry’ is a verb.

This now becomes a sentence that requires complete speech. But what a child with autism will do is only take out the word that matters most — and that word is ‘hungry’ and then add their names as a conjunction to make it relatable to us because

An autistic brain like that doesn’t have the capacity to construct full sentences most of the times.

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