A pub­lic ser­vice announce­ment from my wife Julie ear­li­er this evening:

Autis­tic peo­ple feel anx­i­ety just like all of us. How­ev­er they may cope dif­fer­ent­ly. For neu­rotyp­i­cals, if the anx­i­ety is a result of some­one taunt­ing or being some­how rude or abra­sive or annoy­ing, we know to walk away. But in my expe­ri­ence with my spec­trum kids, they don’t under­stand why peo­ple are mean, and they’ll freak out or just keep com­ing back for more. They don’t nec­es­sar­i­ly get that it’s best to leave some peo­ple alone and walk away. It takes many such lessons to “get it” because their minds work dif­fer­ent­ly. They go from the spe­cif­ic to the gen­er­al, not the gen­er­al to the spe­cif­ic, as Tem­ple Grandin points out. They are easy tar­gets for bul­lies. #The­MoreY­ouKnowAboutAutism