Theory of Mind/mind blindness issues

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The biggest problem I have with mind-blindness, is I automatically expect other people to have the same intelligence level that I have. When I was in the first grade, I remember looking around the classroom and really noticing for the first time that other kids were "slow" and didn't catch on to things as quickly as I did. When the teacher asked a question, other kids would put their hands up like they knew the answer, but they would give the wrong answer! This just amazed me and didn't make any sense at all. I thought this couldn't possibly be for real. I asked my teacher why they were pretending not to know the answer. I literally thought they were faking it. Deep down I still feel this way, any time I talk to someone who doesn't know about something that I know, or doesn't understand what I'm talking about. I feel like they are doing it on purpose just to annoy me.

I act differently, mostly depending upon the environment. As an example, I act entirely different at work than at home. For me, this is definitely conscious. I am curious what the significance of that (being conscious or having it just happen) is.

I got my friend a clay made necklace once in the 3rd grade for her birthday and she liked it and wore it and one day she told it broke. I wasn't upset, I just thought "Oh" and said nothing about it and went back to my school work. I wonder what was her purpose of telling me this, was I supposed to say something or comfort her or reassure her or did she tell me it to be mean? The friend was NT.

When I was a kid, kids would wait until there was no adult around before they started doing mischievous things, things they wouldn't be able to get away with with a grown up around such as authority figure. This here is normal kid behavior and it's called testing to see what they can get away with. Also when I was in 6th grade, we had a student teacher and lot of us didn't like her because she always lost our school work and marked them as missing assignments so we all would have to do them over again. That pissed lot of us off so lot of the kids in my class and math class would act up and make funny faces at her when she would turn her back while teaching. She would turn around and kids would act like they were doing nothing wrong and then go back to tossing stuff and doing spitballs and making funny faces when she would turn back to the whiteboard.

It also wasn't uncommon for some kids to start being mean when their parent would turn their back on them because they weren't there to stop them and I noticed this one boy who was always mean to me was nice to me one day because his parents were around and he simply didn't want to get into trouble if they knew.


When I was a kid I would act different too at places because I was aware of the rules. I was aware my school had rules that were different than I had at home so at school I didn't do things I could do at home I wasn't allowed to do in school. When I was seven I discovered I was allowed to scream in school so I always did but at home I didn't. Then one time I decided to start doing it a home and my mom put a stop to it and I apologized and said it was school behavior. My mom sure learned I was in the wrong teaching environment and I needed to be in mainstream where I could be with normal kids and learn appropriate behavior. When I was eight, I would go to school and use words I wasn't allowed to use at home because I was that literal. I didn't know, my mom's rules applied everywhere. I would go to school and do school rules and school behavior and go home and do home behavior and follow my mom's rules. I didn't even know NTs did this too until I was an adult but for them it might be for a different reason while for me I was just being literal and it was about rule following. I copied behaviors which is what all kids do but for me it was an issue because I didn't understand what I was doing and my mom always had to figure out what caused my behavior because most of the time it was learned behavior. I was a copycat.

One thing that baffles me is it seems like NTs are nor lacking TOM when they hire people because how you live your personal life reflects their opinion of you and influences their decision to have you work for them or not. My mom told me lot of people are not very smart because they think how you act home is how you will act at work and I said to her "That's stupid, don't they know of work behavior and home behavior?" and she said "I guess not."

I think back when I was a kid how I had to act different in school eg. do not say pee or potty I can only say bathroom, no twisting on the swings, no throwing snowballs, no candles on cakes when it's someone's birthday, no whining while at home I could do all these things and not have a consequence or get scolded. I can remember my teacher started to ask us in class "do you do this at home?" and I wonder if it was because of my my mom told her on the phone about me coming home screaming and telling her it was school behavior and my mom then said I think that is acceptable behavior and I don't do this at home.

I think it's human nature to act different depending on the situation. It's not uncommon for special needs kids to mimic each other which is why parents want their kids in mainstream than in special ed all the time. Even normal kids mimic each other which is called peer pressure.

You must live in a strange place because that's not what we call testing and peer pressure.

I wonder if these are TOM issues. I have expected people to react the same way as me and then be surprised at their reaction and not understand why they don't like it. My mom has told me before I don't need to understand it, I just need to accept it.

When I was a child I couldn't grasp how my best friend didn't like Polly Pockets or books or movies I liked. I just assumed she was joking or teasing me. When I was seven, one of my second cousins said she didn't like cake and she only liked cheesecake, I thought she was crazy. I liked cake so how could she resist something good? She was crazy for doing this to herself. Like my mom says, I don't need to understand, I just need to accept not everyone likes the same things I like and respect that.

