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?

"Are you Italian?"

No. I love Italian food, but sadly lack any corresponding sense of style! We are both veh British.

Finallyhere - No, you don't sound like my DH. Not taking your eyes off the road is sensible! It doesn't mean you don't understand pointing in other social contexts.

Rafiliks - That's interesting about not developing or losing skills that aren't encouraged. I suspect something like that has happened!

Charolais - Oh, how frustrating for you! There is a kind of literacy with gesture, I think.

ILostIt - Good point about social interaction. He was definitely not isolated as a child, but did experience bullying in school, which reduced his social interaction to a small group of friends. It stopped in VI form when the family moved to another area of the country - he then had a really happy time with a bunch of mates he's still friends with now.

PIL are not only lacking in emotional intelligence but also very, very controlling, however - to the point that I think it probably qualifies as some kind of abusive behaviour. (And before someone says it, YES we have both read Susan Forward, YES it is very good, YES he has had counselling, and YES it helped tremendously in moving him out of the FOG. Best few hundred quid we have ever spent as a couple, in fact). I do wonder if a lack of gestural literacy (I just made that phrase up) could be a result of this. But I may be barking up completely the wrong tree, with those lovely gesture-sensitive spaniels that Wizard mentions.

This is such an interesting thread. My dad is (I believe) on the spectrum, and though I am definitely not, there are aspects of social interaction that i find difficult/had to explicitly learn as an adult because they were not modelled well for me. Its only as a socially functioning adult that I realise how oddly my dad behaves and how dysfunctional our family dynamics are. As a child it all seemed perfectly normal.

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.

But you've only met them, a limited number (and in my experience not all ASD people called be called "lovely", certainly not all the time). And maybe his parents aren't even that high functioning, but massively masking using rigid rules?
It could even explain your "controlling". The have arranged a set of rules which work for them, so of course they try to impose those on their own children.
Or they could be ASD and controlling, and you'd need to look more at their upbringing in turn etc.

Thinking of examples, in my family, foodwise with the exception of my mum doing the evening meal, nobody ever got anything for anybody else. If my dad makes himself a cup of tea or a snack it would never occur to him to ask if someone else wanted one as well. It's a weird isolated mode of family living that my DH finds totally perplexing, it took some years of living with him for me to learn more social ways of operating!

Bekabeech - I suppose, knowing the prejudice and stigma that are unfortunately attached to autism, I baulk at the idea of saying "Oh they are behaving horribly, and were abusive parents, and it's because they are autistic ". It seems so unfair to those I know and love who have autism and are lovely. It cannot be stressed enough that I am speaking from a position of great ignorance about the autistic spectrum, however.

Maybe it's innate but if gestures weren't used in your dh's home as a child, he stopped using them.
I know that children who are born deaf will first of all babble using sounds but then stop doing it so this sounds plausible!

My DCs are 6 and 3 and occasionally will realise I'm pointing but not quite get what I'm pointing at. DD who is 3 and hasn't got great language will just say THAT without pointing at something or describing it but I think that's more of a "I am 3 and therefore everyone else must know what I am thinking because I am the centre of the universe" type thing. For DS I think it's probably just a bit of an attention issue.
In principle, in other words, they both "get" that you point at things and they use it and understand it - just not perfectly.

It's interesting you say his parents may have treated him badly as a child. If I try to imagine a scenario where a young child's gestures with body language and are completely ignored then to me that sounds almost neglectful.

For example, a baby crying and pointing at food or a child demonstrating a part of their body hurts. Then his parents completely ignored that? Or a child wanting their parents attention or pointing at a picture in a book. Again was that totally disregarded?
To me that seems so off. Babies and toddlers have such limited language their only way to communicate is through gesture and body language sometimes.

Does your dh struggle to interpret children? I mean, can he pick up on their non verbal cues?

It would also be interesting to find out how your dh coped with dating and sex (sorry, nosey!) because a lot of interaction with a partner; signalling attraction, is based on body language and being able to read the other person's body language.

Ilostit - Very interesting questions about DH as a baby. Sadly, I don't think I'll ever know the answers - he would have been too young to be a reliable observer, and he's the first child, with grandparents all dead. As adults, the family don't use gestures like pointing. I imagine they understand what they mean hypothetically (hard to imagine an adult not), but it sort of breaks down in practice IYSWIM. I assume that would have been the same when DH was little. The information I have about control etc. is from much later in his life, up to and including the present day. GFIL used to comment about how harsh, ragey and tartar-like FIL was when he was alive, however.

DH was very tentative at first when we were dating - I had to make the first moves. He is naturally very diffident, so I put this down to that at the time, but I think being worried that he wasn't reading cues correctly may have been part of it too. It was a relationship that started at work, so in many ways it's a good thing he was super careful about not making assumptions.

