There Goes Another Autism Myth
So for all the heightened awareness about autism, and despite the fact that most people I meet say “I know someone who has an autistic child/brother/child of co-worker/etc.,” numerous myths about autism persist.
And, ok, I’ll admit it: One can feel a certain amount of satisfaction in debunking one of those, such as the claim that autistic persons lack empathy.
Last Sunday, Jim and Charlie went on one of their long, long, long bike rides. They go here and there and onto certain favorite streets. Charlie often rides ahead. He’s started going really really fast and Jim zooms after to keep up. Charlie’s learned about going left and right, about stopping at stop signs, about watching out for cars, all while riding his bike. (He does have to be careful around the rear view mirrors of parked cars—he crashed against one once and fell off his bike.) (Falling itself being, I guess you could say, part of the whole kid-bike experience.) Sometimes they stop for sodas and snacks and sit where they can see the bikes.
Sunday was warm, autumn colors lining the roads, and Jim told me how broadly Charlie was beaming as they peddled through a park. They were coming out on a path and came upon a father and his son, who was about four years old and on a little bike with training wheels. As Jim recounted to me, the father was saying things like this:
“You’re not doing it right. You don’t remember everything I showed you yesterday. You’re not getting it right.”
Charlie rode by and, just as he did, the other little boy burst out crying.
The glow immediately left Charlie’s face. He was nervous and weepy, Jim told me; he was very agitated for another whole mile.
He’d heard another child crying and he felt bad. He felt with another child, in sympathy, which is from the ancient Greek word sym for “(together) with” and pathos, “feel,” and also a root word in “empathy.”
Which isn’t lacking in our household.
Tags: asd, asperger, autism, autism blog, Bike, disabilities blog, disability, Education, father, Health, Myth, parenthood, park, training wheels
21 opinions for There Goes Another Autism Myth
bullet
Oct 15, 2008 at 4:38 am
I have very poor empathy most of the time, though can easily be sympathetic if someone is upset. But if someone is crying or shouting angrily near me, even if it has nowt to do with me, I invariably start crying. I’m not actually thinking about the other person, it’s just for me the emotional atmosphere is very charged.
Stacy
Oct 15, 2008 at 6:46 am
The empathy piece kept me from seeing that my son is on the autism spectrum for quite some time when he was first diagnosed. This was the piece that never seemed to fit.
Before I read the response from bullet, I was wondering if some autistics appear to have empathy when they are really just reacting to a change in the emotional climate. That doesn’t seem to be the case in your (and Jim’s) description of Charlie’s bike ride. And it doesn’t fit my experiences with my son. But, as they say, if you know one person with autism, you know one person with autism.
Jen
Oct 15, 2008 at 6:55 am
It’s interesting watching my kids with empathy. My son, who is extremely aggressive, and non-verbal, shows occasional flashes of great empathy, but it is very occasional. One of my daughters (B) is so empathetic that she’s taken advantage of fairly often- give her a sob story, and she’s yours for life.
As my other daughter (A) has grown older she is showing considerably more empathy- when C had cancer a few years ago her sister would lie in bed with her for hours just stroking her hair and comforting her. She gives hugs and kisses now when she thinks that someone is sad, and doesn’t hesitate to label the other person’s behaviour (sad, angry etc) when she sees it.
Without casting any aspersions at all on her though, I think that her empathy is often part of the “drama” that she seems to find in strong emotions. She will go a very long way to provoke or watch strong emotions in other people, no matter whether those emotions are positive or negative, and in some cases her empathy seems to be part of a script that she’s worked out (especially when she watches herself in a mirror being empathetic). Everyone who deals with her thinks that she is doing her best to figure out emotions and acting out these scripts either to fit in better or just figure them out.
But it’s the moments when no one’s watching (and no mirrors around), that you can sometimes see true empathy. Sometimes she still has a flat affect, but it’s definitely there.
Storkdok
Oct 15, 2008 at 7:08 am
My son has shown empathy in many ways for a number of years. If a classmate gets hurt on the playground, he is the first one there, asking if they are hurt, helping them to the nurse’s office, applying the band aids, and talking them through it, saying it will get better. If someone is sad or crying, he asks them why they are sad, and tries to help them feel better. When I have a migraine he turns the lights off, brings me cold water, has me lay down and puts a blanket over me. He calls it “doctoring”.
