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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I’m confused.

What is the typical range of emotions an autist displays and can identify? Our doctor said teaching our children 30+ emotion labels would help them understand themselves and others more. But those labels or identifiers had to be explicitly taught.

How do the demonstrate empathy or the ability to put themselves in others shoes, or see another perspective outside of their own?  Do them demonstrate this by finding needs and fulfilling them? [/quote]

There’s no actual scientific research on this. You can read writings by autistic adults (or just observe your own kids) and see that they experience a range of emotions. Also the demand that they “demonstrate empathy” as children in a way that adults deem correct is really toxic. Kids (NT or not) are self-centered. They don’t go around finding other people’s needs and fulfilling them. [/quote]

Therapist explained it this way. Empathy is seeing a need, taking action, taking the “right action.” It requires awareness, effort, and some degree is skill.

This could be for every day things like: the dog needs a walk, a kid needs to talk or a hug, the garbage needs to go out, arrangements need to be made for kids half day off.

You can teach an ASD person rules and routines, and they will slot them in to their routine if not overwhelmed. 
Take dog out at 7am, 3pm and 7pm. They will do this religiously, no improvising. That can be good or bad. (Ie don’t look up weather coming) 
Hug your kid twice a day. 
Load up garbage Sunday and Wednesdays. Can’t tell them to monitor for it, they won’t.

The other from of empathy that makes humans humans is the ability to hold two opposing through and work through them, find a solution. 
wife doesn’t want to go to Mexico and but he does.  Kid is scared of Star Wars movie but he wants to watch it now. Wife wants house cleaned up no so she can cook, but he wants to do it only Sunday nights. 
This can be a BIG cerebral hang up for an ASD person, you can tell them your perspective or view many times and they will ignore or fight it. They saw it a different way and that is their rule. [/quote]

I would be extremely wary of a therapist who dwelled on the concept of an “empathy deficit” in treating a kid on the spectrum. It’s not like the kind of ABA that punished kids for stimming, but it is a very non-objective deficit-based approach. Suggesting that kids with autism are less than human because they don’t conform to some abstract notion of “empathy” is obviously problematic. I mean, what you describe doesn’t sound like empathy anyway. It sounds like rigidity and being unable to compromise. [/quote]

Lots of rigidity, lack of compromise and fixation in my hfa kid.  Arent these a common symptom of HFa? 
She comes home and wants to make cookies, come hell or high water. No matter if there’s a practice or homework or we’re still working or there’s no sugar.  There’s a tantrum until it happens or she calms down and gets redirected away from her fixation, cookies.  This has happened ages 6-11 now, no progress in being reasonable with personal wants. [/quote]

Sounds like possibly normal adolescent behavior but you should seek out an assessment if you are worried. If she has a “normal” social life and friends, then probably not. [/quote]

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