Archive for July 27, 2011

For the Young Literal Thinker: Good Children’s Books about Idioms

July 27, 2011 Rachel Childhood, Literal Thinking, Parenting

A few weeks back, my post On Literal Thinking was republished on Shift Journal. In response to it, a commenter made the following excellent point:

I wonder sometimes if all the anecdotes that describe autistic children as literal thinkers may be creating a self-reinforcing stereotype. Any young child, whether autistic or not, who had never seen broken dishes wouldn’t know how fragile they were. The child might reasonably assume that if she had been told to toss them, they must be made of something that wouldn’t break, just like a rubber ball or other toy. In most families, if that happened, nobody would think much about it after the mess was cleaned up. But if the child happens to be autistic, the story ends up on the Internet as an example of literal thinking. That leads to more parents of autistic children posting such stories, and so forth.

She’s right about the dangers of some of the anecdotes that make the rounds on the Internet; after all, not everything an autistic child says or does is atypical. But in this case, there is a difference between the way an autistic child and a non-autistic child might respond to an idiom that he or she has never heard before.

In the example in my post — about a mother asking her daughter to “toss the dishes” into the sink — the child was definitely old enough to know what happens to dishes when you throw them. My guess is that the literal meaning took over in the child’s mind and got in the way of practicalities. When I look back on my neurotypical daughter’s early years, I have no memory of her misreading an idiom in that way.

In fact, I don’t remember her taking idioms literally at all. If she’d never heard the expression before, she’d probably look at me and say, “Mom! What are you TALKING about?” So, for example, if I told her to “shake a leg,” she wouldn’t just shake her leg, as an autistic child might. She’d know that the meaning was figurative and that she didn’t understand it. Similar anecdotes about autistic kids usually don’t reflect that understanding.

The whole conversation got me thinking about a couple of children’s books I once bought to teach my daughter about idioms. They were on one of the homeschooling curricula that we made use of, and they turned out to be a lot of fun. It occurred to me that the books might come in handy for parents who want to teach their autistic kids what idioms mean and how they work, so I thought I’d share a little bit about them.

The ones we have are called In a Pickle and Mad as a Wet Hen, both by the wonderful Marvin Terban. (He’s written two others — It Figures! and Punching the Clock — but since I’ve never read them, I can’t vouch for them.) Both In a Pickle and Mad as a Wet Hen explain common idioms very clearly and succinctly, and both are full of great illustrations to delight the visual thinker. In a Pickle contains fewer idioms than Mad as a Wet Hen, but is still a very useful book. I got them both because, well, the more idioms the better, right?

Here are couple of interesting examples from In a Pickle:

White elephant: A totally useless possession that you’d like to get rid of.
As the book explains, the expression derives from ancient Siam (now Thailand). In days long ago, a white elephant was considered sacred. When the king was angry at someone, he gave the person a white elephant. Because it was sacred, the beast could never be made to work. It would simply lounge about until its owner ran out of money caring for it.

To get up on the wrong side of the bed: To be grumpy
As Terban tells it, the ancient Romans thought that it was unlucky to get up on the left side of the bed. (The Latin word for left is sinister.) So if you got up on the “wrong” side, you’d probably have a very bad day, which would make you grumpy!

And here are two of my favorites from Mad as a Wet Hen:

To pull the wool over someone eyes: To trick someone
According to the book, in the days when judges wore big woolen wigs, a judge’s wig might sometimes slip over his eyes so that he couldn’t see. A lawyer who thought he had tricked the judge might brag that he had “pulled the wool” over the judge’s eyes.

Are you pulling my leg?: Are you trying to fool me?
Terban explains that, in bygone days in England, a robber would use a cane or a wire stretched across the sidewalk to catch a person’s leg. Of course, after the person fell, he was robbed.

Neither book explains the derivation of each and every idiom, but there is enough information in each one to keep things interesting.

