See the Situation from the Other Person’s Perspective

To better understand your child’s behavior, it is important to learn about the ways that autism may affect a person. This will allow you to better understand your child. This website provides great information and resources about ASD. To gain a better understanding about behaviors seen in ASD, view our ‘where behaviors come from’ page.

It is easy to tell someone to see a situation from someone else’s perspective, but sometimes very difficult to do it! As you think about a behavior you would like to change in someone else, consider this poem by Mayer Shevin:

Language of Us/Them

We like things

They fixate on objects

We try to make friends

They display attention seeking behavior

We take breaks

They display off task behavior

We stand up for ourselves

They are non-compliant

We have hobbies

They self-stim

We choose our friends wisely

They display poor peer socialization

We persevere

They perseverate

We like people

They have dependencies on people

We go for a walk

They run away

We insist

They tantrum

We change our minds

They are disoriented and have short attention spans

We have talents

They have splinter skills

We are human

They are . . . ?

It may be that the child really isn’t the cause of the problem – perhaps the problem is in the way we see the situation, or in the environment. However, it is certainly true that we are serving our children well by helping them change behaviors that harm or limit themselves, or are unpleasant or harmful to others.