this post was submitted on 28 Aug 2025
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Yet so many of the answers I received as a kid was, "because I said so".
Damn my parents sucked in such mediocre ways.
I told my autistic son to stop following a girl around and telling her she is sexy after he got in trouble for doing it. Told him why, and explained how that stalking criminal charges could be brought against him. Explained how an arrest and criminal record would make his life exceedingly difficult.
So he doubled down and threatened the girl's boyfriend instead.
Oh I wish logic and reason applied, I would happily explain ANYTHING in extreme detail. I mean, I have.
I have no idea how to get through to this boy. School is little help, psychologists don't know or won't be bothered to know, therapists are clueless. He's high-functioning in so many ways so most are happy to ignore him--until shit like this comes up.
That sounds like there may be some anger management issues in there too... That or he's not as high functioning as you think on the emotional side.
Or maybe he needs a long conversation explaining how others are allowed to be autonomous and it's OK if others have different preferences and relationships. Or that consent is the #1 feature of healthy interactions, and if someone doesn't want you, forcing it is just going to make everyone miserable even if he could snap his fingers and maker her his GF.
did you try asking him to have empathy and understand the girl's position?
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Being told and understanding are fundamentally different things.
As a parent now myself, I've used the "because I said so" line.
I have a personal rule however. When I've used it, I make a point to sit down and explain why. It might be after we have all cooled off, or after the stress is gone.
It gives them a sense of what went wrong. In the moment, they also know they will get an explanation eventually. Lastly, it keeps me honest. No using it because I can't explain in a way that doesn't make me look bad.
It's worth noting, parenting is HARD. Our generation at least has the advantage of modern information and science. The generations before us were stuck with hearsay and hope. Recognise their mistakes, but try not too judge them too harshly for them.
The purpose of explaining rules is to give kids the ability to choose to behave intelligently, IMO. If they think rules are arbitrary, which is the impression given by "because I said so", they have no tools to use to make good decisions. Ideally, the explanation happens before things go wrong, to minimize how many times that happens.
Fully agreed on that. It generally only comes out when explaining the rule, in the moment, will either cause compounding issues, or is unfeasible. I've also used it once or twice, while running near my own mental limits.
I think the bad feelings some people have about the phrase is because their parents used it instead of, not in addition to, an explanation.
When parents would lay out a rule, like look both ways before crossing the street, or don't touch the stove when it's turned on, and the kids would ask why, some parents' entire answer would be "because I said so" or "because I told you not to". And then they'd get angry with the kids for "questioning their authority", or because they believed the kids were asking questions for the purpose of being annoying.
Those attitudes used to be much more common, but I don't think it was due to the lack of internet. Parenting books and classes existed when I was born, and my parents still had this attitude. I think it comes from self-centeredness and a lack of empathy, personally.
I don't think the words themselves say anything negative about you as a parent, if you explain your expectations to your kids.
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Yes but similarly I can only fix something after I fully understand how it works.
Is this a characteristically autistic trait?
This may come as a shock but quite essentially everyone is winging everything with a subset of never complete information.
Now i find autism makes me see the patterns more easily between usefull or counter-efficient steps and the details of actual performance-quality.
Combined with often being told “my intuitive plan” is not the correct “default intuitive way to do things” it sets you up to hyperfocus on getting all steps right with ptsd anxiety about getting them wrong.
So we try real hard and question every step to navigate towards quality/success but it takes a lot of mental energy to do so.
Things get much easier once you obtain “fuller” understanding off the concepts at play. Then you can intuitively tell what components your plan needs and what things aren’t relevant.
The way I believe most neurotypical have it is that by doing things just like everyone else they obtain the same average performance-quality and they are not criticised for the commonly shared inaccuracies.
Because they demonstrated the ability to do the task within expected norms. they perceive this as them understanding the task. And will now proceed to call you insane if they ever see you skipping step 4 and oh god why did you flip it upside down?
It's one of those things that are like shitting. Almost everyone does it, but if you do it way more often than everyone else, or it affects you so much it detracts from your everyday life in ways that it doesn't for the average person, there might be something going on.
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Yes
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That was me with flossing. My parents and childhood dentist always TOLD me to floss, and you just stick the floss between your teeth and that's flossing. I thought it was dumb and didn't do anything to help my teeth so I never really did it. Until as an adult my dental hygienist explained in detail you need to scrape the sides of your teeth with the floss and go up/down the tooth as far as you can without hurting yourself. Then demonstrated on herself, and then asked me to do it in front of her so she could see if I was doing it right. Great lady.
So it was entirely process based and not logic based?
Hmm. I understand the logic of 'doing job for 8 hrs = get income' but it doesn't do jack shit for my motivation.
