In a strained relationship, the demands someone makes can be easier to notice than the effort they put in. My Social Accounting Model is one way of making that missing information visible, so that each person can understand more of the other person’s contribution, needs and expectations.
How invisible information changes a relationship
Years ago, I went on a trip with several friends. Late at night, when I was exhausted and trying to sleep, one travelling companion started unpacking. The noise was extremely difficult for me. I asked for it to stop, but the person apparently saw no serious problem and continued. I experienced this as inconsiderate. The other person may have experienced my reaction as unreasonable. The following day, we needed to fetch water because the running water was unavailable. As the rest of us prepared to leave, this person suddenly went elsewhere. We assumed that they were avoiding the work and leaving it to us. Later, the person returned with two buckets of water obtained separately.
Our moral judgment had been based on an incomplete account. We saw the apparent refusal to cooperate. We did not see the separate effort being made. The other person saw our demands and criticism, but may not have understood the accommodations we believed we had already made. I cannot know exactly what was happening in another person’s mind. The incident nevertheless showed me how two people can place very different entries into their social accounts while each believes the facts are obvious.
My National Service experience gave me a concrete example of how a visible contribution could help me become part of a group. Sharing snacks offered a starting point for goodwill when I found the social situation difficult to understand. I developed this observation into what I call the Social Accounting Model.
This describes how one relationship began. It does not mean a person should have to earn protection from bullying.
The Social Accounting Model
The Social Accounting Model proposes that people informally credit and debit one another during social interaction. When someone helps us, keeps a promise, reduces our work or makes us happy, we may credit that person’s account. When someone hurts us, creates extra work, causes a loss or breaks a promise, we may debit it.
[Note that this is a simplified model; most people operate on Relational Meaning and do not literally keep such an account book. They may experience the balance through trust, gratitude, resentment, affection, obligation or loyalty instead.]
| Common debits | Common credits |
|---|---|
|
|
However, that balance may not be naturally visible to every autistic person. Some may understand the physical event without experiencing all its social and relational meaning. Others may already feel attachment and gratitude but struggle to express them or act on them. My multiple-autisms working hypothesis treats these as potentially different starting points, not stages every autistic child must pass through. For a gift or favour to become a meaningful social credit, several connections may need to occur:
| Connection | What must be understood |
|---|---|
| Knowledge of the situation | The person must know what actually happened. |
| Recognition of value | The person must understand why the result is valuable. |
| Recognition of effort or sacrifice | The person must know that time, money, discomfort, work or another cost was involved. |
| Attribution of the effort | The person must understand that someone incurred that cost specifically for them. |
| Connection with previous events | The person must remember the history surrounding the relationship rather than experiencing each incident in isolation. |
| Emotional or relational impact | The facts must acquire enough personal meaning to become gratitude, trust or affection rather than remaining abstract information. |
If one or more of these connections is missing, a favour may be enjoyed without being credited to the person who provided it.
The hamburger account
Imagine that an autistic child asks the mother for a hamburger during the lunchtime rush. The mother queues for twenty minutes and spends her money to buy it. The child receives the hamburger but complains that it took too long. Later, the child asks for ice cream. The mother refuses, and the child becomes angry with her. The parent and child may have experienced the hamburger very differently:
| Part of the account | Child’s possible perspective | Mother’s perspective |
|---|---|---|
| Knowledge of the situation | I asked for a hamburger and eventually received one. | My child asked me to buy a hamburger during the busiest part of lunchtime. |
| Recognition of value | I like hamburgers. | I am obtaining something my child specifically wants. |
| Recognition of effort | Hamburgers are easy to get from a restaurant. | I must spend twenty minutes queueing and use money I earned. |
| Attribution of effort | The hamburger came from the restaurant. | I accepted the queue and expense specifically for my child. |
| Previous accounts | I have asked for hamburgers before and received them. | This is one of many occasions on which I have spent time, effort and money providing food. |
| Immediate meaning | I am happy to have the hamburger but unhappy that it took so long. | I hope my child recognises that I made a sacrifice for them. |
The hamburger may be valuable to the child without the mother’s effort becoming a social credit. The child may experience the twenty-minute delay as a separate negative event. From the child’s perspective, the account may therefore contain no credit for the hamburger and one debit for being made to wait.
