How does it feel when other people are hard to figure out?

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Hello all,

Sorry been MIA for awhile! I struggled whether or not to post this in the parenting forum or not. Anyway, I'm a mom of a 6 yr old boy diagnosed with ADHD and PDD-NOS. My son is verbal and is in a mainstream kindergarten class this year but he is struggling with some academic issues as a result of (we think) his autism diagnosis. Specifically he has a hard time figuring out the main point of a simple story, why something is make believe for example, or expressing in words why he liked it or not. I think its sort of problem with theory of mind stuff.

Anyway, to me something is a bit puzzling....I was told by his former speech/language pathologist that she thinks his academic issues with answering really basic comprehension questions are more likely due to difficulties seen in autism spectrum disorders instead of just deficits seen in an expressive language disorder (which he has) or auditory processing problems. He seems to have a hard time understanding the subtext or overall point of a story (he will often give answers that are off base) and gets lost in just the facts. She says this is most likely because he cannot empathize with the characters or understand their motivations for doing certain things or feeling a certain way so he doesn't understand the overall point of a story or lesson it is trying to teach. (This would extend to people in every day situations too I guess but he does have some appropriate response (verbally, expression wise etc) so the implication is that whatever he has learned in this area has been well modeled for him.) The interesting thing about my son is that he WANTS to understand other people and their feelings, which the therapist told me is not all that typical in many kids on the spectrum she works with.

For those of you with autism, aspergers or pdd nos can you relate to these difficulties? If so, what does this feel like? Am I to understand that my son just plain will never actually feel understanding or empathy for another person's situation unless he has experienced it himself, or he will simply just learn to regurgitate the "proper" response? This confuses me when he seems to want to, or is it just that he already realizes he "should" be able to do this?

Also, I guess I am trying to understand....is it that feelings of empathy toward others are 1. not there, 2. not related to or 3. not understood until they are experienced first hand? Or is it you just don't know how to express certain feelings?

If you were a kid and had a choice, how would you feel about someone trying to change these things?

Sorry for all the questions and if this doesn't make sense. I am a get lost in the details person and kinda stream of consciousness when I type. lol
I am mostly seeking understanding here. Also, I don't want to try to make my son into someone he is not, but he does seem like he wants to learn this so trying to decide if we should pursue therapy for this or not. (relationship development intervention activities have been suggested)

Thanks for your time and input, I'm really lost here

[Moved from Social Skills and Making Friends to GAD on OP's request]

I don't think this is necessarily about empathy but possibly about forming concepts. Those stories for children use examples to demonstrate how to do things, e.g., how to act in a particular social situation.

This approach never worked for me because I need many different and very clear examples to derive a concept from them. In practice this would mean your son needs many different examples in order to form the mental concept of something.

Furthermore, stories are not always the best way to convey information. If he is a linear thinker, how could he distinguish between important and unimportant information? How can he know while reading a story that the color of a shirt is less important than, say, a facial expression? However, that's only my personal experience in this respect.

That makes sense. I never thought about it that way..... I guess I was getting confused between the way he responds to others in social situations (which honestly have been modeled ALOT and are pretty basic at age 6) and his understanding the concept of what others might experience in a story for example, because as you say he thinks in a linear fashion (which I assume makes the "main idea" and definitely any subtext more difficult to figure out at first). Hmmm. Maybe empathy is not what he does not understand which could explain the discrepancy. That's going to be a tough one to teach because he does think differently than I do. We are an unlikely pair....I see subtext and pick up on subtleties in stories and even the way people behave with very little effort (almost uncanny ability) so it is so hard for me to understand what it must be like for this not to come easily or how to teach it. On the other hand I am pretty blah, boring, mainstream the way I think. I come up with the usual, vanilla often "correct" answer as to the main idea, but some of the stuff my son comes up with is just brilliant. (even if the teacher would say the answer is wrong. Alot of times its NOT he just thinks in such a unique way). Sometimes his answers are so awesomely "out of the box" that I'm happy for it. Unfortunately this isn't valued too much in the school environment, which is a shame. I do understand why I guess. Its always been easier to teach to the mainstream or majority when you have lots of kids. Majority rule I guess. UGH This is the reason I am looking into a private school that works with kids who are on the milder side of the spectrum and/or who have adhd and related learning issues. It allows for a smaller classroom environment where a unique learning style is supported and encouraged. I do not want to change him into someone else or some definition of "typical." He is my pride and joy! I love to be challenged by being around people who think differently than I do, so maybe that is why God gave me my unique son.

