Looking in as an Outsider with Autism

At Granny’s I spent a lot of time just wandering off being myself and being confused as to why people were doing as they did–like talking so much about the obvious or for no reason I could gather.  I would go in the living room and play the organ or watch “Hockey Night in Canada” with Papa.

I wrote this essay snippet years ago before I was diagnosed:

All my life we went out to Granny’s [farm].  I’d lag behind as they toured every flower and checked the worms on the apple trees.  I’d wander off by myself and play in the rain barrel or squirt my mouth with the reddest raspberries.  Mostly, I swung and twirled on the swing and watched and listened.

Granny wore hot pink sweatpants, [my sister] wore her powder-black sweatpants, and Mum always wore bluebell blue.  There they’d be, picking weeds with their bums in the air like brightly colored laughing talking flowers.

I knew I wasn’t like them, and I felt bad whenever I was told to join in.  People would ask questions, which I now realize as trying to elicit conversation instead of the blunt information I would return.  I felt like an outsider because I didn’t belong.

How do you “join in”?  Please define it.  Please tell me the purpose of it?  Why can’t I do something interesting instead like reading, studying things, doing art, or going up on the sand hill to pick wild strawberries?  As a child, I didn’t understand that others wanted to be social even though it had no purpose, and they were uncomfortable around me because I didn’t.

For parents with autistic children, I am going to think about this on how balance encourage teaching socializing, with feeding the child’s passions and personality, and making the child feel special instead of different.

The same type of parenting applies to neurotypical children, but the method of teaching it to autistic children is more literal with an explanation as to why.