Children - we don't have our own due to infertility (a whole different story) so neither of us is as attuned to the non-verbal cues of children as a parent would be.

pigmcpigface I'm curious - when you were pointing, where was he looking? At your face?

I just don't like any person with a disability being blanketly described as "lovely". People with a disability, including ASD, can be lovely or horrid or more likely a mixture of the two. ASD neither means you will be awful or provides a free pass for bad behaviour (that obviously doesn't mean that you can blame an Autistic person for having a melt down anymore than a blind person walking past you without recognising you).

The lack of boundaries and asking someone with a dying child how long they will live - does indicate something "wrong" The Grandfather's comment could show his inability to instill values into his son or... lots of other things.

I suppose if you think of a person who is very expressive with their body language, who likes to gesticulate wildly, you think of someone who is very confident and self assured.

You could then assume that your dh is the other end of that scale- shy and self contained.

The fact that his father was controlling and prone to rages probably meant your dh (and the rest of the family) grew up walking on egg shells, learning to adjust their behaviour around him and inhibit their own emotions.
That alongside with being bullied at an early age might be why your dh has a habit of being quite introverted, not making gestures, not liking to draw attention to himself? Maybe even not good at maintaining eye contact, which would explain why he's not noticing a person's gestures.. he's looking at the ground or something!

I'm starting to feel sorry for the poor man. His childhood sounds awful

Bekabeech - Oh, I see what you mean! I think we agree. From this thread, I suspect PIL may show autistic traits, and (as I have probably made clear) I think they're not very nice! So definitely not seeking to portray all autistic people as lovely; in fact, the very subject of this thread is a couple who are possibly autistic and very emotionally dysfunctional and controlling. But I do know some lovely autistic people too. .

upstart crow - yes, either at me, or generally turning around looking everywhere indiscriminately!

Ilostit - I definitely feel sorry for DH wrt his childhood. He's a lovely guy and didn't deserve the kind of suffocating family dynamic. It did so much damage to his confidence and sense of self and I wonder if the lack of gestures thing is part of that damage, in a way. His family are still completely rubbish about acknowledging him as a separate person with his own achievements. When he got a Chair in his early 40s - a long-held life ambition for him - his parents were almost affronted, and didn't really acknowledge it.

Interesting what you say about eye contact - DH is totally normal wrt that, but FIL can't look anyone in the face at all.

Well I’m a lovely person with autism, or a lovely autistic person I can never remember which description is ok and which is offensive, and part of my spectrum behaviour is not entirely caring.

I digress. (That would be the ADHD bit of me)

Anyway, for what it’s worth, I’m not a doctor but my armchair diagnosis is that his parents are likely on the spectrum and this may or may not explain some of their odd and unacceptable behaviour (percentage of illness )

However this doesn’t mean that they could blame or be excused all their behaviour, control etc etc on Autism, or that it’s a slur on this earth of us that bother to work damn hard on being socially appropriate enough to not upset people who are dealing with ill children.

It sounds like your DH may well be “normal” or neuro typical, but has learnt or not learnt certain things from his neuro diverse parents.

Obviously I’m totally unqualified to make such statements, and if I was qualified I wouldn’t be making them on the basis of a few lines about people I’ve never met. However that is my 2p worth, I’d hate to disappoint those who complain about armchair faux psychs.

Slur on the rest of

No idea where earth came from. Autocorrect

Going back to the dogs and the “cold” childhood, it seems shelter dogs are less likely to follow pointing gestures, but that an adopted shelter dog learnt to do so.

Interesting article, with information on humans too.

thebark.com/content/whats-point

notevil - Brilliant post, thank you! I love your wry sense of humour.

Absolutely fascinating to read about the dog studies. It sounds like past history can play a role, but also context and some element of (genetic and learned) socialisation. It's also making me realise how complicated pointing really is - something that most of us take for granted!

My dog is stupid too.

I joined a bird watching group and found I was highly skilled in giving info and directions as to where to spot a distant bird through bins. Other v intelligent people in the group just couldn't do it. So their info would be 'it's over by the shoreline' (whilst we look at a mile or two of coast) I would say 'there's a large tuft of grass with two smaller ones beside it just in from the shoreline directly ahead. Just to the right of that, past the flat rock is an eider duck'.
I am very proud of my unusual skill, and nonplussed that others struggle to do it as it's just stating facts, sadly haven't found another use for it.

Well, as a fellow birder (though not a very good one), I think that's a pretty useful skill in its own right bluetoo! It is a really difficult thing to do - especially with something tiny, non-descript and brown sitting in a massive bloody tree!