What do you wish your teachers had known about you?

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I may be young but I have an old spirit I'm glad to help those who ask

I've only got AS characteristics, so I probably am not much help with what a child with classic autism needs.
I'd just like to ask what country you are in, and tell you that you sound like a great teacher (although in special education I suppose it's different, I struggled getting mainstream schools to understand I had both problems and intelligence)

I'd like to tell you to just be cautious in filling in that girl's words for her, make sure she can confirm that that is what she is trying to say. Becuase I find a lot that people think they know what I am thinking, but they are completely wrong, and I can't tell them otherwise very easily.

Same here.

Not having any private space to think during the day is draining.

I wish that every mind came with an instruction manual describing how each individual perceives the world.

I honestly thought that the world consisted of physical objects and that people were just in the background. I wish that my teachers could have seen the physical detail that I saw and how that made me focus on that detail.

Perhaps then environments (physical and social) could be designed to fit around the people rather than forcing people to "fit in".

I wish that they'd realised that I was trying my best in an overcrowded environment and that I really was behaving in the best way I knew how to at that time.

I honestly didn't have a clue what I was doing "wrong" in social situations and I no idea how to have a conversation with anyone.

I honestly thought that I was being clever and funny, I didn't realise that I was irritating and upsetting others: this certainly wasn't my intention.

I wish my early teachers hadn't just looked at a list of negative characteristics of AS, but had seen me as an individual.

I wish that my teachers could have seen the invisible social blindness, and my detailed focussing on the physical environment.

I also wish that some of my early teachers had realised that a "Goal Orientated Approach to making Friends" doesn't always work.

A support staff member would ask me:
"Who are you going to play with today?"

I'd reply:
"I'm going to play with pupils X, Y and Z today."


This was in the days before I'd even heard of creative visualisation, but I clearly saw the outcome in my own mind. I'd make 3 new friends and we'd all be happy playing together. It was a vivid mental image. If only reality was that simple!

Gosh. I even broke the process down into several steps by myself, (the support staff had neglected to mention how I should go about making friends, so I worked out my own system).

First attempts weren't that successful and were based on the mantras: "Treat others how you'd like to be treated" and "Everyone needs friends".

So I'd march confidently up to the people I'd set a goal of making friends with, smile and say:
"Hello. Nice to meet you. I'm your new friend."

And then I'd talk about a topic of interest that I enjoyed. I'd love to have someone do that to me, even in adulthood to march up to me and ramble on about an interesting topic. That's how I'd like to be treated, seeing as I have so few friends. I honestly wouldn't mind, I'd listen to them. I've listened to lots of people ramble on to me about esoteric and complex topics that they were interested in, so I'm fine with that.


However, me approaching other people in this way doesn't work. I now think the mantra's wrong, it should read:

"Treat other people as they'd like to be treated."

Not "Treat other people as you'd like to be treated".


There's a subtle and important difference there.


When I realised that I wasn't getting far with the above method, I tried a different tack: I basically walked up to each person in turn and asked politely if I could play with them.

This was met by rejection. Some of them were even so desperate that I go and play with someone else that they suggested that I:

"Go and play with my friends."

But I said that I was trying to be friends with them.
They basically wanted me to leave them alone.
After a while, I noticed that they were clustered in little groups and tended to play with the same people every day. I noticed also that pupils X, Y and Z actually belonged to different groups, and that these groups didn't play with (or probably like) each other much.

I'd made a classic mistake: I'd blithely assumed that everyone was an individual who could play with whoever they wanted in school. The truth was that people played in the same boring groups all day every day and didn't make the effort to branch out and form new social connections.


If I hadn't met my "Friendship Quota" by the end of the day, the support staff member would be upset. I was even required to write a list of people I wanted to play with and to tick off the ones I'd successfully charmed. Needless to say, by the end of a typical week, there weren't many ticks on my list!

My parents also received regular installments on how many "social targets" I hadn't met.

I look back on all this and think "What a silly system!"
And what was even sillier was that the kids in the playground weren't told that I was required to systematically make friends with X, Y and Z!


I noticed that my approaching people with the intent of befriending and conversing them has a success rate of about 3%. (gestimate).
I believe that this is where most of my social anxiety has come from. I wasn't socially anxious before people began socially rejecting me.

However, if I hang back and wait for someone to talk to me on his/her own terms the success rate is much higher at 70%. People seem to prefer me to be passive and polite rather than socially active. Perhaps they find me easier to deal with that way.

I reckon that my trying to be assertive and actively approach people actually scares them off. Perhaps, I'm not giving off the required non verbal signals. Perhaps some people see an involuntarily unexpressive or out of sync face approaching them as "creepy".

I wished that some of my teachers knew that I would turn out quite well.

Same here.

I genuinely don't mind if someone comes up to me and tells me all about their interests that are alien to me.

If they sound interesting to my brain, that's great. If not, at least they saw me as someone who would listen and connect, which is cool.

I would have liked teachers to know that shouting startles me (as teachers would often shout at the classes I was in, since most are very noisy.) Also, I would have liked teachers to know how hard it can be to look when they're explaining stuff to the class (I wasn't asked so often to look at the teacher when they were explaining, but some teachers have asked me to in the past.)