I especially like both books because most of the idioms and their explanations are accompanied by humorous illustrations that reflect the literal meaning of each expression. While I tend to think in text, the text usually brings up a strong visual image, and reading these books sometimes feels like looking at a (very stylized and artistic) reflection of what goes on in my own mind. So, whether your child is a text-based thinker, a visual thinker, or both, these books may very well reflect the ways in which his or her mind works and, as such, may provide a good introduction to the world of idiomatic meaning.

© 2011 by Rachel Cohen-Rottenberg

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Interview Posted on the Autism Blogs Directory

July 26, 2011 Rachel Interviews

Hi all –

Kim Wombles was so kind as to do an interview with me about the new Autism and Empathy website. The interview is now posted on the Autism Blogs Directory.

Thanks, Kim!

© 2011 by Rachel Cohen-Rottenberg

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On Language and the Spectrum of Experience

July 20, 2011 Rachel Belonging, Community, Marginalization, Myths about Autism

I tend to tread very carefully in the general discourse about autism, because stereotypes and overgeneralizations abound. Given the wide nature of the autism spectrum, and the varied experiences of autistics and family members, general pronouncements about the nature of autism, as opposed to particular statements about personal autism experiences, generally leave me very frustrated and depressed.

In response to living in a world in which people seem to argue endlessly about which autism is the “real” autism, I’ve made a commitment to reading a wide range of personal narratives. It keeps me from feeling frustrated by the constant generalizing, and it helps me to keep a broad perspective about the wide variety of experience in the world of autism and disability. I am constantly reminded that my experience of autism and disability is not everyone’s experience of autism and disability.

Unfortunately, I recently stumbled across an article that generalizes so dramatically from the specific that it’s taken me over a week to collect myself and respond. The article was written by a woman in my community, Prudence Baird, who has a 16-year-old son with Asperger’s. My husband knows Ms. Baird and has spoken highly of her; I have never met her personally, but she and I are both involved with the local independent weekly. Eager to know more about her, I decided to go to a website for women writers that she helps to run, just to see what sorts of things she writes about.

That’s where I found her article, Naked Motherhood. It discusses autism in highly charged and pejorative terms. (It also discusses the story of Jeremy Fraser, a story about which I have very strong feelings. In the interest of limiting the length of this piece, I’m not going to address those feelings here.)

The terms that Ms. Baird uses to describe autism wouldn’t be a problem for me if she were speaking only to her own experience; as I see it, how she experiences her life and frames her responses to it aren’t open to argument or judgment. However, she takes a giant leap from her experience to very generalized statements about autism that I consider to be highly prejudicial and potentially very destructive.

I want to make it very clear from the outset that I do not believe that Ms. Baird had any ill intent. I do not think she meant to do harm, or that she harbors ill-will toward autistic people, or that she doesn’t see the positive aspects of autism. My purpose is to discuss the impact of her words on me, and to speak to the fact that her words have the potential to do harm, regardless of intent.

Ms. Baird begins her piece with a personal anecdote in which her son is woken from sleep and becomes irate and aggressive:

The popsicle stick-thin figure in rumpled pajamas who is my 16-year-old son stands in the darkened corridor in a fighter’s stance, small white hands clenched into fists. His face, lit by a shaft of light from the laundry room, is contorted with rage at being roused from his slumber—probably by me shutting the dryer door.

…

“Honey, you’re half asleep; go back to bed.” A light touch Casey’s shoulder. Mistake. A tiny fist flies—I duck; a torrent of abuse follows.

“Just shut-up!” yells older brother wrenching open his bedroom door. Then, “Mah-ahm, you don’t ever punish him; he thinks he can get away with this.”

Casey tries to scramble past me, “Fucker! I’ll kill you!” I seize a second jab in mid-air, gently guiding the wrist to Casey’s side as I hold him firmly by the elastic of his P.J. pants.

“It’s late,” I soothe, drawing closed my older son’s bedroom door. “Let’s get you a cup of warm milk.”

