What I Mean When I Say I'm Autistic: Unpuzzling a Life on the Autism Spectrum by Annie Kotowicz

Author:Annie Kotowicz [Kotowicz, Annie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Neurobeautiful
Published: 2022-10-01T04:00:00+00:00

Misunderstandings at School

As a student, my motivations were often misunderstood by teachers. For example, many of them interpreted my frequent questions as a sign that I wasn't listening.

Sometimes, when children repeat questions, it means that they weren’t listening to the answer. Sometimes, when autistic children in particular repeat questions, it means that they’re seeking reassurance instead of information. But both of these explanations only apply to questions that have been fully answered. Throughout my childhood, whenever teachers accused me of “repeating questions,” it was always because they’d missed the point of my question. I didn’t know how to articulate the difference between the question they’d answered and the question I’d wanted them to answer, so every attempt to rephrase made me sound like a broken record.

Years later, I figured out that it helps to begin by telling people which question they did answer. This shows that I understand why they feel like they’ve finished answering my question, before I then circle back to the part that they missed. I wish I’d learned this strategy as a child, but I also wish teachers had been more patient with me. What seemed like inattention was really just confusion, and what seemed like an impertinent demand was a fumbling attempt at self-advocacy.

A specific question that frequently caused repercussions at school was, “Is there any homework tonight?” Whenever I asked this, it was treated as an attempt to create extra work for my classmates or earn praise from my teacher. In reality, I was only trying to protect myself from the shame and consequences of having missed an instruction.

Ironically, the shame I was trying to avoid often came anyway, in the groans of classmates and the mockery of teachers. My worst teachers punished my efforts at self-protection by teasing, “Oh, you’d like homework? Well, now that you asked…”

But my best teachers solved this problem through consistency. Either the homework followed a predictable pattern, or it was posted in a predictable place so that no questions were needed—and if I did end up needing to clarify something, those same teachers were the ones who didn’t mind.

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