I’ve had an epiphany lately regarding my father and some of his formerly most mysterious and annoying habits.
As I’ve written before, it’s apparent to me that my dad was on the spectrum. Of course, no one ever talked about such things back then, so when I was growing up, the family explained my father’s oddities by saying that he was hard of hearing. Of course, he never went to an audiologist or had hearing aids or any of that nonsense. My mother used to say that he’d been born with nerve damage in his ears, and that no one could do anything about it. I’m virtually certain that she made up that story to explain the inexplicable, since she made up a lot of stories, and she believed them, too.
My father’s hearing issues were very aggravating to me as a kid, because every single time I said something, the very first thing out of his mouth was, “What?” Every single time. It was a reflex. It didn’t matter how loudly or how softly I spoke, or what else was happening in the room. He’d always say, “What?” When I had the patience, I’d repeat myself, in exactly the same tone of voice, and then he’d hear me. When I’d get exasperated with him and say, “Why aren’t you paying attention to me the first time?” his response would always be the same: “You’re mumbling.”
And that response would send me into the stratosphere, because I Did Not Mumble. No one else in the entire world ever said I mumbled. I knew that I was enunciating the English language perfectly well, and I still get an adrenaline rush just thinking about my father telling me otherwise. He knew how much it bothered me because, after awhile, he took on a new annoying habit: when he couldn’t hear me, he’d say “You’re mumbling,” and he’d laugh. And then I’d say, “I am not mumbling. You are not hearing me.” But it never made a difference. It was always “What?” and “You’re mumbling.” By the time I left home, it had nearly driven me up the wall and back.
For several years afterward, I continued to buy the idea that my father was hard of hearing. Then, one day, when my parents were visiting in California, everything changed. We were all in the car; my father was driving, and I was in the back seat. There was lots of ambient noise: highway noise, the sound of the car wheels running over the pavement, and everything else you hear in a car going 65 miles per hour on a six-lane freeway. Nonetheless, I said something to my father. I can’t even remember what it was, because I figured he wouldn’t hear it anyway. But, miracle of miracles, he heard me. The first time. Without saying “What?” or “You’re mumbling.” He just heard me, like a regular person, and he just answered me, like a regular person.
I suppose I should have felt angry, as though he’d been playing some sort of weird game all those years, but I wasn’t. I intuitively knew that he really had heard me clearly at that moment, and that he hadn’t been able to hear me before. I became fascinated by the contradiction, but I really didn’t know how to explain it.
These days, though, it makes perfect sense to me. After all, when I go out into the world, I often block my hearing—with earplugs, a Peltor headset, or both. Today, I’ve been able to wear just my earplugs, and hear people as though they’re at a distance, and say a few words in order to get my errands done. But tomorrow, when I go to my Voc Rehab appointment, I will have to wear the headset in order to block out ambient noise and allow myself to concentrate. In other words, I render myself more or less able to hear as needed.
I’m now realizing that my father must have had the same amount of auditory sensitivity and processing difficulty that I have, and that he intuitively came up with a survival strategy. Somehow, he selectively rendered himself deaf. It’s as though he just shut down his attention and literally couldn’t hear, and his saying “What?” was his signal to bring his attention back up. This strategy also provided him with a way to cushion himself against having to hear everything loud and clear the first time, and thus avoid becoming overloaded by it. It really was quite a brilliant strategy, and I’m in awe that he was able to pull it off. As for me—I simply cannot let my auditory attention wane. It’s always on alert, unless I block my ears. Then, even if I can hear somewhat, the person talking feels further away and the sound of his or her voice doesn’t penetrate my nervous system with anything like the same intensity. Somehow, my father was able to give himself the same experience without having to explain why he was wearing a lawnmower headset to go shopping.
My father is now gone, and even if he were still alive, he would not for a moment accept anything that I’m saying. He wouldn’t accept that we were both on the spectrum, he wouldn’t accept that we both had extraordinary sensory sensitivity, and he wouldn’t accept that I couldn’t overcome all of it by sheer force of will. In fact, he’d laugh me right out of the room for even broaching the subject.
So I’m just left with a new understanding of my dad, and it makes me feel closer to him. It consoles me to understand him better now.
© 2010 by Rachel Cohen-Rottenberg
My dad’s strategy for processing things more slowly: repeat the question. As a kid this drove me nuts, my autistic self did NOT want to hear the thing I just said repeated back to me.