But there will be no soothing tonight. The door to Casey’s room slams, and for emphasis, opens and slams harder. I count with eyes closed. Finally, his bed
creaks.

I very much admire that Ms. Baird responds gently and mindfully to her son. As far as I’m concerned, that’s the right response. No argument there. However, I find myself apprehensive about the fact that she says nothing about what her autistic son is going through — why he’s upset at being awakened, why he has such difficulty self-regulating, why he is in so much pain — but concentrates exclusively on her experience and on the impact on her elder son:

I pivot, open the bedroom door of my eldest son who is sprawling on his bed wearing drawstring shorts and Borat T-shirt. His laptop is open to what I hope is homework. He glances at me from under brows stitched together with almost two decades of frustration; a look too jaded for his 18 years.

I well understand that siblings of autistic kids have their own issues, and I am not at all suggesting that Ms. Baird talk about only the subjective experience of her autistic child. I am asking only that everyone’s experience have a place in the narrative.

I worry when I read an obviously well-honed piece, written for public consumption, that does not include any words about the subjective experience of the autistic young man who is at the center of the discussion. Yes, autism can be hard on a family — and it’s also very hard on the person with the condition. I have read innumerable stories about the impact of autism on the family that fail to even guess at the experience of autistic people. Each time I do, I have the same uneasy feeling that I have reading Ms. Baird’s piece — that others will see autistic people merely as burdens and sources of pain, rather than as full-blooded human beings in need of the same empathy and respect as anyone else.

As an autistic person, my heart sinks when read these sorts of narratives. In a world in which the voices of autistic people are so relentlessly ignored, every iteration is another moment of invisibility.

After all, when people read narrative after narrative in which autistics are discussed only with reference to the difficulties of others, the impact on the ways in which people view and treat autistic people can be profound. Many of us have had the disheartening experience of disclosing our diagnoses, only to find that people immediately feel sorry for our family members for having to live with us — even when our family members take great delight in us and do not feel sorry for themselves in the least.

For example, when I was first diagnosed and going through a difficult time, one of my extended family members said to my husband, “Take care of yourself. Sometimes, you know, the caregiver suffers worse than the patient.” I was aghast. Fortunately, my husband clarified that he is not a caregiver, that he is not suffering, and that I am not a patient — that, in fact, he is my husband, I am his wife, and we are very happy together, just as we were before the diagnosis.

Such are the sources of my unease — an unease that turns to outright pain with the next sentence:

“This is autism,” I whisper. “Please. Punishing isn’t the answer.”

As I said earlier, I admire Ms. Baird’s approach to her son; that isn’t what pains me. And I am willing to guess that, in her household, “This is autism” is a shorthand for “This is your brother’s experience of autism.” Unfortunately, because the article was published on the Internet, many people will have no idea of what those words might mean in the context of her family. Many people will only see the words “This is autism” and believe that all autistic people melt down after being awakened, take a swing at family members, and threaten them with bodily harm.

The pain that I feel about it is particularly intense because the person who wrote those words lives in my community, where my Asperger’s is well-known. I wonder whether people who read these words will look at me now and think, “Well, she certainly holds it together well when she’s sitting on her porch, but she must be hell-on-wheels inside her house. The next time I stop by to admire her flowers, I’d better keep my distance and be careful not to set her off.”

They would have absolutely no reason to see me in that light. None at all. But I know that there are people who will see me through the lens of that distortion because, once upon a time, when the only thing I knew about autism were dreadful stereotypes, I thought that all autistic people were scary, too.

My concerns on this score only increase when Ms. Baird launches into some of the most fear-inducing words about autism that I have ever read:

Autism is where marriages and parenting partnerships come to die on the rocks of exhaustion, despair and blind self-interest. Autism wears down families, severs familial bonds with sharp and bitter recriminations, blame and guilt.

