Have any NTs said "you drive me insane"?

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This is one reason why I am going not stop trying to take my mom to see my therapist.

She ditched the field of public education back in 2019 because she could not
take the increase in parental leniency and many of her co-workers not doing anything about bullying.

@ KM:I agree with you. I do most of my own shopping at smaller places (such as my place of employment; much to the laugh of my boss, mind you) and like you, I do not drive because of my epilepsy. Whenever I am not at work, I think of where to go for a walk.

Oh that makes perfect sense. Don't rely on your parents alone as they are not going to be objective anyway, The idea of a therapist is they provide professional talk therapy which also has the benefit of not being caught up in your parent's emotional baggage of dealing with an aspie child.

Having said that my experience of therapists for my daughter has been disappointing.

I smile, but in such occasions itis a forced smile. It doesn't look natural, I'm sure.

As for my kid - she is obviously on the spectrum, too. All signs point to that, from her hypersensitivity, problem with empathy and placing herself in one's position and so on. She socialises with two girls at her kindergarten, but doesn't even know the rest of the kids names, as she doesn't care about them. She turns four in Feb, has been in there since June 2021, as we wanted her to start early to introduce her to a bigger group of kids - she was in a nursery only for a short period of time, as she got sick all the damn time and ended up with pneumonia once, which got her into a hospital. Then we hired a nanny, so she wasn't exposed to other children as much. We are taking her to sensory integration therapy once a week and to speech therapist (she have very advanced vocabulary for her age, but problems with vocalisation), but cannot get an official diagnosis until she's 5. 5 is also a minimum age of participation in social skills trainings available in our city.

When it comes to interacting with strangers - she either ignores them entirely or observes them carefully. It is incredibly rare for her to respond to a person she has never seen before. Doesn't smile back to people she doesn't know, at all. So I don't think that she can pick any more of anti-social traits after me.

It's not that I cannot interact in friendly manner with strangers - I simply do not want that interaction at all, unless it is justified. As a kid and teenager, I had HUGE problems with empathy and the fact that I do sympathise with people at all is only thanks to me rationalising to myself that it is a right thing to do to help someone in distress.

Believe it or not, my Empathy Quotient score at the time of diagnosis was 11/80. I though that this test is stupid anyway, as it contains questions like: "I dream most nights: strongly agree/slightly agree/slightly disagree/strongly disagree" - the F this have anything to do with levels of empathy? Still, seen people here mentioning their high scores, so it is relevant to some. Took Toronto Empathy Questionnaire and the result is 27 - noticeably below average, but not that disastrous.

Still, as I said - I do accept interaction with strangers if it is justified. In fact, I am willing to approach people in need on my own. For example, buying homeless people food or calling for an ambulance when I see one drunk and sleeping on a bench when it is below 0C outside. So, if someone needs my help in a matter they cannot handle themselves and approaches me, or even does not but I do see that they are in need, I try to help as it is morally right thing to do. I'm also okay with people approaching me to share some valuable information relevant to situation I am/we are in. People being in a group formed around a subject of mutual interests, discussing it with me is fine, too.

But small talk about nothing? It is a waste of ATP used to move my mouth parts, to put it simply. A word salad which doesn't transfer any valuable data. Trying to have a momentary connection with random people that aren't part of my life seems like dumbest idea to me - what for? I can spend that time thinking about something important and/or interesting to me, listening to music or reading something (if I'm commuting, for example).

This type of interaction serves only one purpose - to make the person who wants to pull you into it feel better. But if I am irritated by that and do not want it, why should I participate? Freedom of one person ends where freedom of another begins. I perceive this type of action as unnecessary disruption, which doesn't benefit me in any way and only causes stress. I'm not okay with someone trying to feel better about themselves or get into a better mood at my own expense. I'm not okay with them wasting my time on pointless chat and distract me from whatever I am doing. Some people like physical contact, but no one is okay with strangers giving surprise hugs or pats on the back on the streets, right?

Before you ask - I am not on this forum to seek companionship, but because I want to exchange views about autism and learn something in the process. Knowledge is what attracted me to here, not people. Already found some interesting material, especially in relation to what can be done for children with ASD. Still, I think that it is fair game to share my experiences and insights from time to time, because after all, this is how forums work - users must give input, without it message board wouldn't exist. Maybe my own posts will prove to be valuable to some, maybe not. I am indifferent to the outcome. What's important for me is added value which being here brings for myself.

I think you'll find 99% of the parents on WP are basically here for seeking information/knowledge/tips for their child and not for finding friends. I created a thread on the parent section of WP to help with non-verbal kids (my daughter was non-verbal).

Yeah I couldn't get a diagnosis till my daughter was 5 but I recall getting a dressing down from the speech therapist who was emotional/angry at us for taking too long to get a diagnosis (she blamed us for delaying an assessment). At the time she was classified as high functioning since her non-verbal intelligence was through the roof and her vocabluary was ahead of kids her age. But she had issues with vocalisation and comprehension which followed her into mainstream school.

What worked for us was to use ABA for a couple of hours per day (nothing too serious) to help with speech/behaviour. Placing her in mainstream school was somewhat traumatic due to her auditory sensory issues and despite having friends it kind of fell apart when she started getting impacted by small noises and shut down for periods of the day and needed a quiet room for desensitising. In highschool (she's 16) she was doing ok until COVID struck and she's been homeschooling which sucked for her. It's kind of set her back.