To worry about my sons complete lack of empathy?

[DreamWaster]

He is 10yrs old and has suspected but undiagnosed ASD.

He has never understood empathy and used to watch his class mates when they cried and not feel a need to cheer them up. He pays no attention to his brother if he hurts himself or has hurt him even if hes screaming/crying in pain.

we found a fledgling bird that was in a really bad way and asked to take it home. I was really happy thinking he wanted to make it better so when I gently said that it didn’t look like it would recover he looked at me in confusion and said he knew, he just wanted to keep it as it was ‘cool’ and wanted to keep it with his other things he finds like animal skulls and interesting rocks (we live rurally).

I asked him if he felt sorry for the bird and he said no so I asked if he’d ever want to harm an animal to which he also replied no thank God. Is this worrying behaviour for a 20 year old? He’s a sociable bright boy with friends and is doing ok in school.

I think I’m overly empathetic which may be why it worry’s me more.

I am autistic and suffer from hyper empathy.

What I don't possess are the communication or social skills to be able to transfer that to a real life 'my friend is upset, I should comfort them' situation.

Get him assessed of course and if it turns out he does genuinely lack empathy then please do remember we need people like this in society!

Going to throw in something as food for thought....most surgeons lack empathy or score low on an empathy scale. The people who literally save peoples lives, tend to score pretty low on empathy, why? Because they couldn't do their job if their brain was all filled up and they were getting emotional about cutting into a 6yr old to remove her appendix. Alot of people are OK with blood but still couldn't do that because they'd be shaking, thinking of the family outside crying, worrying about the consequences of losing the child....people who lack empathy don't. They get on with the job. We need that.

You also see it across other professions - Traders, Soldiers, lawyers, and high positions of power e.g CEO's are a few. But we need these people. Society would break down if everyone sat around worrying about people's feelings. There would be little progress.

If he does lack empathy, no doubt he will need support and help with EQ but it doesn't mean he's flawed in some way. It can actually be a huge advantage.

It sounds to me very much as if he has a scientific brain. My son is autistic, he had a dreadful lack of empathy when he was younger (he's 11 now). For sample he'd set out to hurt somebody to "see what happened" and used to stare at them fascinated if they cried. It really limited what we were able to do and where we could go and I had to have eyes in the back of my head.

Fortunately he was diagnosed very early so that has given me a chance to "teach" him how to feel empathy. He is much much better now and will go out of his way to help people or be kind. It may be learned behaviour but it's working. ASD children tend to mimic so I was very careful to ensure he was mixing with nice kids. That sounds absolutely awful when I type it out but it definitely had a positive impact on him. I'm sorry you're in such a long queue for assessment, it's horrendous. I'd consider doing some courses, I found one called "Understanding Autism" very useful. Good luck.

People with ASD do have empathy, we just don’t express it in the same way, or express it at all as it requires us to focus on another person then apply it to ourselves in order to understand the situation. And realistically what’s to be done about another child crying when you’re a child yourself? That’s something for the adults to deal with.

It depends on the situation particularly as adults aren't always right there.

As a PP posted her child has learnt to run over and ask if the other child is ok.

Other children will go and get an adult.

I’m Autistic.

Crying people make me uncomfortable. I never know what to do or say and when I try I’m always “wrong” somehow.

I’m a Scientist so I’m a logical thinker; an injured bird is just nature being nature. Not something I’d get my knickers in a twist over.

Doesn’t sound too concerning. Why is he not allowed to find the dead bird cool? I mean it is cool depending on which way you look at it. Particularly if he is into science etc.

@EmptyPlaces My youngest (in his 20's) is exactly the same. He's learned to come & awkwardly pat my shoulder if I'm upset, bless him!

I don't find his behaviour around the bird particularly concerning either. Often I don't feel specific sadness for a dead animal - even with avian flu my feelings are more around despair for the ecological crisis rather than sadness for one particular animal's life (or perceived soul or whatever). Animals and the way they 'work' are fascinating.
I'm not autistic and I've been working in environmental conservation for over 20 years.

My middle child is also Autistic and we do the same if I tried to hug her like I do my other two, it wouldn’t end well 🥴

I love affection from my children; but if anyone else gets too close to me I’ll recoil and step back.

We can’t all be emotional basket cases or nothing would get done, being highly emotional seems to be the new favourite thing amongst virtue signalling dipshits who actually don’t have a clue how the people they claim to relate to feel.

It wasn’t dead, it was injured.

Its not caring about the animal suffering, but just seeing it as a collection opportunity that concerned OP.

That would concern me too.

We can’t all be emotional basket cases

because those are the two options: total lack of empathy or emotional basket case.

Agree with others, sometimes autistics don't experience empathy in the same way or don't have the ability to interpret the information that's necessary to have and then show empathy. Sometimes they don't show it or show it differently. And sometimes they show it, but because they're a neurodevelopmental minority the empathy being shown is not recognised and is misinterpreted.

On that last one, about being a minority, what I mean is that the average person can look at what's happening to another person, imagine how they would feel in that situation and what they would want people to do, and they'll probably be pretty accurate in guessing how the other person feels and what they want. But if I as an autistic person use that same process, I'll likely as not get it wrong.