I absolutely cannot tolerate it when people indulge in these kinds of generalizations about a condition that exists on a very, very wide spectrum. I understand and have compassion for Ms. Baird’s experience, but it is her experience. Yes, it is an experience shared by other families, but it is by no means the universal experience of autism.

Like Ms. Baird’s son, I have Asperger’s. Have my marriage and my parenting partnership died “on the rocks of exhaustion, despair, and blind self-interest”? No. Has my autism severed “familial bonds”? No. Has my autism worn down my family with “recriminations, blame, and guilt”? No. Quite the contrary, in fact.

My neurotypical husband tells me early and often how happy he is that we found each other, and how much I help to ground him and to help him feel at home in the world. My neurotypical 18-year-old daughter tells me that I’m the best mother she could ever ask for, because I listen to her, give her unconditional support, and treat her with respect and kindness. My friends find me to be a trustworthy and sensitive person. Like most autistic people, I am neither aggressive nor violent; in fact, it gives me physical pain just to think about people being violent toward one another.

In my experience, we autistics are as different from one another as the members of any other group. I have worked with autistic teens who are quite aggressive; I have also worked with autistic teens who are among the most gentle, kind, and sensitive people I’ve ever met. And, from my association with autism parents, I know that autism families have experiences that are all over the map. I also know that, when they have similar experiences, they can respond to them in a very wide variety of ways.

Consider the following:

Many autism parents have not had their marriages and their families torn asunder. In fact, a 2010 study showed that, in the United States, the divorce rate for parents of autistic children is 36%, while the divorce rate for parents of typical children is 35%.

Many autism parents have found that raising their autistic children has strengthened their families, and has made them stronger and more nurturing people.

Many autism parents feel that if family members and friends distance themselves, it is not the fault of the autism. It is the fault of the people who refuse to make room in their lives and in their hearts for their children.

Many autism parents are living fulfilled lives with autistic children whom they enjoy. Are their lives difficult? Of course. Are they happy? Much of the time, yes.

In short: Many autism parents, after the initial shock of the diagnosis and the steep learning curve that it entails, do not experience autism as a disaster that has befallen them. Consider the words of K, the mother of a son with autism and apraxia, who blogs at Floortime Lite Mama:

I realized that the most important story that I will ever tell, is the one I tell myself.

About me and my life.

And that I am not just the central character of my life

But also the author

Its most important audience

And the narrator

And so the story I started to write, has become a story of gifts and gratitude and love

And not a story of loss and fear and guilt

And I see my child as different, even gifted

And I stopped seeing him as broken

I have come to see the difficulties of my life

But am still deeply aware of its essential sweetness

And I find that I am not living in a sad story

Or a make-the-most story

Or even a second-best story

And that the story that began so promisingly with “once upon a time” does end on a “happily ever after”

Because this is my story

And that is how I write.

These words reflect K’s experiences and how she has framed them. I am not at all suggesting that everyone has the same experiences, or that all autism experiences could, by any stretch of the imagination, be framed in this way. I am simply pointing out how varied our experiences and our responses are. If Ms. Baird had simply spoken in the first person, about her own experiences, I wouldn’t have a problem. Not at all. If she finds her life as an autism parent unbearably difficult, I respect the voice of her experience, and I respect her right to speak honestly about it.

But from my perspective, drawing conclusions about an entire group of people based on a subset of experience is not helpful, to say the least. It’s nothing less than stereotyping. And stereotyping of any group, whether based on race, class, religion, sexual orientation, or disability has serious consequences for the ways in which people are treated at school, at work, and in the community.

Unfortunately, the article continues on in the same vein. I hardly have the words to describe my response to the next paragraph:

Autism makes no sense; there are no navigational tools or comfortable rest stops along the path families must traverse on their way towards the inevitable—when they must blindly entrust their disabled loved ones to the care of others when they themselves are spent, the marrow of their bones turned to dust, and all their loving ministrations poured out onto the dry sand of life’s injustice. In the final analysis, the only real measure of the energy expended is the significant shortening of the mother’s lifespan and the distance the other family members put between themselves and the pain that just won’t go away.

