HOW TO HELP AUTISTIC PEOPLE WHEN VISITING THEM.
If you went on a road trip with the inspiration for the fictional Redmond Mountford, his morning routine consisted of, a cigarette and a cup of coffee, throwing on the clothes he had on the day before (sometimes clean ones), splashing water on his face, wetting his hair and running a comb through it, and impatience that others wanted to have some breakfast and brush their teeth first. (Redmond would have his shave and shower the night before). If Redmond Mountford was out with his wife, and he wanted to drop in on you, his wife would ring you on her mobile phone and say, “Get the coffee on. We’ll be over in 15 minutes,” expecting her coffee to be on the table waiting for her when she arrived. I even remember her complaining that my father didn’t have her drink (whiskey) ready for her when she arrived and trying to get me to take her side against him.
Redmond Mountford believed himself to be the Duke and his wife was Queen of the Castle (everyone else’s as well as her own) and if you couldn’t do something as quickly as he could, he would stand beside you and chortle at you. He was a truck driver and his prowess for tying intricate knots far exceeded his ability to actually drive. And if you were playing golf with him (not that I ever did) he would stand behind you and snigger and chortle while you were teeing off, not expecting you could hit your ball as far or as hard as he could.
At the time I knew him, he didn’t know I was autistic, but had he have, and I had said I have Asperger’s, he would have said, “What? Donkey burgers?” As it was, the only accommodation they really made was “Peter’s the bookworm.”
One of the things I hated with them was, a Sunday afternoon where I was planning to relax at home during the school holidays would be shattered by the ringing of the telephone and her voice saying, “We’re just at my Mum’s. We’ll be over in about ten minutes.”
If you are planning to visit an autistic person, one of the first things you need to be aware of is we hate spontaneity. We prefer to have set times. We also tend to hate it if people arrive earlier than planned.
Redmond and his wife weren’t the types of people to take that into consideration. They wouldn’t have thought, “Yes, we understand it wouldn’t take ten minutes to make a cup of coffee, but we understand that his preparation is far more ritualised. His ritual would be, 1) set out the coffee mugs, 2) put the kettle on to boil, 3) get out a plate and arrange the biscuits, 4) slice a few pieces of cake, 5) lay the plates on the table, 6) fill a small jug with milk and lay it, the cake and biscuits on the table, 7) pour the cups of coffee or tea, 8) be ready to receive the guests.”
Last Christmas was a classic example with my brother and sister-in-law. How and why? Well, okay, I was depressed as my cat had died and I was missing him. I also felt it poignant as Christmas was on a Wednesday and it was on a Wednesday Christmas that I last heard from my homestay family in Japan. If I had have been in a better mood, I would have said to my brother, “I don’t want to see you before 10:30am.” I would have thought, “Okay, if I wake up at 7:30am, I have to do some household tasks and then have a shave and shower and be ready for them, but I would also say, “Ring up at about 10am and ask how I’m going and if I say, “Okay, everything’s done, I’ve just got to have a shave and shower, and I’ll be ready,” great, but if I say I need more time, think, “Okay, I’ll delay it until 11am.”” So, give an autistic person a reasonable amount of time to do what they need to do. And bear in mind, different people need different amounts of time.
Perhaps the best word on this goes to the janitor of my old high school, who, one day said to the secretary, “I don’t know. Some people take ten minutes to change a wheel, some people take two hours.” Okay, the pit crews on car races take seconds, but all they have to do is use a rattle-gun to unscrew and re-screw a large nut onto a wheel, and people in tyre retailers use a rattle-gun to remove four or five nuts, but if you are stuck by the side of the road, you have a jack and a wheel-brace and unless you are incredibly quick, you cannot change a wheel in so little time.
If it takes an autistic person longer to perform a task, or they have steps in the process that you don’t understand, leave them be. If they ask you for help, by all means, provide it, but don’t try to take over. And above all else, don’t put unreasonable expectations on them. And that is not to be selfish, that is to allow the autistic person to do the best for themselves and not be flustered or agitated.