All these blanket statements of “all autistics are …” are so short sighted.
bullet
Oct 15, 2008 at 8:14 am
I do wonder if I’ve got too narrow an interpretation of empathy. To my way of thinking, empathy is when you can understand and relate to what the other person is feeling. . You realise what they are going through. Sympathy is when you comfort someone. If someone says they’re upset because their company has gone under, I can be sympathetic and say “what a shame” and “so sorry”, but I can’t understand what it means to experience this.
Tom, my eldest lad, has started to show sympathy now, if you hurt yourself he’ll say “are you alright?”. In terms of emotions though, he does struggle to understand when someone is upset or angry, he will laugh and keep shouting and jumping around when his brother is crying after being woken up for example. It’s not out of callousness for his brother, he just doesn’t link Jacob’s tears with the noise Tom’s making, even when told.
ange
Oct 15, 2008 at 10:25 am
“I’m not actually thinking about the other person, it’s just for me the emotional atmosphere is very charged.”
That is me! I cringe and feel like crying if someone is getting yelled at for example, not because I empathize, but because I internalize (like the person is yelling at *me*)! I notice myself feeling impatient and anxious when I should be empathizing with my husband or someone I am close to. No one would ever guess that though by observing me…I’ve disclosed this before and people are shocked and tell me it isn’t true.
My boys, especially the older one, just doesn’t notice really. If a kid falls down while they are playing, Bubba is still in his face asking him questions or “playing” with him not seeming to notice the kid is crying on the ground and bleeding out of all his orifices. But if Bubba is given a chance and in a place to recognize a similar situation, he demonstrates concern.
Fearless Females
Oct 15, 2008 at 12:02 pm
I can honestly say that I’m not sure that my autistic son has demonstrated his ability to be empathetic or sympathetic. He used to laugh when he had seen someone cry. I have always tried to teach him about empathy by telling him to put himself in their shoes…but I used to (pretend) to cry and make a big pretend production out of crying when he beat me at a game or told me no, and he would always come running to me and say “you just kidding?” So I believe he does. I do believe that he tries to understand emotion, and why people are sad/cry.
Alex X.
Oct 15, 2008 at 2:00 pm
I don’t know if the reaction you mentioned shows empathy or not. It seems Charlie reacted to the situation but we do not know if it was the emotional environment change or whether he was feeling and projecting himself with/as the other child.
We can exhibit feelings of sadness when we see sadness without conntecting to the other person. Empathy is defined as “The capacity for participating in another person’s feelings or ideas; putting oneself into the psychological frame of reference of another person so the other person’s thinking, feeling, and acting are understood.” I do not personally know if he had the “shared experience” or whether it was other circumstances that led to the reaction.
bullet
Oct 15, 2008 at 3:09 pm
I’ve become a lot more sympathetic as I’ve got older. When I was 10 my dad was in a car accident that he was lucky to survive. I honestly felt nothing about it, not happiness or sadness, it was just something that happened. When I saw him in hospital all I could think about was what a horrible bruise he had on his head. Today, if my dad was to be in a car accident I would be very upset.
And lack or reduced empathy doesn’t mean lack of kindness or consideration. Tom loves to hug his brother, give him toys and books and giggle with him.
Kristina Chew, PhD
Oct 15, 2008 at 6:24 pm
I’m not sure if and to what extent Charlie’s cry at hearing the other boy cry (and also what the father was saying) was “empathy” in the meaning of “putting oneself in other’s shoes.” On the other hand, hearing that other boy definitely distressed him and Charlie’s had plenty of moments of being told “don’t do this” and of hearing that tone.
When Charlie was younger, he really did not seem to so aware of other people as he was in the instance I noted—not so aware of their crying or some such. He does seem to pick up non-verbal cues of emotions and something about the bikes, the father and son, the reprimands, all spoke a familiar scenario.
Marla
Oct 15, 2008 at 8:45 pm
I think out of all the myths this is one of the worst.
That is such a sweet story about Charlie. M has always had more empathy than most children. She feels things deeper than most and has an amazing intuition when it comes to reading people.
