I’ve heard it more times than I can count. In supermarkets, at school gates, from relatives who should honestly know better by now.
“But he doesn’t look autistic.”
And every single time, I have to fight the urge to say something I’ll regret.
Here’s what I wish I could explain in those moments… calmly, clearly, without the eye-twitch… autism doesn’t have a look. There is no face, no haircut, no outfit that tells you someone is autistic. And if you think there is, you’ve been watching too many films and not enough real life.
My boys are autistic. Both of them. And to look at them, you’d see two perfectly lovely lads. Blake, at fifteen, has a full social life, loads of friends, and enough charm to talk his way out of almost anything. Matthew will hold a conversation with any adult in the room and have them completely captivated within minutes. Neither of them fits whatever picture that phrase is conjuring in your head.
But here’s what you don’t see.
You don’t see Blake unable to wear certain fabrics because the sensation is genuinely painful to him. You don’t see the meltdown that can follow if someone’s wearing a strong perfume in a small space. You don’t see how carefully I have to choose my words… because if I say “we’re just popping in for a couple of things,” I’d better mean exactly a couple of things, or we have a problem.
You don’t see Matthew at a school social event, desperately wanting to connect with other kids his age, and just… not being able to bridge that gap. You don’t see how much energy it takes him to get through a single school day, or the weight of knowing that the friendships other kids seem to fall into effortlessly have never come easily for him. Not because he doesn’t want them. Because his brain is wired differently, and the world wasn’t built with that wiring in mind.
Autism is invisible until it isn’t. And by the time you’re seeing it, we’ve usually already been managing it quietly for hours.
That phrase — “he doesn’t look autistic” — is exhausting for a few reasons. First, it implies there’s a way to look autistic, which is just not true. The spectrum is enormous. It includes people who are entirely non-verbal and people who can argue a room into submission. It includes people with profound support needs and people who, on the surface, seem absolutely fine… because they’ve spent years learning to seem absolutely fine. That’s called masking, and it is exhausting for the person doing it.
Second, it often comes wrapped in what the person thinks is a compliment. “Oh but he’s so sociable, he doesn’t seem autistic at all!” Said with a smile. As if I should be relieved. As if the diagnosis is something to be minimised, something to grow out of, something to be quietly embarrassed about unless the evidence is obvious enough to justify it.
We are not embarrassed. This is not something to be minimised.
My sons are autistic, and they are also funny, clever, curious, kind, and absolutely fascinating to know. Those things exist at the same time. The autism isn’t a shadow hanging over the good stuff… it’s woven through all of it. It’s part of who they are.
So when you say “he doesn’t look autistic,” what I hear is: “He doesn’t match my limited understanding of what autism means.”
And that’s not his problem. That’s the misunderstanding we still have so much work to do to fix.
I don’t say all of this to make anyone feel terrible for having said it. Most people mean well. I know that. But meaning well and getting it right aren’t always the same thing… and if this lands with even one person and shifts something in how they think about it, then it was worth saying.
My boys are autistic. They look exactly like themselves.
And that’s enough.
