Chapter 2

Thinking for ourselves

Autistic people are good at thinking for ourselves.

Lots of people have to deal with peer pressure, which is when people around you tell you to do something. You might do that thing even if you don’t want to, because you want people to like you. For example, you might watch a movie you hate because your friends want to see it.

Non-autistic people have a hard time saying no to peer pressure. They get very upset if they think people will not like them. Autistic people can also have a hard time with peer pressure, but it is easier for us to think for ourselves. We might not feel peer pressure as much.

Because we think for ourselves, we sometimes ignore rules. For example, if we are at a party that is too loud, we might leave, even though we know the normal rule is to stay.

Non-autistic people usually agree with each other about what is important, but autistic people might not see things the same way. For example:

James is autistic. He has a friend named Anne. Anne says a racoon got into her house and messed up her room. Anne’s other friends focus on helping Anne clean up her room. James agrees that Anne needs help cleaning up her room, but he thinks it’s important to make sure the racoon is okay first. Anne’s other friends don’t agree with James. James isn’t doing anything wrong, and neither are Anne’s friends. They just have different ideas.

Eye contact

Many autistic people don’t make eye contact. Making eye contact can hurt us or make it hard to pay attention. It can be hard to listen to what someone says and look at their eyes at the same time. So we don’t look at their eyes.

Non-autistic people can tell someone’s feelings by looking at their eyes. They also use eye contact to share their own feelings. That’s why eye contact is so important to them. Autistic people have different ways of sharing our feelings, and we usually don’t use eye contact to do that. For example, we might just say how we are feeling.

Sometimes, some autistic people seem to make eye contact. We might learn how to pretend to make eye contact, like looking at someone’s nose instead of their eyes. Or we might look in someone’s eyes even though we don’t like to. Some autistic people don’t mind making eye contact, but most of us do.

Nonverbal communication

Eye contact is one kind of nonverbal communication. Nonverbal communication is communication that doesn’t use language, like:

– Body language
– Facial expressions
– Tone of voice

People use nonverbal communication all the time, and you cannot stop yourself from using it. Any time someone can see you, they can see your nonverbal communication.

Non-autistic people know how to figure out what nonverbal communication usually means. They don’t have to think about it very much. For example, when someone has their arms crossed, they know that person is angry. When someone is tapping their foot, they know the person is impatient. When someone smiles in a certain way, they know the person is happy.

But autistic people can have different nonverbal communication than non-autistic people. We might cross our arms because we need to feel pressure, or we might tap our feet because we are stimming. This can confuse non-autistic people.

Nonverbal communication isn’t just about what you do. It’s also about what other people think. People can guess how someone feels from their nonverbal communication, but people can make mistakes when they guess.

It can be extra hard for autistic people to guess or to understand nonverbal communication.
For example:

Bob is autistic, and he sees his friend Sally smiling. Bob thinks that Sally is happy because she is smiling, but Sally is actually angry. Sometimes people smile when they’re angry. Bob doesn’t understand that Sally is angry, so he tries to talk to Sally about happy things. This just makes Sally more angry.

Nonverbal communication has a lot of pieces. You have to use your voice, face and body to communicate to someone. That person is also communicating back to you with their voice, face and body. You also have to figure out what they are communicating. All of this happens at the same time, and it can be hard to deal with it all at once.

Autistic people might try to communicate with just our words instead. We make sure people can understand what we say, and that we understand what other people say. This works if the people we talk to can also just focus on words, but non-autistic people have a hard time doing that.

Putting it all together

Autistic people socialize differently than non-autistic people. We might like to text instead of talking on the phone. We might not like being around large groups of people, or to have conversations with confusing rules.

Other parts of autism also affect how we socialize. We may have trouble with loud noises, so we might not go to parties that are very loud. Moving can be hard, so we might not be able to go up to someone and start talking.

There are a lot of reasons why autistic people socialize differently. We should be able to do what works for us.

Daily living

Autism changes how we get around in the world. It changes how we think, how we feel, and how we communicate.

A lot of autistic people need help in our daily lives. We can have a hard time with some things, like moving our bodies. We might have a hard time talking to people, or doing things that have a lot of steps. For example, cooking can be very hard for us, since it takes a lot of time and has a lot of steps.

But people have to do things like cooking every day. It takes more energy for autistic people to do these things. We may not be able to do everything we need to every day, or we may not be able to do some of these things at all.

For example:

Cass is autistic. They have work today, and go to a long work meeting. When they get home, they don’t have the energy to cook.They can’t figure out the steps to cook, but they need to eat. They can order food instead, or they can get someone to help them cook.

Roland is autistic. He can’t cook because figuring out all the steps is too hard for him.
He lives with a support person, who cooks for him. Roland helps around the house in other ways.

It is normal to need help in your daily life. All people, autistic or not, need help to live. Think about yourself and the people you know.
Let’s say someone can drive a car, and they don’t need help driving. But, can they fix their car by themselves? Did they build the car by themselves? Did they make all the parts for the car by themselves? Did they build all the roads the car drives on by themselves? You might know someone who does one or two of these things, but no one can do all these things on their own. We all need help.

Autistic people might need more help, so we might go about our daily lives in a different way.
Here are a few examples:

  • Someone who needs help being safe might live with a support person.
  • Someone who has a hard time listening at school might have someone take notes for them.
  • Someone who has a hard time shopping might get their groceries delivered instead.
  • Someone who has a hard time remembering what to do might have a job coach at work.

It is okay to need help. You should always get the help you need, and there is nothing wrong with asking for help.

Autistic people have lots of things we’re good at, and lots of things we need help with. We are not like non-autistic people, and that’s okay. We shouldn’t have to act like non-autistic people, and non-autistic people should respect us as we are.

Only autistic people can say what autism means to us, and decide how other people can help us.

Chapter 2 Resources