Caption: When you ask an Autistic person to do something, make sure to attach a timeframe like “today,” “or at 3 PM,” (avoiding demanding words like “now”) and a definite personalization of who needs to do the thing that is being suggested. If one or both of these things is missing from your request, we will not see them as a request, but a passive statement, and it will not get done.
Image: 2 panels with an alien speaking to a person. One panel is labeled “incorrect” and the other “correct”.
Incorrect: The alien’s statement is written in a bubble shaped like an arrow. It points from the alien’s mouth to the person’s ear, stating, “The trash needs to be taken out.” There is another empty arrow pointing out of the person’s other ear.
Correct: The alien’s statement is written in a similar arrow, stating, “Please take the trash out in a minute.” The person responds, “Sure.” There is no other arrow pointing out of the person’s other ear.
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My partner will ask me to do something. I will agree and since I’m usually doing something else at the time, I will continue to do that thing. Then 10 minutes later she gets huffy and does the thing. I’ve been trying to follow up her requests with “Now or when I’m finished?” but it depends how distracted I am whether or not I remember to ask.
Don’t ask that, just say “yes, when I’m finished here”, unless it’s something that obviously needs to be done right then like, “a wild bear just walked through our front door”, or less dramatic “can you deal with the spider in our shower please?”.
One evening for dinner as a change, I asked my 11 year old Aspergers son “do you fancy a walk to McDonald’s for dinner tonight?”
He said no, which puzzled me because he loves McDonald’s.
But of course I said "do you fancy a walk " which he didn’t.
his love for McDonald’s was overshadowed by his distaste for walking. As a fellow Lemmy basement dweller, I feel like most of us can relate.
lol, I didn’t get it either until the last sentence
Yo. That’s just manners.
The flip side is when we accidentally train ourselves to be a people pleaser by treating every ‘update’ like in panel 1 as a direct request and end up doing ridiculous things because we think it’s expected of us.
oof, yes. been there. not going back.
This is our entire workplace. Delegation to the air is very common. “Someone should look after xyz while I’m gone. Bye!”
While ‘Someone’ is a weird name, they do all the work around here.
Minor aside, loving the depiction of NT as cryptid
TBF, I am a cryptid, so this is a totally valid representation
You should always ask anyway. Telling people to do something, including friends and family, is fucking rude. The time table is probably good for non-autistics too.
Ignore
Alien
Orders
Why does he have to wait 60 seconds?
I don’t know if it’s the same with autism, but I have read about and experienced something that impacts people with ADHD called demand avoidance, where asking someone to come help with a task or complete a task right now really fucks me up. It completely interrupts the flow of what I’m in the middle of, and I also can feel really frustrated about the demand for no good reason.
Giving me a timer, even a short one, gives me time to mentally transition at my own pace. I assume for a “normal” person its easy to just say “yeah, in a minute”, but demand avoidance comes with a pretty strong emotional reaction (frustration, anger, guilt) that is absolutely irrational, but can’t be helped.
Like I said, no idea if this is a thing with autism and I don’t feel like researching it. Maybe for people with autism is more about routine and planning but idk
Edit: realised after I wrote this response that there is a good chance you’re just joking about the literal interpretation of the phrasing used in the comic, and that you know all this already, but I’m leaving it up for posterity.
I was being lighthearted by converting it to seconds, but I was genuinely curious if that was part of communicating with autists. I was wondering if it’s something like what you described, or if it would mess them up further because then they might count down the seconds, thinking that was a literal request. That’s really interesting how you respond, and I’ll keep that in mind when communicating with people who have ADHD. Thanks for the informative answer!
I think you have this backwards lol. This applies more to non-autistics. If you ask them something like “Take the trash out”, they can get all aggro.
I’ve tried to replace the lack of time from by it meaning “right now”, but yeah, the first panel doesn’t seem like a request, just a statement to me lol.
