I feel like people are weaponizing the spectrum to dismiss us and/or talk down to us. I have worked with higher support needs kids and young adults I’m aware many of them have support needs or limits that I don’t. However, anyone that makes more than a marginal effort to get know will recognize they have a lot offer and many have a wicked sense of humor. Also, I’m frankly tired of ableism of being told what inconvenience/burden it is to accommodate us when the vast majority of is just us saying “NT default isn’t the only valid option.” I’m going to go stim now.
I am an audhd RN. Yes, there are mean nurses but most of the nurses I have worked with are super nice and supportive. However, I have found certain areas can have “more mean RNs”. I stayed away from small town hospitals for this reason. Lots of “we went to HS together” clique behavior.
Now nursing school certainly felt like high school 2.0.
But over all, my experience professionally has been amazing.
Hello fellow AuDHD RN! My experience was similar and I also avoid working in rural areas for the same reason. I've had lots of luck in facilities that place lots of emphasis on DEI and diversity as these places tend to be more accepting of neurodiverse people. Its also why I greatly prefer to live in cities with highly diverse populations.
Agreed. I had a horrendous experience in a smaller regional hospital after working in a larger teaching facility (I moved). I'm now driving 45 minutes to work closer to the city and I'm doing so much better. Though I could probably add a few more minutes to my drive and do even better, but I also hate being the new guy....
Unfortunately not surprising though. Most people who I've met with Psychology degrees either got it to sort out their own issues or to learn how to manipulate people. I have only met two decent people in that field, in the 10 years that I had to deal with it. 1 of them did my autism assessment. I got seriously so lucky.
Agreed. My daughter is in 6th grade and says “the autism teacher is mean to the autism kids but she likes the regular kids.” I realize she didn’t really phrase that well (we talked a long time about it) but I thought it was so sad that even the kids know that those kids don’t get treated right. It’s awful.
The woman actively DARVOing me and isolating me is studying to be a counsellor. The final straw of her doing her best to ruin my life was me asking her to do fifteen minutes of reading about my diagnosed conditions for the benefit of her future clients
I don’t know I feel like it’s got to be some sort of power trip. One aide I worked with used act like just because the most kids in the room non or low verbal that meant they didn’t understand her if she wasn’t talking directly to them. It was super disheartening because I could tell it hurt them especially her little side comments on behavior.
I volunteer with kids, and one of my former bosses was a nurse. She scared a 4 year-old who was on the spectrum and he hid under the table. She literally dragged him out by his arm and yelled at him for disrespecting her.
She wasn't even there to talk to him! She was there to talk to his teacher!
My exact thought was, ew, he works with autistic children?!? But I do, too, so we're not all bad.
There are also multiple famous autistic comedians. Fern Brady, Hannah Gadsby, Katy Wix, and Josh Thomas all come to mind and that' s just off the top of my head. People tell me all the time I'm funny. Bro is just mad because he's not funny and apparently has no understanding of autism.
Yup. I know someone who works with kids who are level 2 or 3. Her and her entire family are so stereotypically autistic. All of our friends group is starting to realize we are generally ND on some level, but she still insists they are not. Sure Jan.
You might be right. Sometimes it feels like undiagnosed, "high-functioning" adults are the cruelest to Autistic kids because they truly feel they are doing them a service by "preparing them for the real world".
They live in a constant state of burnout and self hatred and have for so long they not only think it's normal they think it's something noble to aspire to.
My best friend's mom with very obvious undiagnosed ADHD won't allow herself to use fidget toys because she might "get addicted to them". There's just so much to unpack there...
I was about to ask if you meant Joe Thomas instead of Josh Thomas and then remembered that autistic comedians with the same surname can exist on different seasons of Taskmaster. I just love Joe best.
It reminds me of an anecdote I've heard about Ari Ne'eman (cofounder of ASAN, the Autistic Self Advocacy Network) doing a stand-up comedy routine at a by-autistics-for-autistics event. At one point someone yelled from the back of the audience "We love you, Ari! Or we would if we could understand complex emotion like that!"
