AIBU to think my son’s gift reactions are not just rudeness?

[RunningOnTeaAndHope]

My son is 7 and currently on the waiting list for an autism and ADHD assessment. One thing we’ve struggled with over the years is how he reacts to gifts.
He isn’t intentionally unkind, but he doesn’t always respond in the way people expect. Sometimes he won’t seem particularly excited, won’t say thank you straight away, or will be very honest if something isn’t what he wanted. On occasion he’s become focused on something else and barely acknowledged the gift at all.
My family have started referring to him as rude, spoiled or ungrateful, and it’s becoming a source of tension. They often bring up examples from the past as evidence that he doesn’t appreciate things people do for him.
The thing is, I don’t believe he’s trying to be rude. He can struggle with social expectations and often doesn’t seem to realise how his reactions come across to other people. When reminded, he will usually say thank you, and he does often enjoy and use the gifts he’s been given.
I’m finding it difficult to know how much of this is typical 7-year-old behaviour, how much may be linked to possible AuDHD, and how much I should be pushing him to respond differently.

Has anyone else experienced this with a child who is autistic, ADHD or AuDHD? How did you handle family members who interpreted it as bad manners or lack of gratitude? I’d be interested to hear whether this improved with age and understanding, and what helped.
My DP (his dad) is similar in some ways, he doesn’t come across as very grateful when he’s given gifts, he’s always been that way.

You should teach him the appropriate way to respond regardless of any extra needs he has.

By about 7 I was having pre-chats with DS1 (autistic) about the correct social response to this kind of situation and the need to say (in a happy tone) ‘wow, thank you, this looks great’ or some such, absolutely regardless of his true feelings.

I was, also, starting to have conversations with relatives, reminding them that his idea of hell was a surprise.

I spend a lot of time managing social situations in advance to this day (DS1 is a teen) but some stuff (like this) is now firmly in the learned-behaviour bucket. I’m aiming for ‘quirky’ rather than ‘rude/brutal’ by the time he’s an adult.

Whether or not your child has any neurodiversity or not, I think you have to teach manners. It's non negotiable that you acknowledge and thank the gift giver. I tell mine to act like they like the gift even if they don't. Every single time.

You've excused his behaviour by blaming it on his ND but there was no mention of you doing anything to change it? Having ND doesn't mean you don't have to parent them.

Yes - practice how to react at home, make it fun.

My youngest was obviously autistic, she went to a SEN school. We (the parents) put in a lot of effort to teach our children to respond to gifts, say please, thank you (even when getting off a bus etc). It seems as though parents have stopped doing this. You should be correcting him each time. You can't seperate what's his autism and him just being a child, until he's a bit older. So no punishment, just teaching.

This is really familiar. My DS is autistic and I can remember on one occasion someone giving him a tee shirt for his birthday (ie not a toy) and he said ‘this is not a present’ in such an affronted voice it made me laugh at the time.

The only thing you can do is to explain why it’s polite always to thank people as you’re thanking them for the effort of thinking of you and taking the time to remember you. That made sense to him and he’s much better now and has been since making the expectations and people’s motivations for buying clear. He’s 22 now and would still prefer Lego above anything else but he is always polite and thankful regardless of what the gift might be!

Good luck - it’s hard as we’re always asking them to be honest and tell the truth and then they do it and it’s still wrong! But encouraging being thankful for the person’s effort or thought rather than the actual item worked for us.

I would avoid this situation by thanking the person for the present, but taking it away wrapped and then letting him open it privately. He can then have some time to process before calling/writing to the gift giver to thank them.

I hate opening presents in front of people I have a terrible poker face.

You need to try and teach him to at least open it, and then a thank you aunty Casey. For each gift.

And avoid opening presents in front of people wherever possible.

We used to practice with things that were obviously not good gifts e.g. one smelly sock. You had to say an enthusiastic thanks then a reason why it was a good present.

Yes! Preparatory chats!
DS is 30 and we still do them, though mainly reminders of who’s who and good people to hang out with.

Jimmy is Sarah’s son, and he’s a good bloke to sit quietly with.

You should 100% be pushing him. Of course he reacts differently due to his diagnosis, but you are doing him no favours by allowing him to ignore normal social interactions, when from the sounds of things he can definitely be taught what other people see as basic manners. If at 7 years old his own extended family are getting audibly irritated with him, it is not setting him up for successful relationships with people in the future. He needs how to learn how to interact with his peers and adults if you want him to be able to make and keep friends etc in the future.

Yes you should be preparing and pushing him to react appropriately don’t become one of those parents who lets a diagnosis become an excuse for bad behaviour and rudeness .

Absolutely. DS2 has autism and while yes, it is important to ‘teach him the appropriate way to respond’ autism is by its nature a communication difference!
I think explaining to family members clearly that autism affects communication is important, but also explaining to your DS that people make an effort to buy presents and it’s polite to be appreciative of their actions even if you don’t like the present.
DS2 is nearly 16 and he mostly expresses appreciation now. What helped was partly adjusting our own expectations, not putting pressure on him to open presents all at once, being explicit with gift givers about what he would like.
For example, DS2 hates gift cards and vouchers as he finds it really hard to choose what he would like, so we ask people to not to get them.

