I've started so I'll finish.

A tip to autism workers throughout the entire scene. The type of tip that only an experience prompts you to realise is needed to give. Concerning us speaking in meetings, and "facilitation" or chairing.

A basic item you will have been trained is that anxiety affects our confidence and fluency to be able to speak up in a group, even at the moments when we have something to say. Now, one of anxiety's focusses is on successfully conveying what you want to say. By common sense, this means being allowed to complete saying it.

But aspies can become focussed on banging on at length on the topic that concerns them, losing all focus on the audience and the discussion's need to flow on. When we are saying something long, it is not necessarily the case that we are going to monologue endlessly until stopped, but of course, to any worker hearing it the possibility exists. The potential problem exists, and any worker or meeting facilitator does not know whether we are going to monologue or finish our point quickly, and the discussion might get disrupted. So what should they do?

Obviously, they should find out. They should ask us how much we have to say, to complete our point. That way they will find out if we are focussed enough that we are completing a single point at all. if we are, we are taking part in the discussion fairly. If there is a lot left to say it might need abbreviating - but having started, having been allowed to start making a point, which includes stating the facts that back it up, we must be allowed to finish. So that we are heard and construed correctly. So that our communication succeeds. SO THAT WE ARE CARED ABOUT as participants. Find out how much is left to say to complete the aspie's point, engage with them to fit that to the discussion's available timescale.

What then is obviously wrong and workers should not do? They should not assume "oh, aspie banging on, must cut the flow" without further thought. They should not cut across our flow without intent of letting us continue, to just assert that it will fit better to say at a possible later time and the meeting must now move on. If they do that, if they don't bother about letting us finish what we have started, that is uncaring towards the content of what the aspie has to say. It shows unconcern for it to be heard accurately, which means completely. It shows disregard of the potential for embarrassment when an unfinished half-said point is misconstrued.

Sometimes a monologuing aspie may be of a type who habitually has no awareness of how long they intend to go on speaking and who is regularly not offended by curtailing unfinished and gets to live with it habitually. The danger is this makes it a habit for the autism worker too, to apply the same standard towards every aspie, and towards the very different ones who are not regular monologuers and who are saying something a bit long because they need to, with every clear idea of its ending. The one case is no guide to the other. They are 2 very different circumstances of meeting participation fairness, and hence of impact on the person when it is got wrong.

• Just saying it's the wrong moment to bang on and cutting off our speech arbitrarily without regard to its content: wrong, bad, damaging, harmful.
• Asking us how much more to say and arranging that, even if rushed, we get to finish the point we have started: good practice, always the right thing to do, caring, need.

Maurice Frank