So for me, when I'm upset or hurt, it takes a lot of my mental effort to process and manage that, and I don't want to have to manage the high cognitive burden of social interaction (analysing someone's words, tone, body language, facial expressions and intentions, and formulating polite but productive verbal responses while producing appropriate tone, body language and facial expressions), on top of dealing with my pain and/or distress. I especially don't want someone touching me, because with my defences down and my state of arousal high, social touch feels intense to the point of pain.

If I were to do what the average person does when they see someone else who's upset or in pain — that is, if I think how I would feel, and treat them accordingly — then I would leave them alone. (Additionally, some things don't feel as painful to me as they apparently do to others — being punched in the playground didn't hurt me much, so it confused me when kids made a big fuss about being punched but were fine with things I found painful — again, I could do exactly the same thing average people do — think how I would feel in that situation — and come out looking less empathetic.)

I have been able to learn to override the instinct to leave people alone when they are upset or hurt, and instead to talk to them and touch them, and I have learnt techniques to deal with the extra distress people cause me by talking to me and touching me when I am upset (if retreating somewhere is not an option), and to suppress my own needs in order to not be rude to someone who thinks they're being nice.

I'm autistic and my DH recently accused me of having no empathy. Yes, I'm shite at the "there, there" cheering up stuff and I feel deeply uncomfortable when I'm around someone who is upset. I usually know when someone close to me is unhappy but I can't tell if they're sad vs angry and I can't piece together why they might be in a bad mood. Unless they tell me explicitly what's wrong, I just stay out of their way because their "bad vibes" (I know, I'm sorry!) make me too anxious.

I do feel empathy, I just don't express it in the way most people expect. Apparently nobody wants my practical suggestions when they've had bad news but that's my way of trying to help. And if I see someone getting hurt or doing something embarrassing, I feel physical pain - my whole body gets too hot, I want to cry and it's overwhelming.

P.S. @pppppppp my dad fell off the ladder to the attic when I was 17ish. A yell, a huge crash, blood smeared down the wall - my mum went ballistic because I didn't even crack my bedroom door to see if he was okay

Another autistic person here (NHS diagnosed) with hyper-empathy. I can feel it, in fact other people crying can send me into a complete shut down as I can't handle it.

I was called a monster by a co-worker after I kept eating my lunch as a collegue was crying and telling us her about her recent cancer diagnosis.

I felt sad for her, and was thinking about her young children. But had no idea what to say but just sat and listened.

Don't make the mistake of thinking people with autism don't have feelings, just because we don't see the need in 'performing' them.

Getting upset over an injured bird is a concern, and well into the emotional basket case column.

OPs son wanting to collect it - out of nothing more than childhood curiosity - is being blown up onto YADNBU HE IS A FUTURE SERIAL KILLER, as if the kid captured and injured it himself.

This. Autistic people are actually often empaths. My boy feels everyones feelings. He just doesnt show it in the same way my non-autistic kids do. Either you arent seeing how he demonstrates his empathy or there is something else happening for him. Autistic does not equal no empathy.

See, this is actually a skill - sitting and listening to someone talking about something that’s profoundly impacting them rather than bursting into tears and making it all about how you feel about their diagnosis.

Depends on your view of things. Depends if you want him to learn. Depends if he wants to learn. Does it bother him? It can be taught. But often I get criticised on MN. Many criticise me saying why should my ASD child adapt. I had a different view. The world is quite un-accommodating. So I tried to teach ds1 who was very upset and struggled a lot. Trying to teach him the rules, how others behaved and why. I bought him a couple of books and he enjoyed them and said he 'got it' a bit more. If you don't like this, don't want your child to change or adapt, don't think it's necessary, fine. If wanting to understand NT behaviour, if you think that would help him, help his friendships, maybe try. If you don't like this viewpoint, feel free to completely dismiss.

feeling empathy for an injured bird does not in fact make one 'an emotional basket case'. And no one has suggested the OP's son is a future serial killer. Are you always this hyperbolic? Sounds draining.

This is another thread of people applying NT interpretations to ND behaviour. I.e."They don't show empathy therefore they must not feel empathy."

You can't teach or train empathy into a person. It's something they either have or don't have. But what you can do it teach them how to show it. But the difficulty with that is that they might not know when it's appropriate. And if they get it wrong then they'll be more reluctant in the future. (I speak as that little kid who used to hug everyone, until I got told off for hugging some people, and then because I don't know the difference, I stopped hugging anyone.)

There, there.

I’m autistic and hyper empathetic. I respond ‘normally’ now, but as a child if somebody cried or was hurt I felt bad for them but also felt really uncomfortable because I had no idea if it was appropriate for me to get involved or not, so I mostly just pretended not to notice (as long as there was somebody else around to help them, obviously!) as I didn’t want to be rude and invasive.

I think some autistic people do lack empathy, but even then most of them have no wish to see others harmed - it just doesn’t cross their mind.

This is another thread of people applying NT interpretations to ND behaviour.

Twas ever thus. OP, I'd ask for this thread to be moved to the SEN board if I were you.