Nanci Kuykendall

>An awareness of each person's preferences and
limitations can >be surfed without putting up
signposts about it.
>Sandra

I can see here where this idea above would be a
difficulty for those with autism or austistic like
developmental differences. I'm having trouble
articulating this so forgive me if this doesn't come
out right. We DO often need the labels or signopsts
for understanding sometimes. Thinking in greys and
abstracts doesn't come easily. Everything is
specifically defined, to minute detail like the koala
with his leaves, and needs to be specifically defined
for understanding.

For instance learning facial recognition of what
"angry" looks like often doesn't translate to
different people. "OK, now I know and have catalogued
what Jane's angry face looks like for future reference
in interacting with Jane. I don't know what Barry or
Bill or Betty's angry faces look like though. I will
have to learn this in order to porperly interact with
them."

These specifics are present in everything. A
sensativity above and beyond most people's
sensativities and distinctions to things like sensory,
emotional or other input. For me most movies feel
like they are beating me about the head and bosy with
emotion. Understated is best and gives me as much of
an emotional punch impact as something more heavy
handed for other folks. I can't watch most of mel
Gibson's stuff (Braveheart, Passion of Christ,
Partiot) because it's just far, far too strong for me
and I am not only sobbing or very disturbed just a
short way into the film but am also emotionally
disturbed, off balance, nightmaring, etc, for days or
weeks afterwards, with amorphous non-specific panic
and anxiety when awake. That's not entertaining or
fun by any stretch of the imagination, no matter how
gifted an actor/director he might be.

Ironically this inability to turn off or tone down
sensory or emotional inputs is coupled with an
inability to see or dectect subtleties in other areas.
It's often contradicotry, unpredictable and
frustrating.

So in that way there are almost no "generalizations"
happening at all inside autistics, even in something
as common as reading emotion on different faces. This
makes navigating something like the party example you
used really hard, coupled with the overstimulation. I
imagined myself in your place, trying to watch my
husband for signs of discomfort and his needing to
leave and I could not imagine being able to do that.
I can't even hear him talking to me when the kids are
playing in the room at a normal kid volume, and have
to either ask them to be quiet for a minute or leave
the room with him myself in order to hear what he's
saying. I can't imagine remembering and enacting a
reading of his face during a busy social gathering. I
can't imagine him being able to do something like that
either. Instead what we do is have a tacit agreement
in our family to say outright what we need to the
other person(s). In fact he asked me to do this when
we were first starting to date and I was relieved that
he had the same problems I do in that area and so
understood me better for it. So if he was feeling
tired and needing to go he would pull me aside and let
me know. Same with our kids, or myself to them,
although we do try to watch the kids more and let them
know what they seem to be expressing because they
don't recognize or understand their own feelings or
needs often.

Nanci K.