being an incompetent aspie as a teen

Post Reply New Topic

I hate that I am incompetent.

Alright, so basically, my mom expects me to be able to do all kinds of things without being taught, because she thinks they're obvious.

Well, they're NOT obvious for me, and I just can NOT figure it out by myself. I need to be taught just about every little thing to be able to do it when it's something outside of my special interests/talents.

It's annoying, because I'm seen as lazy and incompetent, just because she didn't teach me how to do basic things. The very few times that she has tried to teach me basic things, it has failed horribly, because she acts like I already have prior knowledge on certain steps of what to do and how to do, and she skips over important information that I just can't fill in the blanks, and she gets mad at me.

Before I knew I had Asperger's, that was ALWAYS my question.
"Why can't I fill in the blanks?"

Therefore, I always get, "YOU ARE *insert teen age here* AND YOU CAN'T *insert "basic" task that is not easy to just learn alone here* ?! GO DO IT YOURSELF ANYWAY!"

I can't help it that you didn't teach me how to peel an apple! I can't help it that you didn't teach me how to slice bread efficiently! I can't help it that you didn't teach me a proper way to wash dishes! I can't help it that you didn't teach me how to use a can opener! I can't help it that you didn't teach me how to use a stove or oven! I can't help it that you didn't teach me how to spread butter properly! I can't help it that you didn't teach me about how long certain things should go in the microwave; I can't just guess, are you kidding me? (I mean homemade food, not food that says it on the can) ! I can't help it that you didn't teach me how to open a gate! I can't help it that you didn't teach me how to put a key into a key hole and to open a door without taking about 2 full minutes! I can't help it that you didn't teach me how to button up my shirt until I was an older kid, and now I still do it very slowly! I can't help it that you didn't teach me how to zip up a coat until I was older! I can't help it that you didn't teach me how tiny posture details relate to social situations!

and I
can not
help it
that you did not teach me how to be the offspring you want me to be

All of the things that I didn't say something like "until I was older" next to are things that I STILL CAN'T DO, and the Internet can't help me with a majority of them.

If I was lazy, I wouldn't be trying these things, and I do try by asking but my mom for help, but she just doesn't know how to give help, and she just gets mad at me. I don't know how to try on my own, because I just don't know how to start. It's not natural.

If I bring it up to my counselor as something that upsets me, what will happen is she will say something summarized into, "oh well yeah your kid has Asperger's so remember that they're stupid" like always, and my mom will say something like, "k" and then still not be able to teach me what I need help with.

I'm going to try to go with my friend as an unpaid assistant when she's a babysitter so I can learn some things. I just really need someone to teach me basic life skills. I have plenty of them learned in the great scheme of things I think, but I really don't know how to even begin doing a lot of things, and I know it.

Don't feel bad - being a teen is tough enough. Being an aspie teen is brutal, trying to constantly figure out x,y and z.

I'm almost fifty and my wife still shakes her head sometimes when she sees me trying to do something new. Good thing she's patient with me.

Just tell your Mom you'd really like to learn x,y or z but that she'll need to be patient with you and that a lot of explanation really helps.

You're motivated - you'll get there.

She just doesn't know HOW to explain a lot of things. I think that my dad does a slightly better job at it, but he doesn't live with me, and I don't see him very often. If you know how to do it, you should be able to explain it in great detail without leaving anything out, but nooooo, that's not how it works. For a long time I couldn't open soda cans either. I had to get other people to do it until i was approximately 11.

I wish you could practice doing certain things, with your mother patiently observing.

I'm sure, with practice, that you'll be able to do most of the things which you don't do quite well now.

I wasn't very "deft" as a teenager; I'm not "deft" now--but I'm better than I was through practice.

Your idea of learning some practical stuff from your friend is a good one then. And Kraftie's suggestion is good too.

Don't expect to get everything right - I still struggle to tie my shoelaces properly at my age but manage to get by.

You're not as incompetent as you think you are. It's just that NT's are better at hiding their deficiencies.

First thing is to accept that you're never going to be good at doing up your shoelaces. Big deal. Einstein never bothered wearing socks.

When you try to learn something, try to break it up into x,y and z, as a poster above said. Try focusing on x first before you ever get to y and z.

