Published on 12, July, 2020
My son was diagnosed with autism at around 18 however its hard to.know whats autism.and what's possibly caused by his mental age being younger than what he is...for example with everything he will say oh yes I'll just do that..for example I wantdnto renew his passport as if he buys a ber online in the shopping they need photographic evidence at door etc...anyway as we r isolated and we don't have any family and it was covid we couldn't even ask.neighbour to sign the photos for the passport as they had covid...so my son said we'll take it to a solicitor hell sign it...I try to suggest this might not be possible.but thought I'd go along with it as I wanted to ty to trust him and give him independence etc..anyway it was a disaster when he was in the solicitor office the solicitor had to explain.over and over how he couldn't sign the photos but he just didn't understand..anyway he has this attitude with everything he doesn't seem to grasp the details of things which he really should as he is 24.now..I came on here to ask ho I can tell if he is developmental delayed as.i don't want to out him.througg anymore crap with doctors as finding out he was autistic made him suicidal and I've only just got him stable again and I think iff he did find out anythingnelse ia different about him he will get depressed again.
All autistics will mature slower than their peers- some might be 10 years emotionally “behind”, but this is not always a bad thing when coupled with good principles and wisdom, as that essence of awe and wonder which might still be in tact, is something many non-autistics try to regain in old age.
The problem is this: There is a Loss in Translation and this affects everything. And it’s Worse than speaking a different language, because you’re expected to understand and aren’t wired to just learn the new one similar. It’s a different way of using the brain.
Unfortunately, it’s complicated. And he might be excellent independent outside of social “frames”. He may not even know what he doesn’t know. He might simply feel confused and frustrated and stressed and not understand it’s due to a language barrier.
Freud and Lacan noted (nearly 100 years ago) that Autistics weren’t creating Defence Mechanisms. These are different than survival mechanisms which everyone has. Defence mechanisms are created through social-linguistics and contribute to appearing “Mature”. Jung described them similar to an internal “transmutation” where one has learned subliminally to suppress desire and output an acceptable behaviour (an action or a way of saying a thing). If you cannot seem to communicate or understand, that- loss in translation- compounds impact from a young age and much is missed. But another part of the biological difference is the ability to filter out external and internal sense perception.
One thing that’s helped me is just sitting at the library with encyclopaedias, and reading books written from turn of last century when it was acceptable to explain in bold detail how to do a thing when there wasn’t a massive emphasis on “feelings”, which many of us might have difficulty accessing the word to describe. These communication differences ARE the defining line of Autistic being.
My guess is the solicitor may have used the same words but each time with a different tone rather than pausing to think of a more direct and helpful way of explaining. Psychology has provided some great methods for aiding communication when there’s a breakdown between two people stuck in a difficult dynamic (how we are relating with in speech and expectation and assumption). Such as learning to ask “how do you mean” or “here’s what I think you said” (and saying it back).
If you feel confident about certain abilities of his, focus on supporting what he’s good at. See if there is literature he’s interested in to expand his vocabulary and help him learn to notice when there is a communication error. The majority have a bias and an expectation of how everyone should communicate because it’s fluid and easy for them. Unfortunately this leaves those of us who are on the margins to attempt to ask for help understanding and being understood.
When my partner and I got our first passports we were in our late thirties, and we got a solicitor to sign ours. Admittedly it was a solicitor we were using for conveyancing work at the time, but basically all he did was look at us, look at the photos, signed them to say it was a likeness of us, then charged a fee for doing it. So I don't see why your son having that idea means he has a "younger mental age". Was the solicitor unable to sign it due to some sort of covid rules? If he was working in his office he would have been handling paperwork anyway, and he could have sanitized his hands afterwards. Was it because your son didn't have any proof of who he was? (birth certificate, bank card or statement, etc) Lots of people his age don't know about stuff like passport applications, mortgages, etc.
Autistic and neurotypical people often think quite differently and have different ideas about how things could/should be done. But thinking differently doesn't mean there is anything "wrong" with someone.
Your son will have problems communicating with neurotypical people because he is autistic. All of us autistic adults on this forum have experienced that. I suggest you research the "double empathy" problem, which explains this.
What I mean is he has only been diagnosed with autism and not being developmentally younger etc..I'm wondering as of the way he is sometimes