Disclaimer: My short story here shouldn't be considered meme material.

I am not certified in handling autistic children, but apparently I can understand what non-verbal autistic children are trying to communicate, even moreso than their own parents.

My friend's daughter was non-verbal, and she would often do repetitive actions. Well one day, I rode my bicycle to visit my mechanic friend. Then, other friends showed up, with their non-verbal autistic daughter, probably around age 8.

Anyways, the young girl started repetitively running around in the yard, running up towards me, patting my bicycle seat, and then running towards the road. Now think, what's that supposed to mean?

Well after the third round of her running towards the road, her parents were about to whoop her ass ☹️

I had to tell the young girl's parents to basically fuck off, she wasn't doing anything wrong at all. She just wanted to see me perform some bicycle tricks..

It was both a happy and sad moment of my life, to explain to the girl's parents that she wasn't misbehaving at all, she was simply trying to ask me to do some bike tricks.

Of course I did some bike tricks for her, after getting her parents to chill out. No reason to abuse a nonverbal, just try to understand them, and they'll be the happiest person ever!

Thank you for coming to my Ted Talk

kids with verbal issues can oftentimes learn sign language, fwtw

Darn, for me, sign language is about impossible for my own mind to learn, I'm hard pressed to even remember to look people in the eyes..

Yeah I'm probably partly autistic as well, just in a different way.

The lifelong work of women, to continue to fill in the #life training gaps not covered by parents of boys.

(As in, there are multiple ways to interpret this meme and not all involve autism.)

Way to turn a positive meme about successfully living a fulfilling life with ASD into an attack on half the planet

Op is humorously saying they are undiagnosed but suspect they are on the spectrum.

It really goes beyond autism too. Babies might not like how they're being held. Cats might have somewhere they like to be scritched more. Dogs might want to go somewhere they can run

The ability to put yourself in someone else's situation to contextualize body language is a shockingly rare skill

Meanwhile I don't even notice because I'm busy.

They could have probably found an image of someone actually staring at the camera

Underjoke: the girlfriend is also autistic, and doesn't make eye contact.

I installed internet for a dude who had his whole backyard turned into a railway yard for one of these ridable trains and he spent the entire time I was on the roof setting up the dish conducting the train in a full old-timey conductor outfit.

This is a rare skill? I thought this was more or less normal across all people. Damn, maybe I'm the naïve person here.. 🤔

Your last statement really has me thinking right now, like does anyone else even understand empathy, love and care, even across disabilities and even species anymore?

Well now he has Internet so he can download Factorio and he'll never go outside again.

Oh look, the massive ego of women.

Woosh

I don’t think it’s the woman’s ego that got hurt here….

Hahaha nice

fuck that

play factorio outside on the train

Is it tho

Yep, shockingly rare. So much I can't explain it to others... They look at me like I'm talking witchcraft lol

Didn't even think of this, now it's even funnier. For context, the picture is Sergeant James Doakes from the show Dexter - the only member of the Miami police who thought there was something off about Dexter.

Yes

Repetitive tasks can be calming for ADHD and autistic people. Like posting this meme every two weeks.

Not to mention assuming that girlfriend means the maker must be a boyfriend, and for that matter ignoring that autism is severely underdiagnosed in women.

That said, it doesn't attack men, that's your own bias popping up. It attacks parents who have the sheer fucking nerve to not be psychologists who got their degrees from Twitter University.

i had some dates with a girl who looked at me like that. Exactly this critical facial expression... 🤔

If you'd assume practically everyone (say, 95 % of people) are able to do something, and it turns out only 60 % can, then that already counts as shockingly rare. So, even though more than half of people can do something, and the ones who cannot are a minority, it can still be "shockingly rare" that people actually can do it.

In this case I'd guess it's entirely possible that only a third or a quarter of people are able to reasonably read the body language as told here. But, @theneverfox@pawb.social can give a better estimate of this than I can, I believe.

Yes. You're right. It is usually the case that the people who are acting shitty and dismissing the experiences of a large swath of the population due to their ignorance AREN'T actually the ones who feel bad about it! Good job piecing that together, kiddo!

What are you even trying to say?

The lifelong work of women, to continue to fill in the #life training gaps not covered by parents of boys.

Pray do tell how I was supposed to interpret that other than an attack on all men. They are explicitly saying that women possess knowledge and or skills that men do not possess and that women must teach these men these skills. It is placing blame on parents., ostensibly but it is saying that the entire male population is in deficit of these skills.

Yeah, you do seem a bit defensive.

Damn straight, why else would my steam deck control my trains and play TS at the same time?