Autism is characterized by a lack of social interaction. You know what does all of the talking and leaves no room for interaction? Television (TV). A baby or child can cry, scream, and babble at the TV, but the TV does nothing. What does that teach the child? Well it doesn't teach them that social interaction is logical - It's like talking to a brick wall, there's no fruit in it.

Just to remind you, I'm not a doctor - I'm just a person in the middle of society

It would make sense that someone who tried to interact with something and receives no signs of change in what they're interacting with would consider their interacting useless. I mean, would you keep trying to start a car that doesn't start for 20 minutes after you believed it wasn't going to start? Would you continue trying to start it for the rest of your life?

I think it takes something people have to give to help autism. Attention, everyone has that... It's just dependent on where it is. Autistic children for some reason or another usually keep their attention directed away from social interaction. Sometimes, I want to do the same thing. I think we should teach them how social interaction is beneficial. Sure it may take some time, but when someone's convinced something is worthless, sometimes it takes time to see the other options. Many adults still don't like vegetables. It's not because they're dumb, it's just because they haven't found the right answers to their internal questions such as "what makes them worth the taste, I feel healthy already, why would I want those?" Everyone has a lot of internal questions and I truly believe that includes autistic children. Some of those questions hold with them reasons why they shouldn't do something, so those reasons would have to be countered to make logical sense as well.

What are the internal questions an autistic child has in regards to social interaction?

- Why would I do that? - Show me some way that's important and maybe I'll mimic it.
- Why would I do that, I don't get what I want. I'm afraid of not getting what I want. Why does someone want to do something I don't want. - Is it for my own good? How is it for my own good? Why is it for my own good?

(For example) How is going to bed more important than playing with blocks?

Social interaction is like vegetables, it's something very hard to get in to, so there has to be a lot of reason for it and reasons to put to rest the reasons for not doing it.

I think one of the best forms of social interaction is mimicry. Some of it is from observation (including listening to logical reasons for something). Encouragement is also great, acceptance can be a great a benefit. Why is encouragement great? Because typically people feel liked or loved when encouraged, and statistically speaking, people who are liked are treated better and get more of what they want in life.

Thank you for reading. If you would ever like to contact me, please feel free to do so! Just remember I'm not a doctor, I'm sharing my opinion based on my life experiences (we all have a different variety) because I hope it will be helpful to mankind. Though I do not put total faith into the wisdom of crowds or the collective conscious, I do put a lot of faith into them.

For this particular subject matter, I feel my experience is helpful because I was extremely antisocial when I was younger, I was told there were thoughts that I was autistic, so I feel I can relate above average.