The logic chain is not that simple and stops where you say. Why get income? Why would there be a need for "income"? What is income? Why does it need to be "a job" for 8 hours? And so on.
If you completely illuminate the issue, you'll likely find that no, you don't really understand the logic of "doing job for 8 hrs = get income".
because that's not logical. especially whet you're in a job that's not actively helping people, like call centers.
Also sitting around 8 hours and not being efficient at all instead of doing stuff when it works and makes sense.
Of course that does not apply to all jobs but most office related things are batshit insane levels of inefficiency. The psychological implications of this are yet another issue.
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Truth. People who give some justification for doing things don't understand what I need. I need the actual reason. If that reason doesn't exist then the point of the action doesn't exist.
Difficulty: a sizeable proportion of neurotypical people find it condescending and insulting to have the reason for something explained to them, if it seems like something that an adult should be able to figure out for themselves.
As a consequence of this, they're also not comfortable explaining things that they consider obvious, because they feel like they're being rude themselves, and may even consider requests for such explanations to be confrontational.
Yeah I know, we suck
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I'm in the spectrum myself, I feel this. But I also have to mention that my experience has shown me that when you go down this road, you might need to argue with an asd person who doesn't get it and wants to keep arguing, and sometimes there's just no time for that. Sometimes we need to recognise when someone else is an expert and defer to their opinion instead of forcing them to be an unwilling and unpaid tutor. If they're not an expert otoh and are just an authority (boss, landlord, whatever) then argue away but recognise that unfortunately there can be consequences for arguing with authority, so be prepared and know when to back down for your own well being
It's important to realize that while autistic people might understand things and act in accordance to that more readily, we are still subject to other human biases including ego. One's ego may prevent oneself from gaining an understanding in the first place.
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My son got a really bad gum infection when he was twelve. From that moment on he brushes his teeth twice a day. We found a video online that detailed how you should brush your teeth from the 70's and he watched it often. I haven't asked but he probably still does.
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Woke up today thinking I have all the skills to make and fix e-bikes and that is likely a good leverage point to start to escape my isolation and push myself incrementally.
I was feeling really good after like 3 weeks of being able to push myself hard with new meds. Then the ideas of wtf I am going to do with myself were overwhelming. Like a person can't bottle helpless isolation for 11+ years and then just flip that switch like I'm fine now.
So yeah, a few dark days hit me. Waking up to the idea of messing with e-bikes was a win. I just need to finish my hot air rework station and set up my bedroom electronics lab properly again.
I don't really lock in though. All my best ideas and epiphanies happen at random when I'm doing other stuff. If feels like a dozen unrelated threads are always running in the back of my head and one or two might be closer to the front. When I try to force the timeline or creativity, I usually run in circles and get nowhere. Give me a few days to mull something over and I will distil the issues unlike anyone else. I think I'm just really dumb because I don't understand things like most people. Like I do see the logic and can go through the motions, but all most people appear to do is memorize bits and pieces of information. I want to fundamentally understand the subject at a useful and flexible level. I don't value theory like I do applications. I can still do theory, but only when I ground it in a useful application. I place no value on memorization independent of application. I cannot keep those things in long term memory for very long. Six months later, I forget it all. My lock is that I mull over stuff in the background for weeks at a time like I'm always working on them in bits and pieces of thought. Still to this day I question even saying that out loud. Like it seems so basal that everyone should be doing the same. It is fundamental to me. The older I get the more I question that assumption.
I'm similar. The other day, I described myself as "a creature of momentum" to explain how I work best when I have lots of different tasks or projects to cycle between — because of the background-ideas thing that you describe.
Hey, autistic people!
You pour water over your toothpaste in order to soften it so it'll turn into a liquid easier. If your toothpaste is always too solid and goopy it's because you aren't wetting it.
Do people not have spit....?
You're supposed to wet the toothbrush before you put the toothpaste on it. That way the toothpaste doesn't fall off.
I think toothpaste sticks better to a dry brush. If i try to squeeze the tube onto a wet brush it wet noodles to one side.
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This post makes me wonder if it's more than just ADHD and Bipolar depression... I can't do a job properly without knowing why I'm doing it the way they want me to do it, for example. But once I understand the inner workings of a process, I can find ways to optimize it, and thus become good at it.
What does locking in mean?
Focused, not having any trouble doing the thing or remembering to do it that way
Oh gotcha. I figured it was something like that, but didn't just want to assume. Thanks for the help
Hell yes. I've discovered this on my own last year (while having behaved like that for my entire life, but never formulated it that way until then) and it explains so much. The constant childlike "butwhys" just never stopped, in a way.
I should probably get diagnosed…
Kinda. I understand the logic behind some stuff, but I still laze around and don't feel like doing them, like exercise.
Why should I live?
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