A Translation Guide for Misread Behavior
“Look at my feet while I’m talking to you.” At first, that sounds wrong. Disrespectful, even. It goes against what most of us have been taught to believe about attention, engagement, and respect.
But what if it’s not wrong? What if it’s a correction, not of the student, but of the standard?
“What can I do when it looks like they don’t care?” That is a common phrase I hear from parents, spouses, and friends of people living with autism.
They’re not asking a theoretical question. They’re asking it in exhaustion. In frustration. In moments where nothing they try seems to land. And that misunderstanding is often reinforced by siblings, grandparents, employers, and strangers who see the same behavior and reach the same conclusion: “They don’t care.”
Most of the conflict we experience with people living with autism isn’t about effort. It’s about misinterpretation.
We think someone is ignoring us. We think they don’t care. We think they should just know what needs to be done. And in many cases, we’re wrong. Not because we’re careless, but because we’re measuring someone else’s behavior using rules they don’t understand.
By the time we’re frustrated, we’re often reacting to a meaning we created, not the behavior that actually happened.
I am not an expert on people living with autism. I work with and for people who are, and I am learning more every day about their challenges, their talents, and the stigma and misinformation they encounter.
I’ve learned I’ve had to confront something uncomfortable: I am part of the problem.
Misinterpretation is the problem.
When working with, for, or helping those family members who support someone living with autism, the conflicts they encounter are seldom about effort; it’s about misreading behavior and expecting unspoken alignment. Specifically, neurotypical standards are often invisible but enforced by the norms and expectations we have learned over a lifetime. Neurodivergent responses are often visible but misunderstood. Neurotypical people and neurodiverse people share many similarities; however, they process information and think differently. One is not better or worse than the other.
Starting to Solve Our Problem
As people who are neurotypical, in order to build inclusive families, communities, workplaces, and a truly equitable society, we need to replace our biased judgments with understanding.
We need to realize that what we see is not actually what is happening, because people living with autism and other developmental barriers are not better or worse than we are; they simply think and process information differently than we do. If we can do that more often, and without bias, we can begin to welcome neurodiverse people into their rightful role in our families, communities, workplaces, and society.
Resolving environmental misunderstandings
For people living with autism, misunderstanding is a constant companion when dealing with the neurotypical people around them.
As a career advisor, where I find misunderstanding most prevalent is in:
Hiring & Interviewing
Our hiring processes are skewed toward judging comfort instead of capability. We reward an applicant’s ability to perform under pressure, even if the job being sought doesn’t require that ability. Most damagingly, we penalize people who think and communicate differently.
The fix is using structured questions that reflect the actual abilities required, and advance preparation, such as allowing neurodiverse applicants to have the questions 24 hours prior to the interview.
Training & Work
Workplace accommodations are another area rife with misunderstanding for employers working with neurodiverse people. Too often, orientation, onboarding, and employee development are based on vague instructions, a “figure it out” culture, and a lack of clear expectations.
People living on the autism spectrum thrive when they have clear steps and written instructions, defined expectations and outcomes, and predictable feedback loops. Ironically, these same accommodations would benefit all employees, not just those who experience autism.
There is also a myth that accommodations are prohibitively expensive, when in actual fact most involve relatively little cost.
Home & Relationships
This section, and the one that follows, are perhaps the most damaging and painful for people living with neurodiversity in all its forms. Immediate family members live with the struggles, discrimination, trauma, and misunderstandings their children grow up with.
Our society has invisible standards that become apparent from the earliest ages, and through comparisons to other children. We often apply emotional interpretations of behavior that are wrong and potentially damaging, even when they come from people who love them. We also expect shared responsibility without providing structure or a starting point for the person living with autism.
Undoing trauma and building permanent “fixes” takes explicit agreements between everyone at home, to understand that a person who lives with autism or any other form of neurodiversity does not process or understand what neurotypicals assume everyone should know.
We all need to take ownership of this reality and ensure we define expectations in a way that neurodiverse people can process, helping them build a path to meet both their expectations and ours.
The Family Reality Section
“What can I do when it looks like they don’t care?” is a common phrase I hear from parents, spouses, and friends of people living with autism. That misunderstanding is common, and becomes heavier when reinforced by siblings, grandparents, employers, and strangers.
