Provide Safety and Foster Independence by Answering Your Autistic Loved One’s Many Questions

“Why do we do it this way?”

“Why is everyone mad?”

“What does this mean?”

“What did I do wrong?”

As an autistic/ADHD person, I’m both a bottom-up thinker and an explicit learner, so the way I learn new information is by asking lots of questions and getting detailed explanations in response. The more details I receive, the better chance I have of forming a complete picture in my head of what’s expected of me–and being able to carry out that task.

Also, since I learn explicitly (by being directly told or taught) instead of implicitly (from unspoken context and environmental cues), having my questions answered helps me form a mental map that will help me eventually do the task unassisted from a combination of long-term and muscle memory.

Not Answering Questions Harms Development

When you are a bottom-up thinker and explicit learner surrounded by top-down thinkers and implicit learners, you often strike feelings of frustration, annoyance, and disbelief in anyone of the latter neurotype who is trying to teach you. Moreover, this happens very early in life, when you’re just learning the basics of self-care, socializing, schoolwork, navigation, and play.

While these interactions may seem like no big deal to the annoyed adult being asked the questions, not having them answered can have a lifelong negative impact on the child as they grow up and have ever more complicated expectations placed on them.

For example, let’s say a 10-year-old bottom-up thinker/explicit learner asks a question about a social interaction she doesn’t understand, and the adults in her life roll their eyes, sigh, insist that she already knows the answer, and just pretending not to know for attention, she will not learn.

Let’s say, at 12, this same bottom-up thinker/explicit learner asks a similar question of different adults, hoping they will help her. Again, she runs into the same disbelief, scorn, and shame for not knowing what she “should know” at nearly a teenager, and her question is, once again, left unanswered. She will not learn.

Unlike her neurotypical peers, she will not automatically get context cues from others or from being in the situation she’s asking about, so she will remain ignorant and be forced to grow and develop around whatever life question it is she does not have a direct answer to.

Now, imagine the same thing happening to her at 15, 20, 25. She still doesn’t know. There’s a piece of information missing that she desperately needs because she’s missing crucial steps in her growth and development, and the older she gets, the more disbelief she is met with when she asks similar questions–to the point where this unknown thing, which has evolved far past its original meaning, causes serious and lasting problems in her social and professional life.

She finds that friends abandon her, jobs fire her, people are continually upset with her, and the accusations of “knowing what she’s doing” are getting louder and louder the older she gets, yet she still can’t work out what’s going on.

Answered Questions Provide Safety and Foster Independence

There’s no reason anyone should have to grow up with giant holes in their awareness until they crack under the pressure of constant accusations, social abandonment, and professional failure. Until, after a nervous breakdown and subsequent autism diagnosis, they stumble into a dialectical behavior therapy class at 35 and then, and only then, learn the emotional intelligence they should have developed in childhood.

In other words, your autistic child or loved one doesn’t have to be like me. I’m grateful that I was able to build a life for myself after the breakdown and all the hardships that came before it, as well as share everything I’ve learned in my articles and my book, “What Did I Do Wrong?”, but it shouldn’t have had to be that way.

Even if it seems annoying or repetitive, even if it doesn’t seem “real” someone would have to ask a question about something so “obvious”. Remember, your autistic loved one’s brain doesn’t operate the same way yours does, but that doesn’t make their way of learning any less than yours or anyone else’s. It’s just different. And differences need accommodations, not abandonment.

The Takeaway

Believe your autistic loved one’s questions are genuine, and answer them directly without condescension or sarcasm. It may feel like extra work on the front end, but your answers will provide the building blocks of knowledge they need to be more independent and safe as they build their own lives.