Tutoring quiet kids helped heal my inner quiet autistic kid

Because being quiet felt like a bad thing

Little girl partially hides her face in the collar of her white sweater. Photo by on

I tutored math for almost 2 years. I had different students, some quiet, some more talkative. I noticed that my lessons with the more confident, talkative kids felt easier to do. The quieter kids felt like more effort.

That realization horrified me because I was a quiet kid.

I remember how inadequate I felt at school, worrying that my teacher didn’t like me. I felt them connect with other students. But no matter how nice I was, I couldn’t connect like that.

I also saw that more talkative, confident students didn’t need coaxing out of a shell. They didn’t need extra questions. There were no awkward silences to wait through.

But I was a quiet kid. I hung back in class. I wished for extra questions and more time to think them through. I wore silence like an itchy sweater. I felt like a bother, like I didn’t talk enough so I smiled a lot to try and make up for it.

I hated that I was potentially making another quiet kid feel the same way.

So what was the problem? I was a quiet kid so shouldn’t I know how to connect with quiet kids?

Normally, yes.