General Autism Discussion

Yeah, this conversation is going nowhere fast. I'll just repeat for a final time—you cannot beat the autism out of somebody.

My particular obsessions shift. I'm fantasy geek, a history buff, a military equipment nerd, an anime fan, etc, etc. What I'm doing at any given time can vary.

edited 26th Jul '16 2:17:36 PM by AmbarSonofDeshar

Well how else are we supposed to discipline him? Loss of privileges is bad to you people. I agree that the belt is bad, but I said that usually comes after an ultimatum. But even then, she rarely uses it. I know that he obsesses over stuff like video games (which he's currently claiming that he hates) and TV (which is an emotional minefield because of poor writing), but the topics he has about school usually goes nowhere productive when he expects us to do something about it.

I don't want him to be the next Christian Weston Chandler by always giving in to him.

Your case is past the point where negative reinforcement is even under consideration. I'd follow the advice offered by the other tropers here.

CWC did not become what he did because he was autistic. He became what he did because he was a dick. Period, end of sentence. From the sounds of things your brother isn't functional enough to go down that route anyway—not if he's in Spec Ed.

Your concerns should be more along the lines of him becoming violent and unable to cope. Which he seems well on his way to already.

Call CPS.

Which is meaningless. He's not learning anything from it—save that violence is what we do when we're mad. Why do you think he keeps hitting you?

edited 26th Jul '16 2:27:27 PM by AmbarSonofDeshar

I said this before, but you need to get your brother online. If he isn't already. It is going to help him immensely. Even chatting on a site like this will help him to learn socialisation and help him to cope, and help him to figure out how to deal with his family situation. Which if not abusive, is significantly below normal.

He is probably experiencing massive stress levels. If this doesn't leave him with severe social anxiety or depression, is probably going to screw him up in some other way.

And stop thinking about discipline. Discipline is for social people. What you want is to reach him.

edited 26th Jul '16 2:26:55 PM by war877

X4 Call CPS.

That is all I have to say to you and I would suggest to the others in this thread that that be all they say to you. We need to move on, it is not our job to explain how to parent without abusing, in fact it's probably off topic.

edited 26th Jul '16 2:27:34 PM by Silasw

Agreed.

Call CPS.

edited 26th Jul '16 2:28:23 PM by AmbarSonofDeshar

So as I got bottom paged I'll repost my question.

"What do the folks on the spectrum in this thread think are their obsessions? Also in the past what have you not considered an obsession until it was pointed out to you by someone that it was?"

7xI don't even... Look. I mean no offense, and this is the last I'm going to say on it, but I'm going to be blunt. You are in denial. You are in denial about the fact that everyone in your family is in a horrible situation in one way or another, and that is what's keeping you from actually doing something about it. You're trying to convince yourself that things aren't as bad as they seem and everything will work itself out when it won't. And remember, you're the one who who came down here and asked what to do in the first place. If you can't accept what we're telling you, than maybe you shouldn't have even asked in the first place.

edited 26th Jul '16 2:31:40 PM by kkhohoho

Currently, I am obsessing hard over tvtropes and pony. And I recently started obsessing about something else, which I am not quite ready to talk about. In fact, I am not sure it would be well recieved on this site.

But my long term obsessions are moral philosophy, computer simulations, and writing.

I feel like if Rabid hasn't gotten the message through his head by this point, there is nothing that's going to make him understand.

What kind of philosophy in particular?

Moral philosophy. The study of systems of morality. I also like political philosophy and epistemology

My current obsession is mobile games, J-pop, anime and worldbuilding. I don't watch a lot of anime these days because of the other three (I am currently watching Monster Strike, Puzzle & Dragons Cross and New Game!, in case if you are wondering).

As a side note, my worldbuilding includes game design inspired by mobile games that I play.

For a more serious topic, I got a misunderstanding with my own manager thanks to his poor choice of words. He showed me a picture of pizza box and asked (paraphrased) "what is the cost of cake box if barcodes are applied on them individually such as pizza box". So, I did exactly what he said and he ended up mistaking it for the pizza box in the picture. I had to redo the calculations for the pizza box in the picture as well. Now, how do you gauge semantic sensitivity suitable for different work situations?

edited 26th Jul '16 4:00:00 PM by murazrai

Yeah, I don't exactly feel 100% comfortable on calling CPS on my family over the way we're disciplined on the grounds that they'll probably separate us based on our lifestyle.