It’s taken me awhile to untangle all the reasons that I find these words so deeply offensive. I will begin by pointing out the obvious fact that autism does not exist separately from human beings. So when people talk about autism in such pejorative terms, they are not talking about a disembodied abstraction.

I am not arguing whether autism is intrinsic to the person or a condition that can be separated from the person. I’m not going to generalize about the lives of millions of people. Arguments on that point tend to be fruitless, because how people render identity is very complex and very personal. I only know how it is for me — I consider autism intrinsic to who I am — but how it is for me is not the issue here.

What I want to point out is the simple fact that autism is always manifested by human beings. In the final analysis, when people talk about their experience of autism, they are talking about their experience of people with autism. And when they make sweeping, generalized, unsubstantiated claims that autism significantly shortens the lifespans of parents and tears families apart, autistic people become stigmatized by association.

Please understand: I’ve got a condition that is already poorly understand and highly stigmatized, and sometimes, all I really want in life is for the rhetoric to become more nuanced, not more strident. All I really want is for people to be able to see me as a human being, without stereotypes clouding their judgment. Because as difficult as it is to have autism, it’s even more difficult to go out into my community as an openly autistic person with this sort of language flying around. And for a great many people I know, it makes it impossible to come out of the closet at all.

In the past, I have found myself very isolated and lonely because I’ve been afraid that other people will believe the stereotypes about autistic people. It’s been terribly painful to go out into the world being my friendly self, eager to help and to be part of my community, only to feel the energy shift in very, very clear ways when I disclose my autism.

Does it happen all the time? Thank God, it doesn’t. I have found many people who take me as I am and do not rely on stereotypes. Sometimes, they even ask me about my experience of autism and how it manifests in me. For my recent job interview, the parents of the little guy for whom I am now a caregiver did just that. But when I applied for the position and disclosed my Asperger’s, I was afraid that the stereotypes would precede me and that I wouldn’t even be considered for the job.

I shouldn’t have to live with that kind of fear. No one should. And one of the ways to create a world in which no autistic person needs to feel that fear is to stop engaging in generalized pronouncements, for good or for ill, about what autism is.

I honor people for whom autism is a gift, and I feel tremendous pain for people for whom it is a curse. But a great many of us tread the vast grey area between the two poles. All across the spectrum of experience, we all need to be heard.

© 2011 by Rachel Cohen-Rottenberg

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Guest Post Series: Widening the Disability Perspective

July 16, 2011 Rachel Guest Posts

This month’s post in our Widening the Disability Perspective series comes from Flannery, who blogs with honesty and wit about life with her son Connor at Living on the Spectrum: The Connor Chronicles. I’m honored to introduce her as a contributor to the series.

My Son Connor: Living with Severe ADHD

My bloggy friend, Rachel, has been kind enough to ask me to guest post today and write about ADHD. She is so very smart, and a gifted writer, that I fear I won’t do her justice. Please don’t judge her awesome blog by my less than impressive writing. K? K.

Initially, I was going to politely decline Rachel’s request. Certainly, it wasn’t because I would deny contributing to the awareness she spreads, but because I can barely stand to think, speak, or write about ADHD. On my blog, I harness the power of humor and swearing to cope, survive, communicate, and escape from the reality of this disorder.

This thing, this ADHD, it runs our lives. It dictates everything about our lives, our schedules, our communication, our social life… It is the monster that cannot ever consume enough to be satiated.

My son’s ADHD was diagnosed three months before he turned four and was classified as severe. There was no surprise in this, as we had diagnosed him by age two, when he had stopped napping for good.

It’s not easy to convey the full impact of ADHD to people who haven’t experienced it in their family. The best way I can describe it is to say that my toddler could not physically stop himself from moving. He could not control his body or his mind, and at times it seemed like he was coming out of his skin. It was often painful to watch, painful to see my child miss out on the experience of real play because he could not stop spinning or running long enough to sit and engage with others his age.

