What about waking up...

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Hazelwudi....I agree with the idea of over protective and "nagging" being counter-productive and even self destructive to a persons sense of self.But there are some realities to keep in mind that apply to AS children and not as much to NT children.

1)It is a spectrum.....There is no book that can tell you the "proper" developmental age for each trait that maybe involved on each task.Trying to measure each As child against your own abilities is convenient but not reality(I have noticed that is a common trait of "reality"....it doesnt care if it is convenient for me).

2)Exposure can help individuals become less sensitive to their environmental sensitivity issues....sometimes.EX.)I was not given options when eating.I ate what everyone else did and if I didnt like it,I went with out.This did help me become tolerant of more foods,but I still cant eat some things.But other aspies maybe more sensitive to food taste and texture then I am.Just because I could do it,I cant say "all" should do it any more then an NT says we shouldnt "be so picky" because they can eat anything.

3)Living with consequences.....I think that is a great lesson for all to learn.I wish more NT's where held to this standard as well.Perhaps if everyone had to live with this rule G.Bush would be strung up for starting a war instead of being reelected.
I was one very rebellious teen(after my parents kicked me out of the house.I got to experience the consequences of going on birth control and not hiding the pills from my parents.....kicked out.I was very lonely and very bad at reading social ques and believed when guys said they "loved me"...I slept with some of them and I got to experience the consequences of these "flaws
in myself.....A lot of social abuse for being a "slut",possible VD(which only luck helped me avoid),and a lower self-esteem when realizing I had been used.You would think once or twic would have been enough to teach me....its logical.But I thought that these experiences were an anomaly....that the next individual was different....I dont know if that is aspie lack of being able to generilize,a false belief that "because I am honest the majority of people will be honest",lack of female peers to inform me that guys will say anything to get laid or just my denial because of my own lonliness.Doesnt really matter.Only matters that my parents "threw me out" to let me learn by experience and what I learned was that "I am not lovable but defective in some way I cant understand and dont know ho to change"....it was a great set-up for the next step of hopelessness and suicide.

I knew my parents didnt think I was ret*d even with the nagging and skills they tried to give me....They thought I was being intentionally disobediant,careless,irresposible,lazy,attention seeking and rude.In my mind that meant,bad with intent to be bad and that didnt define who I know I was.It made me resent them and dislike myself for trying and failing.Because I KNEW I was trying....I wondered myself if I wasnt ret*d.But because I did have some self worth,I usually thought they were just intentionally torturing me because they didnt like me.

If anything, it has always seemed to me that we tend to overgeneralize. We tend to build these elaborate, systematic mental models, and shove things into them whether they really fit or not. Even on the WP boards, how many threads are filled with "all NT's think this way", "all men are this way", "all women are that way", "all republicans think this", "all democrats believe that", and so on? It seems to me that our exception-handling capability is hampered because our tendency to generalize is exceptionally strong, perhaps even too strong.

If the world was a great, crystalline plain of perfect order and logic, rather than a messy world of exceptions and irrationality, we'd probably be the most well-adjusted of the species by a WIDE margin. lol Alas, it is not... so we must learn absolutely all we can, to make our systematic categorizing more accurate.



From what I've seen, this is the biggest single difference between Aspies and HFA... Autistic kids genuinely don't care and are usually content in their own little worlds. Aspies might be more introspective than the average child, but they still get lonely... they still want to be liked, and have felt social needs. They just don't know how to go about having those social needs satisfied, because they have no instinct for social skills.



I can sympathize with that, to a degree. My fine motor coordination is so good that most people find it actively unsettling, but my gross motor coordination has always been absolutely terrible. If I had been a surgeon instead, any operations I performed would be a veritable symphony of precision... but I'd occasionally trip over my own feet on the way to the operating room. lol

It was even worse when I was a kid... I used to get razzed over that, yeah. When I was four, my parents took me to the optometrist because they were convinced that I must have incredibly poor eyesight for all the falling down and bumping into things I did. This revealed that my eyesight was excellent... but my sense of balance and coordination was very badly off. This made them somewhat more tolerant of my clumsiness than they probably would have otherwise been, but I still got ragged over it on occasion. That pissed me off, as you can imagine. Like you, I had a dislike of being shamed over things I couldn't help.



