A speaking child or adult is more accepted by people?

Post Reply New Topic

After watching Sherlock Holmes 2 recently, I wondered about something:

Do a lot of people more readily accept an autistic person who is obviously different and even stims in public but can talk most of the time?

Just so you know, by that I mean that this autistic person can usually answer questions by peers, co-workers or teachers or can sometimes tell rude people off. Perhaps he or she is really awkward with small tall but if he or she has the opportunity to talk about intellectual topics, he/she can speak rather well and fluently.

Do normal people out there truly get freaked out if you can't talk when they expect you to? Why would they?

This idea only came to me when I watched Sherlock Holmes (who is super weird but an amazing talker) because I know a lot of extremely weird or obviously disabled people who are accepted by many people (not by all people).

One such person who may or may not have AS even had really obvious stims with their arms, repeated words and phrases but was ridiculously well-respected by people who heard him talk and praised it. People who didn't know him personally called him names though. (He was a bully himself too.)

I know other people like that who are very obviously autistic and socially awkward or have another impairment or disability but who either can talk normally like everyone else or can talk extremely well. The film now made me think that being able to talk to people might make them more likeable.

I too can talk very well if I prepare in advance and rehearse sentences over and over and over. However, usually I cannot answer unexpected questions and I generally can hardly talk spontaneously. Something about talking doesn't work, I can't explain.

During my childhood, people who never heard me talk right claimed that my "intelligence is low" or ridiculed me. Teachers waited silently for minutes in class to force me to answer by use of my voice when I couldn't talk. I was bullied all the time for being "scary" and "stupid". It was odd that bullies consistently picked me because for months they wouldn't get any reaction from me.

Perhaps my lack of speech motivated them to "make me respond"? I know of a middle-aged womenwho outrightly said she won't accept my speech issues and "teach me how to talk". I was beaten a lot as a kid by a friend of a family for not answering too.

A fair number of people nowadays are still very wary of me and treat me rudely (or even ridicule me) even when I really fake normalcy in behaviour that makes ASD professional claim I manage to appear normal at that moment. They can't possibly dislike me because of something I said because, well, they haven't heard me talk before they figured that I'm absolutely not tolerable.

Could the wary, irritated attitude of people and their treatment of me really be... because I can't randomly talk whenever I want?



A little after I wrote this post:

Now that I asked some friends about it... I can't believe I never before thought about how it freaks many people out if someone they talk to doesn't talk back. The most obvious thing sometimes is the only thing to be overseen, I guess.

I'm probably right about this, then.

I'm not sure really. Some people on the Autism spectrum can be chatty and more extroverted, but doesn't always mean they will definately fit in. They probably have more chance of making friends but have difficulties keeping friends, whereas I (as an introverted shy Aspie) am the other way round - I don't make friends very easily because I'm too quiet but when I do make friends I am mostly able to keep them.

I used to work with a 50-year-old Aspie female, and she was a completely different type of person to me but still had mild AS like me. She was very chatty, loved working on the till so she could chat to customers, and she was just so interested in other people. I was interested in other people too, but I was too shy to express it. But this lady wasn't accepted by anybody there. Everyone there (even the really nice people) always said how weird she was. But I seemed to be more accepted there, even though I was quiet. I even got asked out by two different men, and they really liked me, but they didn't like this other lady. Nobody even told her about the Christmas meal because nobody wanted her to come, but they all wanted me to come. I may be Aspie but I am very good at picking up whether people like me or not, and I could really tell that they liked me but not this other Aspie. There was one or two who didn't seem too keen on me, but the rest liked me and included me. I even got birthday presents from them, but this lady didn't get anything.

So not sure what that was all about.

The people who are being mean to you for not responding are doing so because they are mean people. A good person wouldn't hit you for not talking to them, nor would they ridicule you.

At the same time, to NTs, it is quite uncommon for someone to not respond at all, not with words, not with a glance, nod, some sort of gesture.

Someone explained to me that when NTs don't hear a response, they think you're purposefully ignoring them, perhaps being rude, disrespectful, and so on.

So yes, you're probably right, people on the spectrum who talk are probably more likely to be more accepted by NTs. It's unfortunate, it's unfair, but it's probably how things are for many of them.

I personally don't care if people talk, and I often make silences. My ex always said "silence is only awkward if you make it so." The NTs who dislike your lack of talking are at fault in this situation. They're the ones making the silence awkward. I can sit with NT friends for hours in a comfortable silence (and I did ask to make sure it was comfortable on their end too, haha); I think you're running into a bunch of bad NTs. .

I think it's actually easier these days to accept anyone who is obviously disabled than those of us who are not. It was not always this way though. Political correctness has driven most to more readily accept anyone they can easily see is disabled.

The problem for most Autistics that our disability is NOT obvious. So, yeah, in a way you are correct.

Yes, I think that you are right, Sora.

People expect others to be able to talk back to them when directly addressed or questioned, and not being able to do so is often and erroneously considered to be a sign of low intelligence or evasion. People also mistake good speaking skills for high intelligence and superior knowledge. I have often seen people comment about others being smart or knowledgeable if others spoke fluently, lengthily, and quickly without saying anything of substance.

I also have problems generating speech in real-time to communicate what is in my mind, and when asked to talk about something that I know about and understand in my mind, I often cannot generate the speech within a short window of expectation. Sometimes, my mind goes blank when I need to talk, like when someone asks me an unexpected question. Other times, my mind flashes up the non-verbal thoughts, either visual or all-around sensory, but it takes a long time for me to figure out how to translate the non-verbal non-linear thoughts into verbal linear speech. Where to start? Where to stop? What order of steps? How much detail at each step? How to summarize pictures as short fast verbal responses? If someone adds something new, like asking a second question before I have figured out how to answer the first question, then it will be even harder to answer any of the questions. I used to think that I was supremely stupid due to my lack of speaking skills. Ever since my writing has improved in the past year and a half, my speaking has improved too. I often rehearse expositions like a cooking show chef making a pie and taking it out of the oven to show the audience, "Here's one I made earlier".