Keep on training him on appropriate responses to social situations, and if you can, give the reasons for the rules. Most six year old boys lack empathy and sympathy. You can train your son to have sympathy. I do think empathy will always be hard for him, so you will need to tell him gently why people do what they do. My mother was gifted at telling me how I erred and any functionality I have is, I believe, a great deal due to her guidance.
I glad you rejoice in his brilliance.

Does your son know on which parts of the story he should direct his attention?

It might be helpful to give him a clue on what the story is about before he starts reading. Some technical information on how stories work could help him pick out the important parts.

I read a lot, fiction as well as non--fiction, but I need to know what kind of story it is I'm going to read. That is, I love a particular scheme, with which I am familiar, like in stories by Agatha Christie or the Sherlock Holmes novels. It is important to know the structure of a story or written instructions.

My boss knows it's beneficial if she's going to highlight the relevant parts of an instruction before handing it to me. Also, if there's a change in the work routine I need an information about the information, for instance she writes "this note will explain changes regarding ..." followed by the actual information.

First off, I agree with what you say about the emphasis on "the mainstream" in school; I had a huge problem with this myself, back in my school days. This was one of the things I did not like about it. Have you ever read any of the books by John Taylor Gatto? You may find them interesting.

I can't know exactly what your son is feeling, but at that age the underlying feeling I had was a general feeling of confusion. Other people seemed to somehow know what was going on and seemed to "fit in", in a way that I didn't. There is a problem which many children have- (there is a technical name for it, which I've forgotten now what it is)- where they have difficulty figuring out what the point is to a story: rather, they see each item as a separate, disparate element, and can get distracted by the details, thereby having trouble "putting it all together". I don't know if this is exactly the problem your son is having, but I had that problem when I was younger, and even have it still to some extent today. This sort of thing can get better with time, though it may not go away totally. In addition, understanding "subtext" is a form of abstract thinking which is very hard for people on the spectrum, much less a 6 year old! His way of thinking is more literal, so naturally he's going to comprehend the facts of the story instead. Since he probably has a more pure way of expressing himself, he probably doesn't even understand that other people use subtext at all- (it took me a very long time to figure that out!) So naturally, he would have difficulty being able to comprehend that part of the story.

As to the empathy thing, I think it is possible for someone on the spectrum to still "feel" empathy even if they've never experienced that thing personally. (At least, in my opinion it counts as empathy). It's possible to feel some kind of "intellectual empathy"; I don't know if I can explain it, but I'll try. An example (a rather extreme one, I guess): I've never been in a war zone, but I can feel extreme sorrow for somebody in this situation. I can't say I know what it feels like exactly, but I do still feel for the the person somehow. Even in more regular situations, it's possible to understand intellectually what someone may be experiencing. Some of this takes time of course, and experience, but I think this is true of all children, including NT. I think the fact that your son *wants* to understand other people is very encouraging.

Morgana, what you are describing is SYMPATHY, something I can conjure up lots of. EMPATHY is knowing the feeling and feeling the same feeling, something I can only do if I have had the same experience and felt the same way about the experience. I am truly short on empathy. Darn it.

Wrong.

Autistics have empathy, we just find it hard to understand others.

Best analogy I've heard is being an immigrant to a different country with a different culture. Not like you don't care about those people, but you may seem rude because you don't know that an innocent word where you're from is a swear word in your new country, or get confused by local slang, or whatever.

Except with an autistic person, this feeling stays your whole life. It always takes more work for an autistic person to interact. With good friends and family who understand autism and can meet you halfway it's a lot better, but relating to anyone else is tricky and takes a lot more thought. Doesn't mean you can't learn to do it - and not just 'regurgitate the right response' but actually understand the reasons - but it never really comes automatically. Social skills need to be explicitly taught, it's much harder to pick them up intuitively.



It's a stereotype that autistics don't care about interaction. A substantial percentage are actually plenty sociable, about as much as most kids are. Even those who are quite aloof (more often lower functioning) will often enjoy interaction if you know how to approach them right - kind of like a cat, actually.



We feel empathy. If I know someone else is unhappy (for example, my younger brother suffers from depression and social anxiety), I feel unhappy on their behalf, and want to comfort them.

But often I don't know what someone is feeling, so I may seem insensitive when I'm really oblivious. Other times I do know they're upset, but have no clue what I should do to help them.

