I have a question to ask autistic people

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Copypaste and print out everyone's posts on this thread, as I think there's a whole lot of terrifically valid input and sharing here, from everyone. [nodding]

BirdinFlight, the stories of yourself and your background, this is incredibly interesting and so useful to me, it's exactly what I need to learn about. I am struck by the parallels between you (also when young) and my son, and I want to take the time now to read your posts more slowly and carefully. In fact I think I will copy paste the whole lot and print it out, so I can write all over it

"Remarkably empathetic" or "eerily" maybe as a good replacement for "spookily" -- I think I get your intention as to mean perhaps that it's "almost paranormal or magical" how empathetic he may be in those situations, perhaps?

Yes, I too have heard "spooky" used without a sinister or scary meaning. It can just mean "remarkable" or "astonishing" or something similar, yep.

You can hear people say things like:

"You guys really look alike, it's spooky how much!"

And "She's spookily good at cooking even though she's only new to it."

Im an aspie female and I have always shown empathy towards animals. I always brought strays home. If it was a bird or whatever if I saw it in need I would take it home and let it go when it was better. So much so that people used to tell me to be a veterinarian. I just love all of Gods creatures...except spiders, snakes, roaches and bedbugs.

Autism is only bad when you have no support so it's good that you think positively about it. That attitude alone will make a huge difference in his way of life. Some days are just bad but with the right people in his life, he'll be even more awesome than he is now.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lbTkQ72SkDE

I leave it to the reader, to decide whether this is moral, but take no sadistic pleasure in hurting it.

somanyspoons - Thank you for expanding on your earlier post. Now you've done so I see more clearly the point you were making, and your reasons for doing so, which I agree with. The constantly mutating meanings of words and expressions is something to which we should pay close attention; not something that most speakers do. In a similar way to 'spooky', several decades ago in the UK, the word 'wicked' began to be used to mean 'amazing' or 'incredible', in much the same colloquial sense in which 'awesome' is used today - as in 'he mixes a wicked Martini' etc.

I just felt that you were being unnecessarily censorious, given that katy_rome's English is so supple and fluent.

thank you everyone for these observations -- yes you are all correct that that is how I meant that word, but I am actually really thankful so somanyspoons for pointing this out before I really put my foot in it, in a less friendly context. Please pull me up on anything else, without hesitation!! I honestly had no idea, also I have to now confess before this goes any further that I am not Italian at all (sorry!! !!), I AM mother-tongue English, Scottish to be precise, but have lived in Italy for many, many years, and my husband is German, so I'm tri-lingual and totally confused by now, also not particularly good at being PC (my granny, who I swear was kindness itself, had some sayings that would truly make your hair stand on end).

Also, far from seeing autistic people as kind of 'other', I rather see um.. NTs (have just learnt that word) as 'other', as I believe the whole of humanity is 'on the spectrum', it's just a large spectrum and the autism component is a slice of it.

Anyway I'm starting to suspect I'm on the spectrum myself - i mean in the conventional sense - and that's why I identify so much with my son, and have suffered so much with him when he suffered - thankfully, no longer.

I ADORE the vid with the cockroach. We also like to rescue animals .. the last, which was a hairless small baby mammal, I think was probably a rat, but we kept that piece of information from my husband, who as a farmer's son may not have approved ANyway he sadly died (the rat not my husband), and we buried him in the garden under a wooden cross, with a ceremony.

Our house is full of lizards, and we bring in fresh vegetation for them (teeming with insect life) and keep saucers of water in corners. Yes they do drink, you can see their little tongues flicking out. They are inside because it's safer than in the garden, where we have two cats. They all have names, and visitors think it's rather odd that as I move around the kitchen I have to carefully step over 'Hermione' or 'Hedwig'. They can sunbathe on the terrace, which is cat-free. My daughter would definitely rescue even cockroaches, though I would have difficulty there (I would have to strategically leave the room to 'go and do something'....)

Well, it doesn't surprise me at all to hear that you are a native English speaker. I've studied your posts very carefully, and couldn't find any of the usual grammatical errors or mismatches that Italians generally make when speaking English, however fluently, so I did wonder. (All nationalities tend to make mistakes based on their own linguistic constructions.) Although English is so widely spoken these days, one can't always tell.

Like you I am Scottish (actually the 'Katy' sounds very un-Italian!), and lived in Germany and France for many years, and speak ten European languages, to varying degrees of fluency, so although English is my mother tongue my mind is constantly full of other languages, which has a marked effect on my English. As you say, it's very confusing.

I can't agree with you that the whole of humanity is on the spectrum. It's rather like the expression that one so often hears, 'everyone's a bit autistic', which is completely wrong. It would be more accurate to say that humanity as a whole is neurodiverse, being made up of neurotypicals (NTs) and the neurodivergent - i.e: those on the autism spectrum, or with other neurological or mental conditions. On forums like this, and in fact more generally, language is important, as somanyspoons pointed out.

If your son is diagnosed with AS, then it is more than possible that you are also on the spectrum. You'll find many discussions on the forums here about people whose children get diagnosed, only to find that they themselves are also autistic.

Your house and garden sound like mine - full of wildlife. Birds and other small creatures who die are buried, and everything gets fed, even those creatures that it's probably better not to encourage.

You seem to have found a second home here.

My neighbor's son runs into the street. My step niece can't speak.

Is it autism, or something else, too?

I am supposed to be far, into the spectrum, according to written tests, have lots of genetic mutations, and I don't do that stuff. I was never of the opinion that I had a handicap.