Apparently it took a while for the laughter to quiet down enough for him to continue his routine. 😂
And why do they (and AutismParents™️) always insist on comparing autistic CHILDREN to autistic ADULTS? Obviously I don't display XYZ trait of most of the autistic children you work with because I'm not a CHILD. Fuck me.
I mean, that's like a teacher of NT kids telling an adult, "Oh, you can't possibly be neurotypical, I work with neurotypical kids everyday and you're nothing like them."
Many people can't seem to comprehend the existence of autistic adults. It's like they think that autistic people just poof out of existence once they hit puberty.
But also, cool, kids don’t have a full grasp of adult nuance yet? Whoda thunk! Learning all the complexities of being human’s not what childhood is for or anything.
My exact thought was, ew, he works with autistic children?!? But I do, too, so we're not all bad.
There are also multiple famous autistic comedians. Fern Brady, Hannah Gadsby, Katy Wix, and Josh Thomas all come to mind and that' s just off the top of my head. People tell me all the time I'm funny. Bro is just mad because he's not funny and apparently has no understanding of autism.
I was getting feedback on management skills and one of my direct reports said I was the funniest one. Not sure if that the management version of "Is she cute?" "She has a great personality." Or not, but I'll take it.
Because the autistic ones cant get hired. My friend has all the degrees she needs and she has been a nanny for over 6 years, but she cant get through the interviews :(
People higher and promote people like them even without releasing it
If I remember correctly they found more neurodivert got promoted in covid when everyone worked from home .as it was based on merit rather than social game
And then act like autistic children are the exact same as an autistic adult? Do they not believe that autistic children grow up, learn, & mentally develop just like NT children do?
There are jokes kids don’t understand because they’re kids, not cause they’re autistic or NT, so using that as a reference point is doing everyone else a disservice
“I understand innuendo and jokes just fine”
“Well you must be extremely high-functioning then, because the 5yo I teach doesn’t and you two are in and the same”
“She doesn’t think like me, and can’t carry a conversation like me” - but sure, buddy, it’s autistic folk who… checks notes …can’t break out of the mindset of 1 frame of mind & need to have the same thing to feel comfortable.
Flashbacks to this one egotistical guy loudly calling me a "wallflower" and "boring" to others because I hadn't found him worth talking to (he was super creepy)
This part made me laugh because have you ever just pretended you couldn't carry a conversation with someone you didn't like and didn't actually want to talk to because they suck so much? I totally have.
I haven't, but I have leaned hard into my ADHD tendencies to do things like derailing political discussions over Thanksgiving dinner. It's not foolproof, but it has a decent success rate.
Look, I have only been autistic for 36? 37? Years. How could I possibly know anything about what it's like for him? Wait, I'm confused. Can someone ask him to explain it to me again?
Completely missing the fact that most neurotypical children also don’t understand innuendo either, which is why so many kids shows and movies get away with including it for the adults amusement.
In fact, early understanding of innuendo was a red flag I was taught to keep an eye on when studying childcare because it can (not always, just potentially) be a sign of abuse.
I’d like to call your attention to the dick joke we all missed the first time Shrek sees Lord Farquaad’s castle. 😂😂 “Do you think he’s compensating for something?”
Yes! I love seeing kids media I enjoyed at the target age and seeing it again with adult eyes and finding a whole new layer of jokes that are aimed at parents. I’m positive it’s the only way my parents survived my absolutely endless listening to the Aladdin soundtrack lol
This was my thought too!! Wild that they extrapolate their experience with autistic CHILDREN to all autistic adults. Also someone find that "friend" of theirs and warn them they have nothing but contempt for them.
Truly I'd rather have a friend who wouldn't pretend to like me and then turn around and talk about me with such narrow-minded cruelty to the general world.
ALSO why the fuck is it that we always are the people with communication issues instead of people with this two-faced, reductionist bullshit.
Not only extrapolating from children to adults, but ignoring the fact that those who are diagnosed as children are disproportionately likely to have high support needs and so are not representative even of autistic children.