The ice cream refusal is even more direct:
- I want ice cream.
- Ice cream is available.
- Mum is stopping me from getting it.
- Therefore, Mum is creating an unnecessary obstacle.
The debit is visible immediately. The mother’s reasons, previous sacrifices and wider responsibilities may not be.
Bringing the child into the hamburger queue may not solve the problem. The parent may intend to demonstrate the sacrifice, while the child experiences another unpleasant demand: “Why must I stand here? Why can’t Mum queue by herself?”
Unless the meaning of the queue is made explicit, the demonstration may create an additional debit instead of revealing a credit.
Making the social account literal
For some autistic children, saying “You should be grateful” asks them to experience relational meaning that may not yet be available to them. A literal social-accounting system may work better. This could take the form of a notebook, whiteboard, chart, application, picture-based system or another format the child can understand. It may contain separate accounts for the parent and child, or one shared ledger with clearly separated columns.
Each entry can show:
- what happened;
- what each person wanted;
- what effort, discomfort or loss was involved;
- who received the benefit;
- whether the event created a credit or debit;
- and what action, favour, compromise or repair would settle it.
For example:
| Event | Hidden information made visible | Account entry | Possible settlement |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mother queues for the requested hamburger. | The queue took time and was undertaken specifically for the child. | The child credits the mother’s account. | The child later helps with a suitable household task or accepts a reasonable request. |
| The child tolerates an unexpected but necessary change. | The change required substantial effort from the child even if the effort was not externally visible. | The parent credits the child’s account. | The child receives an agreed favour, additional recovery time or another appropriate benefit. |
| The parent breaks a promise without a sufficient explanation. | The child lost an expected activity and may have organised the day around it. | The child debits the parent’s account. | The parent apologises, explains what happened and arranges a proportionate repair. |
| The child completes an agreed responsibility. | The action reduced the parent’s work or prevented a problem. | The parent credits the child’s account. | The credit remains in the account or is exchanged for an agreed benefit. |
The system must be genuinely two-way. If only the child’s debts are recorded, the child may reasonably experience the system as another method of control. The parent’s broken promises, unnecessary demands and mistakes must also be capable of creating debits. The child’s invisible effort must be capable of creating credits.
The child should be given an accessible way to explain:
- “That change cost me more than you realised.”
- “I completed something difficult.”
- “You did not keep the agreement.”
- “I need time before I can settle this account.”
- “I do not agree with this entry.”
Entries should preferably be discussed when everyone is calm. The ledger should clarify an interaction, not become another weapon during an argument or meltdown. The values also need not imitate money or claim mathematical precision. Depending on the child, the system might use simple marks, tokens, pictures or categories such as small, medium and large. The purpose is not to calculate the exact monetary value of love. It is to make otherwise invisible effort and reciprocity concrete enough to understand.
What may and may not become a debt
A parent may record the effort involved in ordinary care because the child may genuinely need that information made visible. Cooking, travelling to appointments, waiting in queues, rearranging work and handling difficult situations all involve real effort.
However, the ledger should not make basic necessities conditional on the child maintaining a positive balance. Food, shelter, healthcare, safety, education and ordinary care must not be withdrawn as repayment or punishment. Likewise, accumulated credits should not be treated as permission to override bodily boundaries or demand physical affection.
The system can create a literal teaching obligation such as: “Mum spent twenty minutes obtaining something especially for me, so I will help her with an appropriate task later“. It should not create an unlimited moral claim such as: “Because my parent has cared for me, I must obey every request regardless of what it is“. That distinction keeps the system focused on understandable reciprocity rather than turning parental power into an account that the child can never repay.