With this in mind, and after careful consideration, we began medication. It helped tremendously in the beginning, before we discovered that his metabolism is unusually fast, and the positive results wear off in 2-3 hours. Since then, we’ve been on a roller coaster of trying different medications to help him, and we are still in the midst of that.

They say that ADHD never travels alone, which is an attempt at conveying to parents that there are usually other underlying disorders that accompany the diagnosis. Until we started medication, the ADHD was like a big, heavy blanket with tiny holes. It obscured the mild Asperger’s Syndrome that my son was diagnosed with a few months later, that had only shown itself as small quirks underneath the ADHD.

What is interesting and, perhaps, maddening about ADHD is that so many characteristics mirror those of autism. For example:

ADHD involves hyperactivity, which can also be a trait of Asperger’s.

ADHD involves an inability to focus for sustained periods of time, which can also be an Asperger’s trait.

Children with ADHD typically lag behind their peers in social and cognitive development by 30%, as do children on the spectrum.

Children with ADHD often lack impulse control, as do some on the spectrum.

If my son carried only an ADHD diagnosis, he would not receive an annual IEP and would not receive many of the special education supports that he does now. One could argue that because of the biology of ADHD, that it surely lies somewhere on the “spectrum” of disorders, perhaps at the mild end. But it is not classified as such, and so those children that do not have a secondary diagnosis struggle through school. In that regard, the secondary diagnosis has been instrumental in getting him support.

In my son’s case, it has been crucial to try to control some of the ADHD symptoms in order to address the deficits of Asperger’s. He is overwhelmed by stimuli, noise, movement, activity. He does not always understand facial expressions or nuances of speech, and will sometimes ask what something means, and sometimes not. Calling something by a different name, such as referring to a motorcycle as a “chopper,” is upsetting and confusing for him. Sometimes, a simple change, like taking a different street home, will cause him to become extremely agitated.

For a long time, we found ourselves studying a particular behavior and questioning whether it was “an ADHD thing or an Asperger’s thing.” We’ve come to realize that the two are intertwined, and the importance isn’t in the origin of the behavior, but in our response to it.

Of all the challenges we’ve come across, the single most challenging and heartbreaking one is the aggression. When frustrated or angry, my son will often hit or bite because he is not able to control his impulses. This has resulted in many dismissals from child-care facilities, and there is even one nationwide disability services agency that refuses to serve him because of the aggressive tendencies. So far, not one doctor or therapist can tell me if or when he might grow out of this. It his biggest challenge, and we worry that we will still be dealing with aggression when he is 12 or 14.

This may seem like a bleak picture. However, there has also been tremendous progress and growth in many ways. There have been great strides in introducing new foods to his limited menu, huge increases in vocabulary, and a growing awareness of how his actions affect others. In short, despite the continuing challenges, there is forward momentum.

As our son ages, we can only hope that his hyperactivity lessens and his focus increases. With his amazing sense of humor, zest for life, and boundless energy, he is surely destined for great things once he learns self-control.

In the meantime, we work diligently with his psychiatrist for medication monitoring, and with his behaviorist who teaches him social skills. The road is long and winding, but the view along the way isn’t always dark. It’s also full of surprises and laughter.

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Cognitive Empathy at the Dinner Table

July 12, 2011 Rachel Empathy, Marriage

I’ve long felt that everyone has difficulty with cognitive empathy and perspective taking when it comes to minds that work differently from their own. A couple of weeks back, I had an interesting experience along these lines.

At the dinner table, I asked my husband Bob the following question:

Do you think I’m odd?

Now, if you’re on the spectrum, you probably realize that I asked the question because I wanted to know what he thought. If you’re not on the spectrum, you might wonder whether the question were a setup, along the lines of Do you think I look fat?

