Tying shoelaces

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My mom would make me sit in my room until I agreed to tie my shoe laces.

It got boring after awhile, so I usually agreed.

I think I learned at the much same age as everyone else. I didn't learn properly though or I was incapable of tying them correctly. Not sure which. They were always opening right up until my teens.

I must have been in the second or third grade before I finally learned to tie my shoes. That whole "bunny ear" thing had me stumped too. Before I learned, I asked my mother if anybody else my age didn't know how to tie their shoes. She told me there were...in places where people didn't wear shoes.

I didn't ride a bike until I was 14. I tried a few times earlier, and the people teaching me usually got discouraged and quit.

Both of these were a source of extreme shame early in my life. To this day, when I don't catch on to something quickly I feel incredibly stupid.

I think it's the matter of not being able to be "taught" skills like that. I remember how frustrated my mother and I would both get, when she tried to get me to do that (age 3-4, and probably as old as 5 or 6). I remember that despite totally failing at remembering any of the techniques, I just bent over one day, and tied them just fine. Never a problem again. And such is the same with all kinds of learning. I did not learn basic arithmetic in school either. I just somehow figured it out, and despite getting terrible grades in math in school, and barely passing algebra I in 10th grade, suddenly I somehow just started to "see" math in my head, and no problem whatsoever now... Not even with more advanced math relating to electronics and physics. I learn things by myself best; no matter how talented a teacher or tutor may be....

Charles

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JKFu-2gjjo0[/youtube]
The key point seems to be about :30 into it.

And iceveela, with your brother, I think the point is to be middle-of-the-road and be encouraging on another occasion without being pushy.

Lol I couldn't figure out how to tie them before turning 14!! ! Now that's bad and even now I tie them and leave them tied for when they accidently untie themselves, I'm that lazy! I much prefer the hard "ramming in the foot" part over the "painful tying" part each time I put them on.

I'm 49 years old & cannot tie the bunny-ear style shoelace knot. I finally just tied 'em in a squareknot and put the ends in it, making a loop for each side.
Its fine-motor plus something else. Its also I don't learn stuff (like higher math) if someone tries to force me to learn it. Had same issue with bike riding, until one of my friends showed me a different way to start. Piece of cake after that..

Sincerely,
Matthew

My dad did it the same way!

But I always got confused for a little while, I understood the whole bunny ears thing, but he seemed to twist the lace in numerous different directions before finally putting it through the loop. :p

I learned arithmetic sort of like that, but I never got past geometry. One day I had trouble with math, the next I was doing mental arithmetic.

Also, I was reading about implicit learning the other day:

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/bea ... implicitly

As for learning how to tie shoes, my parents couldn't teach me at all. They eventually had my grandmother teach me, and she taught me a different method that ties terrible knots. I refuse to wear anything with laces if I can at all avoid it.

I just taught him how to do it for the first time in under 10 minutes earlier today.

so he has the capability of learning, he just does not have the motivation due to all the "he does not understand it due to his autism" crap my parents constantly say.

Impressive.......but the results leave too much of the lace ends dangling free to be trodden on, IMHO - especially the "magic fingers" method. To tie laces well, one needs to anticipate this problem and somehow ensure those dangling ends aren't long. It's usually impossible to buy laces of exactly the optimum length.....one solution is to get them a bit too long and cut them to size - them put a bit of heat-shrinkable sleeving on the cut end (you can get that from Maplins) to stop it fraying. As the laces stretch over time, you may need to trim again, though mostly I find the lace holes on modern shoes are badly finished - they have sharp flanges that cut into the laces and make them snap in half before their time. I bought some "everlasting" laces once (guaranteed not to snap), but no matter how tight I tied them, they always came undone, because they weren't supple enough.



I probably had similar trouble at first. But repetition won the day. It's amazing how much more can be seen if a thing is repeated.......I see stuff that I never noticed at all the first time round. And of course there are two shoes, so I could be doing one while he did the other, and if we went slowly enough he could tell me the moment I made a wrong move, and show me the right way, immediately, not way after the event when it would be hard for me to see what he was talking about.

I didn't know how to tie shoelaces untill I was 12, A girl at school taught me to tie them after that it became second nature too me.

I wasn't able to tie my own shoes until I was 14 and I still can't ride a bike.

Yep.....people can be so ridiculously glib can't they? A counsellor told my (black) partner that I was "colour blind" because of my autism.....i.e. that I had no conception of racial / cultural differences. What rubbish! I knew perfectly well that her cultural background was relevent to our relationship. But my autism made it difficult for me to argue otherwise, so the counselling stopped working. Should have been a good thing, getting a counsellor who knew about autism.....oh well.

I used to tie my shoes using the second method of the video, I didn't understand the first one until age 6 or 7, now I want to learn magic fingers

It looks easier here:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gbaHxsilsKI[/youtube]

Please be careful with your brother. It may be because of how he was told to do it, like I was, that caused his difficulty.
That doesn't mean his autism is an excuse! Just that he can NOW tie his shoelaces.

Sincerely,
Matthew