I remember being in 6th grade and I went to another 6th grade classroom to see something the students were putting on in class. They each dressed up as a famous person and pretended to be that famous character and they talked about their lives. One of them was Dr. Seuess and the other was Princess Diana and she said she died in 1996 and I got confused so I said to my aide I thought it was 1997 and she told me it is 1997 and she just made a mistake. I remember I couldn't stop dwelling on the mistake so after the show ended, I told her she made a mistake and told her the correct year and she started gasping and making a huge deal about it. I said 'That's okay, everyone makes mistakes and you're not perfect." I realize now i should have kept my mouth shut. I thought she would be happy I told her the correct year and now I realize that's not logical to tell her because she has already done the mistake so no point in telling her because what would that change, there is no DeLoreon.

Up until my early twenties, I thought if I corrected people and gave people information about stuff they were judgmental and ignorant about, they would change their minds and be more open and positive and understanding because I change my views all the time and perspectives when I read personal stories or do research. I didn't realize some people are just willfully ignorant and they don't care if they are wrong or not. I sure learned that lesson from my last ex.

My mom told me that as a child and my therapist told me in high school that kids will copy each others behavior and pick up on each other and he called it peer pressure. I was confused in elementary school about how to act because kids didn't always follow the rules so my mom tried to explain to me about how kids will test their limits so they will wait when there is no grown up around and do it and they go "Oh wow we didn't get in trouble. Cool." "Oh there is no duty lady here, let's do this and see if we can get away with it. Oh we did, cool."

Peer pressure is when one or more kids try to convince other kids to do something. If a kid decides to copy another without feeling forced, there's no peer pressure involved. Maybe your counselor just assumed that the reason the kids were copying each other was peer pressure, but that isn't the only reason kids copy each other.

I think peer pressure is like League Girl describes, more of an implicit copying and conforming to a norm that is determined by most of the people behaving similarly. It is not only someone purposefully trying to convince others to do certain things.

Norms don't even exist unless people expect them to be followed. Expecting people to conform can be explicit or implicit, but if there's no push from other people to do something, then there's no peer pressure. There has to be some kind of social "pressure," otherwise the term doesn't even make sense. What's pressuring about people just copying others because they want to?

Maybe they do it because they feel if they don't they will be judged and not liked by other kids. Like kids might not stand up for a victim who is being bullied because they don't want to be bullied so they ignore it and turn their backs. I also read kids bully because they feel if they don't, they will get bullied and I have also read online that sometimes kids might not be friends with someone because they don't want to get picked on for it so that is one of the reasons why we tend to be outcasts. I find this all sad than feeling all judgmental. Being a bullied victim myself and an outcast, being more of a target and more of an outcast would be the last thing I need so I can't help but find this all sad an I find it harsh to say kids are just as bad at the bully for not standing up for the victim. People might call this peer pressure, some might call it copying. I would say I felt some peer pressure as a kid but rest the of the time I just copied without feeling any pressure because I was trying to be like everyone else and I thought it was how I was supposed to act and it was all okay behavior because I saw others do it. I also thought if kids saw I was being like them, they would think I was just as good as them and stop thinking of me as stupid and I would be liked more and have more friends and not be weird anymore. My mom calls this all being literal and some might call it peer pressure or being badly influenced.

Yes, that's peer pressure too...IF the other kids will actually be judging them. If it's just baseless anxiety over what other people think and other kids don't even care, there's no peer pressure involved.

A person can feel peer pressure or social pressure if they find that all the other people around are doing something, then they copy the others and do it too. That is conformity to group behaviors. It is probably driven by implicit social cognition without requiring anyone to try to convince the person to act like they do. It's like that study with the researchers pretending to be subjects giving wrong answers to obvious questions, then the real subject starts to copy their wrong answers after awhile without anyone pushing them to do it.

I agree, but I'm just saying that the feeling of peer pressure, or imagining being peer pressured, is not actual peer pressure. A person can feel pressure and think that other people care how they act and be wrong. Peer pressure is when people actually exert some kind of pressure on someone; it's an act by the people doing the pressuring, not a feeling or a thought of the person who might be pressured.

social pressure by members of one's peer group to take a certain action, adopt certain values, or otherwise conform in order to be accepted.

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/ ... ref&ch=dic

My sister was the crankiest, most aggressive person you could meet but whenever she got on the phone to our Grandfather, she'd put on the most sickly sweet fake high pitched sucky crawly voice you've ever heard. That fake falseness used to make me want to vomit. After she got off the phone, suddenly, Miss Hyde would come out again. I used to tease her about it because I couldn't stand her 'fakeness'.

Anyway, all of her sucking up was in vain. She sucked up to him all those years and when he died, he didn't even leave her a brass razoo - and wasn't she peeved to say the least