Jesus of Nazareth is attributed the quote "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you" and the surrounding works explain the implied end to be "given you were they". It was never the intent to say that because I like when people start arguments with me I should start arguments with other people, it means I want people to do things I like to and for me, so I should make the effort to figure out what things I should do to and for others that they would enjoy. If you were simply told to treat other how you'd like to be treated and not actually given the lesson of the parable, you were done a disservice.

ASD children have particular difficulties with this because of the NT way off communicating. I mean really now, we're going to build our entire spoken language system around the idea of saying the exact opposite of what we mean much of the time? Really? And we're the crazy ones for wanting to just say what we mean? I feel like seth meyers "Really?!?!?! REALLY?!?!"

They probably did do me a disservice.

As for "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you"

It does seem to imply, semantically, to me anyway, that you should treat others as you'd like to be treated not as they'd like to be treated. There is a difference.


Well...I would like other people to talk about subjects that I'm interested in with them.

This is probably true for NT's also.
People like others to talk about them and what they're interested in.


That's the problem.

For instance, I'm interested in organic chemistry.

At school, an NT girl would come up to me and natter on about a teenage magazine with advice on relationships because that's what she was interested in.

The girl blithely and mistakenly assumed that I'd be interested in the same things as her just because I was the same age and gender as her. She was treating me in the same way as she'd treat her other friends and how she'd like them to treat her.

I'd be being just as "bad" if I marched up to her and started spouting random organic chemistry facts, because that's how I'd like to be treated. This is one of the reasons why I enjoy watching science documentaries.

The "treat others how you'd want to be treated" therefore only works if you and other people think in exactly the same way, share the same philosophies and are interested in exactly the same things. It mistakenly assumes that everyone thinks and reacts in the same way. For example something you might enjoy talking about or doing might sound boring to someone else, yet you'd love to be treated that way. Treating someone in one way might not be sensible or appropriate for another person. The same goes for environments people are best adapted to and topics of discussion.

How do you instinctively know how the other person would like to be treated?
People have made faux pas with me and vice versa, when assuming I want to be treated a certain way when I don't. I used to be dragged to parties and kid's clubs because of how someone believed I should be treated, never mind that it was social "hell" for me and I wanted to read a book quietly. It works both ways.

One person's offering of kindness could be another person's offering of boredom and discomfort.


Another playground mantra seemed to be: "An Eye for an Eye..."

I saw that one get used a lot (to damaging violent effect).
Sometimes on me!
A lot of people seemed to gain black eyes from this.

You are just being aspie. NTs love say the exact opposite of what they actually mean. Semantically it DOES say EXACTLY what you think it does. It is not a semantic statement, it is a pragmatic statement. In a pragmatic sense, the only thing it could actually mean is the exact opposite of what it says because NT verbal communication likes to use incomplete sentences as far as we can tell, because the other half of the sentence is in the non-verbal portion that goes WHOOSH right over an aspie head.

I appreciate what you're trying to say.

But, I don't think it's always the opposite at all.

I'm just pointing out that the statement assumes that all people think in the same way.
I've seen it time and time again, people treating others how the givers themselves would like to be treated, not how the other person would like to be treated.

"It's only the thought that counts"
Is a prime example of this.
Person X buys Person Y a gift that Person X desires.
People Y gets taken to activities that Person X enjoys, but person Y finds boring.
Person Y has to go along to be polite anyway...
This happens frequently with NTs.

The statement could be easily misinterpreted because it isn't precise enough.
Perhaps language itself isn't precise enough to account for this.

Perhaps it's quite difficult to understand someone who has a different way of perceiving the world to one's own. I've had to learn this the hard way.

Perhaps everyone's "default setting" is to "assume that the other person thinks exactly the same way that I do".




In a book?
I'm not sure.
There are zero non-verbal components in books.
Where are the facial expressions on a printed sheet of paper?

"Little susie ran towards her mom, arms flappng wildly behind her, teeth shining brightly. She leapt at her mom." What is happening here? what has just been described? "Timmie was always a large boy, and he had learned to maintain good posture through the strong discipline of his father. Tim turned to face the interloper in his afffair, brow furrowed. His eyes flashed as he said with firmness "You should leave. Now." The facial expressions are the same place as everything else, they are printed on the sheet. When they are not printed, they can still be there in a manner that, if you can't read, you don't know is there. Things implied by other things that one might have no context to understand. When a sound takes place outside your range of hearing, how do you know you did not hear it?

If you read the parable, the description of the actions as they play out lends context to the unwritten portion. When people recite it, they do so with a specific intonation and emphasis that helps imply to those that can hear it "I mean this in the sense of a pragmatic parable." Unlike that dry monotone you will hear when they are just reciting rote fact.

Just because the parable is written the way they are meant to understand it doesn't mean they automatically comprehend it. It still takes an applied effort to absorb and integrate moral lessons. Jesus was pretty clear to anybody who was paying attention what his intent was with those words.

This isn't a thinking the same way assumption in the way you are stating it. The assumption is that all people want what they consider good. You want people to help you have the things you find good. So help people have the things they find good. You start talking about your interests because you like when people talk about their interests and somebody appears uncomfortable, if you were uncomfortable you would want somebody to stop making you uncomfortable. So you Do Unto and stop doing.

Of course the rabbis before Jesus taught it more like "That which is hateful to you, thou shall not do" because it was more of a rule against committing violence and Jesus was trying to expand upon what the talmud had already taught jews so they could grow beyond it into something better. So yes, this goes beyond just being a semantic-pragmatic thing even though that is a pretty core issue.