People Not Explaining Things Properly

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Keep in mind that some of the people you talk to... Are actually bad at explaining things! Sometimes my son wants me to explain something, and I just can't! Maybe I can see the image in my head, but I can't put it into words, or I'm tired and can't think of another way to phrase it. Give me a day and I can think of something.

I remember this time my daughter was on the playground and some other kids were trying to explain a game to her. She was about 7 or 8. The rules of the game didn't make sense to her, and she got very upset. Well, the kids explaining this game were only 6 or7 years old! Plus it was honestly kind of nonsensical--it was made up by little kids, after all. Finally I convinced her to just watch a round or two of the game, whereupon the light dawned and she understood.

"You explained that very poorly," she informed the 6 year old.

It's the talking down to I don't like. Something only my female colleagues do to me.

Work to me feels like you are constantly trying to move forward in the darkness. Everyone just expects you to know things by intuition and understand things telepathically. If you can't do that you are treated like a naive Child.

I get people asking me what I'm doing, or scolding me for doing things wrong, a lot at work. I always get told to do things, but no one thoroughly explains what they want done to me. I do think that my manager is catching on, because she's started showing me every step of things and describing what to do. She apparently has an autistic kid though, so she's probably more used to doing that than my other coworkers are.

I get treated like a child work, but it seems like some of my coworkers think I'm legit "slow", which is my fault for taking forever to process things on top of already needing very specific, detailed explanations. I thankfully don't think that most of my coworkers are trying to be mean by treating me like that.

I had something silly like this happen to me, too. I was helping a coworker prepare clothes when it hit time for me to go on break, and she told me that I "could go to break if I liked", which I thought meant that she was telling me I could choose to go or stay. I went "Oh, okay," kept helping her, and then she reiterated and motioned for me to go away. lmao

I have people act like I'm playing a game by not understanding them. It's one of the things that legit pisses me off since that behaviour also just seems like some sort of passive aggressive game, and I don't want to play it. It's not that hard to imagine that once in awhile someone won't understand what you mean, and that they're not just trying to waste your time by asking for clarification.

Out of curiosity I did a Web search for "examples of talking down to people" because although I think I'd recognise that behaviour when I heard it, I couldn't think of any examples. But all I got was this kind of thing:

https://groups.google.com/g/xzcgisk1y/c/xImm6RsEz2Q

https://ipaqsrevised.blogspot.com/2021/ ... meone.html

Bizarre coincidence, considering the thread is about needing clarity It's as if they wrote it in Aramaic and used the worst translation engine they could find to convert it to English, and never bothered to check that the result made one iota of sense.

One reason why it's so hard for me to get clear answers to questions is that some authors make a complete mess of communicating. It's not just trivial subjects either. I got an invitation from my doctor's office to have a screening for heart disease that just used the initials of some heart complaint (one I wasn't familiar with) and ended with the words ".....and then with a doctors." Best guess, whoever was running the practice was using cheap immigrant labour and setting them tasks they weren't qualified to do, in order to cut their costs by reducing the quality of the service.

It happens. Not very often but it does, usually when I take things too literary. Sometimes when I don't get enough information.
EG a teamleader asked me to take all the bilge pumps inside and when I did he had to explain that he meant all the bilge pumps that weren't in use.
It happened quite often when cooking with my then GF, eg "chop this up" ... "NO not in dices, it should be sliced".

/Mats

What are those links?!

Makes me feel coherent!

"Talking down" means "being condescending".

Can you say "condescending" boys, and girls?

Very good!

Excellent example, naturalplastic

I've noticed in my middle school years people seem to understand vague requests like "don't call us anymore" and "No more of that" and knew what they exactly mean. I would get in trouble for these things and not know what they meant until it was too late.

One time I was told I couldn't use the computer in the resource room. So I didn't. I used one in a different resource room and I got in trouble for it. I was like "I didn't use your computer" and my teacher was like "yes I did, I told you you couldn't be on it" and I said "and I wasn't" and she said again I was in Mr. Al's room and I said she never told me I couldn't use it in there. She then said "Oh my fault, I mean don't use any computers in this building or that building and even in the elementary school, don't use any computers in all school districts until Thursday."

It got easier as years went by from experience. You start to figure out what people mean by when they use certain phrases and you learn to ask questions.

Do these people know you have autism or that you have some sort of processing issue? I am finding people really do not know unless you tell them and not everyone knows what autism is even if they have heard about it. I am sure there will still be people out there who will be willful about it but you really don't know until you tell them.

I get that happening too. In nearly every single job I had, I got talked down to. Then in nearly every single job I left, people contacted me afterwards and said: 'that person who replaced you...they're kind of...stupid...Can you come back?'

Guess what my answer was!

And their comments made me so satisfied. After all their complaints, they actually had an intelligent, efficient employee after all and they didn't realise til I'd left

They didn't know because I hadn't been diagnosed back then. But I think it shows a certain cruelty to keep tormenting someone who is desperately trying to get a straight answer, by deliberately withholding information. I soon move on from people like that.

I decided if I ever go into a group situation again, I'll say, 'I have mild autism. This means I often can't understand social situations. And I need clear instructions. For example, if you said 'it would be great if someone wiped the table.' I won't know you want me to wipe the table. It's better if someone says, '(my name), could you please wipe the table?'

Hopefully they'll understand that? Who knows.