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Jan. 15th, 2022 09:23 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cahn-So the big thing I'm doing right now is watching Bablyon 5 for the first time via the rewatch on selenak's DW, which went from "I'm mildly interested, guess I'll watch further since ase and selenak really seem to like it" ("Midnight on the Firing Line") to "Yeah, I'm vaguely invested now" ("Mind War") to "OMG WHAT EVEN IS THIS SHOW MUST FIND OUT WHAT IS GOING ON" ("Signs and Portents"). Still in S1, it would be easy to join the watch if you wanted to!
-I realized over winter break that E.'s social skills are... well, they're probably reasonably okay for a first grader. (Note that E. is in sixth grade.) Anyway, they need a lot of work and we haven't been working on them explicitly. So we've started doing ten minutes every day of social skills work, scripting out conversations and responses to things, and techniques like mirroring (I'm not sure if there's a technical term for this, but basically, if someone asks you how your winter break was, asking them how theirs was), and troubleshooting responses I hear when she plays virtual Minecraft with friends. She reported that a kid in her class asked her how her break was, and she said fine, and then she asked them how theirs was, and they said fine, which she said was better than she would have done before :P
I am now running into the issue that she doesn't want to try practicing conversational work with kids her own age, which, fair, they are on a whole different playing field than she is, so I'm asking her to try short conversations with younger kids at her school. It's a good thing her school is tiny. I have no idea how high school is going to work.
I know I should probably get her into therapy, but therapy is... really hard to find right now, and also I think honestly I've done so much analyzing of socialization myself that I can provide a fair amount of that; what I think she really needs is practice, and that's the thing that's hard because unlike most kids (including the other ASD kid whose parents I'm friends with) she doesn't seem to get a whole lot of intrinsic enjoyment out of socialization. I think she does enjoy being with other people, but it's more of a... second-order effect? Like, she likes the kinds of things she can do with other kids, like Minecraft, but actually talking to the other people (other than exchange of information about their Minecraft missions, or whatever) is sort of a necessary evil for her (and yes, we've talked about how socialization will make it easier for her to get the things she actually does want, like friends to play Minecraft with -- but it's another layer to have to deal with). But she does really like playing with A., and they have a lot of hilarious fun times together, it's just that I think she needs to be very very close to someone to have that kind of relationship, and there's no one else who really fits that for her right now.
I think she is progressing, though! This year was the first year we have had zero reports of blowups at school (down from about weekly last year) -- which is partially better regulation, but also seems to be in large part because she has finally internalized that she should maybe care what other people think. Which is funny because I feel like everyone else who's a parent of an almost-teenager daughter is trying to get their kid not to care as much what everyone else thinks, and I'm like, "no, care more! Care enough not to throw loud obnoxious tantrums in front of them, at least!"
-A. is expressing displeasure with the extracurriculars he is either doing or trying out right now, that is, karate (which he begged me to sign him up for last year) and math circle (which he was super engaged with and fascinated by during the zoom meeting, and then declared he didn't want to do it). He says he wants to do basketball, but unfortunately by the time I signed him up, we were on the wait list. The neighbor girl did get into basketball (girls' basketball isn't quite as full up), but judging from how A. behaves when they play together, I don't know how much he would actually like it.
On the other hand, we have come to an agreement that he doesn't have to go to karate on Wednesdays (it's supposed to be 2-3x a week; he goes on Fridays about once every other week *sigh*) if he takes a walk with me, and these are lovely and hilarious and we have great conversations where we talk about what animals have only two legs, and he tells me his big plans for building a combination see-saw/slide, and we see parts of the neighborhood we've driven through but never walked through, so that's been lovely :D
Besides his inexplicable hatred of extracurriculars, he is just... it's like he got parceled all of the emotional intelligence, both his own fair share and E's as well. In first grade, the age at which his classmates totally spazz out a lot, he's a total pro at meeting E's often-extremely-emotional outbursts with a calm, non-confrontational, patient response, which is just crazy to me. I mean, yes, he is also a total pro at winding her up, don't get me wrong, and I'm betting that a bit of his patience is him figuring out that if she's the one who blows up that she's more likely to get in trouble -- he's not 100% an angel. But kind of amazing for a first grader!
