I watched the program with Chris Packham on Tuesday, my mother actually rang my wife to say she would be watching it. I thought wow, my mother is starting to accept my autism. I met her yesterday, the reply to the program was, “ you would think with all of Ken Bruce’s money, he would get a coach and get his son talking.” I had no answer apart from disbelief, I actually did try to explain, as Basil Fawlty said, “ you may as well explain it to the cat.”
I wasn't told that bluntly, but I learnt early on that my desire to talk about "serious" things wasn't reciprocated other people and as I have never been good at small talk, I just stopped talking. And haven't re-started.
I just witnessed my nephew this very evening get told -albeit in a jokey way - to ‘shut up’ as he was spouting fact after fact in an unending stream of words. I was being overwhelmed by several inputs going on at once (how visits home tend to go) none of which I can tune out to foreground only one. So I was grateful when he went silent for a bit, but felt bad too that he’d been made to feel like he was being too much just by talking how he talks. And I know how that feels.
