My neurodiverse child uses 'they' pronouns for everyone

[Justrelax]

I just wanted to share this because I think it's interesting. My son is 16, autistic and very bright. We've noticed a really interesting phenomenon with him that he very often uses 'they' when he's talking about friends, especially new friends that he doesn't know that well. He uses 'they' really naturally (whereas I find it almost impossible to use if I know the sex of someone). He'll come home and say 'I saw Alice again today. They've got a new skateboard. They got the bus to the shop at the weekend and then they went to the park to have a go on their new board. I wish I'd seen them!' We've even started pointing it out to my son and teasing him about it and he just gets mildly irritated like it's irrelevant. It's nothing to do with gender ideology - the people involved never identify as trans or non binary and my son is not into gender at all. He doesn't believe people can change sex and just thinks it's all stupid - he's far from a tactful child, tbh! It happens very frequently though. I don't really have a point I just think it's interesting that autism is so over-represented in the trans community and that even my kid who is not interested in gender has some kind of brain quirk that's not quite computing gender in a normal way somehow.

My ds is autistic, now a young adult at uni, and still sometimes gets pronouns confused and always has done. Nothing to do with gender identity and he does know people's sex. I think it's a form of language difficulty with my son, I wonder if yours has similar difficulties and uses they to avoid getting it wrong.

When I hear of autistic kids at school being told they must use certain pronouns and being told off when they can't remember... I just see lack of disability awareness and lack of disability inclusion. It's not only that autistic individuals can struggle with obvious lies, or things against rules (language rules for example) it can also be a language processing disability.

My eldest uses it as a formal distancing thing - 'they' is for people who aren't familiar (more in the grammatical sense - eg. prefect at school he doesn't know or children in other classes who he's never really spoken to) to him - basically how we all use it when we don't know if someone is male or female, but he seems to extend it to anyone he doesn't feel he knows.

Nothing to do with the whole gender thing, just a weird politeness affectation in his case.

I've always noticed this with my son. I think it is simply the case that, quite independently of gender ideology, 'they' pronouns have become more common in certain usages.

(I'm not talking about the artificial over-extension of their use as part of gender ideology - just the kind of use your son makes of them.)

I think that part of the reason 'they' is becoming more common (and has been for a couple of decades at least) is the attempt in written language to become less sexist - which often involves using 'they' instead of 'he'.

My son isn't autistic, he is simply reflecting a linguistic evolution. I have noticed this way of speaking in him since he started school. He is now in his twenties. It may have been that as a young schoolchild he slightly 'over' used it: It is very natural for children to do this as they learn language.

I know quite a few young people who just use "they" for everyone as it is - they think - less likely to cause offence and remembering everyone's preferred pronouns is hard.

It reminds me of the book Woman on the Edge of Time by Marge Piercy where a character travels to a future where gendered pronouns do not exist and this is shown as freeing (written in 1976 though). Actor Lily Gladstone uses she/ they because there are no gendered pronouns in Blackfeet.

Hmm, interesting. I've noticed 16yo DD doing this a bit.

It's a bit old fashioned, but not technically wrong.

In Jane Austen novels using "they" to refer to a person, even where the sex was known, was done all the time. It's so interesting to see this returning. It does simplify things a lot.

That is interesting, @RecycleMePlease about the 'formal distancing thing'. It is certainly true with my son that he has always tended to use 'they' when talking to me about people he doesn't expect me to know, and whose individual identity is not really part of the convo.

I think it is partly because, in the usage I mentioned above (the written-language substitution of 'they' in place of 'he' to refer impersonally to someone whose sex the writer does not need to specify), 'they' is intentionally distancing because it deliberately leaves the person unspecified and indeterminate.

I think you are right that it is linguistic evolution. I have found myself doing it with my own kids (referring to their friends that i don't know well, for instance, or the androgynous person in the shop) and I think it is partly not to 'make assumptions' and not to enflame any simmering pronoun debates.

Very different example but my DD could not get 'you' and 'me' the right way round as a toddler. She herself was always 'you' and she referred to other people as 'me' or 'i'. Very confusing for those who didn'tknow her! She started speaking very young but it took until she was quite old (3, 4?) to figure it out. She's 20 now and not neurodiverse at all. Or at least not in a classifiable way! I've never seen another toddler with the same issue.

Aww, sweet, Cosplay. I suppose she was influenced by the fact that you and her other close carers called her you and themselves me/I, and it was a struggle for her to get on top of the need to reverse that when she herself was talking.

I do think that linguistic overuses and errors are signs that a child is very actively working things out and is at least averagely linguistically able, possibly above averagely able,

My son (who is neurodiverse) did this! He was "you" when he spoke about himself and adults were "I" when he spoke about them - I have a video of him saying "you want to get down" instead of "I want to get down" and he would say "you want I to do x" instead of "I want you to do x".

It's pretty logical when you think about it, I'm almost surprised it doesn't happen more...

It's not unusual for autistic people to find pronouns challenging. Research has shown it to be a difference in the brain rather than a communication difficulty. My son is autistic and will frequently get pronouns mixed up e.g. "Dad is doing it by herself" or "Jane said he couldn't make it".

"They" is a good catch all.

Some of the young people at my work do this - we have one division that is particularly creative and trendy and I’ve noticed it with them. I don’t mind it at all but it is striking to me that it’s quite a linguistic shift.

I know quite a few young people who do this. They're not all autistic. I think language is just changing.

In my work I use a lot of template letters. They are all written as “they will…” etc to make it easier to plug in a name and go. I suspect lots of businesses do the same. I wonder if this might be a factor?

Can you link to that research? My understanding was difficulty with pronouns was part of a larger language deficit.

I do this and I'm 50. I'm ND and often mix up pronouns. I use they loads not because I give a toss about misgendering but just because using she on Dave from accounts sounds like I'm taking the piss.

My (ND) son also did the me/you pronoun reversal till he was about 3 or 4 - ´you want a drink', ´what's in my bag?' etc. I read a lot about it at the time - perhaps linked to difficulty seeing that someone else's perspective could be different from his

My neurodiverse father, born nearly a century ago, would have found that totally natural.

I think it's an age thing - my teens use 'they" as the default pronoun for everyone their age, and then use "she" "he" or a more intentional"they" once they know the person and their preferences better. I quite like it, and it's refreshing to genuinely not know the gender of some of the kids they'll tell me about.

My teen DS does this. Most confusing. I keep listening out for the other person/people he’s talking about.

My oldest (ASD) does this as a deliberate choice 'to avoid being shouted at'.

I'm sad that the inclusive student world thinks it's ok to shout at the neurodiverse, but there we go.

It's interesting though understandable that all those tiny signals most of us read without noticing that let us sort people into 'he' and 'she' are a bit more challenging for some. My dad always struggled with the words 'nephew' and 'niece' - a general 'sibling's offspring' word, whether nibling or something else, would have suited him very well.

The AQA exam board appears to agree as they (haha) used this type of phrasing in every question that referred to a person in last week's GCSE exam paper in my subject. I found it clumsy but maybe the students don't?

I'll ask.

This is really interesting. I use ‘they’, I’m 40 though! I always have, I’m not ND as far as I know. My 3yr old uses ‘he’ for everyone!!

Apparently I do it quite often as well, mid fifties. Like you say probably picked up from increased use of they to avoid awkward he/she constructions.

I hadn't noticed it myself, a friend pointed it out.