But at some point I realized that this was a way of coping with needing more time to process something before responding (or even making sure he got the question).
People generally want a faster response than I or my dad can give them. Since repeating the question meant he was talking, it was at least better than silence and let people know he was addressing what they were saying.
Also; I heart ASL.
I’m guilty of saying “what” to just about every single question but I really am deaf. It’s an almost automatic response and often I don’t even realise that I’ve actually heard the question until later.
It takes me a few seconds to process the question and fill in the gaps. Saying “what” or “sorry?” buys me more time (otherwise people get impatient and just walk off). It also gives me two shots at the question.
The mumbling thing is difficult too. Now that I’m so heavily into scouts, I often have to tell kids to repeat things. I crouch down and make sure that they’ve got my good ear (and that I can see their lips). Sometimes after three or four goes, I still can’t figure it out. It’s painful to have to tell them that “I just can’t figure it out – sorry” and direct them to another leader but there’s nothing else I can do.
Your dad *might* really have been deaf.
Sometimes I get a sentence or two perfectly – if the conditions are right and if the speaker is having an unusually clear moment – and if my head is thinking about similar things already so I don’t have to make some sort of incredible leap of logic. It doesn’t happen much in the car though – normally there’s too much ambient noise for me to be of any use to anyone there.
It’s funny how being autistic, or having an child who is makes you look around at your family members and think again about what you thought of as their peculiarities. Won’t things be different when instead of saying ‘Granppa ‘s hard of hearing’ we say ‘Granppa on the spectrum and needs to take a rest from the noise’? By the way, I linked you over at mine on a post about what life will be like for autistic people in 50 years’ time: http://paris-ankara.blogspot.com/2010/06/two-thousand-and-sixty-two.html
Karen and Gavin: Yes! It’s quite possible that my father said “What?” to buy himself time to process the spoken information he was receiving. I can definitely relate to the need to do that. I imagine it’s possible that he was really deaf, but from everything I remember, it doesn’t seem likely. He looked so perpetually overwhelmed by everything that my intuition is that he was extraordinarily sensory sensitive, and that life had long ago become aversive.
Sandrine: Beautiful post! I hope your predictions come true. It’s a subject I’ve been thinking about a lot of late, and I’m so glad you posted on it.
I said “what” to my kids or repeated what they had just said to me. Once when one asked me why I always repeated the question before answering I told her that I needed to hear the question twice before I understood it. I didn’t know about auditory processing delay then, but that explanation was true. When my father had trouble hearing what we were saying, we used to say, “He’s not hard of hearing, he’s hard of listening!”
Also, the one of my children with undiagnosed auditory processing delay complains that her colleagues at work frequently tell her she should have her hearing checked, and she bites her tongue rather than remind them that (because she’s in the military) her hearing is frequently checked, and apparently there is nothing wrong with it.
it’s strange to look at your parents and other family members through the lens of what you know now. i really think my mother was NLD, many extended family members are AS. i want to blurt out and tell them, but i think the response would not be so welcoming either.
it’s good that your father was at least half-honest, in a way, that he couldn’t understand what was being said. (he probably really did think it was a hearing issue; there weren’t too many other explanations available then.) i don’t even bother with “what?” any more. many times i just nod and hope i can sort through it all later. it’s not a good habit.
This post totally made me realize that I am exactly like your father, except that I usually say “Huh?”. I used to stare blankly while I repeated what the person has said in my head (like a tape recorder), but then people started to think I was stupid, so I think I subconsciously changed it. Even sometimes I automatically say it when I’ve heard them perfectly because I was “ready” to hear them. My mother used to say all the time that I had selective hearing when I was young, but I thought she was exaggerating. I see that she really wasn’t – I can turn my hearing off whenever I want and I do it all the time. The only time that I can’t is when I have insomnia and I feel like I can hear every noise from a mile away.
Kian, thanks for this comment. I think I understand my father even better now.
Very glad to have helped. I just found your blog and it’s already helped me, so thank you.
I can do this too. Its not so much that I turn off my hearing, but that I turn off processing of my hearing. I can here someone perfectly, but not actually process the information.
Interesting. That’s pretty much what happens with auditory processing disorder, except that being able to hear but not process the information is involuntary.