Aye. I've yet to see constantly nagging a child result in positive change. Do they honestly imagine it helps? All it does is force the child to choose between their emotional tie to the nagger and their own self-respect.



I make no claims to being a particularly empathetic person. Even on the empathizing/systemizing scale, I'm yea about 25/89. Fortunately, I am capable of caring about those close to me. For those who are not... I tend to be neutral leaning to vaguely benevolent, unless they give me cause to be otherwise. For those who are not and who do not "measure up" to my standards... well, until they decide they WANT to do better, there's really nothing I can do that will help. Sure, I could give them positive reinforcement, but is it really functional to reward someone for not doing anything about their problems?

They come to you with the same old complaints. You do what you can to bolster their self-worth, and help them come up with a few things they could do to make their lives better. A week or two later, here they are again with the exact same problems, and didn't even TRY to do anything to help themselves. Here they are yet again, fishing for praise. They don't really want help, they just want someone to pat their hand while they self-destruct. And yes, for their sakes as well as my own I refuse to do that, because it makes the problem worse instead of better.



From what you've said, it was nagging and constant micromanagement that ravaged your self-esteem. You weren't even allowed to choose your own clothing, you said... how in the world is that equivalent to not allowing you to learn from your own actions?

Last edited by Hazelwudi on 13 Feb 2007, 5:34 pm, edited 2 times in total.

Hazelwudi,

Have you been diagnosed?

Your profile indicates that you have not.

***My son, by the way, is a moderately functioning AUTIE. I am the aspie.***

I'm one thesis away from getting my master's degree in social and personality psych, and I know damned full well what I've got (Asperger's).

However, I also know that I definitely don't want paperwork following me throughout life, attesting that I have what NT's consider a critical and largely irreparable defect. This is unfortunately how they tend to consider all that falls under the label of Pervasive Developmental Disorder, and I'd sooner not be constantly served up with a heaping helping of stereotypes, misconceptions, and condescending attitudes every time I turn around.

I'd far rather be viewed as a somewhat eccentric human being with a strange knack for statistics than "one of THOSE people", you know?

Hazelwudi....One thing I want to clear up.When you use the term "generilization" you are referring to a kind of black and white thinking that is common in AS.I cant count the times I have had therapist say that I wa doing this.Yes,it is related to our need to systemize,catagorize and make order out of a disorderly universe.We start with lining up our blocks,dolls or stuffed animals and then proceed to do it with human emotion and motivations.My personal example would be that ,Goerge Bush is not a man whose politics differs from mine....he is the antichrist.

However,this is the same thing as not being able to apply knowledge or skills learned from one area in all similar areas.I may learn that my mother does not like to be interrupted when on the phone but not realize that also applies to her talking to her friend at home or my dad on the phone.Thats what I meant about "generalizing" consequences.It has nothing to do with back and white thinking.My point,which I thought I made clear in my example of getting "played" by guys over and over before I figured out that many guys do that(instinct now is to think they all do).


I also hate false praise that is part of some "therapy's"...please dont tell me that I should go home and look in my mirror and tell myself that I am pretty.If someone gives me false praise,I am just likely to disbelieve everything else they say(lieing once makes you a liar)I dont have problems confronting people who are making self-destructive choices....I did for 8 years working with CD/ADHD/MI teens.I think I was pretty good at "reality therapy" without making them feel like I couldnt give them credit for positive choices they did make.However,the OP was referring to a nine year old little girl who hasnt even had the benifit of a positive DX to understand what is going on for her.I dont think waking up one day and being told you are AS....now get over it and start functioning like you are not AS....is the right approach.As I mentioned,some skills will be learned over time and more effective ways of doing tasks can be tried.Just telling someone to do it "right" or be punished hardly sounds effective.As I mentioned more then once.I wanted nothing more then to "be good".

