What should I know about autistic people & how to interact with them?

I’m a caregiver. I’ve only been a care giver for 6 months. I have never had a care giving job before. I work with high functioning autistic adults.

A client I had for 3-4 months recently dropped me as a care giver. I’m hurt as I thought that she liked me.

A manager told me that I overwhelmed her at times I made the mistake of telling her to much about myself. She did ask me a lot of questions though. Then the interest all of a sudden stopped.

That was weird. She’d get stressed out easily at times & start talking to herself a lot.

She had 4 shut downs & meltdowns since I was with her. One time she got so upset with me that she told me to get out of her place.

She assumed that I was judging her. That scared me. Now I’m with a new client who seems calmer, but I’m still worried that I might accidentally trigger her too.

What should I do & not do around autistic people? My former client got triggered by people yelling, telling her what to do & judging her.

She even yelled at at a friend on the phone that she didn’t think that she wanted to be friends with them anymore for disagreeing with her about something.

She was a bit critical & judgmental at times too. She’d ask me personal & inappropriate questions about my sex life. I told her that I don’t want to talk about that as it’s personal.

She tried telling me what to do, what to eat, that I shouldn’t spend my money on stuff & she complained about me puttIng on makeup at work for touch ups too as she said no one else did that, that I ‘smelled like b.o’ when I was near her, told me how to drive, etc…

She overwhelmed me too. Are a lot of autistic people like that or not?

Do autistic people generally try to control other people or not?

The other clients that I had were OK. Most of them stayed in their room usually.

I read about some stuff on here, but I’d like to get advice & insight from autstuc people or people who work with autistic people.

The thing to know is there is a wiiiiide variety of behaviors on the spectrum, but the common thing is some kind of lack of social skill/understanding. Do you have anyone you can ask about this specific client?

I dated a guy with asperger's (outdated term basically for mild autism), and pretty much the one thing I had to make sure of was to reign in the sarcasm (and I'm from New England land of smartasses ahhh!! but it was obvious he didn't grasp it as easily as most people), "translate" emotional/irrational/spiritual sides of things into "his language," and (something hard for me) was to not take a lot of the things he said to heart.

If I'm close to someone and they're freaking out a huge thing I try to do is distract the person, but with him that didn't work so well because he would just hyperfocus on whatever and be completely unable to direct his mind elsewhere (even on something he was completely obsessed with like history). This is where I was unable to help because of my own stress intolerance (and in retrospect unintentionally manipulative/abusive behaviors).

Just don't expect any beating around the bush or goofing around from them I guess. But like I said, if you have someone close to the client or someone that referred you to them, ask them, and as you get to know the individual, you'll learn.

There’s a lot of literature on ASD. I find it weird that they hired you to take care of people with autism yet provided no training.

It’s better to not generalize. It’s called a spectrum for a reason. Everyone is different. No, generally speaking, people with ASD don’t try to control others.

Just the intro articles for you .

Autism spectrum disorder - Symptoms and causes - Mayo Clinic

Thanks for the info. Sorry yo hear about that guy. I did ask a manager more about the new client. So I did get some information, but I had to ask questions.

I wasn’t told that much about the client aside from their medical issues. I wasn’t told anything about their triggers or much about them at all.

Thanks. Thankfully this new client is quiet & calm. She’s nice. She like movies & shopping too.

I need to cook & plan all of her meals, but I don’t mind doing that.

My former client was harder to deal with at times. The managers there should ‘ve told me more about the clients.

I asked more questions this time. I also asked the client about their triggers, meds, medication & if they have any allergies & what they like to eat too.

I guess that they expect the employees to figure things out for themselves.

I hope you guys get along really well!

We do. She is nice & polite. She doesn’t ask me nosy questions, talk to herself or walk in front of me like the other client did..

The other client was rude, intrusive, talked to herself & was inappropriate in other ways too.

It sounds to me like you’ve learned a lot through this experience, hopefully gaining valuable knowledge of working with difficult clients will help you in the future.

It’s a shame you haven’t been given better training and support in your role, but often it’s on the job where we learn most anyhow. Good luck!

Thanks. I should’ve never trusted the first client. She couldn’t keep anything to herself at all. She was rude & inappropriate at times too.

Idk if she could fully control herself or not. I suspect that she could

It was hard for her though maybe. They definitely should have offerme more information & training.

My current manager is awful. She makes a big deal out of every mistake. Now I need to go in to get retrained soon just for forgetting to text her about a new medication that my client was starting the next day.

I’ll be lucky if she doesn’t fire me soon.

Oh that makes sense about the medication retraining. I know over here medication administration is taken extremely seriously so it’s absolutely a thing that any organisation would react to, I’m guessing it’s the same in the US.

Sounds good if you’re getting proper training for it though?

I would check out Orion Kelly’s yt channel to start. He’s autistic and provides a wealth of free information about autism

Sorry to hear about that guy. I heard that a lot of autistic people don’t understand sarcasm that well. They tend to take most things literally

Thanks. I’ll check out that guys site.

I've had some home aid like once a week for an hour. I had to cancel after several years because the service became crap.

But when it worked well it was like this. The carers had files on us which they should look into now and then.

Mine had, what they were supposed to help with. That meaning the things I was worst at, in my case cleaning and grocery shopping. Things not to say, in my case suggest where to clean, since I well know what is needed, doesn't mean I have the energy to do that, so I will feel that is calling me stupid or lazy. It tells about my illnesses. It tells a little about my communication style, what I'm like, my hobbies and my pets. This could have anything to do with our lives.

I feel this kind of plan is needed and read before anyone could come here. When carers were still good, they stuck to my file. The file was written by their boss but of course with the help of me.

For myself, I LIKED when carers talked about themselves. I liked when they talked like to a normal person. That they took some interest in my life. For some stupid reason they were not allowed to show emotion if something bad had happened, so I felt they were cold. Low affection is meant when the client is having a meltdown, not when they are just telling you stuff.

You need to know that they will always feel below you, even if they are smarter, the situation causes that, so be very sensitive.

If there is no file, the best is to sit down and ask the client what she expects, what her triggers are and what to help with. They have to feel in charge. And no, that doesn't mean they can be rude. It's perfectly good to say that the subject they brought up is making you uncomfortable and also say that it goes the other way too. Some can get panicky if they don't get an answer, I have a friend like that, I will try to weasel myself out of the question but in a way that she doesn't feel a loss of control. If you think of it, so called normal people are super nosey too, but they aren't as open about it. It's OK to say that you are different people and some things you will do differently. It can be an autism thing, but it can also be that she feels that carers have power to say whatever so she will do this to not feel as much of a client. Carers ask us private things all the time.

It's hard to work with autistic people because all are different, when you learned someone's style, you work with another that is totally different.