Daughter's boyfriend told me he was on the spectrum

Japen said:

He is absolutely lovely. He is polite, kind, a good conversationalist, kind to animals. So I was shocked to learn yesterday that he is on the spectrum

Sorry if I'm reading this wrong but what you've said here kind of implies that you think that someone on the spectrum couldn't be lovely, polite and kind or a good conversationalist. Is that what you mean?

Sort of. I understood it that autism meant that social skills such as conversation didn't come easy to those on the spectrum, and often they come across as rude because of the lack of conventional social skills. The couple of children I taught at school never spoke.

Sort of. I understood it that autism meant that social skills such as conversation didn't come easy to those on the spectrum, and often they come across as rude because of the lack of conventional social skills. The couple of children I taught at school never spoke.

Thank you for your kind and useful comments.

Japen said:

I understood it that autism meant that social skills such as conversation didn't come easy to those on the spectrum

It perfectly possible that they don't come easily to him. All that you can see of him is his behaviours as he shows them on the outside, and when we've grown up our whole life with autism, we can become very good at hiding just how hard we're working beneath the surface to present ourselves as (we believe) other people think appropriate. So although what you see looks the same as "typical" behaviour, he's probably achieving it in a very different way than you do (the old adage of the graceful swan paddling furiously away beneath the water is very appropriate). Some of us are able to use these compensating strategies better than others, of course, depending exactly how our personal form of autism affects us - it's generally much more difficult for autistic people who have learning or language disabilities, for example.

The reason that he may still need some support is because masking our autism in that way can be extremely mentally demanding. However intelligent we may appear on the surface, there can still be surprisingly common, everyday things that we find difficult, especially when the "brain drain" of being around other people wears us down from time to time. Reading the intelligent, witty replies here, you might find it hard to imagine how many of us might struggle with things like going shopping or making sure that we eat enough, but it's not unusual for our "intelligence" to be a bit paradoxical like that.

From what you've said so far, you sound like a very tolerant and open-minded person - and those are by far the most important qualities that you'll need to get along well. The only other thing I'd suggest is to make him aware that if he has any specific problems (for example, extra sensitive senses, like with his eating) that it's OK for him to be open about them, and he'll teach all you need to know as you go along (and you can always pop back here if not!)

Wow - these are brilliant! I have a better grasp now, thank you so much.

Thank you xx

You're welcome. There's a couple of good articles here that might help:

https://theaspergian.com/2019/05/04/its-a-spectrum-doesnt-mean-what-you-think/

and

https://the-art-of-autism.com/understanding-the-spectrum-a-comic-strip-explanation/

I'm not going to be offended by anyone here :) I appreciate anyone taking the time to comment because I really know nothing so I'm learning from scratch. Thanks for your reply.

Ah :-) I understand now. Thanks so much for clarifying and not reacting badly to my question (which I was quite anxious about asking tbh but felt that I had to).

That's the thing about the spectrum - it's a spectrum :-).

If you hang around here, you'll learn an awful lot about it.

One thing that some (most?) of us have is called black and white thinking - in my case it has helped me in my career as I can analyse anything logical with the precision of a scalpel, but also - as I think just happened - take things literally. If you want to understand why I interpreted your meaning the way I did, imagine saying "He's lovely, a great conversationalist, so imagine my surprise to find out that he's gay (or black, or white, or Christian or ... or ...)"