u/pdawes

I am NT but notice that when I am around autistic people with the stereotypical "uncomfortable in social situations" presentation (e.g. avoiding eye contact, pacing and stimming, etc.) it's like... I feel like I have to do it too?

Not even super consciously, it just feels like one of those things like not staring at someone's breasts or missing limb or something. I take on the discomfort myself and sort of shut down. I notice this a lot when I'm in a group setting with one autistic person but other NT people; I become uncomfortable and kind of bring my level of engagement down to match the level of the autistic person. I stop looking everyone in the eye, I'll fidget and pace. These are not things I normally do otherwise.

I do feel like there's this "family mode" I get into. As a kid I feel like I was socialized to act autistic and socially phobic, basically, and if I wasn't like that it was treated as if I was doing something weird and ostentatious. My mom (whom multiple people believe may be autistic) actually said that to me once, "stop being in the spotlight so much" at a family gathering. In retrospect I was just being... a friendly kid? among people who wanted to talk to me for a change.

Anyone relate to this?

I store mine at my desk upright when I'm not using it. The design of the pad makes it easy enough to store upright, and I can flip it down for use but it's clunky and slides around while I'm doing it. Also it could theoretically fall over when stored upright.

I'm wondering if there's some kind of like... spring assembly? I could make or purchase to make flipping back and forth between upright and horizontal easier and more solid.

Anyone try something like this?

I grew up bilingual in English and Spanish. I also took French for 10+ years in school. Got up to a C1 level at my highest, but it is much more effortful and foreign feeling. I have definitely lost a lot of it over the years.

I had the typical profile of a heritage speaker of Spanish who didn’t speak it outside of the home. I had roughly B2 vocabulary most of my life, and I didn’t really get to native fluency until I started working a job with Spanish-speaking clients every day. I found that I just kind of passively absorbed greater fluency, ability to tune in, ability to discern different regional/class accents, etc. Everything I can do in English I can now do in Spanish.

Now, I might be emigrating to a Francophone country and working in French in the near future. I‘ve been brushing up on my French and consuming a lot of French media. I notice I’m developing a similar passive process of ”tuning in” to fluency, not translating in my head, etc. which is cool. However, I feel like it might be weakening my Spanish somehow? Perhaps I am just being neurotic, but I really want to preserve the capacity I have and it feels like my brain can’t handle a third language without compromising the second. I suppose it could just be fatigue though.

I’m wondering if anybody has experience with a similar situation and keeping up all your languages. Am I worrying about nothing? Do you have established practices for keeping your abilities up?