Published on 12, July, 2020
My Son is Autistic and my husband thinks that both he and his dad are. His dad says things like Autism means you don’t know what’s going on and don’t understand much. He’s always surprised when my son does understand something. My father in law doesn’t seem to even mention or consider the triads of impairment. Surety if he was autistic himself he would know about these?
Absolutely.
Sounds like your father in law has a quite stereotypical view of autism that he doesn’t relate to himself. If he has never been diagnosed then he won’t automatically know about the condition even if he is autistic. And it affects people quite differently due to the large spectrum of traits. A lot of people who suspect they are autistic as adults come to that conclusion after researching it themselves after seeing an article or video about it that they relate quite strongly to, or having a child diagnosed that is very similar to them
I think some people have just swallowed the social norms they were brought up with and are to indoctrinated and afraid of being seen to be different.
Not necessarily- I strongly suspect my Dad is autistic but he is in complete denial about me being autistic, saying things like ‘I’m ruining my life by not pushing myself more to socialise and getting a diagnosis’. He said he had to teach himself scripts too to socialise etc. So I think sometimes people who are autistic but don’t know it, will not see autisitic traits in someone else as something unusual because they experience them too. Also everyone’s experience of being autistic differs and traits vary a lot. For example I know a lot of autistic people don’t like phone calls whereas I absolutely prefer phone over most other ways of communicating (no need to look at body language, easy to do from anywhere without having to see people).