# Unless it's really important... One of the main things that bothers me is being interrupted while I'm working on something. And it's not just _annoying,_ it's actually very jarring to me and my thought process. It's common for people to interrupt others. Sometimes it's necessary, and other times it's not. Either way, for neurotypical people it's not that big of a deal, they can usually go back to what they were doing as soon as the interruption is over. But, for many neurodiverse people, that's not the case. For me, being interrupted is like someone plopped a dam in the middle of my focus river and I'm on the dry side trying to figure out where all the water went. Each interruption is a major setback in whatever process I'm engaged in at the time. I basically have to demolish the dam, and then try to paddle against the flow of the river until I can find my focus again. If this happens too many times during a process, it can be extremely frustrating because as a neurodivergent person, we're not just picking up where we left off, we're having to go backwards before we can pick up where we left off. Too many steps backwards and we feel like we've barely begun. For our brains, processing time is precious. If we put our minds to something, we can accomplish amazing things. We can learn deeply and achieve major breakthroughs in understanding a topic, learning a new skill, or coming up with innovative ideas. It may take us longer to grasp a concept than the average person, but once we are allowed to work on a concept, uninterrupted for long periods of time, we will have a better handle on it than anyone else. This is one of the reasons that ABA therapy upsets me. In the depictions of ABA therapy that I've seen or have been described to me, it's very clear that ABA therapy actually holds autistic people back. One of the main reasons for that is that the person doing the therapy (not all of them really qualify to be called therapists, in my opinion) will move their patient from one skill to another too quickly, pulling them out of their focus river entirely. The longer an autistic person is unable to return to a focus river, the further back they must start the next time they do return to it. I believe this is one of the things that can cause skill regression in autistic people. Where a new, learned skill is suddenly forgotten. So, here's the thing. We do better if we can focus on ONE thing for long periods of time. Short bursts over several days are often not the way to teach an autistic person. (Of course, we're all different.) This is evident in the way we can learn absolutely EVERYTHING about our special interests. It's not _just_ because we're passionate about it, it's because that's what we spend long amounts of time thinking about, learning about, practicing, etc. I have been lucky enough to have the time to teach myself _a lot_ of skills, but I never had that time when I was in school. I was only able to do it after I graduated high school, moved out, and had kids with my husband. Now, I wasn't a horrible student. I'd say I was better than average with mostly A's and a few B's, but I do wonder if I could have been at the top of my class if I was able to focus more fully on a particular subject before moving on to another. So, please, if you see an autistic person trying to do something or learn something, don't interrupt them unless it's extremely important that you do so. You have no idea how big of a setback you're imposing on them. And what's more, don't help them with a task unless they ask for help (whether vocally or not). Many of us learn by doing and if you help us because we're taking too long or because we aren't doing it quite right, you're just hurting our learning process. We'll get it right, eventually. You just have to let our brains work the problem out and process everything we're seeing, doing, and learning. I can't tell you how many times I've seen a video of an ABA therapist, or a well-meaning parent swoop in and physically move the autistic person's hands to "show" them how to complete a task. This technique will not work with us. Hovering around while we complete a task is one of the worst things you can do. Don't believe me? Check out [[Things that Took Me FOREVER to Learn]].