Feelings tonight

ID: a small creature shouting "Fuck it! I will thrive, regardless" in all caps. The text is much larger than the creature. End ID.

The image was posted November 6, 2024.

"All autistics have low empathy" - This statement is wrong.

"Autistics having low empathy is a MYTH, we actually have HIGH empathy!" - This statement is ALSO wrong.

Autistics can have low empathy, they can have high empathy, they can have learned empathy. The myth would be that all autistics only experience one end of the empathy spectrum.

In spreading around misinformation that autistics actually have high empathy, you are disregarding the autistics who do have low empathy. And vice versa.

Sorry for infodumping about my special interest out of nowhere, you said a keyword and it activated my unskippable dialogue

If you are disabled and impacted by recent hurricanes and need help, call or text the Disability and Disaster Hotline at 800-626-4959 or email [email protected].

I sat with a crying second grader today. (The age range is outside my wheelhouse but I was the most convenient adult.) He was crying, the other adults said, because his brother took a phone he was playing on. “Phone addicted,” everybody said. “If he would get up and play games with the other kids he wouldn’t be crying.”

He told me everyone lets his brother take things from him because his brother is younger, and doesn’t know better. He told me he doesn’t want to play because he’s tired, he has too many extracurriculars this summer and can’t get good sleep because “everyone in my camper is so loud when I’m trying to sleep.” He’s exhausted and only eight. His mom’s an acquaintance and told me she and the kid’s father are going through a separation — mom and four kids left the house to stay in a camper.

But people will seriously not listen to kids crying over seemingly minor things because on the surface it looks like a tantrum. If kids are given the space to articulate themselves they often will.

I’ve found that if a child is capable of having a conversation (that is, old enough to speak and express themselves, not injured or upset so badly that they literally cannot stop crying, and not behaving violently), then 90% of the time their reason for being upset is legitimate, or at least understandable.

Please remember that this also applies to teenagers and preteens, they might be acting like a knowitall who doesn’t give a shit, or a first class jerk, but chances are fair they feel like shit for one reason or another and adults just chalk it up to teenage angst instead

I was labeled a bad kid, punished constantly and never allowed to explain myself when I messed up, and often when I got a chance I didn’t know how. If I asked what I did wrong when I didn’t know, I got told to stop sassing or that I knew what I did. (No I didn’t!)

I got diagnosed autistic at age 15. That was decades ago.

Guess what? When I mess up I launch into explaining what happened to lead to it just to show I didn’t do it on purpose, and then I apologize for it.

And I still get told to stop making excuses at 44 friggin’ years old.

The trauma of not being listened to and frequently accused of being a bad person for how your brain is wired is lifelong. Don’t fucking do it to kids.

I’m not saying never speak to kids who are acting like asshats. They should be told their behavior is unsafe and unacceptable. They’re probably gonna be disrespectful to you, but it’s okay to point out that what they’re doing is unsafe / unacceptable.

Approach it from a “what happened to you?” standpoint instead of “what’s wrong with you?”

Allistic people don't know what it's like to operate with poor sensory processing, just as we don't understand what the world is like from the perspective of someone who can fully detect it, with all their senses. It's fairly natural that they've just assumed we're clueless, even mentally deficient, and that we've assumed they're right. Because most of us aren't actually blind or deaf, our inability to sense and perceive as others do is missed, and the consequent difficulties are chalked up to mental deficiency of some kind.

I don't know which autistic person needs to hear this, but...

Other autistic people who act childlike or have childlike interests are NOT the reason you get infantilized.

The rainbow-haired, plushie-hugging, stim-dancing autistic you saw on tiktok is NOT hurting you by existing.

Let your fellow autistic people be themselves in public.

And STOP blaming autistics who express themselves differently than you for society's ableism.

So many of us have trauma from therapists or parents policing our mannerisms and telling us our interests or clothing were "not age-appropriate". We are not —I repeat, NOT— going to turn around and inflict that same ableism on each other.