I told my Mum that my husband believed he has Autism and my Mum said he can’t have as he’s disorganised and untidy, people with Autism are neat organised and methodical. Is this the case that people with ASC are neat, organised and methodical?
I told my Mum that my husband believed he has Autism and my Mum said he can’t have as he’s disorganised and untidy, people with Autism are neat organised and methodical. Is this the case that people with ASC are neat, organised and methodical?
To answer this, I'd like to present me and my daughter, both autistic and both on opposite ends of this tidiness scale.
For me, I have always been very organised, not obsessively but even as a child I always kept my room neat and knew where everything was. Nowadays with my own family, I'm the only family member who always knows where my possessions are - keys, wallet, phone, stuff like that - because I have a system where things go and that's where they could only ever be. The number of times my wife or kids always complain they lose things and then ignore me when I say just keep them in one logical place utterly confounds me. House keys, in particular, no-one but me can seem to remember that keys go on the "key rack" (clue is in the name!)
As for my daughter, me and my wife almost always give up getting her to tidy it because it is futile. I'm sure she has her own system like me, but to most people it is just chaos, with clothes (clean or dirty) all over the floor, and all sorts of stuff piled up, with so little actual floor space left it's hard to actually move around in it. We hire cleaners for our house and we always tell them to ignore her room, it would be impossible to manage. I believe her thinking is that cleaning is boring (not wrong) and she could actually be doing far more interesting things like reading, which she loves, so she chooses that instead. I think she has an avoidance problem, because she will happily put off anything if she thinks it's not important.
So hopefully that explains it - it depends 
To answer this, I'd like to present me and my daughter, both autistic and both on opposite ends of this tidiness scale.
For me, I have always been very organised, not obsessively but even as a child I always kept my room neat and knew where everything was. Nowadays with my own family, I'm the only family member who always knows where my possessions are - keys, wallet, phone, stuff like that - because I have a system where things go and that's where they could only ever be. The number of times my wife or kids always complain they lose things and then ignore me when I say just keep them in one logical place utterly confounds me. House keys, in particular, no-one but me can seem to remember that keys go on the "key rack" (clue is in the name!)
As for my daughter, me and my wife almost always give up getting her to tidy it because it is futile. I'm sure she has her own system like me, but to most people it is just chaos, with clothes (clean or dirty) all over the floor, and all sorts of stuff piled up, with so little actual floor space left it's hard to actually move around in it. We hire cleaners for our house and we always tell them to ignore her room, it would be impossible to manage. I believe her thinking is that cleaning is boring (not wrong) and she could actually be doing far more interesting things like reading, which she loves, so she chooses that instead. I think she has an avoidance problem, because she will happily put off anything if she thinks it's not important.
So hopefully that explains it - it depends