A practical bridge rather than an idealised relationship
Some readers may object that this approach is transactional or behavioural. It is intentionally concrete. Relationships are more than transactions, but telling that to someone who cannot yet perceive the additional layer does not make the layer appear. Waiting for spontaneous gratitude while repeatedly punishing the child for missing invisible expectations may be less humane than providing an explicit system the child can actually use.
A family must function in the world as it exists. For a child with significant support needs, the immediate objective may be safe, workable cooperation rather than a perfect understanding of emotional nuance.
A carefully designed social-accounting system may be one practical support that reduces repeated conflict and makes continued family care more sustainable. It should not be promoted as the answer for every autistic child, but neither should it be rejected merely because it does not resemble an idealised NeuroTypical relationship.
Who carries the negative social tokens?
In many families, one parent often becomes responsible for nearly every instruction, interruption, refusal and necessary boundary. The child may therefore place almost every negative social token into that parent’s account:
- Mum stopped my video.
- Mum made me get dressed.
- Mum took me to an unpleasant appointment.
- Mum would not let me eat what I wanted.
- Mum told me to go to bed.
The child may not see that the parent is enforcing requirements created by school, health, safety, time, money or the needs of the rest of the household. The parent simply becomes the visible source of every unwanted event. It can therefore be reasonable to distribute difficult roles among several adults.
An employer may deliberately assign the “bad guy” role to a paid helper so that resentment falls on the helper rather than the parent. For example, the helper may end video time and enforce an agreed bedtime while the parent handles reassurance and enjoyable activities. The strategy transfers hostility from an irreplaceable parent-child relationship to a paid support relationship that can be replaced if it becomes unworkable.
I consider this an acceptable strategy when the helper understands its purpose and freely consents to the role. It is comparable to employing a school discipline master or a workplace supervisor to carry out socially unpleasant responsibilities. The employer decides whether to use the strategy; the helper decides whether to accept that role.
The duties and limits should be agreed in advance, and the employer should support the helper in carrying them out. Consent to an unpopular role is not consent to threats or abuse.
Social Accounting as a bridge to Relational Meaning
Social accounting does not claim that relationships are nothing more than exchanges of favours. It is an external map for someone who may understand objects, events, rules and consequences but not yet experience the invisible relational connections that give those events their emotional weight.
At an early stage, a child may understand: “Mum queued for twenty minutes for me, so I owe her one suitable favour“. That understanding may sound crude compared with spontaneous gratitude. Nevertheless, it may work well enough to begin building reciprocity and reducing resentment.
Over time, the parent can add more of the meaning behind the account:
- Mum chose to accept this inconvenience because I matter to her.
- This is part of a history of things we have done for each other.
- A promise affects trust beyond the immediate event.
- Repairing a debit protects the relationship, not merely the token balance.
- This person is not interchangeable with every other person.
The entries may gradually become stories rather than isolated transactions. Some autistic people may eventually attain a more intuitive experience of Relational Meaning while others continue to benefit from explicit rules and concrete accounts.
Collective love and individuated love
Parents also ask whether an autistic child who does not show conventional affection genuinely loves them.
I use the personal terms collective love and individuated love to distinguish two kinds of concern.
Collective love recognises that every person deserves help, protection and moral consideration. Individuated love gives one particular person additional meaning because of who they are, what has happened between us and the relationship we share.
Social accounting can provide an external structure for recognising that differentiation. It records that this person has a unique history with me, has made particular sacrifices for me and has acquired responsibilities and expectations that do not apply equally to every stranger. The system cannot manufacture love by awarding enough exchange tokens, however it may be able to help an autistic child recognise the history and reciprocity from which a more individuated relationship may eventually grow.
Disclaimer: This article presents my personal experience and a conceptual model I developed. It is not a clinical theory, diagnostic tool or substitute for advice based on an individual child.