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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!
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Date: 2022-01-16 06:06 am (UTC)E.'s social skills work reminds me of the moment I admired a goofy, kind dorm-hall neighbor and realized that she didn't care at all what they thought of her but cared a great deal how she made them feel.
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From:no subject
Date: 2022-01-16 07:21 am (UTC)I don't think s1 is terrible or anything -- it's quite uneven, but there are some very good episodes in it, and relatively few that I would consider completely skippable -- but I do feel like it levels up in seasons 2 and 3, so especially looking forward to you getting there. (But also, I'm a bit biased, because I got into it in season 2, so only watched season 1 a couple of years later.)
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
Heh, this is very familiar, in all aspects, from my two. Now, L and O are closer in age, of course, so it's not as surprising, but we marveled a lot at how calm and rational O was in dealing with his sister, who tends to be, uh, volatile. But also, just as you say, very good at pushing her buttons -- something he still does, "because it's so easy", he says. And he definitely realized, and even tried to explain to her, that reacting calmly lessened the amount of trouble they'd get into, but she never seemed to think it was worth it to control her outbursts.
(It does seem to be a question of choice in L's case, because she has always been absolutely angelic with everyone outside the family -- teachers think she's perfect, her friends' parents see her as a role model child, and she is very sweet with friends and other people she likes. It's just around us that she doesn't restrain her volatility. As far as I've been able to figure out, it's because she sees that family-of-origin is not a consent-based relationship, so she doesn't feel like she needs to apply any effort towards cultivating it. Which is... an interesting point of view XD But she has gotten a lot better about being reasonable even with us as she got older.)
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From:no subject
Date: 2022-01-16 06:32 pm (UTC)Does each extracurricular have a different mix of kids? I wonder whether A. finds it too much for now to adjust to each context separately.
This is not advice! only anecdote, and I think the pressures differ a bit anyway. I admit to registering Reason for a whole bunch of different summer camps, though juggling the schedules versus their themes was a bit tedious back then; it forced her to meet different mixes of kids/adults but in a definitely limited-time-only way, so that she could decide how much emotional effort to put in and so that she wouldn't feel free to ditch school-year activities casually. (I pitched it as "so that you try out new things," not new people, but for Reason's personality honestly the thing stuff was secondary. By third or fourth, I'd reduced the range, with her feedback on how different camps were organized/led.)
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From:no subject
Date: 2022-01-16 07:38 pm (UTC)It's most excellent to see a calm, rational approach in play.
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.
How is she with adults with whom she has interests in common? I would not have reacted well at ALL to being advised to talk to younger kids :P, but did much better with adults.
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
Yes, exactly, I see socialization as a necessary evil! This is why I don't miss people, I miss doing activities with people. Once I've got the activity covered, humans are basically interchangeable. :P
I also realized not long ago, and explained to my wife, that the reason we've found me using a cutesy tone of voice with her, which we both hate (and let's be clear, I hate cutesy with a violent passion), is that my normal talking-to-people tone of voice is inextricably coupled with a sense of necessary evil. I find that if I use that tone of voice to her, my brain receives the signal that I'm impatient to get out of this conversation and annoyed with her for subjecting me to it, and I start involuntarily experiencing those emotions.
It turns out, I have no tone of voice for expressing affection, since I've never needed one before. Or rather, I have exactly one tone of voice for expressing affection, for my one use case. And given the choice between wondering "Why am I talking to you and how soon can I stop?" and wondering "Why am I talking to you the same way I would talk to a dog?", I have chosen the latter. But it's not a great set of options for either of us. :P
(Note that I don't miss people, but I do miss dogs. Dogs are not interchangeable!)
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
My mother can join you in this! My entire childhood was spent in her quest to get me to care about other people's feelings, an uphill battle that ended largely in defeat*.
As late as my 18th birthday, which was the last time she saw me interacting with third parties outside my innermost social circle, she was still going, "When someone smiles and says hi to you, you smile and say hi back!"
Me: "Not if I'm trying to discourage them from ever doing it again, I don't!"
Mom: *facepalm*
* My wife to me, last month, talking about how most women get socialized: "If anyone ever tried to teach you that women should be accommodating, it did not take."
Her emphatic expression of the italicized words made me laugh.
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.
Huh, yeah. I mean, you have to have the impulse control to not do it, but also the motivation to apply your impulse control. I had A+ impulse control, well beyond my age group, at basically all ages of my life, but I clearly also had the motivation to apply it to not throwing tantrums. (My parents said that while all their children had public meltdowns on a semi-regular basis, the only one they remember in great detail was mine, precisely because it was the one and only time. I was five, hungry, and protesting their feeding practice of telling us to stop eating while we were still hungry, on the grounds that "full" = "bad".)
Reflecting back on this, I think my motivation to apply my impulse control to not throwing tantrums but my refusal to apply it to not arguing, eyerolling, or getting sarcastic, was because one was childish and one was adult behavior, and my in-group was adults. That is a form of caring what people think, but it's a specific form. I knew the adults didn't *like* it when I got sarcastic and argued and protested ad nauseam, but as long as I was satisfied with my own behavior and thought it was superior to theirs, I didn't care.
Interesting.
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!
That is impressive!
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Date: 2022-01-18 05:58 am (UTC)Reading about E. and A. developing as people is both interesting and an intellectual puzzle. One gets the impression A. is going to want / need a very different type of parenting than E. I suspect DW biases toward people who recognize E.'s experiences (me: "is there a way to explain social interactions as a Minecraft metaphor? Would that even land?") so I'm interested to learn what challenges A. overcomes with time and age.
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