My kid talks to adults too much

[Anonymous]

This thread is out of control, lol.

I am an adult who does this. I have no idea whether I’m on the spectrum. My practical tip is, if you’re going to push the convo down the path of your special interest, ASK A LOT OF QUESTIONS. People with more expertise than you do not want to hear your opinions or pat you on the head for all your “knowledge.” If your kid is doing that, then yah, quite annoying. In contrast, in my experience people enjoy having their expertise acknowledged and like having an appreciative audience. So I always ask qs and appear impressed, even if they’re saying things I know. This works well enough that people rarely change the subject or extract themselves from the convo. If they do, obviously I back off.

[Anonymous]

I have a job that people often have a lot of questions about. I am nice and theoretically glad people are interested but I really don’t want to talk much to an unrelated 10 year old about it. It’s stressful d as d high burnout and when I’m off duty, it’s irritating to talk about. And on a plane…please just make sure your son keeps it short.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I have a job that people often have a lot of questions about. I am nice and theoretically glad people are interested but I really don’t want to talk much to an unrelated 10 year old about it. It’s stressful d as d high burnout and when I’m off duty, it’s irritating to talk about. And on a plane…please just make sure your son keeps it short.

Can’t you just say you’re a dental hygienist or something? If you don’t want to talk about it, why say?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I have a job that people often have a lot of questions about. I am nice and theoretically glad people are interested but I really don’t want to talk much to an unrelated 10 year old about it. It’s stressful d as d high burnout and when I’m off duty, it’s irritating to talk about. And on a plane…please just make sure your son keeps it short.

Can’t you just say you’re a dental hygienist or something? If you don’t want to talk about it, why say?

That is what I do now, actually! But in non-plane situations usually not possible (not that it’s a fascinating job, just something lots of people want to chime in about.)