ase and selenak really seem to like it" ("Midnight on the Firing Line") to "Yeah, I'm vaguely invested now" ("Mind War") to "OMG WHAT EVEN IS THIS SHOW MUST FIND OUT WHAT IS GOING ON" ("Signs and Portents"). Still in S1, it would be easy to join the watch if you wanted to!-I realized over winter break that E.'s social skills are... well, they're probably reasonably okay for a first grader. (Note that E. is in sixth grade.) Anyway, they need a lot of work and we haven't been working on them explicitly. So we've started doing ten minutes every day of social skills work, scripting out conversations and responses to things, and techniques like mirroring (I'm not sure if there's a technical term for this, but basically, if someone asks you how your winter break was, asking them how theirs was), and troubleshooting responses I hear when she plays virtual Minecraft with friends. She reported that a kid in her class asked her how her break was, and she said fine, and then she asked them how theirs was, and they said fine, which she said was better than she would have done before :P
I am now running into the issue that she doesn't want to try practicing conversational work with kids her own age, which, fair, they are on a whole different playing field than she is, so I'm asking her to try short conversations with younger kids at her school. It's a good thing her school is tiny. I have no idea how high school is going to work.
I know I should probably get her into therapy, but therapy is... really hard to find right now, and also I think honestly I've done so much analyzing of socialization myself that I can provide a fair amount of that; what I think she really needs is practice, and that's the thing that's hard because unlike most kids (including the other ASD kid whose parents I'm friends with) she doesn't seem to get a whole lot of intrinsic enjoyment out of socialization. I think she does enjoy being with other people, but it's more of a... second-order effect? Like, she likes the kinds of things she can do with other kids, like Minecraft, but actually talking to the other people (other than exchange of information about their Minecraft missions, or whatever) is sort of a necessary evil for her (and yes, we've talked about how socialization will make it easier for her to get the things she actually does want, like friends to play Minecraft with -- but it's another layer to have to deal with). But she does really like playing with A., and they have a lot of hilarious fun times together, it's just that I think she needs to be very very close to someone to have that kind of relationship, and there's no one else who really fits that for her right now.
I think she is progressing, though! This year was the first year we have had zero reports of blowups at school (down from about weekly last year) -- which is partially better regulation, but also seems to be in large part because she has finally internalized that she should maybe care what other people think. Which is funny because I feel like everyone else who's a parent of an almost-teenager daughter is trying to get their kid not to care as much what everyone else thinks, and I'm like, "no, care more! Care enough not to throw loud obnoxious tantrums in front of them, at least!"
-A. is expressing displeasure with the extracurriculars he is either doing or trying out right now, that is, karate (which he begged me to sign him up for last year) and math circle (which he was super engaged with and fascinated by during the zoom meeting, and then declared he didn't want to do it). He says he wants to do basketball, but unfortunately by the time I signed him up, we were on the wait list. The neighbor girl did get into basketball (girls' basketball isn't quite as full up), but judging from how A. behaves when they play together, I don't know how much he would actually like it.
On the other hand, we have come to an agreement that he doesn't have to go to karate on Wednesdays (it's supposed to be 2-3x a week; he goes on Fridays about once every other week *sigh*) if he takes a walk with me, and these are lovely and hilarious and we have great conversations where we talk about what animals have only two legs, and he tells me his big plans for building a combination see-saw/slide, and we see parts of the neighborhood we've driven through but never walked through, so that's been lovely :D
Besides his inexplicable hatred of extracurriculars, he is just... it's like he got parceled all of the emotional intelligence, both his own fair share and E's as well. In first grade, the age at which his classmates totally spazz out a lot, he's a total pro at meeting E's often-extremely-emotional outbursts with a calm, non-confrontational, patient response, which is just crazy to me. I mean, yes, he is also a total pro at winding her up, don't get me wrong, and I'm betting that a bit of his patience is him figuring out that if she's the one who blows up that she's more likely to get in trouble -- he's not 100% an angel. But kind of amazing for a first grader!
no subject
Date: 2022-03-17 05:54 am (UTC)I can't even get people to not talk to me even if I determinedly look away (out the window, at a book, at a screen) and keep a wooden face and say nothing at all and avoid reacting at all to anything they say or do. Or if I frown directly at them and then look away.
Man, I wrote this like a month ago and totally forgot to actually, well, post it *facepalm* :
So -- I've been thinking about this and watching my and other people's reactions, and I can't deny that one factor here is that I've got way more tolerance for ordinary small talk than you do (not least, being in a couple of communities where it's been valuable to me to learn how to do it, both as ingroup-promoting and as information-exchange facilitating), so to a certain extent I probably don't notice very much (except the last week or two when I have been, lol) when people do make small talk. And I'm not sure in what contexts you're having trouble with people talking to you when you don't want it, and if maybe you're just surrounded by extroverted people??