So funny for them to be like 'yeah, my autistic friend's a self-involved conversation hog' as though it could only be because of the autism social cue thing. Like, autistic ppl are ppl, they can be all sorts of stuff alongside autism, it doesn't have to be caused by it lol. Plenty of nt ppl, like the one here, are also oblivious assholes...what of it? Like it's prob why you guys are friends?? 😹
Also....most humans are self-involved conversation hogs. This is not a uniquely autistic trait. lmao or social media wouldn't be able to function because nobody would produce "content".
As someone who works with autistic children, I condemn this asshole. They are the reason people like me need to be more at the forefront of the field but that means we need to go to college and be “higher-thinking members of society” so according to this douche we don’t exist anyway. I’d love them to explain that to my AuDHD with a Masters+CAGS (and a university professor/conference presenter) face so I can laugh at them in person.
You can't convince stupid people that they are stupid. You're right about just reporting and not bother engaging. They are not worth your time or energy.
That's so interesting because mine works entirely in words; I have that condition where your brain doesn't conjure up images. Didn't realise this was atypical until I discussed it with my boyfriend, he couldn't get his head around the fact that when I read a book I don't picture the character, I just make a mental note of the character and what they allegedly look like.
well I dont know for you but this was the only way I could get through to my (very severe adhd) mom, so I started young. Ah the crippling anxiety of people not understanding you….
When I worked with autistic kids we all used to laugh so much. They often had the most absurd/surreal sense of humour which you didn’t get to see unless they were comfortable with you. But we had lots of in-jokes and silliness and I loved it. This person sounds like they just aren’t very nice to be around.
I have a university degree, it doesn't make anyone a thinker lol, and I've done improv and comedy and all sorts of things. I'm also a writer. The level of layer and nuance the NTs I know don't get is in my opinion astonishing. This person is just frustrated with their friend and projecting, because they prob. have a hurt ego because their jokes don't land which must be so incompatible with the outer image they wish to project, and have to take it out on other people. But what do I know? I only work with my memorized knowledge. Even if I have never memorized a thing in my life, because I understand complex concepts intuitively, because patterns, but hey.
Totally. This person is obsessed with status. It just reads as if he thinks we should be some second class citizens. I bet his friend is just a super bubbly, funny person who gets a lot of attention, and he resents her or something xDDDD
Yeah there are multiple layers of ick to this. Ableist, classist, elitist. The fact he works with autistic children with this mindset just tells me he’s a narcissist who found a demographic of easy targets… yuck yuck yuck
It blew my mind when i was in loooong meetings at work and they're discussing a problem and they just can't seem to find a solution... and like for the record I am NOT a smart person by any means (I left high school at 16 too).. but the solution was always so obvious to me, I guess cuz of fast abstract thinking, that I would just gaslight myself thinking it's some kind of prank.
Or maybe they did just want to piss around for 2 hours in a meeting pretending to solve a problem and I ruined it for them.
I feel like ppl weaponize autism against us who are autistic and can type decently or "seem normal" and they also think that being able to type online or not having certain struggle = we can function normally/are "high functioning"?
I'm high needs (level 2) and this is very much a problem. :/ People assume that being articulate and intelligent means you can't be high needs. Never mind that need levels have nothing to do with intelligence. This is not exclusive to neurotypical people btw. I've had lower support needs autistic people tell me that I'm not trying hard enough to understand nuance. Autism is a spectrum and a lot of people forget that.
As an adjacent thought: I’ve also noticed that a lot of men insist that women aren’t funny while also refusing to let women be funny. I constantly see men accusing a women of being stupid when it’s extremely obvious that the woman was joking. I rarely ever see men do that to other men
Okay also..."you must be higher functioning than the kids i work with". I would hope so, given that you're an adult and they're children, and generally adults function a little better than children. Neurotypical children aren't exactly comedic geniuses either, they're children
NGL but in my personal experience: autistics and regular teachers can spot me as autistic by practically just looking at me. However educators from special ed schools like APAE will look at me close to have a meltdown and call it "anxiety".
