Autism or a normal social faux pas

[ParentofPremie]

My DS5 is undergoing assessment for ASD and one of the questions is "does he understand different rules in different situations".

The other day he tried to cut his friends hair. The teacher told him off. He genuinely didn't understand what he'd done wrong. When I spoke to him in a calm manner later, he explained that his dad cuts his hair and he cuts his dad's hair so he genuinely wasn't sure what the problem was. We had a chat around different rules in different circumstances. He wasn't able to explain this to the teacher, perhaps because he was confused at her anger.

Is this sort of thing normal confusion? I thought "you know what, he has a point". But is this the sort of thing a "NT" child would be able to pick up?

Other things he struggles with are sayings like at preschool parents used to greet their kids with a "I missed you so much I'm going to eat you up" and he'd burst into tears. Since then he's learned that people say odd things, so when someone said "my throat is burning" he asked "what do you mean?" Rather than getting upset.

In each of these instances, I can see what he means! Until his teacher brought it up I just thought it was a normal thing for small children as they were learning about the world. But do other children pick up on nuances of human interactions more easily?

Lots of children do hair cutting, so I wouldn’t worry too much about that. I think they more often cut their own though.

Autism can mean that you take things literally, so ‘it’s raining cats and dogs’ would mean you’d look out to see the cats and dogs if you don’t know this is an idiom.

How old is he? 4 and it would be a NT misunderstanding. 14 and it wouldn’t.

Second word of the OP

He does take things literally but he's learned we sometimes use smilies, metaphors, idioms, weird sayings. We had a good laugh about it where I brought up common sayings like the one you mentioned and we made fun of them.

I think hair-cutting at a young age is relatively common. I know a lot of children who hacked into their own hair.

There was one episode when they were about 6 when I noticed that her friend came to football with an unusual haircut. Her mum said “Yes, it happened at school. They also decided to give each other ‘side fringes’ in class one afternoon”.

When I looked around, she was correct. The other little girls from that school also had matching hair.

Thank you. That's really helpful. I do wonder whether his teacher was disproportionate with her response then, saying you won't be able to come to school if you do this (see my other thread).

I'm an older person who has recently been given a diagnosis of autism.
I've struggled with social interaction all my life.

I recognise in myself a great rigidity: I have a set of rules in my head and I feel that's how I, and other people, should act in certain social situations. And the problem for me arises because I try to stick to those rules but of course other people dont: they act in totally individualistic ways according to their own perception of the social situation.

So I can very much relate to your DS but how non ND children pick up human interaction would be hard for me to understand.

The world for me, and always has been, a place where I've been totally out of kilter with the majority of people.

Why is a five year old.cutting his father's hair?

@ParentofPremie If your child is being offered additional suppprt, the sooner the better for him.

Autism is a complex diagnosis and with such a young child, you really need to let them make the decision.

Just a little bit - for fun / to encourage him that the noise of the machine isn't scary so that he lets his hair be cut (his dad shaves his head all over so not much can go wrong)

None of those are things I’d take as markers of autism.

what triggered the autism assessment process?

Agreed. Surely the key point is to monitor behaviour now you’ve spoken to him and see if has learnt and understands.

On their own they’re not ‘markers’ for autism and could easily just be a child figuring things out. However there must have been other concerns to trigger the autism assessment process? Alongside other indicators, these things could be significant.

IMO the "I'm going to eat you up" misunderstanding and the confusion about what he did wrong with hair cutting does lean towards ND.

