Published on 12, July, 2020
Being autistic (well, I wouldn't be on here if I wasn't!) and very solution orientated, and always bursting with ideas - I wonder what anyone thought about this...
Having read loads of posts on here, it seems that many people struggle with aspects of their lives that non ND people find less challenging. What if there was a local group of ND people that put their particular strengths and weaknesses on a forum, and they matched up with people with the opposite situation so they could help each other.
I am a 62 year old woman, SUPER organised, "high functioning" and very focused. I'm not afraid of confrontation, but find NT people very tricky to deal with. A year ago, I met a 37 year old young man when I went to trap a stay cat in his garden, and we have become friends. He is very obviously autistic, hugely intelligent and deeply practical, but unable to cope with life generally.
We have had the lovliest friendship where we "swap" skills to help each other. He fixes all my broken things and has made secondary glazing for my windows, and I clean his house, cook him healthy meals and take him shopping as he doesn't drive. He couldn't get an appointment with the GP and desperately needed to see him, and just didn't have the fight in him to persevere so I did it for him and got one. Both our lives have been enriched by meeting each other...
I would be really interested in hearing what other people think about matching local ND people up with opposite skills and abilities!
This could be great. I guess that we are doing that here to some extent.. I have learned lot of things from people's advices here. It's a great idea for the local ND communities to start a gathering aimed to match people like that. It could be something similar to language exchange meetings so people would be free in a space to talk, get to know each other and match themselves. For NDs maybe more structure like filling a small questionnaire online that highlights the skills of each participant and then let them read each others profiles before meeting. When they meet they can do something similar to speed dating when each person meets each one for some minutes to ask few questions for clarifications and so on. After that the gathering could become a regular gathering with drinks where anyone can chat with anyone. I think organising something like that like twice a month so people get to know each other in a safe space before they decide whether to add someone new to their private life or invite them to their house.
That would seem safe to me. On the other hand, I don't know how to do it online where all can meet safely. Online world is a bit more dangerous, and people live in different places (I'm in Prague) so maybe being organised by a local community would be safer and more efficient.