Quick background: I live in a house with my sibling and their parents. My sibling is not legally or biologically related to me, but they ARE my sibling. My sibling’s parents are not my parents, but we are collectively a ‘family,’ in many senses of the word. I call my sibling’s parents “the Elders of Plumley” as Plumley is the name of our house, they are the oldest members of our household, and they are sources of great wisdom. I myself am in my late teens (no longer in high school.) My sibling is in their mid teens (still in high school.) All of us in the household are various hues of neurodivergent. (I have ADHD and my autistic friends are all convinced that I’m also autistic; my sibling is a fellow ADHDer and may or may not be autistic; Elders are ADHD and ??? (cluster of traits that are definitely something but remain undiagnosed) respectively.
Main thing: So, I have this communication issue with my younger sibling. (They’re in their mid teens, I’m a few years older than them.) Sometimes I’ll be trying to tell them something, or ask a question, and they won’t respond; if I say their name a few times, they get frustrated with me (or, they make a noise that sounds frustrated, I’ll admit that I don’t know exactly what all their noises mean.) This isn’t as much of a problem for me as it is for their parents. The elders of plumley have trouble communicating with them, and it has been known to cause arguments/distress. My sibling responds to them in ways that are harder to decipher, and they tend to make more irritated noises. (Or maybe they just get interpreted as irritation more often. I’m not sure.)
My sibling has previously described processing/registering that someone is talking to them, but not feeling the need to respond. I’ve asked about how we could maybe work out a means of more regularly communicating the fact that they’re listening and similar, but they kinda just shrugged at me and made a confused noise. And to be honest, I feel quite similarly about the whole thing too! So, I turn to you lovely internet folks. Do you have any strategies for this kind of thing? Are there things I should be doing on my end to make communication easier? Are there alternate ways of saying “I’m listening” that aren’t just saying the words?
It may be in your interests to explain to people exactly what you just said to me.
My current boss is ND and very open about it. It means I don’t get frustrated when he’s not communicating the way I’m used to; I don’t take offense to certain behaviours; but also, I can comfortably say to him ‘hold up, let me finish what I was about to say’ wait for him to process that bit, then continue.
You sound similar to him. He knows that the majority of people are going to feel frustration or offense because some of his ways of relating aren’t what is perceived as ‘normal’, or he comes across as plain rude. So when I started work he explained all this to me. Sometimes he is just being a fuckhead - like anyone can be, he doesn’t have a free pass - and I’ll call him out on it. But day to day, to avoid miscommunication or irritation, we’ve found a way of interacting positively.
So I think for you, you’ve got to realise that it’s not about shutting down. I think even in a passing conversation with someone you don’t know, you can probably say ’ Hey, I’m ND - sometimes I can interrupt/talk over you, I don’t mean to - I’m trying to listen but it’s hard for me to stay focused’.
Maybe review any videos or podcasts that hold your attention and figure out if there’s a speech pattern that helps? Is it short sentences with pauses? Is it asking rhetorical questions? Or is that what makes your mind wander?
Anyway, I’m no expert in this specifically but I’m a writer and do a fair amount of public speaking. You can tell when you’re losing someone and I typically don’t think it’s the audience’s job to change how they listen, but rather how I speak. For you though, I think it’s a bit of give and take.
Hahaha, I don’t want to explain to everyone what neurodivergent is meaning 😅😂 no time for that, and I can’t really explain it on demand, that is a very difficult task for me. But I have good way working/living with it. Here in Switzerland, it seems like generally only people below 30 know about this stuff, lol