The problem is that this interpretation is often wrong. We are using neurotypical bias. We need to validate emotional frustration without reinforcing misinterpretation.
I believe that solving “the problem(s)” begins with family, and I suggest the following steps:
Step 1: Say what you feel, direct and unfiltered. Never feel guilty about saying what you are thinking and feeling, this is important, can it can help you take the next step.
- “I feel like I’m doing everything.”
- “Why do I have to ask every time?”
- “How can they not see this?”
- “It feels like they don’t care.”
Step 2: Reframe without dismissing
Introduce the three core breakdowns:
1. Invisible Expectations
- If a task or responsibility is not defined, it doesn’t exist.
- “Notice” is not a shared skill. A parent will notice dishes are not done; a person living with autism may not. Even if they do notice, they may not know where to start when there are multiple tasks, sensory overload, or competing demands.
2. Attention Differences
- Focus is not evenly distributed. Neurotypical people learn to prioritize, but we often forget our system is biased toward helping us do so. Neurodiverse people do not have this societal advantage
- Processing timing differs even among neurotypical people, something even well-intentioned family members can forget when frustrated.
3. Initiation Friction
- Starting, or more specifically knowing where to start, is often the hardest part for people living with autism.
- For a task like washing dishes, there is an underlying order we learn, which may not be understood or retained by someone living with autism, even if the person has done it before.
- Someone living with autism can also be overwhelmed by rubber glove texture, temperature, or additional “found” dirty dishes.
- No entry point = no action. Having clear starting points turn impossible tasks into doable ones.
Step 3: Replace emotion with structure
Instead of: “You should help your mom more,” say: “Karen, I need you to do the dishes after supper, and here is what I need you to do…”
Instead of: “You should know how to do this,” say: “Karen, here’s what I need you to do, and when…”
Instead of: “Why didn’t you do this?” say: “Karen, next time, do this…”
Step 4: Balance accountability
Understanding is not excusing. Effort still matters, but effort must have clear targets and clear instructions including where and how to begin.
Appreciation how everything interacts. Many neurotypical people can function in environments with multiple interruptions and many distractions, neurodiverse people may not be able to do so.
People living with autism are not better or worse than anyone else; however, unless we unload our biases and misconceptions, they will be made to feel inferior.
Step 5: Emotional bridge line
One person feels abandoned. The other feels like they’re always failing. The problem is that neither is being translated. For neurotypical parents, grandparents, employers, co-workers, and people living with autism or other forms of neurodiversity, these frustrations are shared equally.
The “Convincing” Reframe
Stop trying to convince. Start by removing friction. We want to shift from emotional pressure to functional clarity. Neurodiverse people don’t resist helping; they resist confusion.
Motivation often follows clarity, and consistency builds trust, not pressure.
The Hard Truth
In all relationships, professional, academic, and family, we need to remember that if someone consistently “fails,” we need to check whether success was ever clearly defined.
If you’re relying on instinct, learned behaviors, and experience alone, you’re relying on similarity, bias, and misconception, not effective communication.
Clarity feels like kindness to one person and control to another, but it is the only thing that works for both.
“Look at my feet while I’m talking to you.”
This teacher “got it.” What might have seemed like an inappropriate comment to a student living with autism was, in fact, exactly the kind of problem acknowledgment and action that comes when we stop measuring respect through eye contact.
It was a challenge to listen beyond our neurotypical norms. Most importantly, it was an invitation to meet someone where they function, even if that place is unfamiliar or uncomfortable.
We have learned to exist, and often thrive, in a world that rewards those of us who think and process information the way we do, the neurotypical society. However, if we believe in a world that embraces diversity, equity, and inclusion, we need to recognize the limitations and exclusions we have created.
You can begin to help solve this problem.
Appreciate and recognize eye contact and body language myths, and the danger of assumptions like “You should just know …”, we should understand why vague instructions destroy performance, not only for neurodiverse people, but for many neurotypical people as well.
We need to recognize the emotional cost of being misread that people experience every day. Finally, we need to acknowledge how structure and clarity can improve all of our relationships with people who simply think differently from us.
Paul