Someone put the number in her phone.
She isn’t sure how to navigate through the contact to get the number.
Something I learned as I got older and has drastically improved my relationships is to just answer the question as asked.
This is a great tip in general, but especially so from an autistic perspective - we generally communicate much more directly, and you should trust that if we’ve asked that specific question it’s because that’s specifically what we want to know lol
What’s normal for you might not be what is normal for others, so I can’t really answer that!
Maybe this will help?
https://neuroclastic.com/autism-autistic-communication-differences/
Makes me wonder if I’m on the spectrum or if ADHD people normally do this too. Or if this is an engineer thing.
The flip side is I normally don’t trust other people to ask me precisely what they need and want because all too often they try to solve a problem but don’t come up with a great one and would be better off telling me what they’re trying to accomplish so I can come up with a more optimal solution. (Also if I am not sure about the best solution, I will try to state what I’m trying to do)
This is sometimes called an xy problem.
Like, someone wants to do some calculations in a spreadsheet. They don’t know spreadsheets or Excel, but they know JavaScript. So they try to use JavaScript in their spreadsheet. They get part way and ask you “hey how do I get console.log to print to a cell?”. Which is weird. Instead they should be asking “how do I add up the numbers in this column?”
Just send her the digits.
On Android there’s a phone symbol at the top of the messenger that you can just tap to call. I’m not familiar with Apple products, but if they have something similar that could be helpful too.
iMessage just has the FaceTime video call option at the top, which isn’t always a good option, but if you click the avatar bubble (middle top circle) it brings up the menu for call, video call, changing their info and notification settings etc.
It’s there behind an extra step, but it’s just complicated enough for someone who doesn’t tech.
Grandma writes down her grandkids numbers into her address book that she’s used for many decades. It worked when she had a rotary phone, it worked when she had a cordless phone and it still works when she has an iPhone. If she ever decides to get some other brand of phone she will have no problem calling her gandkids because she has a system that works independently of whatever new technology comes around.
Meanwhile her grandchild will find it difficult to adapt to a phone from another company because they’ll have to figure out how to export their contacts and import it into the phone, and then adapt to a different interface. They will likely just continue use phones from Apple no matter how much the charge for them, regardless of their reliability or quality. Too much hassle to change.
Now it’s debatable which way of using the phone is better, but there are some real advantages to how grandma does it.
So just give her the damn number, so she can write it in her address book and she can dial in that number when she wants to call you. Her way of using a phone is not necessarily worse than your way of using it.
GIVE HER THE NUMBER
iMessage works on emails too, maybe if this were an sms
