Lesson 5: The Understanding
What are we actually dealing with
We were on our way home from a Christmas trip to London to see Rover’s grandparents.
I’d prepared him for the Eurostar. He loves trains. He’d watched a YouTube video about it on repeat. In those videos the train is always the same blue-yellow-grey. So in his mind, the plan was not “we’re taking a train.”
The plan was: we’re taking that train.
The way in was perfect. On the way back, we had to change in Brussels. Christmas crowds. A chaotic platform. Loudspeakers echoing everywhere.
And then the train rolled in.
Red.
I knew immediately.
When your kid is five, you pick him up and carry him on. Rover was sixteen at the time. A packed platform, every head turning, him screaming, me negotiating. You give in fast.
It took me two hours and three additional missed trains to convince him to take the last leg of the journey.
If you don’t have an autistic child, this sounds insane. If you do, you’re nodding. You have your own red train.
We all know roughly what autism looks like. But what might actually be going on underneath?
I’ve been pondering that question for years. Theories about why autistic kids struggle to read social cues. About why they don’t feel too little but too much. About how the brain is constantly trying to minimize surprise. Even how AI language models work. Each one gave me a piece.
None of what follows is my own theory. But I do have a remix.
Autism is a spectrum and every kid is different. This part you already know. But underneath, I think three things are always at play. How much of the world gets in. What the brain expects to happen next. And what it decides matters.
One. How much of the world gets in.
Ok, lets do a thought exercise.
You’re stuck in a traffic jam inside a tunnel. Every car around you starts blasting death metal at full volume. The tunnel echoes like crazy. The bass is in your chest. You cover your ears but it doesn’t help.
Now a polished English lady knocks on your window and asks: “How do you do, sir? Are you having a nice day?”
You’re not rude. You’re not stupid. You just have zero bandwidth left for the subtleties of polite social interaction.
That’s autism. The world comes in unfiltered. Not just sound. Light, texture, smell, the tag on a shirt. Every sense, all the time. And when all your bandwidth goes to processing that, there’s not much left for anything else.
Two. What the brain expects to happen next.
Imagine that while reading this post, someone taps your right shoulder. You turn around, and there’s a full-grown adult dressed as Pikachu, screaming his name directly into your face.
First, your heart jumps. Then, when that fades, a deep sense of confusion. What the actual f%#?*
Your brain had a model of what was about to happen. Then something completely different occurred. The mismatch is what startled you. The mismatch is what confused you. And now your brain updates the model, so next time it’s less surprised.
In this case, that update might leave you traumatised by Japanese anime figures. Which would be a perfectly rational response.
Your brain does this continuously. Predict, check, adjust. Most of the time the deviations are small enough to correct in the background. But for autistic people, the senses are already dialed up to ten. A small deviation can trigger a much bigger emotional response.
That’s what happened in Brussels. The train was the wrong color. Not a big deal to you. A small disaster to him.
Three. What it decides matters.
Sensory overload and prediction errors explain a lot. But there’s a third piece.
Autistic people are often described as taking things literally. That’s true, but it’s a description, not an explanation. The explanation is weighting.
Any moment has layers. What’s literally happening. What it socially means. What it emotionally means. And every brain has to pick which one to pay attention to.
Most neurotypical brains turn up the social layer first. They read the subtext, the tone, the hidden rules. An autistic brain often turns up what's physically happening first instead. The concrete facts. The mechanics. Same inputs. Different ranking.
When Rover was little, he and his sister Maxin would try to play together. But that wasn’t always smooth sailing.
Think about something as simple as playing tag (‘tikkertje’ in Dutch). Neurotypical kids don’t just want to run. They want to be chased. Because tag is a little social story. “Chase me” means: I’m fast, I’m brave, I’m fun, I belong. The running is only a functional aspect of the game.
For Rover, that invisible storyline wasn’t weighted much. Tag got processed as running. Tiring. Chaotic. Why would I want this?
If you have someone on the spectrum in your life, you'll recognise a lot of this. But I have noticed another pattern over time. These three feed into each other.
Rover, like many kids on the spectrum, hates being dried off after a shower. The towel. The randomness of where it touches. Yet he loves deep pressure. A weighted blanket. A bear hug. Same skin. But one is random, the other sustained and more predictable. And if the world is overwhelming and unpredictable, it makes sense to adjust the weighting to the part that follows rules. Systems, mathematics, coding. Sound recognisable?
Once you see this, the routines make sense. The narrow interests. The repetitive movements. Most people see those and think: that’s autism. But those aren’t the condition. They’re the coping strategy. Ways to create a calmer, more predictable world.
Is that tough to deal with as a parent? You bet. But your kid is not misbehaving. Their mind just works differently. And with this understanding, you stop fighting it and start dancing with it. Figuratively ofcourse ;-)
You’ll never control the world. But you can take a lot more of the edge off than you think. And most of it is surprisingly practical.
We frequently plan Rover’s day in advance and walk him through it. Sometimes we use pictograms or write it down in big letters so the schedule is clear for him. Ahead of a big family trip to Kenya, he and his mom sat down recently and drew Africa together.
You learn which environments are sensory manageable and which ones need an exit strategy. Big city? Locate the park before you need it. Restaurant? Pick the quiet corner, not the terrace. Flight? Take the direct one, not the layover.
Understanding becomes intuition. And intuition, over time, becomes something I didn’t expect.
People pay thousands for silent retreats to get what Rover gave me for free! He teaches me to experience the world with much greater awareness.