Hey, it's my turn!

If you've never met or had a conversation with an autistic adult before the interaction you're observing or engaging in may seem a little unusual or unorthodox to what you're used to.

Turn taking and slowing down the pace is essentially a rule rather an option, and for adults with autism this is important to be able to navigate the social world more smoothly and with pleasure.

Think of it like any 2 person board game where each player is given time and space to take their turn to think, process and strategically place their counter or make their move. If we try and force their turn, hurry them along or keep talking and distract them, we would find it unacceptable no matter how tolerant we are.

For someone with autism conversation doesn't come easy, it takes work and effort to have to interpret all the things that are going on no matter how short the interaction is.

You've most likely had conversations with others who seem to feel it's okay to interrupt your spiel at every opportunity, because things aren't getting to the point fast enough for them, or they believe they have better things to say and their point is better than yours, right?

Non-autistic, aka neurotypicals (NT) will tolerate it and give way much more readily during interactions with other NT, and very regularly will allow people to talk over them leaving little space for them to finish their spiel, especially people in positions of authority or power.

For adults with autism this is often very intolerable and challenging to deal with for several reasons. First their working memory is fickle and things slip in and out very easily. This can be very anxiety provoking especially with NT changing topics on a whim or firing questions while they are still trying to process the last question or two they were presented with.

Whilst autistic adults are processing the fact someone has interrupted, they are also being given a new load of information to process by the interrupter. By the time they've been patient listening to the interrupter they have forgotten what their point was. This can be very frustrating and leave them feeling devalued and disrespected and wanting to disengage from the conversation.

In order to not forget what they are saying and lose their thread autistic adults need space and time to complete their turn. The interruptions can often come from people who don't have the time to listen to what might sometimes seem irrelevant conversation, too slow a response, or not as important or interesting as theirs.

Adults with autism also often have to start right back at the beginning of a story or conversation to regather their thoughts and pick up the thread, rather than picking it up half way through just to be able to remember where they got to.

There will also be 'conversation hangovers' where they are trying to assess what the other is doing at the expense of what they are saying. Again for NT who have better working memory this can be seen as repetition and often irrelevant conversation they'd rather not engage in or have time for.

Autistic adults will very readily engage in topics of special interest for a long while and not necessarily want to break off to focus on other topics that don't engage them in the same way. If they are feeling rushed however, or the conversation becomes too complex and requiring lots of decision making they may need some space to break off for a short while.

Many of the social cues NT can easily zone into without too much effort (i.e., subconscious processing), are often amiss for autistic adults who have so many other things to consciously process or get distracted by, and so it's not always possible to know when to change topic or disengage from the interaction.

The rules are not always clear enough in conversations for adults with autism. NT can quite readily navigate the social world with ease and intuition and able to read the signs when someone isn't engaged or enjoying the interaction. They can also be flexible in leaving the conversation half finished and move where the flow takes them with other distractions, whereas there's often a need to allow a conversation to reach it's conclusion once it's started with autistic adults, especially when it's important to them.

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