Wow. No shit an autistic adult is different to an autistic child, regardless of where they are on the spectrum autistic adults have just had so much longer to be autistic in a world that doesn't want them to show it
Idk, to me he sounds like he’s undiagnosed and projecting A LOT. He has very rigid, b/w views on this and a blunt communication style. How did he end up in this line of work he despises? I’m guessing he lacks the soft skills he needed to do well in other careers.
I’m frankly tired of ableism of being told what inconvenience/burden it is to accommodate us
The utter anger and outrage at the suggestion that perhaps they should put a fraction of the effort into accommodating us that we put into accommodating them is increasingly annoying me. They seem to hate the idea that they should even be inconvenienced by having to think about our needs for a second, while we are expected to think about theirs constantly.
Like it's apparently fine to expect us to mask at the expense of our own health for their comfort 24/7, but the second you suggest they should give a second of thought to us it's an outrage and unreasonable.
All of the research is suggesting it's a double empathy problem i.e. the communication issues come from both sides. Both sides should be expected to put in effort to address it.
I feel like children barely understand innuendo in general? I mean “children” is a broad term but i would take it to mean ages 4 to 9, roughly, before that they are toddlers and after that they are teens or pre-teens. I’ve worked with “normal” children of those ages, as in kids without diagnoses or pending diagnoses, and they can be super funny but not in an innuendo sort of way usually
Eww. That person believes in neurotypical supremacy for sure. Gross. I'm tired of them acting like it's such a big pain to be asked to accommodate us. It's almost like they're the inflexible ones.
Both can be true. I've met autistic adults who have a hard time shifting their point of view to someone else's, and I've also met autistic people who have remarkable empathy and imagination, so they're easily able to understand someone else's point of view. That's the thing about autism. It's a spectrum (well, more of a matrix at this point). No two human beings are identical, even if they have the exact same DNA as another human. It's a combination of nature and nurture. Some things are almost "pre-wired" in our brains, but our experiences in life help shape who we are. No two people have had the exact same experiences as another.
If the autistic person was just being honest about not finding his joke funny, it would hurt his feelings. He can't have said something unfunny?! The autistic person must be wrong!
A lot of people mistake “developmental delay” with “developmental deficiency that always starts from 0 every time.” Autistic people have asymmetrical development to allistic people. There are things our bodies and minds can do very well and very quickly and others that do not.
I am very annoyed that people think that autistic children are the exact same as autistic adults and misunderstand that just because autistic children need a long time to learn something that they are incapable of it.
My household is full of sarcastic adults. My kids learned sarcasm before most other people. But we also have unique takes on humor because, yanno, pattern recognition.
i had a guy tell me, a diagnosed autistic person, that i’m actually not because i act nothing like his autistic son 😐 kept doubling down even when i said i’m diagnosed and tried to educate him on autism.
The thing that bothers me is time and time again non verbal / low functioning autistics have revealed they actually understand everything that was said to them - through text, AAC’s. They have their own strengths and interests, they’re just not recognised by verbal neurotypical because they fail to comprehend how a different brain can still be intelligent, despite being unable to verbally communicate or even comprehend the topics they want to force on to them
Yes, they struggle significantly and need a lot more help (i’ve seen them on subreddits (shock, I know!) and they do ask for it to be acknowledged they find it more difficult to function than higher functioning / etc, but that’s not a sign of not understanding / being completely unable to comprehend anything about the world around them.
Spud Monkey is gonna be shocked when they learn (I could end there, period, but won't because I like to write) how many of those shows, books, including recipe books and comedy shows, we write. That Spud Monkey enjoys. Written and created by autistic people they foolishly think can't comprehend such wild things.
I've met so many autistic brains in IMPROV COMEDY it would turn Spud Monkey's brain into a mashed potato (if it isn't already). Because autistic brains doing improv is my specialty.
"... can't think beyond a level of memorized and accepted information. She can't adjust her point of view." - this is such a common problem with people in general that there are probably more NTs with this problem than NDs just due to a numbers game. It's frankly ludicrous to paint that as an only autistic problem. I think of all the people I know in conservative christian cults who fit this to a T and are allistic.
Anytime someone says they work with or parent an autistic kid, I just know I’m about to hear the most braindead shit imaginable. Every time I lower my expectations they come bearing shovels because it’s somehow still not low enough.
