I met a friend with autism when we worked together years ago. One day he came to me and said “I’ve been talking to some people and doing some tests and it looks like I might have autism.”
I looked at him for a few seconds and said “wait, you didn’t know?”
“You knew and didn’t say anything?!”
“Well I thought you knew! It’s not really casual work chat ‘hey man, how was your weekend? BTW looks like you’re a bit autistic’”
I have a similar thing with a friend. He’s mid 30s and at that point I am very sure he is on the spectrum. But I don’t know how to speak to him about it because I think he doesn’t know. He had a lot of difficulties in life, both social and academic, and it feels like it could go one of three ways. Either he will be surprised, look into it, and finally make sense of everything. Or he will be surprised and then be even sadder because someone saw him as autistic. Or he actually does know and will be sad that it is so obvious that I noticed.
First of all - don’t think of autism as a bad thing. It’s a perfectly normal (and even valuable) way for someone’s brain to be wired.
Second, a kind and casual way of approaching it is “Hey, have you ever been checked for ADHD or autism?” It’s especially useful if they bring up any of the usual difficulties that ND folks experience far more often than our NT peers.
I met a friend with autism when we worked together years ago. One day he came to me and said “I’ve been talking to some people and doing some tests and it looks like I might have autism.”
I looked at him for a few seconds and said “wait, you didn’t know?”
“You knew and didn’t say anything?!”
“Well I thought you knew! It’s not really casual work chat ‘hey man, how was your weekend? BTW looks like you’re a bit autistic’”
I have a similar thing with a friend. He’s mid 30s and at that point I am very sure he is on the spectrum. But I don’t know how to speak to him about it because I think he doesn’t know. He had a lot of difficulties in life, both social and academic, and it feels like it could go one of three ways. Either he will be surprised, look into it, and finally make sense of everything. Or he will be surprised and then be even sadder because someone saw him as autistic. Or he actually does know and will be sad that it is so obvious that I noticed.
First of all - don’t think of autism as a bad thing. It’s a perfectly normal (and even valuable) way for someone’s brain to be wired.
Second, a kind and casual way of approaching it is “Hey, have you ever been checked for ADHD or autism?” It’s especially useful if they bring up any of the usual difficulties that ND folks experience far more often than our NT peers.
That’s really not true beyond the mildest of mild cases. I worked with autistic adults and it really was not helping them.
Yea, exactly. It’s a tough one, but I do often wonder if I should have mentioned something