Melody
Oct 15, 2008 at 10:40 pm
Also, if someone doesn’t demonstrate their empathizing doesn’t mean that they aren’t. For instance,if someoneis crying, I may sit and stare at a wall in a different direction.I want to comfort them, I feel a pain inside and relate to how they feel, and feel something like that deeply inside myself, but I don’t know what’s the protocol.And so my body languagemay seem very inappropriate to the situation,such as if I was in the middle of telling a joke, and I can’t get myself out of the momentum of telling the words, and my facial expressions are rehearsed to look happy, and that would not look at all like I was empathizing with the sad person, even though inside I was feeling terribly.
Also one of the main reasons why I don’t notice people is because,it takes so much more energy for me to process things that are simple to most people (like riding a bus to a new place for instance), so I will be less able to notice other people, or if someonesays my name. That, or there’s a lot of sensory distraction, such as a spinning object that fascinates me and consumes my focus or a lot of chaotic noise that diffuses that focus. I don’t know how often that applies to other autistic people, but it applies often to me.
Cliff
Oct 16, 2008 at 11:54 am
I think the empathy question is tricky because it is frequently predicated on a notion of innate empathy, which I’d argue isn’t completely the case anyway. Empathy at least requires some kind of understanding involved, and thus gets involved in whether one has a full understanding of another individual’s circumstance, in a different sense the immediately visceral (so it’s not that you’d have to just know that someone was in a car crash and that you wouldn’t want to be in a car crash. It’s more complex than that). My experience is that empathy is tied in application to certain types of social skills.
Certainly, the whole “autistics can’t empathize” is a serious issue, and probably endemic of the whole “autistics can’t” notion, anyway (where I’d say that there was no solid essentialism on what one can or can’t do with autism, but rather in broader tendencies instead).
Cliff
Beth
Oct 16, 2008 at 12:40 pm
I have a herniated disk in my back which really flared up last winter. I do still get some backaches from time to time. My little guy will always rub my back or my shoulders whenever I complain that my back is hurting. He’s very sensitive that way.
When he was about 7, my other son mentioned that he heard that one day the sun would explode and there would be no more sun. Nicholas was very worried and wanted to know what would happen to the people here on earth. I told him that we don’t know for sure that it will happen but that scientists think that it won’t be for a very long time, after we are all in heaven so he would not need to worry about it. He still wanted to know if the people here on earth would be okay and if the planet earth would be okay. My little guy was actually worried about the fate of humanity, not just how this would affect him!
Jess
Oct 27, 2008 at 12:18 am
My brother has zero empathy. May I repeat that. ZERO. He has ZERO clue about the way people operate. ZERO intuition. It is truly one his biggest handicaps, and the hardest thing for people interacting with him (including myself) to cope with, and the reason people think he’s weird and rude most of the time. Explaining responses and reactions that people might have to commonplace situations is like talking to a brick wall. On the other hand, if you suggest to him that someone may be suffering about something he overcompensates like mad with displays of emotion (often saccharine) that I don’t think he actually feels but thinks he should feel–so there is a cognitive awareness of the way you should behave but no nerve centre that can react. He is also attracted to or repulsed/fascinated by strong emotions and remembers the details of incidents that provoked emotions–his and others–for a long time, and can describe them, but not in any insightful way. I don’t personally think this is a myth. Sorry. . .I know this probably sounds awful to you like the guy who called his son a wrecking ball disguised as a human but I cannot get over sometimes how completely and utterly clueless my brother is about how people operate.
Emily
Oct 27, 2008 at 10:15 am
Processing through the emotion centers of the brain means greater memory recall. Some research has suggested that it is for this reason that women seem to have such crystal clear recall of events that men seem to generalize in their memories: brain studies indicate that women process through the emotion centers. Autistics are known for visual memory, and it may well be that their highly attuned emotional processing allows for that. People who teach who know what they’re doing know that humor and other emotions unquestionably serve to embed information more strongly in the memory because of the coupled processing of emotion and data.
