Difficulty with verbal directions/instructions-anyone else?

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When it comes to verbal directions/instructions I have difficulty retaining the information in my head. Especially if it involves multiple directions/instructions.

Yes. I have to have it all written down or I just forget.

I hate YouTube instructional videos because nothing is written down. The worse part is that everybody these days says everything is easy, just look up how to do it on YouTube. Meanwhile, I will search around on the internet for a text version of the instructions instead.

I definitely have this problem too. I do much better with written instructions, so I can refer back to it to make sure I'm doing everything correctly. I also remember what I read much better than what I hear.

Auditory processing slowness happens to me somewhat often. Sometimes, it is just with one instruction.

This trait really sucks at school when we have to pay attention to something the teacher says and then go and do it. In art class, my teacher was explaining how to do something but when I tried to do it, I couldn't even remember the first step .

Yep. Auditory processing problems. I focus on the details (the individual letter sounds) and miss the big picture (the meaning of the sentence).

I definitely relate: I can follow a few steps of verbal direction, then I more or less lose track of what was said. It's as if remembering what I'm doing displaces remembering what was said and it all just flies out of my head. My verbal short-term memory is fragile. In my work, I had to be careful to write things down, because people tend to get upset if you ask them to repeat themselves too much. However I also have a horrible time following written instructions as they seem to assume you know what you're doing. Things like written step-by-step software installations would confound me because they would skip steps or would omit to say how to respond to certain queries. I guess that NTs just know those things automatically somehow, whereas I need every step described. I'm autistic and not verbal on the inside and hearing or reading verbal instructions takes a lot of internal translating on my part. The best way for me to learn is "hands on", where I actually do the described actions. When I could get coworkers to "walk me through" doing an action, I'd generally remember it much better. Watching someone else do the actions isn't the same as doing them myself, though. I was very gifted technically at my work which was quite complex, but there were definitely times when the learning impairment aspect of my autism was an issue and was hard to hide.

What was the question again?

As far as I'm concerned, verbal instructions are the path to destruction.

Just this.

I do better with instructions when they are presented in writing. I learn best by writing things down.

This. I'd often be accused of "not listening" and "not following directions" by my teachers when I was in school. 7th grade home ec was the worst...we had to use sewing machines and sew tote bags and it didn't matter how many times the teacher showed us what to do. It was a nightmare and I never knew what to do. And I also broke the needle almost every time I tried to do anything!

I always loved it when kids would always assume I never paid attention

It must have been so lovely to listen to the teacher talk and then can't remember what was said and always getting literally tired from listening my brain would start to shut down and my head getting real heavy I had to use my hand and arm to hold it up and my eyes would still close. I always blamed this on ADD because that is also a symptom of it. I didn't know ASD people also had a hard time with listening too and remembering directions.

yes

*raises hand* I tend to separate things in my head, so trying to look at instructions for something can be confusing because I don't imagine the big picture. I also have crap working memory.