Peculiar gestures issues - can anyone shed light?

[pigmcpigface]

I'm not seeking for advice in this post, but for explanations that might help me understand!

I've been married to my DH for 5 years. Generally happily . However, about a year into our relationship I started to notice that he didn't follow gesture. For example, if I say a phrase that conventionally has a gesture attached to it - "Look! There! A peregrine falcon!" he won't think that I might be pointing. He also couldn't use body language to indicate wishes or preferences: if he is in a conversation and needs to leave, he won't stand up, or move subtly to indicate "I have to go". However, since I pointed this out, he's learnt how to do all these things without any issue.

Here's the interesting thing - it seems to go back to his family. Neither of his parents use gesture, and they can't follow it when it is used in a social/emotional way either. I suspect that DH was never really exposed to gesture at home, and hasn't learned to tie it in with words. It's odd because his parents are spatially highly aware - they always know what direction north is, they pride themselves on their technical map-reading abilities, and not without reason because they are superb at it etc.

I should add that PIL lack fairly rudimentary emotional intelligence too - they can't respond in any emotionally appropriate or empathetic way to anything. Before I get accused of "just not liking them", it's pretty glaring - for example, I recently watched them quiz a person whose teenage relative was dying in hospital about the child's percentage chance of survival. DH (who is generally much more sensitive to other people's feelings and wishes, as is BIL) had to step in because it was so breathtakingly insensitive and causing such obvious upset. They were completely oblivious to the fact that it might not be OK to behave in this way, even though it hardly involved very sophisticated people skills.

Can anyone shed any light on this?

I remember watching a documentary, I think it was about additional senses or brain injuries which had a bit about gestures. I'm racking my brains to remember what was said but I think they showed someone who for whatever reason didn't gesture 'naturally' but who had trained himself to in comparison with someone who did it naturally. They screened them off from their hands/arms so their head was above a sort of board and just talked to them. The natural gesturer carried on gesticulating even though they couldn't see their hands and arms but the other guy stopped completely. It wasn't at all innate, he only did it when he could see what he was doing.
I have a vague feeling it was also related to how good their proprioception was but I could be getting completely confused.

vet - my dog doesn't follow pointing, but he does follow body language. OP - I have no armchair diagnosis (although I have heard that not pointing is something investigated in small children with possible ASD)
It sounds like you are 'training' him well.

When DS2 was undergoing the assessment process for ASD, one of the things we were asked about was whether he had been able to follow gestures as a young child.

Were you on that thread about faffers? If so there is some background to this isn't there?

My ILs sound similar to the way your inlaws sounded on the faffers thread which is why I remember them. Yes the failure to do pointing and body language is very, very weird, but often these dysfunctional families do have some very, very weird behaviours.

It is infuriating as there is nothing inherently wrong with some of these weird behaviours but it makes the whole relationship even more infuriating, and you look like the mad person for being so incensed by their weirdness.

The failing to read body language is quite significant among dysfunctional people and I think the reasons are very different from those who genuinely have a difficulty with it. Simply put, they just don't care.

Say you are trying to leave, they will just plain ignore the very obvious signals you are sending that you want/need/are about to leave because they don't think you have any thoughts, opinions or plans that are independent of them. This leads to what you are calling lack of 'emotional intelligence', though I think that is too sympathetic a terminology. They have decided to not engage with other people's emotions as it simply does not occur to them that they exist.

For example, they quizzed that family on their son's survival chances as that is what they were interested in. They wouldn't have thought for a second that the other person had feelings they needed to be sensitive too.

To give you a similarity example from my ILs, I once had to inform them on the death of a relative as they kept going on and on about 'the big gap' between two of my relatives who were siblings. And I really needed them to not do this in front of their parents. They responded by saying: "I suppose what you must always ask yourself is whether or not there was anything the parents could have done to prevent it?". And were simply baffled that I then got cross with them. Not a fucking clue.

a few sentences on refer to the car as "it" he has already lost track of what "it" refers to...and might think you mean some secondary thing that was mentioned

Words like “it”are anaphors - they change their meaning according to context. Poor anaphor resolution can be an ASD trait.

