Autistic problems with spelling and grammar

I used to think I was a bit dyslexic, now I think my problems with spelling could also be related to my autism. I still get excited when I learn how to spell a new word. Recently I’ve learnt to spell Echinacea. For a long time I didn’t know how to pronounce it, and now I can spell it too! I look at unfamiliar words like Echinacea and they just appear like a long stream of meaningless numbers. The way I’ve remembered how to spell it is; ‘e’, then ‘china’ and then ‘cea’ (which you can remember from the way it’s pronounced).

Spelling has always been a problem for me, mostly because I find it so difficult to figure out how to pronounce words. It’s a language problem I’ve had since I was a child (I was late talking and when I went to school my teachers couldn’t understand me). NT children start saying words by the time they’re two. Also my reading was below average. I love reading now; I think it just took me longer to remember how to say all the words. Grammar is still a mystery for me.

I did a degree in writing and film studies. I was really looking forward to the modules on grammar. When I was at school it was trendy not to teach grammar and instead to encourage creativity. I think most of the other kids picked it up along way. But I was fifteen before anyone told me what an apostrophe was.

Our English teacher was telling my class off, it was the first year of our GCSEs, for our lack of grammatical knowledge. At first she didn’t believe us when we said we’d never been taught. But when her favourite and cleverest student (we were the top set) told her it was true she had to believe him. She spent fifteen minutes explaining apostrophes.

It stayed with me for a while. Autistic people learn through repetition though, and once isn’t enough for me. So I was very excited about doing a whole module on grammar. It was hard work and I learnt a lot – at the time. Two years later though I struggle to remember it. I’ve kept my books though. I shall go over them again. One day, who knows, it might stick. For now I have to rely on Word to tell me when I’m using an apostrophe incorrectly.