Don't worry that you have trouble following your mother's advice. Just learn what you can from her and move on to learning off friends and observing what they do and imitating them. Attaching yourself to a good friend and doing everything they do is a good practical way of getting out into the world and learning how to behave in a world that's predominately NT.

Keep your video games if that's what you enjoy doing, but I were you I would turn the TV off and never watch TV again. Get all your knowledge from books, fiction as well as non-fiction. Study hard at school and develop a special interest that you can turn into a career. You'll be surprised what you can achieve in life. It only requires a bit of effort.

It's also possible to experience someone putting far too much effort into trying to teach you something you do find "obvious". Which tends to be both frustrating and confusing for everyone involved.
Especially if you experience a mixture of both associated with the same task. Effectivly "obvious", "obvious", "far too brief", "obvious".

Yeah, don't worry about it too much. I didn't know how to really cook, or tie my shoes, or pay bills, etc. But I guess I'm lucky that there's an Autism Center near where I live. Mostly what I learned about self-care skills, life skills, etc. I had to guess at. You'll learn it somehow, eventually. You've just got to learn things in ways that work for you.

Sounds like my ex-wife. I think that NTs learn a lot simply from watching others instead of logically analyzing the situation. Their eyes are constantly scoping their environment and soaking in what they see like a sponge. They can do this because their minds are less active as I have noticed that it is difficult to think and watch at they same time. NTs don't question very much why things are the way they are. they just accept it. Both aspies and NTs have their niche in society.
a
I have a theory that Aspergers is caused by the brain being slow in sending the neurotransmitters to calm active parts of the brain. That would explain why some aspies do not like being touched or do not like excessive visual stimulation. It would explain comorbidities with ADHD and OCD (obseesions happen when the brain is not calmed and you can't give your full attention when you are thinking of something else) and social awkwardness (nearly all social unwritten rules are learned by watching).

I can totally relate to this. Someone will say something like, "wash this apple", and I'm just standing there like, "what am I supposed to do?" Everything has to be spelled out really clearly and specifically. I have no idea how I'm going to learn how to cook, do laundry, etc.
Is there a program where you live that teaches life skills to people with autism? Maybe that would help.

Those are stuffs you learn by trial and error method.

You don't know how to peel an apple? Take a knife and try to figure it out. You don't have to do it well at first. If a knife doesn't seem to work try another (a vegetable peeler work best). If the apple doesn't turn of right - try another method, for example cut an apple in 4ths and peel each part seperately.
Same with bread cutting. After many tries I learned to cut it (the trick is you start cutting from a bottom edge, not from top) but everyone in my family prefers the already cut bread anyway so I rarely have to cut it. Perhaps you could buy your own, pre-cut bread and store it in freezer so it won't get bad too fast, taking only how many pieces you need and using microwave?
I do it when I am staying home alone. I have fresh bread for 2 weeks this way. No one teached me this. I once seen my aunt taking her bread out of freezer and using microwave when she needs it which I found weird at first but after thinking about it I figured out it saves the bread when you are unable to eat whole one before it goes bad(2 days out of freezer). Other stuffs I learned by myself. Such as how to put bread in a full freezer (aka making enough space to push it in and opening the bag so air goes away xD), how to take it out once it freezes (you must hit it sometimes to seperate the slices) and how much time is needed to unfreeze it in microwave (put it in, set microwave for like 10 secs and open to see if its ready, if it isn't -repeat till it is. After a few tries you will learn the right time).

In my house its my mom who asks me how to do some house tricks. And she is NT while I have AS. So you don't have to be NT to figure those out. If you really need someone to TELL you how to do it you should consider reading about NLD which often gets diagnosed as ASD but is a bit different than being an classic aspie (people with only AS have high or at least normal visuo-spatial skills while NLD sufferers lack those. Visuo-spatial skills are related to "learning by seeing" which you seem to lack).
Also Internet seems a decent knowledge info - if you can't ask your mom how to do something ask Google instead. Google is full of tutorials.