There are a lot of ND people in my family but my DH and DS are both very NT and one of the differences that fascinate me is how quickly they both pick up on tone and emotion over actual words, and how quick they are to accept that social rules exist without needing to know WHY. It's a real social cohesion thing. For example my DS could have cut a friend's hair, that's not wildly unusual behaviour for a 5 year old, but he wouldn't necessarily have been confused at the the teacher being angry. He would probably just be sad about making a mistake and getting told off. He would probably accept that there was a rule he wasn't aware of (or that he'd ignored!) and that he'd broken that rule.
Whereas my ND relatives would have much more of a "why am I in trouble?" "you didn't tell me I couldn't do that?" "I don't understand why you're upset" "but that's not consistent with x, y, z?" kind of reaction (which they probably wouldn't voice, because they'd clam up in the face of obvious anger).
It isn't necessarily a bad thing, my ND relatives are less susceptible to peer pressure and more likely to challenge stupid rules. But it does require coaching on awareness of potential areas of conflict, which it sounds like you're already doing well.

sounds like he takes literally, going to eat you up.
be glad he is having an assessment op

My dd has ASD and is very literal. When she was younger she took everything literally and even now as a young adult struggles with metaphors and sayings.

Thank you, you worded this perfectly in a way I couldn't. It's like he manually has to understand and file each social rule, why it's there and what it's fair, whereas another child might go "oh okay" and move on

I’ve had a look at your other thread.

It reminds me a lot of DS when he was younger. He is Autistic and was a prem baby.

I was constantly being told by the teacher that they wanted to have a word. It was particularly bad at the start of terms.

DS still finds some things difficult, and I really struggled with the idea of diagnosis, but in many ways it has made life much easier. It really helps when trying to understand how he thinks about things.

I totally agree @Wearealldoingourbest that the WAY that he manages things is totally different to the way that someone NT would.

he’s absolutely amazing, an all round good human and I wouldn’t change him ( or his world view) for anything.

@parietal @Sherararara @MereNoelle yes there are other markers like prefers talking to adults, is only just playing with peers now but "doesn't understand how to join in", scared of loud noises etc.
However he's also got physical disabilities and these could all be because of delayed development and/or with the motor difficulties comes never losing the startle reflex hence loud noises are uncomfortable , so it's complicated

Sounds like he has Pragmstic Semantic Disorder (ASD ) I had a child in my Reception class who would become hugely distressed if any adult said " I've got a frog in my throat today ""It's raining cats and dogs".

Yes this is the sort of thing that perplexes him! Although he laughs about it now. So would the rest of the class just accept the saying without confusion?

Just the hair cutting I wouldn’t be worried at all. It seems to be a phase. Be glad he did it at school, not on a play date at your house!

The responses may be more of an issue (have young ND relatives). I guess the question is what else is the teacher seeing to bring it up. At least she is looking at the big picture and not going straight for a punishment.

I know people hate the Daily Fail on here but there was an article on Autism misdiagnosis yesterday written by a clinical psychologist who suggested the following:

*We also see the erroneous application of genuine clinical concepts such as ‘autistic masking’. This is a strategy used by people with autism to cover up or camouflage the communication difficulties they experience, helping them ‘fit in’. For instance, people with autism may pretend to be ‘normal' in social situations – by reducing their fidgeting, not revealing their intense interests, or rehearsing what they will say, for instance.

We are seeing this characteristic being misused to justify giving diagnoses to people who do not have symptoms of autism – but who, for example, might be socially awkward*

I think this is relevant to what you're wondering about as I think there is little tolerance for social difference or awkwardness now without people looking to medicalise it. Your DS could easily be just a bit immature and socially unaware but this absolutely doesn't mean that he has Autism.

No one else became distressed. I dare say many had heard those phrases at home from parents and grandparents and just accepted it as a grown up thing, others may not have entirely understood why 'frog' was added to the phrase but understood that it related to the huskiness of the adults voice. He exhibited other traits too. He would decide , whilst he was on the carpet for registration, where he was going to be in the queue to go into assembly. If that didn't work out he would be unable to cope. His voice/ speech was typical of an autistic child. In his case it was very robotic. He had friends but there were lots of playtimes where he would be upset because they weren't playing the game properly. "Spiderman wouldn't say that. Batman doesn't do that" He needed it to be done in the 'right' way not the 'fun' way that the others were happy with.