As for expressing feelings... well, autistics can be as hard for others to read as others are to us. I've found as an autistic person I'm good at reading many other autistics, and they will show emotions that are quite clear to me, but others don't pick up on those cues because they're different from NT nonverbal cues. For example, with autistics who flap their hands, there's happy flapping and anxious flapping, and they look clearly distinct to me. But many NTs just see it as handflapping.

Thanks so much for all the input. I haven't read any of the books by the author you mentioned Morgana, but I will check them out

Gosh I hate to think my son walks around feeling confused, poor guy! Good to know there is actually a term for what it is when its difficult for someone to to find the point of a story and put it all together so to speak. I will have to ask around about that. It would be helpful to have a definition so I could try to help him overcome that a bit now. And yes at age 6 literal thinking is still common, you are right. PTSmorrow, I am not sure my son knows which parts of the story to focus on, but I like your suggestions. I will try them.

Whatever it is, I think in my son's case he has the same difficulty in figuring out what happened in social situations with peers just like he does in stories. He does not always get why people act a certain way in real life, and sometimes I don't even know. But I do feel it is good that my son wants to understand and interact. He is super social/outgoing though so its definitely not that he doesn't want to interact (which I realize is a myth about those on the spectrum and NOT true in many cases.) I do notice that sometimes if someone is just mean to him (as little kids can be to each other without provocation) he doesn't always understand why, and is especially confused when they are suddenly nice to him after that. With one little girl, he keeps asking me, how come she is being nice to me now? I really had no answer on that one! I pretty much told him who knows, it was probably because he was being nice to her, and it was not early in the a.m. at the bus stop when everyone was grumpy. (probably true) So really these things aren't so easy to figure out I guess, but at least the possibilities as to why someone might act a certain way can be taught. (that is if I even know! LOL)

After I posted I also realized that I was probably just getting sympathy and empathy confused which is why it didn't make sense to me when the therapist said he didn't understand other's perspectives in a story/had no empathy. My son clearly has shown sympathy lots of times, but maybe not empathy as he may not understand how (and especially not likely at his age of 6 like you mentioned even if he were NT). Empathy is much harder (and definitely for any young child) unless that child has experienced it and of course, notices. (which I suspect would be hard for my son with the ADHD on top of PDD NOS). I also think empathy is somewhat different from taking the perspectives of characters in a story so maybe the therapist was using the wrong terminology. She should have probably just said he has trouble understanding all the different perspectives in a story and integrating them to get the main point.

So I started debating the difference between sympathy and empathy myself. You see lots of conflicting definitions. As far as I know I'm NT, but yet I am the first to admit that if "empathy" is feeling the exact same feeling another is feeling then I pretty much fail at it if I haven't had a similar experience. Yet on the other hand I pick up on body language, tone of voice etc. easily so I can often "feel" when something is wrong with someone else (even if I don't know what exact feeling it is) and usually when I mention it they ask how I knew. Or I can clearly feel sympathy or sorry for someone's circumstances that I've heard about even if I have not experienced it, and like trying to help them. So that whole topic confuses me! LOL

Leila, I wouldn't feel too bad about struggling with the empathy thing. The fact that it bothers you that you sometimes don't get it says loads about you as a person, in a good way. Frankly I am supposedly NT and like I said, I have a tough time with this sometimes too. I think sympathy is more often what's experienced by most unless we have had a similar experience to draw on, unless of course you count my "picking up on the feelings in the room or subtle body language of a person" as empathy. I know my son has actually cried when he thought someone he didn't even know got hurt (in this case a race car driver at a race he was attending) and he will notice when someone looks sad and try to cheer them up, but not all the time. He also wants to help rescue animals when he grows up he says. To me you need some sympathy for that, which apparently he's got.

Also when you say you don't know what someone is feeling so you may seem insensitive when you are oblivious, that sounds more like components of an attention problem maybe? If that is true then most autistics might just fail to notice sometimes (or in some cases alot of the time), its not that they cannot or don't want to. I know ADHD/ADD symptoms are prevalent in may autistic individuals. To me that would sort of explain it. (unless of course you just meant you couldn't read their emotions that particular time.)

Anyway, thanks so much to all of you, for helping me understand my son better.

Sometimes it's an attention problem, but other times we're paying attention and still don't get it. For example, I heard of one kid who, when his father was angry at him, he pointed to his father's forehead and said '11'. He noticed his father's forehead was cronkled, but didn't realize that indicated anger.