So, you've been looking through the lists of aspie traits and you've found one called "taking things literally". You read about it and it says,
'The person may not understand jokes, sarcasm or figures of speech, such as, "It's raining cats and dogs."'
They might look outside for falling animals....
Awwww.... How cute.
So, you ignore it and move on to the next symptom.
My latest post over at Special-ism looks at an example of what taking things literally really means and why it's important to take this issue seriously;
Hop over and read it;
Taking Things Literally; An Issue that Matters
by Gavin Bollard
http://special-ism.com/why-taking-things-literally-is-an-issue-that-matters/
'The person may not understand jokes, sarcasm or figures of speech, such as, "It's raining cats and dogs."'
They might look outside for falling animals....
Awwww.... How cute.
So, you ignore it and move on to the next symptom.
My latest post over at Special-ism looks at an example of what taking things literally really means and why it's important to take this issue seriously;
Hop over and read it;
Taking Things Literally; An Issue that Matters
by Gavin Bollard
http://special-ism.com/why-taking-things-literally-is-an-issue-that-matters/
Comments
It is not figures of speech as much as this type of communication, where my son falls flat on his face. He loves stories and reading, so figures of speech have become familiar to him and he asks, if he doesn't understand.
On the other hand when the teacher tells that there is a game where no-one is allowed to speak and he uses hand signs to try to communicate (all made up, not sign language), he gets in trouble. For him though, the instruction was not a blanket ban on communication, but on speech. So it is these unpredictable slight inaccuracies in communication, which NTs can "magically" pick up that he stumbles over.
Cubeangel says
""People who claim Einstein is a reason to not need social skills, and to not care what other people think, need to learn more about how socially savvy Einstein actually was, and more about how much Einstein did care about what other people think and how they were treated: http://www.einsteinonrace.com/reviews.htm"
"Anon, I would like to make a side comment that has nothing to do with autism whatsoever. A lot of people misconstrue the phrase "not caring what anyone thinks."
"A lot of normal children take this out of context. A lot of teachers and parents say this without thinking of how the child would interpret this. The correct context for this phrase is to resist negative influences and peer pressure to do things that would be detrimental like promiscuous sex and illicit drugs.
"At school, a lot of kids say these things are the popular thing to do and makes them seem cool. The idea behind this phrase was to instill the individuality to resist this negative behavior and influences. It did not mean to give up all standards with reckless abandon and to be rude and disrespectful. It took me a long time to realize what was going on.
"Honestly, I believe children are misconstruing other pieces of advice adults give and then the adults wonder why there is so much disrespect, rudeness and behavior problems.
"The thing is there are come cases in which one must care about what certain people think and in other cases you do not have to care. In fact, you could put this on a sliding scale.
"Employers, teachers, parents, etc are ones you should care way more about what they think then the popular kids who use drugs. The popular kids who use drugs should be way low on one's totem pole."
[and this goes for the unpopular kids who use drugs too!]
When we were dating I jokingly said to him I don't know what I would do without you but I would like to try. It is amazing we patched things up and later married.
Normally, he will just adopt the attitude the person in question is dead to him. He seems to have no remorse in cutting the person out of his life for ever more.
Do you want to have a coffee? means a myriad of things. And only occassionally does it mean do you want to have a coffee.
Taking things literally is neither cute nor a problem just for kids.