Hi everyone, I’m Amythest, and welcome to this week’s episode of Ask an Autistic!
[intro music: I want a renaissance / to shine a light / be the change we want / to set things
right / we’ve been waiting in the dark for so long]
Today’s topic: special interests.
A special interest is a very focused or narrow area of study, or it’s a subject, or it’s
a thing that an autistic person feels very passionately about and loves very much.
Autistic people will often collect information related to their special interest and organize
it in lists or graphs or charts or collections.
But that’s not a requirement for something to be a special interest.
Special interests are a part of being autistic that is really more of a difference or a difference
in neurotype than a disability.
Some autistic people may have one special interest throughout their whole life.
Many autistic people have multiple special interests, or they may have a primary special
interest and then secondary or tertiary special interests that come and go as their interests
come and go.
For example, when I was a small child, my primary special interest was ancient Egypt.
Everything about ancient Egyptian culture and religion and mythology fascinated me.
If there was a book about ancient Egypt, I had to have it.
I saw all the documentaries.
I went to the ancient Egypt IMAX two or three times.
So ancient Egypt was it for me.
But a lot of people often experience that their primary special interest will change
over time.
For myself, when I turned about twelve, ancient Egypt was kind of put on the back burner and
my new primary special interest, an interest that remains to be my primary special interest
to this day, was the X-Men.
I always really liked the X-Men – I would watch the cartoon when I was a kid, you know,
the nineties one with the cool theme song, and I read a comic here and there but I never
really got into it until middle school.
But when I did, wow.
I know that a lot of autistic people can relate to stories like the X-Men and Spider-Man because
they’re fundamentally about people who feel different, and the ‘others’ in society.
And I know it was definitely that way for me.
So once X-Men was my special interest, I needed to know everything about X-Men, and of course
I wanted all of the X-Men paraphernalia that I could get my hands on.
My mom has always been very supportive of whatever my special interest is at the time,
and I love her for that.
Because even if she doesn’t really get superheroes or get X-Men, she started buying me comics
for Christmas, and she would let me talk at her about X-Men and my special interest, and
she even watched one or two of the movies with me.
So thanks for that, Mom, for always supporting my special interests.
Now a kind of troubling behavior that I see in non-autistic parents of autistic children
is an attempt to kind of suppress or stamp out or change the topic of an autistic child’s
special interest.
When it comes to special interests themselves, they are not harmful in any way.
Sadly, when it comes to autism and autistic people, non-autistic and neurotypical scientists
and researchers and doctors tend to take a really negative approach to autism and the
autistic neurotype and what it means to be autistic.
You could frame the concept of special interests in a positive or neutral way, such as autistic
people might have very focused areas of special interest and they like to indulge in them
and share these areas of interest with others.
But instead, researchers and scientists and doctors tend to pathologize special interests,
even though it’s not something inherently negative, harmful, or bad.
Special interests are sometimes referred to as obsessions or fixations.
Those are just words, but they have a lot of negative connotations, and for parents
who have been taught that any form of autistic behavior is different so it’s bad and it
has to be stamped out, making special interests sound like obsession or fixation makes parents
want to stop it.
And that’s really not a good thing.
If a non-autistic child is really into horses, and she goes riding on the weekends and she
reads all these book series with horses in them, and all her favorite clothes have horses
on them, that’s just passion.
She really likes horses, and it’s totally acceptable and fine.
But as soon as it’s an autistic person, it’s different for some reason – you know,
because autistic people are different.
Contributing to this is the fact that sometimes an autistic person’s special interest won’t
make sense to the neurotypical people around them, or an autistic person’s special interest
might be what a non-autistic person wouldn’t consider “age appropriate.”
So if an autistic adult has a special interest that is, say, something like the Care Bears
or coloring in a picture book, it’s not hurting anyone, but it has the potential to
make more close-minded people feel uncomfortable.
Because again it’s not “age appropriate.”
Who cares if an autistic person’s special interest is technically “age appropriate”
or if it makes you a little uncomfortable if it makes them happy – and, after all,
it is their life, right?
When it comes to autistic children, parents ask me “when do I stop it,” “what’s
the limit,” you know, and to that I say, “has your autistic child eaten their dinner,
done their homework, taken a bath – in that case, let them indulge in their special interest.”
The reason that it’s so important for parents to allow and even encourage their autistic
children’s special interest is because special interests aren’t just a topic or a subject
or a thing that we feel very passionately about and that we love.
It is also a kind of coping mechanism.
Michael from Mr. Snayl’s Wild Ride put it very well when he said that the world just
doesn’t make sense to autistic people.
It’s confusing and baffling and arbitrary.
And after a long day of battling through a neurotypical world that, quite frankly, isn’t
made for you and doesn’t really cater to your needs, indulging in a special interest
can be a kind of release, it can be an escape, it’s peaceful, it’s enjoyable, and it
often actually rejuvenates autistic people.
It allows us to spend time alone with the things that we love and feel very passionate
about, and to recharge.
Because in a world that doesn’t make sense to you, you need something that does to hold
on to.
And those are our special interests.
That can kind of explain why, when it comes to special interests, a lot of autistic people
like to catalogue and list and categorize and organize things related to their special
interest, again because the world isn’t neatly organized and categorized, and it can
be very hard for us to make sense of, even as children.
But having a special interest that we can know everything about and that we can organize
neatly and understand thoroughly is a very peaceful and relaxing feeling.
And I love my special interests, and engaging in my special interests rejuvenates me and
centers me, and it makes me feel so happy, and when I’m doing my special interest,
my mind is so calm because I’m focused on one thing, and that one thing that I love
fills up my whole head.
Some people will try to defend special interests by pointing out how an autistic person’s
area of passion or study may become a career later on, and I’m sure this is true of many
autistic people, and that if you’re into marine biology or horses or computer programming,
then yes, those special interests can become a career for you later on.
But special interests and other autistic traits don’t need to have a higher purpose or end
goal to be worthwhile.
Neurotypical people do things that they enjoy just because they enjoy them, and special
interests are the same way.
So whether or not your autistic child or an autistic person’s special interest leads
them to a career in that field, special interests are worth supporting and encouraging and cultivating
just for the sheer pleasure of it.
Special interests aren’t just something that autistic people feel passionately about,
although that, you know, is part of it.
They are also a kind of anchor for us, and just a part of our neurotype that is how we
enjoy things: very focused, and very passionately.
So if you’re a parent of an autistic child, please do not try to stamp out or suppress
your child’s special interest.
All that does is leave them without a very enjoyable and healthy method of escape and
of anchoring and of centering oneself.
And just because an autistic child enjoys things differently or in a different way than
a non-autistic child doesn’t mean that the autistic way is wrong, it’s just different.
As long as it’s not hurting anybody, the autistic child included, please do not discourage
your child’s special interest.
If you would like to comment with what your current special interests are, please do!
And if you like this video, please do thumbs-up and feel free to subscribe for more Ask an
Autistic.
Thank you all for watching this episode.
[exit music – I want a renaissance / to shine a light / be the change we want / to
set things right / we’ve been waiting in the dark for so long]