My husband, who is neurotypical, was absolutely stymied. Now, please understand that he is a very empathetic man in every sense, and that he is also very socially adept in conventional ways. He can read most people extremely well. He’s very sensitive. He’s the sort of person who can listen to you and make you feel like you’re the only person in the room. He can also can walk into a large social situation and chat it up with anyone. I’m often in awe of his social graces.

But when I asked him the question, he hesitated. He looked very uncomfortable. In fact, he had a look on his face that I recognized immediately. It’s the one that I’m sure I have on my face in most social situations. It was as though he were thinking about all the possible ways he could respond and couldn’t figure out which one was the right one.

I felt a pang of recognition.

It was very clear to me that he wasn’t able to figure out by my facial expression, my body language, my nonverbal cues, or the look in my eyes where I was coming from. So I decided to help him out in a way that I wish more people would help me out: I told why I’d asked the question.

“Honey,” I said. “I’m asking you a straightforward question to which I want a straightforward answer. I’m interested in how you see me.”

I could see he was still stuck. His neurotypical brain was saying, “I really have to finesse this somehow.” And the part of him that knows that I’m nothing if not direct was thinking, “Okay, I should just be a mensch and answer the question.”

So I helped him out again. “Really,” I said, “you must know me well enough by now to know that I don’t ask a question to which I don’t want the answer.”

He seemed relieved, and he said, “No, I don’t think you’re odd. But I do think you’re different.”

I found that helpful. The thing is, he couldn’t figure out why.

We talked more about it the next morning. He was still curious as to why I’d asked the question. Our ensuing conversation was a crystal clear example of the fact that like minds understand like minds, and that my experience of other people is very different from his experience of other people:

Bob: “Why do you want to know what I think of you?”

Me: “Because I’m interested.”

Bob: “But what does it matter? My opinion is purely subjective. It doesn’t say anything essential about you.”

Me: “Oh, okay. Let me clarify. I wasn’t asking you to tell me something essential about myself. I was asking what you thought.”

Bob: “I don’t understand that. You’re the only one who knows whether you’re odd or not!”

Me: “You’re right. Inside myself, I feel perfectly normal. After all, I’ve always been me. But I’m not always able to read how other people see me, because I don’t think like they do, and your opinion helps me imagine how another person might view me. In other words, I’m information gathering.”

Bob: “Okay. I see. That makes sense.”

Me: “I’m glad you understand now.”

Please note the sheer number of words expended to explain my state of mind and where I was coming from. He could not tell until I verbalized it.

Sound familiar? I thought so.

The way I see it, everyone has difficulty empathizing with experiences and ways of thinking that seem foreign to their own.

It’s not an impairment. It’s just called being human.

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On Literal Thinking

July 7, 2011 Rachel Literal Thinking, Word Pictures

I’m always very interested in the observations of parents regarding the literal nature of their autistic children’s thinking. I’ve read many tales of children who take idiomatic expressions literally, with some very humorous outcomes.

Consider, for example, the experience of Fiona, who blogs at Wonderfully Wired and writes this post about her children’s literal interpretations. In one scenario, she talks about her daughter Ella:

“I asked her to help me clear the breakfast bowls off the table and because the dishwasher still needed unpacking from the night before, I asked her to just “toss” the dirty bowls in the sink and I would deal with them later.

So she did.

From almost a metre away.

And they ALL broke.

She couldn’t understand what the problem was, I had said to toss them!”

(google image)

Now, I don’t know about you, but I think that the whole scene is incredibly cute and completely hilarious. (Of course, I didn’t have to clean up the broken dishes…)

The thing is, though, that I don’t remember ever taking idioms literally as a child. I had other forms of literal thinking. For instance, I tended to take people at their word. When people spoke, I’d see the word pictures in my mind, and the words became living, breathing entities. It took me a while to figure out that I had to wait for follow-through, and that people might not always mean exactly what they say.