Your brother may not be clueless about how people operate as much as being way too sensitized to emotion in general in some ways, but also compensating by viewing it “logically,” which can come across as unfeeling. When you’re overwhelmed, you tend to present as clumsy, clueless, deer in the headlights, flat affect, rude, too blunt, etc., when what you’re really doing is tamping everything down to a flatline, just trying to keep it all in.
Jess
Oct 27, 2008 at 11:47 am
There is no doubt that my brother is very sensitized to emotion and I do see this playing out; the boisterous emotions of my 11-year-old bother him and he cannot tell the difference between serious upset on her part or us just grousing about a picky thing. He is also still very pre-occupied by negative feelings associated with events in his childhood and can recall these with remarkable detail but again, not with any insight into what causes conflict. However much he is bothered by feelings, I maintain that he has not empathetic and is unsuccessful at reading emotions beyond the most obvious, e.g., smiling (nice person) or scowling (disapproving, probably bad person). Also, people exist for my brother in degrees of how well they provide a good feedback loop back for him, not as people-as-other, if you get my drift. In situations where you are genuinely called to put yourself in the position of the other person and recognize his or her state of mind (empathy), even logic cannot help him. I understand the situations where logic takes over—in fact, I wrote about that in the post on my blog post I flagged for Kristina, about a bus driver shouting “Ladies First” to my brother. That was a classic instance of logic compensating for not being able to *read* the situation and I thought my brother’s point was really valid too. But that was not what I was talking about. I was talking about the genuine absence of appreciation of what other people think and feel.
I am interested in the whole issue of recall/learning because my brother has been in one specific situation—one in which he has rejected or rebuffed gifts or expressed genuine disappointment over them—probably a hundred times. And a hundred times has not allowed him to make one dent in his management of this situation from the standpoint of addressing the feelings of the giver. And I am not trying to say that my brother is not disturbed by his own management of the situation, because he is—because hie senses people are disturbed by his reaction. A couple of days ago it happened again and he wrote to me that he wanted this situation fixed for good. (At those times, I realize how very difficult it is to be my brother.) But that’s one example where the information does not seem be processed even logically, as in “OK—here’s the damned gift-giving situation again. . .what did I learn last time? I’d better just say thank you even if I don’t like it.”
Thanks for letting me ramble.
Jess
Oct 27, 2008 at 12:10 pm
Oh, and I just want to add that, Kristina, I thought it was great when Charlie was singled out as the most popular boy at camp and the one everyone wants to play with. Having that kind of personality is going to be a huge advantage for him.
Regan
Oct 27, 2008 at 12:55 pm
I believe that I have seen Eleanor demonstrate empathy, although we did also give it something of an assist by playing games such as, “how am I feeling?”, “Why?”. FWIW, I believe that this is not necessarily unique to autistic children–I have an old book, “Raising a Thinking Child”, which is geared to typical preschoolers and these kinds of exercises and dialogs are pretty familiar. I bought that for my older daughter, years and years before Eleanor was born. Presumably the authors saw a need to write the book. I also think that it is important to be modelling that which one seeks to instill.
Now sympathy, with the connotations of compassion, was slower coming or maybe harder to discern…but we have seen that as well. She used to laugh when someone got hurt, then later, cried, and now comforts or checks to see if the person is going to be okay…it’s still somewhat idiosyncratic, but is there.
My opinion of one is that it is very possible to develop empathy, if it is not already there but being demonstrated in an idiosyncratic manner. I have certainly met my share of typical people who at least superficially seem to lack some degree of empathy, and, sympathy, for that matter.
Emily
Oct 27, 2008 at 1:16 pm
TH unquestionably has empathy, but his response to this feeling differs completely from the way an NT might respond. For example, he doesn’t usually say “I’m sorry” when he’s accidentally hurt his brother because he doesn’t think that’s going to help the pain any. It’s not that he doesn’t understand his brother’s pain or even that he doesn’t feel sorry…he just thinks it’s not a practical application of it. So…I think there’s empathy there but a completely different processing and response to it.
A Very Careful Listener
Nov 12, 2008 at 10:05 am
[…] Autism myths abound and Kev is collecting, and dissecting, them at this new site. One myth that especailly irks me is the notion that autistic kids are “in their own world” and “withdrawn into themselves” and, generally, “out of it.” […]
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