I'd be surprised if this was purely down to parenting - he would have had many opportunities outside of the home to pick this up (unless he was home schooled?). Rather, whatever reason for his parents not learning this is probably passed down to him.

How fascinating

It's definitely something to do with his odd parents, isn't it?

And it's amazing at how much of human behaviour and comprehension has to be taught, or retaught if taught badly in the first instance.

eg, my mother is rude. She reads while people are trying to talk to her - will just pick up a book and sink into it, leaving you talking to the top of her head. I did it too, until I was 15 and a friend pulled the book out of my hand and snapped "Can you fucking NOT read AT me please? It's so IGNORANT!" It was so normalised to me I had never thought it odd behaviour before but as soon as it was 'named', I was incredibly annoyed with my mother for a) being rude and b) teaching me to be rude.

Bit of a tangent but my point is, I had gone 15 years without the skill to recognise when my own behaviour is ignorant but it only took one instance of someone pointing it out because I wasn't inherently lacking social skills, unlike my mother. Your husband doesn't inherently lack the ability to read body language but his parents didn't use it.

pigmcpigface I find it really hard to understand but think it is basically a language thing, and yes, he needs to subject of a sentence re-asserted in any longer conversation. Though I often forget (because it's quite an unnatural way to converse) and then find myself saying...hang on, just what do you think we are actually talking about right now?

Ask you DH to try the AQ test:
www.wired.com/2001/12/aqtest/

My DH scored 38 -this wasn't surprising!

My cousin is like that, it's just the way he is - we're all different and not everything needs a diagnosis does it? He's otherwise just like anybody else, we all have our foibles.

strax - That's really interesting, can you remember the title of the show?

Your post just got me to make a connection - there's a book by Merleau-Ponty called Phenomenology of Perception. It's really old now, and I think some of the science has changed, but he studies a guy who has experienced a very serious brain injury called Schneider. He can do routine tasks (like making a wallet) but he can't interact spatially in non-routine ways very easily - if he's asked to mime an action he can't do it, even though he can do it in context. So he can't abstract the movement, but he can do it in a concrete situation.

Of course, DH hasn't had a brain injury, and I don't know how much the experiences of those who have can be translated to those who haven't!! (Or indeed whether different kinds of head injury result in different gestural behaviours). I guess if gesture is situational and contextual, then not being part of a gesturing household growing up might have either muted an innate desire to gesture, or stopped a learned gestural language from developing?

I suppose in the back of my mind, there is also a question of whether being part of an emotionally 'flat' household has also inhibited his development of gestural language? I don't know if I'm just associating gesture and emotivity arbitrarily, though, in that question.

Being NT in an Autistic household can make you quite oddly behaved even if you are exposed to NT influences outside the house. Your parents set your early years and form the basis of your personality and it takes some fairly extreme behaviour to make a small child look elsewhere for a role model.

Sorry, that one no longer scores automatically, try this:
psychology-tools.com/autism-spectrum-quotient/

So interesting! I've noticed my dog can do this, if I say squirrels and point in the direction or just look at them, but my suspected ASD kid doesn't always 😄

I do remember my mum repeatedly saying "look at where I'm pointing" when I was a kid. You'll be pleased to know I've got it now.

waxflimflam - Yes, that was me. Your post is very, very perceptive indeed - and you go right to the heart of a completely different question I have about those dysfunctional behaviours my in-laws exhibit: do they mean to be so inconsiderate of others, or is it unintentional? Does it matter whether bad behaviour is intended or not? Would any kind of technical information or diagnosis make a difference? (I am increasingly inclining towards the view that intentionality doesn't matter).

To go into this in more detail would be to derail the thread - it's a whole separate issue. Where it is relevant is that I do wonder whether DH's failure to develop an understanding of gesture could be psychologically connected to an emotionally dysfunctional upbringing. As several people have pointed out on the thread, however, he would have had opportunities outside of the household to pick this up. And I do wonder if I'm not arbitrarily connecting gestural behaviour with emotional behaviour in even asking that question.

It's rude to point.

