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This evening our son came over to the house around 7 pm. I was polishing silver. He said “Hi” and I said “Hi” and he wandered around in a vague sort of way. I asked if he’d eaten supper yet and he said yes, he’d had spaghetti and meatballs. I finished the spoons I was working on, put them away, and went back to my study to get some work done until Richard came in from the land, since M- hadn’t said he wanted anything and he often uses Richard’s computer (it has broadband. His house doesn’t.)
I heard our son leave, and then come back in a few minutes later. I went back out; he was moving aimlessly about the kitchen. “Did you come over for anything in particular?” I asked. “No,” he said, ducking his head. Then he asked a series of questions about whether my mother had done this or that with me, and what had I said, and that led to some family history.
Finally I noticed the relevant point–he was wearing a purple shirt (school colors.) I asked if he was wearing a purple shirt for any particular reason. “Football,” he said very softly. Well, it’s Friday night. But I haven’t been to a football game in years (when Richard took him, it was a time I could write like a banshee, alone in the house.) So I asked if there was a home game and he began to perk up, like a drooping plant that’s gotten water. “Yes.” I asked if he wanted to go. “Yes,” a little louder. I asked what time the game started. “7:30.” It was then 7:34.
I told him, on the way to the high school (something over a mile away and there’s no safe walking route) that I’d have taken him when he first came in if he’d asked then.
It is still hard for him to ask directly for what he wants even when it’s something that we do every week. Which things give him the most trouble are variable, but usually whatever’s most important to him is the hardest to say. He had no trouble telling me he wanted to be picked up at 10 pm. Yesterday he had trouble (but did manage to say) that he wanted to go ice skating. He told me he felt brave for saying it. Why, I wondered. Because he thought I might be annoyed if he asked….but I’ve never been annoyed when he summoned the whatever-it-takes to ask directly for something.
Comment by AnnMCN — August 29, 2009 @ 7:17 am
So much of what is on the spectrum I can see as behaviors in “normal” people. Here in the South, many women are brought up with that attitude – that you never say directly what you want. They’re not on the spectrum, but the effect on someone dealing with them is similar. The misunderstanding potential of hinting is a big problem Your son, for instance, missed the beginning of the game because he was unable to ask directly.
I never was able to function that way, either as the hinter or as the hintee.
Comment by Elizabeth — August 29, 2009 @ 9:41 am
That’s one of the things that our son’s nursery-school manager noticed–his behaviors were normal behaviors for kids at a different age, at a different intensity and a different frequency. And I know what you mean about indirectness in some non-labeled people, including in asking for what they want. I hadn’t directly associated it with the Southern Ladyhood thing (maybe the south Texas variant of SL socialization missed that aspect) but I do remember times when two little girls (I was one of them) would waste a half hour trying to get the other to say what she wanted to do. Hmmmm…
Comment by AnnMCN — August 29, 2009 @ 12:56 pm
I used to joke that having male children meant they were doubly alien, being male and being children, but really truly, I believe that we are all people, and the potential for everything is in us (whether you call it unmapped DNA, or no man is an island, or the butterfly effect). People who are autistic cannot process some things the way I do, but it doesn’t make them utterly Other.
It isn’t just Southern. Do you remember the scene in The Screwtape Letters, about getting each member of a family to not say directly what he or she wanted to do? Very British, but the same behavior.
Does your son learn from stories at all? I mean, looking at story as a sort of lab to play out a what if? Or does that move into the cannot grasp figures of speech territory?
Comment by arthur piantadosi — January 7, 2010 @ 1:02 pm
I’ve got to say, the things that give me the worst trouble are the variable ones, not the constants.
Comment by Elizabeth — January 7, 2010 @ 1:05 pm
Yeah…they are harder because you can’t predict them.
Comment by Finny — June 24, 2010 @ 2:38 pm
I, too, have great issues with asking for things. I am always worried/scared that someone will be annoyed or mad with me for asking.
Even hugs from the husband, I ask for.
Do not like interrupting people. So I wait for them. So they do not get mad.