Recently I have been interested in the idea of teaching neurotypical people to be better at communicating with my neurodiverse clients. I have spent my career going the other direction: teaching social skills to neurodiverse/autistic people. Perhaps it's unfair to put all the burden on my clients.
To that end, I wanted to generate a Top 10 list of skills Neurotypicals could master to socialize better with my autistic clients. Considering these posts are on the shorter side, a Top 5 list might make more sense.
#5 "Hesitating" before responding to your question doesn't have a typical meaning. Traditionally, hesitating means there's some doubt or skepticism in the respondent. If someone asks, "Do you love me?" and you hesitate, it doesn't really matter what you say because you've just ruined it. For my clients, however, hesitation is often the result of a Processing Speed* issue. Regardless the question, my clients almost always have a perceptible pause before answering. This is often because they're processing the input and preparing an output slightly slower than you. The difference in processing speed between most autistic and neurotypical people is extremely slight, but it is perceptible, especially in conversations. For autistic people the hesitation simply means, "I'm thinking" and not, "how can I let them down easy?"
#4 Autistic people monologue for many reasons. One reason is that it's a gap-filler. They dislike silences in conversation probably as much as you, and this is sometimes how they fill it. Or, some autistic people have a hard time imagining how you don't like what they like as much as they like it, and especially when you ask them about it. Also, some autistic people are happy to converse about a topic they know something about, and their exuberance for social interaction becomes a monologue. Monologuing for the Neurotypical can be uncomfortable, so it's ok to tell them you would like to take turns in the conversation.
#3 Autistic people have a strong drive to be a part of a group, but they're not always sure how to expresses that behaviorally. I have met very few people who say they hate being in groups actually hate being in a group. Usually, they have found being in a group difficult and have experienced lots of failure, so for many it's better to just be a loner. Stand-0ff-ish behavior is based on a real feeling, but isn't always a sign people want to be left alone.
#2 Autism is a communication disorder, and the disorder happens on a couple of levels. Specifically, people with autism can have both an Expressive Language (speaking) and Receptive Language (listening) disorder. So, not only can people with autism struggle to understand others (Receptive Language), they can be very difficult to understand (Expressive Language). I like to give my clients the benefit of the doubt and be slow to get offended by something they say, or how it's said.
#1 Autistic people generally prefer communication that is more literal in nature, especially if the situation has a lot of new information. Neurotypical people, on the other hand, prefer non-literal communication which can be very hard for autistic people to decode. We call this a "Pragmatic Language Disorder" for autistic people, but I have found that it is as hard for neurotypical people to communicate literally as it is for autistic people to communicate non-literally. The two communication types are like English and Spanish. Neither is better, but one is often spoken by the majority. Both, however, can make progress in their non-native languages for the sake of community.
*While Processing Speed and IQ are both related to intelligence, Processing Speed has more do to with "efficiency" than raw computing power. For instance, most of my clients have a higher IQ than I do, but the ratio of their processing speed to power is much more in my favor. I'm generally dumber but faster than most of my clients.
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