But I also kind of think that I might be right about giving an inch being a more robust solution than not giving anything. Because if you're just not talking to people *at all* and turning away from them, or just frowning -- The thing is that someone not reacting at all, or negatively, is sort of counter to the normal social rules and therefore people don't really know what to do with that, and so half the time they'll assume you didn't hear, or that something might be wrong, so they'll keep trying. I myself, if confronted with someone who was not reacting at all, or negatively, to my presence (and knowing that I haven't done anything overtly to offend them), might feel compelled to ask how that person was doing or something, or even try to draw them into a conversation, because it would ping me as "is this person okay? what's going on?" rather than "I don't want to talk," even if I'm an introverted spectrum-adjacent engineer who would usually avoid saying more than hi, and I dare say that a lot of people would do the same.
In my experience, the ordinary social way of signaling "I don't want to talk" is in fact not to totally say nothing at all, but (if someone says hi to you), quickly nod or say "Hi" and then go back to one's phone/screen, or walk quickly away, or whatever -- that signals "I acknowledge your presence, other human, so we can consider the social exchange completed, but you are less compelling than whatever is going on otherwise right now." I think most people will accept that as fulfilling the minimum of the social contract and then leave you alone. Another even better trick is to act distracted while doing so, like, when someone says hi to you, wait for a second and then look up from your screen or book, say hi (or "oh, hi") in a distracted/short tone of voice, and then look back down. That one *really* conveys "I acknowledge your presence but I don't want to talk to you and I am giving both of us the excuse that I'm busy," which dissuades most people. Maybe not all, but I'm gonna bet those people wouldn't have left you alone if you didn't say hi either :P
There are certain social situations where one is expected to provide a couple more words than just "hi," and in this case the bare minimum is a little higher before one can step away, and one might have to provide a few monosyllabic answers first. (D is actually quite good at doing this bare minimum and then successfully side-stepping social contact he doesn't want. Occasionally there are people he's happy to talk to (which usually means they're people who are interested in the same kinds of things he is), in which case he is perfectly happy to chat, which I suppose is different from you. But often he doesn't want to, and I've definitely seen him absolutely just kill a would-be friendly conversation straight dead -- or heard about it later -- by doing the monosyllabic bare minimum thing.)
(I am apparently quite good at this by accident? I've heard from a couple of people that when I was an adolescent, people thought I was very stuck-up, which in retrospect I think is because I'd been socialized to say hi to people but I was never really into it, but rather would be really into whatever I was doing that didn't involve them. In high school and college I also spent most of my time with my best friend, and whatever she was saying was almost always more interesting than what the other person was going to say, so there was that too.)
(If you try these techniques, it's probably better if you don't try it with the people who are already used to your not talking, they might get the wrong idea :P )
Now, the rules are a bit different for an adolescent socializing with an adult, where you also have additional social mores around this particular dynamic, many of these driven by the fact that societally, adults are implicitly supposed to be coaching the kid on how these social rules work -- which makes it a little harder to get out of a certain class of conversations (than it is for an adult), if that's one's goal :P (Of course, in E's case I'm also strongly mandating her to have conversations, so...)
no subject
Date: 2022-03-20 03:36 pm (UTC)Yeah, then I would probably at some point, at whatever age you think is appropriate, let her know what touch starvation is. She may not end up with it, but if she does, at least she won't be confused about what's going on, because it can be very counterintuitive. I don't hate touch nearly as much as she does, and I still have significant touch starvation.
And if she does end up with it, she'll be in a position to look for creative solutions. There are probably resources for autistic people on this topic.
But I also kind of think that I might be right about giving an inch being a more robust solution than not giving anything.
It does not seem to matter! Whether I smile and say "hi" or "fine, how are you?" or whether I ignore them from the get-go, people are really persistent. Both casual acquaintances and complete strangers.
I did finally, almost by accident, add the phrase, "Sorry, I don't feel like talking," to my arsenal, but it took a really long time--into my thirties--to come up with something that was concise, polite, unambiguous, and truthful enough to satisfy me.
I really wish someone had given me this phrase when I was ten. It would have saved me and everyone around me a lot of frustration. Instead, all I got was, "No, you must be friendly! Other people's feelings!"
I think most people will accept that as fulfilling the minimum of the social contract and then leave you alone.
Hahaha. Maybe "most" people, but a non-trivial number of people will decide this is the opener to a conversation and will plow on ahead to the next topic despite monosyllables. Basically, until I discovered "Sorry, I don't feel like talking," I had two choices:
a) Have the person repeatedly insist on whatever conversation opener they've chosen, in the face of me ignoring it.
b) Have the person repeatedly insist on the next step in the conversation after I disengage, in the face of me ignoring it.
There...really wasn't a whole lot to choose from there, except at least in option (a) I wasn't blaming myself for sending mixed signals.1