Hurtful comments - help please

 Thank you. I understand better now. 

Hi Austin7,

I'm only 17 (younger than your son) and no psychologist, but as human beings, sometimes when we're hurting, we lash out. It doesn't make us bad people. Being on the spectrum can be very, very, very painful. Sometimes, lashing out can even be a way of pushing a loved one's limits because we're insecure; we want to be absolutely certain that they won't desert us. Maybe that's what your son is doing when he says these hurtful things? Of course that doesn't make it okay, but as a young Aspie, I'd advise that you allow those around you to support you and keep reminding him how much you love him, whilst reminding him that you can't get away with being cruel to people, even if they are family. 

The other answers have been much more technical than mine and I've hardly got oodles of life experience; I'm sorry! I just really hope that things get easier soon. 

The bottom line is, I never want to cause my family lasting pain when I lash out verbally, and I'm always very sorry after I do it. There's no excuse, I know that, but sometimes it just hurts so much. Your son probably feels similar to me (though, of course, no two people are alike). I'm sure he doesn't want to cause you pain either.

Take care,

LivAgain 

Perhaps if I try to take that a bit further it would help.

Part of what your son is experiencing is a shortfall in the amount of conversational/social information he picks up. There are several theories about this relating to both eye contact and "bandwidth" - the amount of information he can take in at a time.

Ordinarily children will pick up on speech intonation as well as what is said, and will be able to register the difference between a scowl or a smile. They will be conditioned to social norms by the reactions of people around them as to how they should behave.

On the spectrum you lose a lot of the speech inflexion, facial expressions and gestures. In part at least it will be difficult to look for this information. Your son will be hanging on the exact spoken words. It will be a bit like texting without smilies (emoticons). Particularly if he is frequently reprimanded for not conforming he will hear mostly critical and unkind words.

For him therefore other people seem harsh even cruel. So his reactions are likely to be driven by his own sense of pain and isolation. Also he won't be learning any distinctions between harshness and kindness on the basis of which to govern his responses.

Autism is often compared to being a foreign visitor with language difficulties, struggling to make out what other people around him are saying. Another analogy is that ciommunication seems to be through a fog. Except this is permanent - you never really learn the new language, the fog never clears. 

What you need to remember is that what you say is what he hears. It is not ameliorated effectively by your frame of mind or facial expression. So you may need to add in words the information you would otherwise have conveyed by looks, facial expressions and gestures.

All he perceives is a harsh unfeeling world that doesn't understand him. Its not about being self-centred. It is a very real difficulty in understanding and making communication.

He probably really won't understand that you feel hurt. That's part of the condition, you won't really get through to him in the conventional way. You will be a mystery to him just as much as he is a mystery to you. The best way forward is for you really to imagine what it must be like to be unimaginably "different".

It sounds to me as though you need to call on someone for help as you need to be able to share your problem rather than deal with it on your own. Do you have friends or family that might help you deal with this?