Poor man.

Have you considered his mental health? SEN? Autism? ASD?

Or the fact that he just actually normal.

Maybe it's innate but if gestures weren't used in your dh's home as a child, he stopped using them. His parents sound as if they have some social communication difficulties, even if they don't have any official diagnosis. Your DH may have learned some unusual communication patterns from his parents, but it sounds as if he doesn't have any major underlying issues as he was able to pick up using gestures relatively easily and is clearly very successful in a job that involves interacting appropriately with a wide range of people.

Are you Italian?

I'd assume that as a baby when he would have typically learnt to gestures that it was ignored. As social and learning being we typically don't repeat what doesn't get a reaction, such as babies that are ignored stop crying eventually even though that is an innate behaviour, so if he was home with parents until school age and no one actively encouraged or did anything about it it seems fully plausible that the skill/behaviour just didn't develop although he is fully capable of understanding it and using it once he's had it explained and 'ingrained'.

As for the parents different people's brains work in different ways. I am 'blaming' the parents as the cause as he's picked it up so quickly as an adult so doesn't seem that it's something he's unable to do. I have processing/recall difficulties and no matter how many times someone may try to teach me the right thing my brain just doesn't work that way. I am not 'stupid' or unintelligent, I just can't function as easily as many others and it shows especially in social situations.

I'm wondering if I am like your DH. If I am driving and my DH navigating he doesn't say left here he will point the direction to go. Since I am not at the end of his arm and can't take my eyes off the road, I don't find it very helpful.

We have a sat nav

This is so interesting! My husband doesn’t understand body language or pointing. When I am pointing to show him something I have to say, “Look at my finger. I am pointing at it. It is there. Follow my finger”. His mother was the same. (My husband is 65).

If we’re at a meeting and it’s winding down - people are gathering their papers off the desk, pushing their chairs back, he will lean back in his chair to get comfy and start off another meeting related subject. It is so embarrassing. He absolutely cannot tell when he is annoying someone.

His older brother is staying with us right now and I’m noticing similar traits in him. I hope this thread stays active as I’m 8 hours behind here and need to go to bed.

"It's rude to point."

At people, it surely is. I doubt the trees, birds, keys and other inanimate everyday objects I'm pointing at mind much.

Aspergallus - thanks for the sheet, I'll get DH to do it later on! Definitely see many of FIL's traits on there, but not many of DH's or BIL's (the latter is a textbook extrovert!). But I have to say, I have friends who are high-functioning autistic and friends with children who are autistic, and they are lovely. None of them behave anything like as badly as PIL - so I am not sure that any 'diagnosis' of that kind (even were it to be made professionally) could offer a complete explanation of the way they act.

His parents do sound ASD like. He could just have not learnt as a child, or be able to learn now as an adult when it is explicitly pointed out to him.

And having ASD doesn't mean you can't be empathetic etc.

If you spot other quirks then I'd try to explicitly explain the issue, and see if that helps him to overcome them.

Personally I think he could be "on the spectrum", have "traits" or just had the inbuilt tendency for gesture suppressed as his parents didn't respond to the gestures he used as a small child. By the time he went to school at 5 it might have just been something he didn't bother with any more. Although it is surprising that school didn't notice something odd.

I have been diagnosed with a processing disorder that affects recall. I've never been told by anyone that I have traits of ASD or similar but just done that quiz and come out with 39/50. Apparently "Scores in the 33-50 range indicate significant Austistic traits (Autism)." So works as a nice reminder that not all autistic traits = autism, but that other things could also be going on. Unless I am autistic but present differently because I'm a female???

I don't agree that he has "learnt" this from his parents. It appears that he can't naturally read body language, or use his own body language to communicate.

He has learnt how to mask that "blindness" as an adult by developing rules he can stick to although it doesn't come naturally to him (eg point at an object if you want some one to look, stand up if you plan to leave etc).

Reading body language can be partly developed by nurture but surely it's an innate skill?

And unness his parents kept him isolated, wouldn't he have learnt social skills at school, among friends, with exes, in the workplace? Where was he before you met him? Was he reclusive?