Autistics and Rules and Expectations – and stimming?

As an ADHD autistic adult, I’d say that I have a decidedly nonapparent relationship with rules. And I say that because sometimes rules are my everything, and other times I will just not play by a rule, to an extent nobody seems to understand.

An Example of My Extra Rule Following

For about eight years, I taught a January session class at my university. It was scheduled to meet in the evenings, I think from 6pm – 915pm, with some breaks in there.

Here’s a picture I dug up to show you how that went down, every night. You see, that’s my car in the faculty parking lot. Also, it is the only car, the last car there, because nobody stayed the full class period during January session.

I haven’t taught January session in years, and I’m telling you that I’m still genuinely upset about it right now writing this up. I understood the reasons for the rule, things like minimum contact hours per credit and federal financial aid stuff.

Also, I was teaching a course that I had taught many times, and so I knew that to teach it well did indeed require following this rule and meeting for the full class meeting times, in order to give students enough time to learn and to do the things.

My classes went great! Ain’t nobody complaining about meeting for the full class period from inside my classes.

I did get teased by a few colleagues, and the facilities staff were annoyed because they could not lock up buildings on south campus until I left. This meant that I had the lot of them lined up, in the hallway, outside my classroom, every night, staring us down.

I told students to ignore them, and we all agreed to it.

What do you think? Was this because I couldn’t be flexible with rules? I don’t think so. I think it was because I believed in the basis for the rule. When I think a rule is the right thing then, well, I will follow it every time.

We Will Tell on People

We might even do this when we’re grown. It’s super distressing when there is a rule we believe in, to see people breaking it. I tried to report that all the faculty did not meet for the full class periods.

First I tried asked them, and that’s when they began teasing me. Then I told on them. I learned that it turns out nobody cares, but I went full hall monitor; yes I did.

I find it physiologically upsetting to watch someone break the rules when I believe in the rule. This is what autism can look like, because it looks like that in me. I want to tell on themselves to them, which can take the form of what people call “holding up a mirror” but the distress comes from the breaking of rules that make sense.

And if I learn that they really don’t care, then I will tell on them not to get them in trouble but because I want them to follow the rule, because I believe that the rule is in place for better reasons. I don’t care whether they get in trouble. I do want them to follow the rule. In this case, students earning three credits without the contact hours? This upset me.

Related Experiences

I don’t think that I could ever personally enable an addict, because of this autistic tendency I have that makes it so difficult to tolerate rule breaking. This is just about me. I once had a coworker who was a gambling addict, when I was working EMS, and one day I physically stopped him from buying his scratch tickets.

We were on the same truck for a 24 hour shift, partners for that one day, and no, I wasn’t able to just keep the truck warm outside while he ran in to spend his week’s paycheck a few dollars at a time. No. We weren’t even friends. It was just too wrong for me to remain a bystander for it, when I was literally behind the wheel while he ran in.

Social injustice leads to a similar, visceral response for me. I hate the injustices, and I want to fix them. The rules about justice, kindness and fairness, about being there for one another, as neighbors, as friends, as people on the road? These make sense to me deeply and guide my life, and they feel connected to my nature.

An Example of My Extra Rule Ignoring

But don’t conclude that I follow rules extra, because that’s not it. Like with some autistics, I’m probably better known for NOT following the rules. A story for you on this follows.

When I was in the military, I lived on a base that had a stop sign in the middle of nowhere. I mean, you could see for at least a mile in all directions of road. There was a stop sign, next to a tree, in the middle of flat land, and the stop sign had absolutely no purpose.

The tree had a purpose, which was for the military police car to hide so they could pop out and give tickets when people didn’t stop at their stop sign. It was the most ridiculous stop sign placement. This was thirty years ago and I’m shaking my head side to side right now remembering the absurdity for this article.

The first time I got pulled over, they asked why I didn’t stop. I said that the stop sign was ridiculous, because I could see for at least a whole mile that no cars were coming, (I wish I had a picture of this to show you – it really was just a game for them.)

They told me I had to stop. I said there was no reason to stop, none. It was absurd. I wasn’t going to stop at that stop sign. “Bro, I can that nobody is coming, from any direction, for several whole minutes. Why stop?”

The answer (beccause we put a stop sign here) was unsatisfactory to me. What I wanted them to do was to make different choices. Stop hiding in a tree to give useless tickets. Go do whatever else you supposedly are there to do, etc.

Okay, well jump ahead in time and I learned that after three moving violations on this base, one will lose their driving-on-base privileges. And my housing was about three miles in from the gate. And so in THAT moment, this potential threat became a VERY compelling reason for me to stop at their ridiculous stop sign henceforth.

Which is it: Rules or No Rules?

Sometimes, an autistic personmight need to understand the rationale behind the rule. We think differently, and so we might attach reason and purpose to different points than where an allistic person might. We’ll probably benefit from more context, and more explicit detail.

I know that I also need more information in the form of necessary steps along with the rationale, if there is a rule I should follow. Without the explicit steps, or without the rationale, I’m probably not going to do it. And it may look like I just don’t care, but that’s not it.

It’s not that I don’t care. It’s that I don’t think I need to care. I can’t read between the lines or know what you don’t tell me. I don’t yet see a reason to follow this new rule.

I am trying to manage so much sensory information, which I then process in my own way such that I need to employ a lot of discernment to try to filter what matters. Help me see that this is something that matters.

Why does this rule matter? Why should I do this? Until I get the context, until the rationale clicks for me, a new rule is just another stupid stop sign in the middle of an open field, and even if I somehow remember to do so, I ain’t got time to be stopping for that. 

What is stimming?

Stimming is that we do invent some bonus rules too.

There’s also this thing some autistic people sometimes do. We invent rules! I’m going to share with you the oldest rule of my life, begun when I was three years old, and I still like it.

The rule: While riding in a car, you need to lift your toes when passing a telephone pole. I made that up when I was little, and declared it a rule. There’s even a recovery option, for times when you forgot to do it for a while, you can call:

“Okay, for the next ten seconds, when I raise my toes, I get to count all the telephone poles on the planet, as long as I can estimate how many that would be. And this can bank points for when I miss them.”

Of course it’s got no real meaning and it’s silly. When I was little, I think I imagined something bad could happen if I didn’t handle the telephone poles. Now I don’t think that, not quite, although yes I do still actually lift my toes when I ride past telephone poles. Doing so gives me comfort.

Overall? Rules can give a lot of comfort, especially when they make sense and have a solid rationale. Rules that don’t make sense (i.e. how people are supposed to lie some small ambiguous amount on first dates or job interviews) are hard. And rules that we just make up (lifting toes when driving by telephone poles)? That’s stimming, and it gives us tremendous relief, and grounding, and safety, and calm, and peace.

It’s the first stim I know of from my past, since I was so little, and I’m 50 years old this year, an dI still have this stim. It’s still calming and centering for me.

What do you think, autistic kin, do you relate to any of this?

Want to discuss this topic? There is a thread about it on the facebook page.