You're Not Listening to Me! Understanding Autistic Attention

In each of this series of 12 articles, Dr Jo Grace shares an autistic trait with us, showing how early research pathologised difference as a problem and then giving us insight into more contemporary work in which difference is viewed as neutral, and problems are solved through understanding and collaboration.

Illustration of talking to Mummy from My Mummy is Autistic by Heath Grace.

Understanding autistic attention through a child's perspective

Autistic attention is the focus of this article, and it's something I understand from both sides. In 2020, I became the UK's most obnoxiously proud mummy when my son became the UK's youngest published author with his book, My Mummy is Autistic. He wrote it as he turned five, illustrating it with the vibrant felt-tip pen drawings that only children can produce. Along with everything else that happened that year, I had a baby. That baby has just turned five, and his book, My Daddy is Not Autistic, came out in March 2026. It is not mandatory for sons of mine to write books by their fifth birthdays, but circumstances conspired and we find ourselves in this situation.

This is the eighth article in a series of twelve interconnected articles that all explore autistic experience through the eyes of a child. You can explore the other articles on the Parenta blog. I imagine many of you will have been following along all year and will by now be familiar with the format of each article. I identify a characteristic that has been recognised in research as an autistic trait, and show how early research pathologised the differences they identified, before moving on to look at the same trait through a contemporary lens in which the difference is not automatically a problem. Today I am writing about attention. The difference in the way autistic people pay attention was identified, and then automatically pathologised, by researchers such as Mundy and Sigman (1989), who described it as an impairment.

A classroom example of autistic deep focus

I can think of an example of this difference from my teaching days in a special school. It was early in my career, and it was a big day: a class trip. I had my whole class lined up at the door, ready to walk out together and board the minibus. My teaching assistants and I checked: did we have the risk assessment and the medical kit; had we got the emergency medication for the children with epilepsy and allergies; did we have the liquid feed for the person who had a blended diet; and were the blankets on the wheelchair users' laps secured correctly? I was ready, my hand poised on the handle at the top of the door, high up so that the children could not reach it. I glanced around one last time to check it was safe to leave, and there, playing on the carpet in a patch of sunlight, sat one little boy. Cross-legged, happy with the two toy cars he was driving across the pale green carpet. Untouched by the kerfuffle around him. No idea that he should have been lining up.

I bellowed his name at him. He looked up, startled. I told him to line up. A teaching assistant rushed to get his coat. He was an occasional user of words, and in general his words were all lines he had learned for cartoons. My bellowing had interrupted his peaceful play, and he was agitated, racing in his head to find the words to make the situation right:

“But wait!” He announced as a teaching assistant struggled to feed his arms into his sleeves. “We’ve left the refreshment lady behind!”

It was a line from Thomas the Tank Engine, and it really broke the tension. We laughed and remembered we were going on the trip for fun. I knew what I had done wrong. I hadn't called his name when instructing the class to line up. My everyone line up, and get your coats on everybody, did not touch him. When my son drew the picture above, I recognised myself as that child on the carpet. Although there is a great difference between people who are autistic, there is also a surprising amount of similarity. This is what I have been writing about lately in my book The Scale of the Spectrum.

Monotropism: how autistic brains focus deeply

Contemporary research, for example, Murray et al (2005), is beginning to recognise autistic people as monotropic thinkers, capable of deep focus and concentration. If your engagement with a topic is not surface level, then surface level invitations to disengage from that topic will not distract you.

Why interrupting deep focus can distress autistic people

As that boy focused on his cars driving on the carpet, or as I focus on my hula hooping, or in the picture my bouncing on a trampoline (we do not have a trampoline, so I think the author has used artistic licence here), our brains are occupied by what we are doing. The world around fades into the background. The sounds, the sights, the goings on, all become distant from our experience.

Practical strategies for supporting attention shifts in autistic children

Calling my name, as I called that boy's, is not telling me to pay attention; it is an invitation to shift processing channels, as a particular tap on the rope of a deep-sea diver calls them back to the surface. You would not expect immediate emergence. Asking people to shift attention abruptly, as I wrongly did to the boy in my class, is to cause them distress, just like asking a diver to surface too fast. Not all autistic people are monotropic thinkers. However, if you recognise autistic people you care for as potentially being people who can focus deeply on a particular topic, then show respect for their processing by giving them plenty of warning for when they will need to change attention channels. Using their name to signal that the requests you are giving are directed towards them can help. Happily, for my children, I respond to the name Mummy. I do, however, respond to this name no matter who calls it, which can get confusing for us in supermarkets sometimes.

Over to you: Think about the children in your care who focus deeply on one thing. How could you offer them a gentle, named warning before the next transition, rather than expecting them to surface straight away? Tell us in the comments below!

References

Mundy, P., & Sigman, M. (1989). The theoretical implications of joint attention deficits in autism. Development and Psychopathology 1(3) 173-183.
Murray, D., Lesser, M., & Lawson, W. (2005). Monotropism.
Grace, E and Grace, J (2026) My Daddy is Not Autistic. Routledge.
Grace, H and Grace, J. (2020) My Mummy is Autistic. Routledge.
Grace (2026) The Scale of the Spectrum. Pavilion.

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