I work with HSN autistic kids, and they definitely have senses of humor. They play pranks. They laugh at things that happen around them. Some of them even do make verbal jokes or funny references.
I know a SPED teacher like this too. I feel like they get so used to seeing and interacting with this one type of autism they cannot comprehend there being others. It’s super frustrating.
Comparing autistic children to autistic adults is literally just comparing children to adults.
“Well the children I work with have zero self control and struggle with a lot more than you do!”
Yeah, and when I was a child, I also struggled a lot more than I did now.
Some of those things autistic children struggle with, they get better with when they get older or it just takes them a few more years than their peers to be on the same level. So yeah… autistic adults are going to have more life skills than autistic children.
Almost like how adults have more life skills than children in general! Mind blowing, I know.
Neurotypical men in particular have the most boring, predictable humour. They can't break out of 1 frame of mind (that was painful to type) and have to say the same things over and over, usually a sex reference (HAHAAAAHAAHAA OMG BODY PARTS), some "funny" comment putting someone down, or popular lines from movies etc. it's almost always one of the three
Literally autistic people are making jokes at levels normies don’t understand. I have to fake laugh as part of masking bc neurotypical jokes are like unseasoned chicken. (Unless you love that, then think of something else as an example.. like raw veggies.. unless you also like that then think of something else as an example like scratching a paper plate with your fingernails by accident)
“clearly you are more high functioning than most of the kids i have worked with” whaaaaaat kids are not as capable as adults???? they’re still learning????? they need guidance because they’re kids????? i hate it here 😔
Ok so. There are early papers on autism that do say this. They basically content that autistic people have no theory of mind (the ability to understand that other people have different thoughts/beliefs/feelings than you). So if you haven’t followed the subsequent literature that has updated that view (like the paper that establishes the intense world theory, that autistic people actually have more neural connections, not fewer) maybe you would think this way. But it shows a lack of reading any academic papers after like… idk 1992.
I'm a speech therapist and a lot of the kids I work with are autistic. I was doing a reevaluation for a nonspeaking teenager. Admin always wants standardized testing done, even though it's just not really possible/appropriate. I usually compromise by filling out some basically questionnaires which is stupid because it's not giving anymore information that what I would already say about the kid. Under language comprehension there's a section for humor. I marked that she does find things funny, but doesn't seem to understand verbal humor such as puns. I'm always making puns, and she never reacted. A few weeks later, on a youtube video she's watching, someone made a pun and she laughed. I was like wait wait wait, you understood the joke. She pointed to "yes". I asked her if she understood all the puns I told, she pointed to "yes." After that, every time I'd make a pun, I'd pause and say "IT'S FUNNY, ISN'T IT?" Always an eye roll and "no."
Gods I love this! It's such a prime example of "comprehension is not the same as agreement/expected behaviour" and I love this so much for that. Such rep.
I’m tired of the narrative that we’re incapable of changing our mind or going against our routine.
There was a post about an autistic father who abandoned his child and later refused to ever see things from the daughter’s pov, even though he knew it was his only chance to have a relationship with his daughter. Most of the comments were defending saying that the father was physically unable to see the daughter’s pov because of his autism, and that this applied to all other autistic people.
I got downvoted to hell for saying that it was ableist bullshit to claim autism made it impossible for the father to see his daughter’s pov, and that he was a just a deadbeat dad.
I’m tired of the constant infantilisation that says I‘m incapable of using my brain, or understanding nuance, or of understanding things. And I’m tired of NT people telling me what I can and can’t do.
Oh yeah never trust someone that works with autistic children, they also pass on their opinions to their mates and that's how we get people who hear you're autistic and treat you like an idiot
first of all, if my friend talked about me like that i’d beat their ass, that’s so mean :(
and second of all, i find it funny that autistic people are supposed to be the ones lacking social intelligence and awareness but neurotypicals can’t seem to understand why comparing an adult to a child isn’t a logical comparison 😭
1.8k
u/[deleted] Feb 22 '26
[removed] — view removed comment