Greentea wrote:
Learning2Survive wrote:
Why can't we have a step by step guide for aspies to get their social skills and their life on track?
Because the non-verbal is non-verbal
for a reason. Namely, because saying it outloud would be uncovering an underworld that we're all supposed to pretend doesn't exist in society. Nobody wants to write the "king is nude" truth, and nobody wants to publish it either. Even parents of Autistic kids have admitted that they feel extremely uncomfortable teaching them verbally what they can't pick up non-verbally, because it's admitting that society is a lot more phony than is usually acknowledged.
Doesn't this strike you as odd? After all, everybody
knows how things really are - even we figure it out eventually. Or it's just my total lack of understanding of taboos? I can see why people don't like somebody who shouts an unpleasant truth from the rooftops - but why such reluctance of having a discreet conversation with your own child? It's not like we don't
notice anyway how phony society is and we'll only judge people more harshly if these things are not explained to us. As a teenager I ended up thinking everybody uses double standards and will try to take advantage of others - it took me a very long time to understand the difference between defence mechanisms and plain cruelty.
I suspect a lot of people are actually incapable of expressing these things - they are born with an instinctive knowledge (that can be further developed) of what can/can not be said/done and just take it for granted (also assuming that everybody else has the same abilities). Some of these protocols are actually so complicated and strange when you try to put them into words and rationalize them, they seem so
absurd from a strictly logical point of view - maybe that's what's causing the discomfort - to suddenly be confronted with your vain/emotional/irrational side and try to justify it in front of someone that doesn't empathise with it?
Or is it that admitting these weaknesses would imply that people should change? Many seem to perceive discussing unwritten rules as an opened and deliberate attack, like the very core of their nature and existence as social beings is being questioned and immediately become extremely defensive.
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"Selfishness is not living as one wishes to live, it is asking others to live as one wishes to live" (Oscar Wilde)