NOT WATCHING THE SNAKE! I like them in their ecosystems, eating rodents, but not within houses...or outside, within 20 feet of me. I don't mind little garter snakes; we used to race them as kids. LITTLE ONES, like 4 inches.

I mean, give me a non-vague instruction, and I'll do the non-vague task. That's more typical of behavior in the non-neurotypical. We like specifics! Specifics are good!

AHAHAHAHAHA. Considering I just got zapped at work for not figuring out and excelling at hella vague tasks, SO MUCH THIS.

A very useful term INHVirgoO is "Let me check my understanding of this" (preferably in writing) and then repeating things back to the instruction-giver so they can clarify. And I take notes.

I believe strongly in CYA. And also in giving explicit, clear instructions, and checking people's understanding. People are often afraid of appearing incompetent or dumb, so they'll just say "Uh-uh," whereas that phrase is pretty innocuous AND CsYA.

At ten I think I was cooking dinner on a fairly regular basis. Not meal planning but certainly following instructions. Not much older than that I was coming up with my own special recipes and making those sometimes.

Started cooking at six. My first dish was a herb omlette. The cookbook explained out to seperate the eggs and the yolks, and we had all the herb required by the recipe in the house.

I am so relieved to hear that others have to take a good long while to process it when someone speaks to them because I am so that way. Sometimes I stare for a good while at a person waiting for the words to come into focus.

DH was just watching an idiotic show on the science of sex, full of all sorts of fun "facts" like "men like looking at breasts" and "men have a higher sex drive than women because women are looking for a mate that will stick around." Really?! It was like a Time magazine article in tv form.

I was never taught to cook, and still am crap at it. I was never taught anything that didn't have to do with cars or feeding livestock; everything else I know, I learned by trial-and-error or by finding out for myself. I am the person who's often wished for an Instruction Manual for Life. I think my family assumed that because I was really smart, I didn't need to be taught anything, I'd just somehow...know. My family was also the kind who'd run to do everything for me on one day, and the next day be annoyed with me for not doing it for myself. Not conductive to learning.

BTW as far as the kids doing housework thing goes, my kids are lame, you'll all be mocking them in a couple years. They've been "folding" clothes since kindergarten, but I always have to redo them if I want them to actually look folded. Both kids have changed the sheets, but they need to be coached through it. Really, they can't even be trusted to straighten up their bedrooms, and they are asked to do that daily. Same with setting and clearing the table. And I was equally incompetent at their ages.

I think there's a long period of "crap at doing it" which is why some parents give up or don't bother in the first place.

Much of the basic home maintenance tasks that I know, I learned either from working as a custodian in college, or from the "home maintenance checklist" at the group homes. I did, however, learn basic cooking and cleaning from my parents. Dad taught me more about cooking than he did about taking care of cars. I think he saw me as someone he could not teach something that came so naturally to him. This is not the same thing as believing that I could not learn - but it felt like it at the time. I spent a lot of time in the decade or so after he died mastering things on my own and having "So There, Old Man!" moments.