@RunningOnTeaAndHope it's a skill you need to teach him.

My DS2 is autistic and struggles with social interactions and reading people. He tends to study gifts rather than react to them. The only reactions we generally get are super excited or super stressed, so no reaction to a gift is quite normal unless it was something he desparately wanted.

I’m not sure anyone should be expected to be ‘excited’ or ‘grateful’ for anything unsolicited, let alone a 7 year old with possible ASD. Gift giving is so fraught with social expectation I wouldn’t chastise him for, what in his world, is just stating the obvious “that’s not what I’d play with” or “I don’t like that, it’s rubbish”.

I can remember being exactly like this as a child (NT) and it annoys me still even as an adult that we have to be automatically ‘grateful’ even if a gift is thoughtless, poor, totally inappropriate etc. I think what would’ve helped me as a child is some role-modelling and kindly explanation as why that might be perceived as impolite and how to be more diplomatic and charming. Don’t teach him that his thoughts are wrong, teach him how to reframe them diplomatically. It’ll be a skill for life.

I agree with PPs that opening gifts in front of people can make the process of receiving gifts incredibly stressful for ND people, especially on birthdays when they are already potentially out of routine, having a lot of additional attention on them, and knowing that their reactions are going to be scrutinized.

While he can and should be encouraged and supported to manage his responses, I also think it would be fair to change things around so he's not opening gifts in front of people until he has mastered that art. It is his birthday after all, so if you can reduce one source of stress, that would probably be a good stop gap.

Autism isn’t an excuse but it is a different way of viewing the world and understanding the expectations of others. Our ds didn’t understand present giving so we did lots of modelling behaviour, making sure that we said thank you.

When he eventually was able to verbally communicate I remember ds telling people that he already has that toy or saying that he didn’t like something that he was given. He wasn’t meaning to be rude, he was simply saying what he thought without realising that this may upset people. Again we modelled the behaviour. We said thank you and then put it to one side later on when the gift giver was gone.
DS didn’t know how to act in certain situations so we showed him.

Now that he’s an adult he will say thank you but will sometimes follow it up with a text later as that’s his preferred communication method.

It seems really crappy to encourage someone to lie, like they are excited to receive something they do not want. But this is society rules and most of us adhere to them.

However, to me manners are extremely important. Being ND doesn't exclude you from having manners! I am often more polite than the NT people around me.

You can encourage him to say thank you for my gift at the very least, even he does not feel excited about them or love them. You are not going to help him socially in the years to come if you don't and just encourage bad manners.

You can say to him feel free to tell us (parents) how you feel in private but encourage him to say thank you for the gift at the very least.

It's difficult and it is linked to their ASD. One of mine can smile and say thanks. The other cannot fake anything at all so even a thanks will still be offensive to those who want an over performative gushing response. Luckily our family are all understanding. They also know if they buy anything unexpected the reaction isn't remotely reflective of whether my child likes it or not, they need time to process something unexpected.

You need to teach him appropriate behaviour, set expectations beforehand and intervene if he’s not giving the appropriate response. I spent a lot of time at that age talking about the gift “doesn’t that look great, let me see it, have you said thank you to auntie Jean for such a kind present”. You need to be actively involved in him opening presents, saying thank you and give him some strategies to use when disappointed with his gift.

You can still teach someone to say thank you even if you don't like it.

Maybe reframe it as being thankful someone thought about you instead of encouraging them to say no I won't play with that, I do think that's very rude. Hardly will win any favours in making friends in the future. We all have to go about in life doing things we don't like or situations we don't like.

That's life unfortunately and it's an NT world whether we like it or not.

You teach it explicitly and coach phrases that he is comfortable with and can say sincerely. You might also be able to reduce demands eg by asking for presents not to be wrapped up, and setting things up so he opens them over a few days or something. Prep him that a gift will be coming, maybe have a plan on when to open it so he doesn't have the extra load of the surprise.

Obviously not all autistic people - someone needs to master more important things like "no" first. For some people, moving away from something unexpected or overwhelming is a communication success and should be treated as such. But if he's able to engage and communicate enough that it's appropriate to expect it, coach him to say a sincere "thank you" and perhaps a stock genuine phrase like "it was very kind of you". It might help to spell out to him that he is saying thank you for the kindness of them thinking of him and going to the trouble of getting the present, not for item itself.

We may have briefly practiced with comically terrible gifts - a fork, a flowery handbag.

All of this will get easier as he gets older and hopefully more able to communicate what is difficult.

Autistic or not, he needs to exist in the world, and appropriate responses to things, even if initially alien, need to be worked on? That’s my view anyway.

Have you taught him to smile and say thank you for a gift? If not then you need to. It’s important for all children to be taught manners and basic social etiquette