I also remember an occasion in which I broke down in tears of disappointment after my father used a word in a different way than he’d ever used it before. My parents always used to refer to cupcakes and other baked goods as “goodies.” Then, one day, when I was about five years old, my father brought a box home and said, “Look at all the goodies I brought for you!”

I had images in my mind of chocolate cupcakes with multicolored sprinkles on top. My mouth was watering.

Imagine my surprise to find toys instead! Now, you’d think I’d have been thrilled, but I’m sorry to say that I broke down and cried inconsolably. My parents, who were not the most sensitive people on the planet, just laughed and told me that I was being ridiculous. They didn’t realize, of course, that they had switched the meaning on me, and that the picture in my mind was so vivid — and so scrumptious! — that I felt as though I’d been had.

But even as a child, I loved metaphor and wordplay. They gave me great delight. And I know other autists who do, too. So I began to wonder whether understanding wordplay stands in opposition to literal thinking.

I’ve discovered that, for me, it doesn’t. In my mind, the literal meaning and the figurative meaning work together. In fact, it’s the combination of the two that makes wordplay so much fun.

Take, for example, the expression, “It’s raining cats and dogs.” When I asked my non-autistic husband what he saw in his mind when he heard this expression, he said, “Nothing. I just experience it as a metaphor for heavy rain.”

In contrast, when I hear the expression “It’s raining cats and dogs,” I literally see the word “cats” and the word “dogs” falling down like rain. I also see the literal rain — in fact, the words are falling with the rain and splashing into puddles — but I don’t see visual images of cats and dogs.

The fact that I think in text may account for why I understand the wordplay. Words are symbols, so I’ve already made a partial translation toward the metaphor before I’ve begun. The words falling like rain are what make the wordplay so enjoyable, because my mind is literally playing with the words. I’ve been seeing words in this way for as long as I can remember.

However, despite my understanding of metaphor, I sometimes find myself becoming impatient when people are speaking and using sarcasm, irony, and any humor that involves a meaning the opposite of what is being said. It’s not that I miss the double meaning. I know it’s there. The problem is that I have to work so hard just to keep up with the literal meanings of the words that I sometimes don’t have the energy to switch cognitive circuits and address the figurative meanings. And because I see word pictures in my mind when people speak, and I have to read them in my mind and then respond, my processing is delayed. I therefore find it difficult to switch circuits into the figurative meaning and keep up with the rest of the conversation, too.

It’s as though I’m always working on two levels. The nature of my auditory processing means that I have to work very hard at simply parsing the literal meaning of speech, and that I’m working overtime just to keep up. And my love of wordplay means that I intuitively understand when the literal meaning is not what is meant.

So, when my husband lovingly teases me at dinner by saying something the opposite of what he really means, it can feel very tiring. I understand that he’s being loving. I really do. It’s just that I have to listen so intently that I’d prefer he just come out and tell me what he means.

But if he writes things with irony, with sarcasm, with teasing, with double meanings?

I love it. I thrive on it. It’s like eating chocolate cupcakes with multicolored sprinkles.

So, I wonder how much of the literal thinking of autistic people comes from difficulties with auditory processing, rather than a failure to understand metaphor. For people who think in visual pictures (seeing actual cats and dogs falling, for example), is the problem that they don’t understand the metaphor? Or is the problem that they have to work so hard to keep up with speech that it’s difficult to switch between the literal words, the pictures they call up, and the intended meaning?

I’d love to hear what you think.

© 2011 by Rachel Cohen-Rottenberg

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A New Blogger on the Block

July 6, 2011 Rachel Empathy

I’ve just discovered a new blog called From Inside the Heart. It’s written by Miranda, a teenager with Asperger’s, and it features heartfelt writing and keen insight.

Miranda has been so kind as to write a piece especially for my new Autism and Empathy site. The post, Possessing But Not Expressing, is up today. I hope you’ll come by to read and to share your thoughts.

Welcome to the autism blogging community, Miranda!

© 2011 by Rachel Cohen-Rottenberg

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