stimmyabby:

It’s hard to learn how to have conversations when you have auditory processing problems, and a lot of the things people say sound like gibberish.

It’s hard to learn how to have conversations when you have language problems, and a lot of the words people use are confusing, or it’s hard for you to put your thoughts into words.

It’s hard to learn how communication works when people ignore the things you say, treat them as cute, praise or correct them, but don’t respond to the actual content of what you are saying.

It’s hard learn what makes people uncomfortable when you always make people uncomfortable anyway because you don’t have the motor or language skills to avoid making people uncomfortable, even if you understood all the social rules perfectly.

It’s hard to learn a lot of things from and about people when your natural body language and way of using language is different from theirs; it’s like trying to learn how people work in a country where you don’t speak the language.

It’s hard to learn the same things about interaction other people are learning when people interact with you differently.

It’s hard to learn about body language when you have visual processing difficulties, and have trouble reading other people’s body language without staring.

It’s hard to learn about a lot of things when you’re not noticing all the things other people are noticing because you’re focusing so hard on monitoring your body language, or speech, or eye contact.

It’s hard to learn how friendship works when people pity-friend you, set up fake forced friendships for you, or pretend to be your friend when they’re really bullying you.

It’s hard to learn how to be friends with other people when other people don’t want to be friends with you.

It’s hard to make friends when you’re more stringently supervised than other kids your age.

It’s hard to learn how boundaries work when people respond to your pain or discomfort by deciding there is something wrong with you.

It’s hard to learn that whether you want to interact with people is relevant when people treat it like it’s irrelevant.

It’s hard to learn how to interact with others when you are taught that the only way to do so is to do things that are physically impossible for you. Or mentally impossible, because you can’t process language fast enough. Or a terrible idea.

It’s hard to learn about caring about other people’s feelings when you are taught that if you cared about other people’s feelings you would do things that are physically impossible, or mentally impossible, or a bad idea.

It’s hard to learn how to navigate the social world as an autistic person when you don’t have a lot of, or any, autistic role models.

It’s hard to learn how to develop your own social judgement when people constantly tell you you have to accept their interpretation of a situation, because you don’t understand, because you have a social skills problem.

It’s hard to learn social skills when people say they will teach you the social rules, but some of the things they say are wildly overgeneralized, wildly oversimplified, or just flat out not true, and they enforce them on you anyways.

It’s hard to learn that interaction with others can be pleasant when people are constantly cruel to you or insist you do things that hurt you.

It’s hard to learn a lot of things about relationships when you’re afraid to get close to people because you’re constantly acting in a way that is unnatural to you and hiding things about yourself and you’re afraid of how they will react when you finally slip up.

It’s hard to learn a lot of things about relationships when you feel distant from others because you’re constantly acting in ways that are unnatural to you and hiding things about yourself.

It’s hard to make friends when people are constantly bonding over things that you don’t like, can’t do, or don’t relate to, and when a lot of your life experiences are things other people don’t understand or can’t relate to.  Or when people you would like to or might otherwise like to be friends with say bad things about people like you.

It’s hard to make friends when you don’t know who thinks bad things about people like you.

Ect ect ect