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What do aspies really think of "social skills"

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glider18
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01 Oct 2011, 10:27 pm

kfisherx wrote:
Wow... Congratulations on figuring out that something is wrong. Social skills training is disrespectful to many (perhaps most) of us from what I can tell and it is completely misplaced in school. Schools need to be providing down time for us and giving us confidence and advocacy skills. What you are about to learn about the ASD culture is that most of us have plenty good enough social skills when we have both confidence and proper accomodations...


I began reading the responses to the OP question with an idea for how I was going to respond. Then I read Kfisherx's response and Bingo! That is how I feel. I didn't read much further in the posts. I would have difficulty saying how I felt any better. Thanks Kfisherx for your response.


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Taupey
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02 Oct 2011, 7:18 pm

y-pod wrote:
To me, social skills is the same as acting skills plus repressing my natural urge to tell the blunt truth. I'm not bad and can act for quite a while. Though it greatly stress me out.

To be honest, though I'm sure I'm still quite awful compared to "normal" people. I forget lines frequently, especially if someone says something I'm not expecting. I often forget to say please and thank you, and have a mental block regarding saying "you're welcome". I look at people's chest too much instead of their eyes. :D I ask too few questions and show too little interest in their lives. I keep interrupting at the wrong time, and not leave the right gap in my speech for people to respond. I'm sure I have a lot more to learn and to practice. But there's not much help for adults. I'm especially bad when people tell me some bad news, i.e. their dog is dead. I'd say "That's awful! I'm sorry to hear that." OK, then what do I do? Pat their shoulders? Hug? 8O Then I have to resist the urge to say things I really thought to say "It's not too bad, he lived long enough." "Well at least you can stop spending more money on it now." "Maybe you should get a parrot next time, I heard they live a looong time." :D

I think on one hand we should practice social/acting skills, on the other hand we should also accept ourselves, and the reality that we'll never be too popular no matter what, so don't worry too much about being yourself sometimes.


"It's not too bad, he lived long enough." "Well at least you can stop spending more money on it now." "Maybe you should get a parrot next time, I heard they live a looong time."

lol... :D I use to get into trouble saying things like that as a child.

You sound like me, I often think to myself, (what do I do, what do I do... what do I say now???) while I'm trying to carry on a conversation with a NT in real life. :?


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Your Aspie score: 167 of 200
Your neurotypical (non-autistic) score: 35 of 200
You are very likely an Aspie.


League_Girl
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02 Oct 2011, 8:48 pm

I remember when my brother went off to college, my mom told me how sad she is that he left and I told her at least she be spending less money and she have a lower electric bill, less food to buy, she be spending less money on food and bills and there be less messes to clean up and less laundry to do. I don't know if that was the right thing for me to say but my mom told me I do so good with that stuff I had made her feel better. Turning bad things into good things. But she accepts me is why.

Also I tend to ask personal questions if I get into talking and getting to know someone. Then I end up not asking anything at all. I have no idea what I should be asking. I just copy other people and let them be my guide like watch what they do and copy them, ask them the questions about themselves they asked me.

I am often thinking in my head "what do I say?" "What should I talk about?" "Would it be okay to say this?"

When people tell me the bad new, I just say "I'm sorry" and leave it at that. I have no idea what I am to do. Should I ask them questions about it like how it happened and how do they feel about it? Do I tell them they should get another animal? What about when their child had died, should I tell them they can try for a another one? I used to make these comments but now that I am older, I know better now because I realize people react differently to stuff than I do and I know more about social rules so I am now thinking in my head and end up not saying anything. It's like I become from being talkative to being silent I had developed social anxiety as if. But with my family, I don't have to worry about any of this stuff because they accept me so I say what is on my mind. I do the same with my husband too. When I get comfortable with people, I say more when I see they are good people. But once they start getting mad at me for things or don't like how they are treating me or ignoring me, I quit talking to them and say no more.



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03 Oct 2011, 5:10 am

1000Knives wrote:
For the higher functioning kids, call it psychology. You're probably going to have to teach them some stuff out of a high school or college psych textbook. Sounds weird, but they're probably not going to learn "it" (how to play the game) any other way (except for getting it beat/arrested/ridiculed out of them.) It's very easy to just allow them to study psychology, and the way other people think about different things, then they can apply their theoretical knowledge of psychology into interacting with kids. It could also make them into a psychopath, as they're learning sorta how to "program" people, so use caution and discretion. But yeah, psychology teaches you to read and analyze people, so that's what you need to teach, how to read, analyze, and react in a way that benefits them.

That's my idea, if they're high functioning. Low functioning, they're obviously not going to get the scale of psychology, but yes.


Besides agreeing with this I think some practice I learned in theater lessons were helpful, to improve confidence.

Examples:

Everybody is sitting in a room looking at an emty chair. Then we would go up one by one, sit down and say "hello", and go down again to sit by the others. Your turn was ca. 20 times and every time you should say "hello" differently. The first times were a horror, but then it got better, and in the end we did it slow and easy.

Also worse things like, standing and saying eg. "oh s**t Im late" (bad example) in the most dramatic vs. natural way you can imagine, also by expressing with your body (in front of everybody). I knew from the beginning that I can do it, but it just doesnt come out... before you really go for it.

We made a lot of exercises where we had to confront each other directly, in front of everybody, with a pre-defined situation. Having somebody in front of you who is in the same difficult situation as yourself (you have to carry out the task together) was a big experience, because the social situation between me and the person in front of me was irrelevant, we just had to look at each other and say pre-defined things, so that we had to "see each other as anyone". Dont know if I describe this good.

We also had pre-defined complots which we had to improvise to. It was complicated situations between people (eg. jealousy, conceit, pitty and so on), which we had to have in mind when we interacted with each other. We discussed these issues in detail before practicing them.

Anyway, theater lessons are recommendable for improving confidence.