Not seeing the bigger picture.

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I remember when I was about 8 or so, it was my dads birthday.  He liked music (we had records back then, this was the early 80's).

I saw an album cover in the record store which I really liked. It was really colourful and pretty. I really wanted to get it for him, so I did.

I had no idea what music was on it, that part just didn't register as something I should consider.

Well turns out he did'nt like any of the music, in fact it was completely the wrong genre.

You see, I bought it because I liked how it looked, i was fixated on the pretty cover, to me, that was so much more important.


This is the earliest I can remember of this sort of fixation. It appears to have been the main theme throughout my life and has caused a lot of dysfunction and problems.

Is this Autistic fixations?

I'd say it's more a matter of not being able to see what wasn't on your plate, so to speak.

Maybe a bit of that thing where they say we can't imagine someone else's thoughts/feelings very well? Theory of mind?
I read about this in books, but I do not recognize it for myself. Do you? I doubt it.

What's more likely is that you as a child just forgot (or didn't know yet) that gift giving is about the other person and that you had to study your dad's preference and his music taste.

The bigger picture and the bottom line is that you wanted to give your dad something amazing and lovely and wanted to make him happy. Insert exclamation points and internet hugs here.
Our want to make someone happy is also something I read about us in books and this I do recognize in myself. And in you.

In our house there wouldn't be an opportunity to explain and to tell about the great colours and the good intentions. I'm very glad to have left childhood behind, my friends now appreciate the intentions and I can be as muddled as could be and there's always time to explain or nuance afterwards. I hope you too have these kind of people in your live.

I can relate to that, but I don't recall it listed anywhere as a specific trait. Maybe one can arrive at it through synthesis.

That has actually reminded me, when I was 11 years old and bought my first present for my mum (it was mothers day I believe). I was totally sure she would love it... I knew she loved her plants and garden.

So what was it? A little cactus. I thought it was cute and unsual, and also, they were more affordable for me as a child. What would that matter though . The gift is what matters, no matter what, right?

She told me that cactus can be perceived the wrong way , so I never bought cactus again as a gift.

There are no big pictures for me, ever.

I thought that I'd give my mum some pea green tea towels for her birthday two years ago. I thought she'd love them because I'm her Sweet Pea and the colour would remind her of me. A few weeks later, we were watching golf on TV and I told her that my ball would be pea green if I was a professional golfer. My mum said, "Please don't give me anything else that's green."

I suppose it could be described as that - getting too focussed on the visual presentation and forgetting about the content. And I guess that might come into the realm of "not seeing the bigger picture."

With me it would be the other way round, i.e. I'd ignore the presentation and focus entirely on the music, which is apparently unusual considering how much visual presentation the record industry adds to sound recordings. I'm happy with an mp3 as long as the bitrate isn't so low that it noticeably lowers the sound quality.

But I often get stuck in the details of things. If it occurs to me, I don't usually have a lot of difficulty in "stepping back" to see the big picture, but it doesn't always occur to me, so I'll work away perfecting a tiny detail and then later realise that I could have put that time to better use if I'd taken a look at the overview and planned the project accordingly. My habit is to complete the one detail first, then move onto some other detail nearby, and so on till it's done.

The example in the OP isnt really a "big picture thing".

its more of "not thinking at all" thing.

If your dad was into art. And you saw a coffee table art book with a great masterpiece on its cover, and great paintings as plates inside then ...it might be a great gift because art is visual...visual would be the point.

A music record/CD in a pretty package? Its music (ie sound) in a package. So its the sound, and not the look that counts. And besides...you should have had SOME sense of what kinds of music the person (your dad) was into before buying any physical music media for him.

I think it's a matter of being inside your head and only seeing what you saw (a pretty cover) rather than thinking, "Oh, I'm supposed to think about the music that is on the record." But given that you were only 8 years old, I don't think that's so unusual. An NT child who is 8 could make the same mistake.

Adults should be appreciative of a gift from a child, even if it's less than perfect.

Yeah. You were just being a normal little kid. Not particularly NT or ASD in behavior.

If it makes you feel better...when Sis and I were in junior high/highschool our NT parents returned from a trip in Canada with gift T shirts from "Crazy David's T Shirts" ...the world's greatest selection of T's with the coolest hippest stuff printed on them.

And they managed to pick...the two worst shirts in the place. Shirts emblazoned with slogans SO BAD, and so inappropriate... that...in retrospect ...I think that sis and i shoulda called the cops on mom and dad for outright CHILD ABUSE!! !! for picking them for us:lol:

WTF were they thinking?