Christiane
Forum Replies Created
-
A few days ago I caught my 17 month old standing like this – what I think of as “my” usual standing position, The Stork. Now I know it’s a sign of bad balance and autism – so early already!
Penelope also told me that both her son and his father hold their utensils like this – not using all the fingers.
Any other physical signs I’m missing?
-
I recently finished listening to her book Love Warrior and she struck me as extremely autistic. I don’t think I would have picked up on it a year ago. And it was interesting how much she generalized her experience – writing “universal truths” that are only universal for autistic women. It was eye-opening
-
Thank you Pam! This is so helpful.
-
OK I just watched the end. How long do we give people to give their guess? Because we need to talk about that 😂
-
Similar reasoning on my side. Unless one of the others is really “acting”.
I chuckled when they said “the mole might not be autistic but have ADHD or OCD or another condition with overlapping symptoms” – yeah 😅
-
One thing I notice in others because I do it too: not sitting “properly” in chairs, but instead sitting on one leg, having one leg pulled up on the chair, sitting cross-legged on the chair etc.
I can’t help myself, but when I see it in others I think “yeah that doesn’t look professional at all”
-
Got it. And it’s very accurate – she will walk up to strange moms on the train and ask them to pick her up and sit on their lap. It’s really weird.
-
I’m glad to hear that. The stigma around autism for our generation is a massive obstacle for progress.
-
Shit! The “bad play” example is something I’ve struggled with my entire life. It’s like either I decide how things go, and others follow, or somebody else decides and I follow. I am very bad at collaborating but only realized recently during this autism journey.
My husband is the same. Nobody wants to play with him because he is so bossy. And then he gets sad.
So we’re a great match – arguing about the tiniest things because we want to be in control, and if we don’t argue it’s because one person has “let go” – that’s not good play either if one person just got annoyed and stopped playing.
So this was very helpful Ru, thank you! I don’t want our kid to grow up with these issues.
Good thing we started couples counseling last week ☺️
-
This is so interesting. What bad play skills look like confident behaviours?
-
Oh wow. Half the times I didn’t even notice anything wrong with her face. And the rest of the time I just thought “well, this charade must be tiring, she needs to rest her face”.
-
I wonder this too about Grace and Frankie. Sure, Frankie is “obviously” neurodivergent. But is Grace really neurotypical? She founded her own very successful company. And raised her kids in a pretty f-ed up way. No way Brianna is not autistic, right? And Mallory – four kids, then divorced – maybe just better at masking?
The diversity of autism in women fascinates me.
-
But then wouldn’t every single lady in that Miss Universe competition be autistic? Is there any point saying Miss Sweden looks “more” autistic as she walks than Miss USA?
-
I look at the two women and think “ooh that’s so interesting, I’d love to have a conversation with them”. I love how Drew sits on the couch because I do that too. And I used to think that everyone’s preference would be to sit like that but that society constrains them. Now I wonder if my preference for comfortable seating is about sensory issues and autism.
One of my biggest takeaways from P’s course is that I always thought that everybody was faking it to a certain degree (I mean, does anybody *actually* listen to the company president’s two hour lecture?) and it’s been a mindfuck to realize that actually, no. For most people this is just their lives, no faking. And anybody who writes online about how “everybody” has impostor syndrome is probably just autistic and surrounded by autistic people 🥲
-
I’ve drafted and redrafted how to respond to these comments to try to explain why it was such a big deal for me. Yesterday’s group call helped me figure it out a bit better but it’s still not 100% clear; maybe you have more insights. Or maybe @penelopetrunk sees something that I don’t. Also, @tatianna has older kids so I’d love to have you weigh in on whether this even matters.
I’m not “pushing pink” because I hope she’ll make friends that way (how autistic would that be 😅). I’m trying NOT to push.
I previously thought that by consciously not getting anything in pink I was making a statement of some sort, like I’m more advanced than y’all with your gender stereotyping colors yada yada yada.
My realization was that going so much against pink was removing choices from my daughter. Of course at 10 months she doesn’t know how she’s dressed; but if I flat-out refuse to let her wear pink as a baby, how will I behave down the road? I’ll refuse to let her do ballet, to dress up as a Disney character, to help her learn how to apply makeup as a 12 year-old, etc. etc. until I refuse to accept that maybe she wants to slow down her career to be a stay-at-home mom?
I saw the slippery slope of me having a very clear idea of what it means to be a successful woman, and it started with not wearing cutesy girly colors and an attitude of “in this family we don’t pander to that stupid stuff”.
We discussed a similar situation in the group call yesterday. A kid’s teacher was telling the mom that her kid is more mature than her peers and while she does have friends, she isn’t behaving in the “standard” way in the classroom. Nothing disruptive, just a smart, kind kid who’s a bit of an outlier. It took us a long time to discuss it and figure out that our initial response of “well what’s wrong with being a mature and interesting kid” wasn’t helpful to the kid.
So I’m trying to work on that. And it starts with not dying on the hill of gender-neutral baby clothes.