I mean, how would an low-income family with someone who looks like he's been in an war zone for several weeks, an antisocial 21-year old with no job, a mother with an medical condition that effects how long she can drive, and an (probably autistic) stepfather who works at night would qualify as an "abuse/neglect-free" family to these guys? I mean our diet is less than ideal, there's storage containers stacked in 3 rooms, and there's my shoes...

We're planning on taking him to an psychiatrist in SD this summer to get him diagnosed since the school barely did anything but keep him in special ed. But there's the issue of mom's aforementioned medical condition...

Again, if you aren't actually going to listen to what we're telling you, then why did you even ask us?

Call CPS. Your brother is not thriving in your home environment.

@murazrai: If you run into semantic ambiguity, shoot it down with disambiguating questions.

edited 26th Jul '16 5:29:58 PM by war877

X5 Yeah as said, when in doubt simply ask for clarification, generally people are more then happy to help out, it's better then mistakes being made. The difficulty comes in identifying situations where there is ambiguity.

edited 26th Jul '16 5:46:53 PM by Silasw

Yesterday I had a conversation with two coworkers about habits of one of them in his 30s who likes to get to know women who pay visits to our office. I tried to encourage him to be more forward than just knowing their names and admiring them while doing work (thanks to his age I think he would benefit from a marriage), but he ended up insinuating that I am the one who is interested in them, ignoring the few times that I have mentioned that I decided to remain single for the rest of my life.

After mentioning that my happiness will be destroyed once I end my single life, he suddenly made a bad pun regarding it, which is essentially conflating two Chinese words with the same pronunciation. One (幸) means luck (the word that I meant to use and forms the phrase meaning happiness (幸福) with another word) and another (性) means sex (the word that he use). This is borderline illegal thanks to the other coworker is female and such conversation can be constructed as sexual harassment towards her, even though she is comfortable with it.

I am already uncomfortable with this in part due to its legality and in part because it touches on my personal and private life and beliefs which is likely to cause misunderstandings. Then, he claimed that I only watch PG-13 stuff, which causes confusion due to the fact that Japanese (read: anime) PG-13 rating is much looser than local PG-13 rating. (While Monster Strike and Puzzle & Dragons X are indeed PG-13 by local standards, New Game! isn't quite PG-13 by both standards thanks to being a Manga Kirara Time adaptation. Neither of them know any of these anime.)

Then, he said that he has his own collection which filled his hard drive, which I don't get what collection he is referring to and asked him to get a home server. Suddenly, he turned this conversation into outright illegal territory by saying that they are action films and offering to share it (I won't say what they are due to wiki policies, but it is obvious what said action is referring to.) to me. I outright refused him while being both frustrated (I can't make a proper response without making the situation awkward) and angry (he seemed to be implying that I am not a real adult and just a manchild, which the truth is far more complicated).

After he walked out from the office, said female coworker said that it is a phase of a male's life. The problem is, as I explained to her, I have gone through this phase of life before. In retrospective (I didn't tell her because I consider it a private matter which cannot be known by people who knows me personally without understanding my actual perspectives.), it was a very dark period that I have sworn to myself that I will not turn back to it. Not that I didn't watch the stuff at all, but my approach to it has been far more refined, controlled and most importantly, healthy. Also, I tried to explain that in my current phase, adult means mature as in intellectually, thus his stuff is juvenile to me. Thankfully, she praised me for getting past the stage.

Now, how should I deal with him if he tried to do the illegal thing again? It's a good thing that the office was just the three of us when this took place. If he do it when everyone else is here, especially my elder sister, brother-in-law and manager, I really don't know what to do.

While I've talked about autism in the workplace before, this article has a lot of new information on the subject. See, the initiatives to get autistics in workplaces have been around for a few years now, and the results, both good and bad, are now known. So we now have a better understanding of what works and what doesn't.

The article is quite long, so I'll focus on the important new information here.

As you can see, a lot is being learned, and things are improving. But I'm not surprised at some of these results. Like the fact that most autistic employees don't last long in their jobs because most employers don't actually understand the condition. Or the fact that after hiring autistics and changing to suit their needs, companies get better at treating all their employees. It makes sense: no two people are the same, and even though autistics have the more obvious differences, the simple fact is that good communication is good for everyone, not just us.

And that also applies to autistics — no two are the same.

Yup. My point in this case was that no two people of any type are the same. And yet the workplace, schools, etc. are based around the assumption that people act the same way (think "workplace culture"), want the same things, learn the same way, etc.