Neurotypicals, including Moms of autistic kids
Please have a little humility in your observations of autistic people, here and in real life!
It’s true that autistic people often can’t read the social cues of neurotypical people. But it’s equally true that *neurotypical people can’t read the social cues of autistic people.*
You simply cannot judge our feelings or intentions by our body language, because it is profoundly different than yours (unless we are very high masking). I see it happen here all the time (“Georgie wasn’t paying attention to Connor,” “James is dominating Shelley,” for example) and often in circumstances where it is so clear and obvious to me what is happening. (And sure, it’s reality TV, so any of us can be missing context, but when often the cast clarifies something on social media, we who are autistic were correct in what we were saying.)
Similarly, can we please end this fucking myth that autistic people can’t be expected to feel empathy and are going to be more self-absorbed than others?!?!? First of all, that doesn’t match the current science, and even more importantly, it doesn’t match the autistic experience! Once we allow for a slightly different flavor of empathy, one that doesn’t rely on reading body language, autistics can be *much more* empathetic than others.
We are not the ones who expect the entire world to conform to our expectations, for example! Nor were we the ones tormenting you in school! Give us some credit here, and have some humility about your own experiences.
And please listen to autistic adults when we describe our childhood experiences, *especially* if you have an autistic child! Neurotypical parents *regularly* dismiss us when we say something hurts (like the way Madison’s parents talk about her in front of her) because you think it doesn’t hurt your child. Please consider you might be lacking the social skills and empathy to understand what your autistic kid is going through.