Read somewhere on another autism site I think that when learning the steps to do something it can help for example if there are ten steps to learn the last one first then the second last and join it to the last then the third last etc until eventually the whole sequence was known apparently works best for some people maybe you might be one of them

So, I don't know your mom. But as a mom to a 7 year old autistic girl, and an aspie myself, you might be being too hard on her. It's entirely possible that she did try to teach you these things when you were younger, but you just weren't ready. My daughter struggles with a lot of things, and in many cases is utterly oblivious when I try to show her how to do something like tie her shoes or start a zipper. She can do 6th grade math... but isn't ready for these other tasks yet. It can be a very hard pill for an adult, even one on the spectrum, to swallow. Ultimately I ALSO did not master many of these skills when I was young. I still mess up my buttons. I still can't get the key into the keyhole properly and it can take me 30 seconds to get a door open, frustrating those around me to no end. I'm a horrid cook so I stick to a fairly narrow menu and when it's my turn, my family often has to deal with over cooked and improperly seasoned food. Laundry? I'm fine once I get to know a laundry machine, but when it's a new or unfamiliar one expect me to read the manual front to back 10 times and then still take a few weeks to settle on the right detergent/temp/setting combo that suits me. I didn't learn to ride a bike till I was 30 and I avoid tie shoes like the plague. Buckles are hard. Zippers are hard. PEeling an apple? Holy crap, you should see the scars. But I can do it now.

My point is... it's not the end of the world. Even if your mom takes no further steps on her own to teach you, you can learn yourself. Trial and error. You may never be perfect at any of them, but it's not going to stop you from living your life either, unless you let it. I have a job, a house, a husband, and kids. Sometimes I feel like my brain is going to pop from over stimulation, but holy crap, I'm doing it. No one ever knew what my "Deal" was growing up, but it was generally thought that I would be a slow bloomer and might never get married and might never have kids. They were wrong. I'm not perfect. No one is. But I can do it.

The best thing your mom can do at this point, imo, is to back off and give you space to practice at life. That is what my mother did when I was a teen and it helped immensely. She removed all rules and basically said "don't wreck the house, don't die, don't get hooked on any drugs, don't get knocked up" otherwise, I was left to do what I wanted the caveat being I also had to take care of myself. I had to do my own laundry. I had to take care of my stuff. I had to get myself to and from school. I had to make sure my work was done. I had to make sure I was fed. She wasn't being lazy, it was practice. She would step in when she saw me doing something REALLY wrong or potentially dangerous (rare chicken anyone?) but otherwise it was up to me. Best thing she ever did for me.

Don't worry, Serena, once you practice doing things, you'll learn how to use them.

Again, I wish your mother would just allow you to practice, without criticism.

Yep...I have a "nonverbal learning disability." I still have trouble with some things. I have trouble with visual-spatial things.

Kiriae offers good advice--and she's a nice poster--but she's naturally good with her hands. Don't feel you have to emulate her. Some people with autism are good in the visual-spatial realm; others are not.

Just do the best you can.

You are exactly right here. That's not how it works. Knowing how to do something does not necessarily make you good at teaching someone else how to do it. When I was a kid, it was "clean your room." I repeatedly told my mom that I didn't know what she meant or how to do it, and she repeatedly thought that I was being willful, lazy, and disobedient when I didn't clean my room. What I meant was that I really didn't know how to clean my room, but because that seemed so straightforward to her, she didn't understand what I meant. At all. And I have to say that in other respects, my mom is pretty much a perfect mom. But she is nowhere near on the spectrum. So I really don't think she understands what is meant by "I don't know how to clean my room." She was as confused by my statement that I don't know how, as I was by her directive to do it.

Some of the things you listed probably don't even have a "right" way. Buttering your bread, for example. If it gets buttered, it doesn't matter how you did it. It is OK to devise your own way of doing things for things that you don't know how to do. I think that one thing that holds my daughter back with many tasks is that she only wants to do things that she can do "correctly," and she has little tolerance for making mistakes while learning. So she is stuck because she doesn't know how to do XYZ and will not try anything at all, for fear that she will not be doing it "right." Getting her to understand that there can be more than one "right" way to do things and sometimes no "right" way is very difficult. And sometimes the way that is "right" for someone else may not work for her. Or you.

Don't wait for your mom. She may not be able to help you. And sometimes the most effective way is to just open yourself up to not getting it "right" and trying.

Good luck to you.

Yep...as long as the job's done, I don't give a rat's butt about the process by which the job was done.