What actually IS typical kid behaviour?
I've been looking on the list of symptoms for autistic traits in children, and there seems to be more behaviour for autistics children that neurotypical children! And in that list, my youngest brother, who is just as neurotypical as I am, experienced some of those traits shown in the list when he was a toddler, and I bet I did to.
Heres the link:
http://www.autismweb.com/signs.htm
My mum said when I was 2 I used to cry every time someone turned the hand-dryer on in public toilets because the noise must of frightened me. I grew out of it by about 3 or 4. And when my youngest brother was 4 he had a massive box full of toy cars and he used to line them all up along the rug arranging them into a 'carpark'.
And there are plenty of other traits what I've seen in neurotypical children, like when they love something they will talk about it to you, not so much older children but little children do. My next door neighbours got a little girl of 5 and she is, as far as I know neurotypical, and she loves horses. She once was showing me all her collection of 'My Little Ponies' and wouldn't stop talking about them.
There are a lot of traits like that seen in children that they grow out of, and if that isn't typical kid behaviour, then what is?
I think neurotypical kid behavior is being able to communicate in a way that others understand, having a natural instinct to communicate, and knowing what communication is or that there is even such a thing. Many autistic children don't even fit the last criteria, so the others are out of the question. There is something to be said for the general profile of "autistic aloneness", and I think this is a criteria that should be emphasized over very specific traits, such as liking and talking about horses or trains, that are shared by all kinds of children.
Even if a child does like and talk about one subject, there are differences in the specific style and content of the communication. Autistic children are likely to stick with one aspect of the subject and hash it out in exceeding detail. Once, I was giving a class presentation about Egypt, and I spent 90% of the time talking about the genealogy of Ptolemy, which had nothing to do with the rest of the presentation. I just fixated on that one thing because I found the name Ptolemy unusual and interesting. What I"m trying to say is that a description of autistic traits will seem similar to traits found in all children, but the actual in-the-flesh manifestation of these traits will exhibit different patterns in autistic vs. neurotypical children.
Just to pick up on one of these, my youngest is 7 in October and he still cannot tolerate the hand driers, on a good day he will put his hands over his ears, but on a bad day he will still run out screaming. He is autistic.
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Your Aspie score: 187 of 200
Your neurotypical (non-autistic) score: 7 of 200
You are very likely an Aspie
I know what you mean. There is more to being an NT kid than learning brilliant social skills. NT kids believe in make-believe characters like Father Christmas, have favourite videos they love to watch, have an interest in certain things, become frightened of certain things, are clumsy, and the list goes on. It's all part of learning. When I was a small child at school, a lot of the girls in my class liked horses, and played ''horses'' together every lunchtime, and knew everything about them. Other girls always got the skipping ropes out almost every lunchtime and played skipping games with eachother. There are interests and repetitive behaviour seen here - but also social imagination aswell.
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Yes I am a straight female.
From East UK
Aged 25
When I was a kid I only knew one girl who liked horses as much as I. None of the other kids were interested in them.
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We hang around singing out everything on the radio.
When I was a kid I only knew one girl who liked horses as much as I. None of the other kids were interested in them.
OK, so....NTs never share any interests?
_________________
Yes I am a straight female.
From East UK
Aged 25
Simplest way to put it is that several autistic traits are normal traits for as long as they are not going to extremes, are still age-appropriate and/or are not impairing.
If I look after kids, the normal kids can often be found talking as excessively about something "cool" as those kids on the spectrum.
But it's usually just those on the spectrum who'll still tell me all about that same something almost all day for the following days (or for the following weeks, months or even years!).
Redirecting attention/changing conversations normally (by just saying "Hey, isn't this cool? Look at this!") with normal kids works fairly often and it then is also normal that they might go back to what interests them more eventually. Redirecting attention/changing conversations like that works rarely for kids on the spectrum though. Might as well spent 2 years listening to their interest 2/3 of the time you're around them if you let them.
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Autism + ADHD
++++ no spell check when posting from my IPAD ++++
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The trouble with having an open mind, of course, is that people will insist on coming along and trying to put things in it. Terry Pratchett
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