‘Be polite with everyone, first of all with family members.’
Autistic hyperfocus, bluntness, and literal-mindedness can often be misinterpreted as rudeness by neurotypicals. So, at first sight, Hopko’s 19th maxim appears to be something of a challenge. However, it should not be read as a demand that autistic people mask or conform to every social rule. Rather, it is about learning to treat the people closest to you with consistent, practical kindness, For autistic people, politeness can be understood as simple, repeatable acts of respect: using basic greetings, saying ‘please’ and ‘thank you’, not deliberately shaming or mocking others, and apologizing when you realize you have hurt someone. This does not mean suppressing your needs; you can be polite and still say, ‘I need quiet now’, or ‘That light is hurting me’, or ‘I can’t talk about this today’. In fact, clear communication is often more genuinely courteous than pretending everything is fine until you melt down.
Because autistic traits can include monotone voice, blunt phrasing, difficulty reading cues, or going non-verbal under stress, ‘being polite’ needs to be grounded in intention and agreed signals rather than in neurotypical performance. Simple scripts can help (‘I’m overloaded, I’m going to my room for 20 minutes’; ‘I’m not angry; my face just looks like this’), so your family and close friends learn not to misinterpret your tone, and you have reliable words to reach for when your brain is tired. You might also set shared household expectations that respect everyone: for example, agreeing quiet hours, warning before starting noisy tasks, or checking in before launching into an infodump. When you do snap or speak harshly in overload, politeness looks like returning later, naming what happened without self-hatred (‘I yelled because I was overwhelmed, and that was wrong’), and asking forgiveness.
Many autistic people have been told all their lives that they are ‘rude’ simply for existing differently, which can lead either to despair or to giving up on kindness altogether. This maxim offers a different way: you don’t have to become a social chameleon; rather, you can let Christ teach you small, concrete habits of respect that fit your actual nervous system. That may mean choosing one or two polite practices to focus on at a time (e.g., saying ‘good morning’ to those you live with, or sending one brief check-in message a week), and letting the virtue grow slowly from there. Thus, ‘be polite with everyone, first of all with family members’ becomes a way of honouring the image of God in those who share your daily life, while also honouring the truth of who you are and what you can bear.
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