Thread by @autisticats

Yesterday I remembered that when I was around 6-7 years old, I learned how to make origami foxes in my art class at school.

Then, when I got home, I cut up a bunch of pieces of paper into squares, and then proceeded to make what ended up as over 200 foxes in just a few days.

They were all different sizes, but a substantial portion of them were smaller than a thumbtack.

I was meticulous, and the repetition of folding in the same pattern constantly didn’t bore me, it made me excited and happy.

I was so proud of how many there were.

That weekend, I scooped all of the foxes up and put them in a giant ziplock bag, then took them to church so I could give some away to people.

The congregants were astonished at my “patience” and “attention to detail.”

Looking back, this is such a classic autistic story.

Repetitive actions are a core part of autism, but they’re so often misunderstood.

People think they need to stop us from doing things like spending hours upon hours making minuscule origami foxes.

But stopping something just because it’s “not normal” is not a good reason.

When Abby was in middle school, she drew what probably ended up being ~1,000 drawings of My Little Pony OCs, all lined up on the papers.

They all looked the same, except for the coloring and other details.

Her reason for doing that was the same as my reason for folding foxes.

Many modern behavioral therapists would classify our actions as “inappropriate play,” stating that we should be using more “imagination” and introducing more “variety” into our activities.

But who are they to decide what “play” means? Shouldn’t the focus be on having fun?

Recently I’ve been watching MARINA’s music video for her song Purge The Poison ().

It’ll get to the end and I’ll just press the replay button. These kinds of repetitive actions are baked into my existence.

And I enjoy it. Repetition is fun.

Are these actions “productive” in any typical sense?

No.

But do they make me happy?

Yes.

That’s all that matters. Not everything a person does needs to (or should) serve some greater economic or social purpose. Humans are supposed to enjoy life.

The things that autistic people enjoy doing might seem strange, or obsessive, or abnormal to people who don’t experience the same drive towards repetition.

But that’s fine. You don’t have to understand something in order to accept that it makes someone else happy.

So the next time you see an autistic person spinning a plate, or making a braid from three pieces of string until it’s 6 feet long (something I also did in my childhood), etc. just let them do what they’re doing.

You can even join in, to see what it’s all about.