You are right the constant insults,mocking(told I walked like a Nazi),asking everyday if I had made any new friends did hurt my sense of self because I was given a clear message of what "normal" was and let know that I wasnt living up to it and that that disappointed my parents,the only people I actually cared about liking me.I have never understood this.I had ....a very strong sense of myself as being OK.I didnt really think there was any thing inately "bad" about me and though I saw flaws and wanted to improve myself,(wanted to be a cross between Anny Oakly,Kung Fu and Jesus Christ)but I forgave myself my flaws.Is that AS?It seems very odd,given that I was "abandoned" at 2 and adopted by people who I didnt think liked me.The problems with my self esteem were inpacted by my parents constant trying to get me to be "normal" but also from them giving up and kicking me out.Guess it is a mixed bag and it took many years to break me down.I didnt become cronicaly depressed until about 15 and first suicide wasnt until 17.I dont think my parents trying to teach me skills and tasks is what hurt me....it was feeling like the things I couldnt seem to change....my likes and dislikes,my inability to make friends,my personal tastes in clothes,food,etc...
were WRONG.That meant that I was wrong.Do you see the difference?

Reading this made me scream in a mad fit. I've had people tell me the exact same thing. Well, they used the word "handsome", rather than "pretty", 'cause I'm male. Anyway, I could never figure out how that method would work. It's no different than calling a pile of sulfur a "rose". Sure, you call it by a name that refers to something that smells sweet (a Shakespeare reference), but at the end of the day, it's still a smelly pile of sulfur. Similarly, that's what I thought of people's methods of doing what krex described. I could sit in front of the mirror for hours, telling myself how handsome I look, but at the of the day, that ugly face will still be there looking back at me. It's basically telling me to lie to myself. And false praise is the worst kind of lie in the world.

Yes, but when you gather enough evidence, don't you eventually come to the correct generalization? Considering your phone example... let's say your mother scowls at you and tells you to hush when she's talking to a friend on the phone and you're interrupting. She scowls and tells you to hush when she's talking to dad on the phone. She scowls and tells you to hush when you interrupt her midway through running off a telemarketer on the phone.

Once you get enough data, do you not eventually come to the correct generalization? Mom doesn't like being bothered when she's using the phone.



When they've got to learn these skills, are mentally and physically capable of mastering these skills, but are passively resisting as much as possible, what good is constant nagging going to do? What good does nagging EVER do? That's right, none at all. This is why I advocate allowing them to learn from the natural consequences of their actions, so long as the probable consequence isn't maiming or death. They're badly in need of real-world data to start with, even more than the average child because of their AS.

An added benefit of this method is that the child will continue to do what they should, even when you are not looking. A lack of deodorant doesn't only make them stinky if you're around... it makes them stinky, period. Whether or not you're hovering over them ceases to be a factor in whether or not they put on their deodorant.



It was them constantly pressuring you and nagging you, in the effort to effort to magically morph you into someone you weren't, yeah. Well, they certainly shouldn't have done that!

So...moving right along...

Didn't want anyone to think I have abandoned the thread completely, but I am in the middle of some major life events here, so I have been attending to those.

Thank you all for your thoughts/opinions/support. I will take what I think will work with my daughter & appreciate the feedback. Like I have said in other threads, I am all for helping to teach my daughter ways to cope and giving her the ability & freedom to live independant of me, so I was looking for new tools, to get us through the hard times. I am not a fan of of guilt and shame, in any case, so this is not an option for us, but I also do not want (for any one of us) to wake in 10 years time, finding that we are still having to prompt/remind, etc

I am fairly confident that we will find our way in all of this.

thanks again.

(Hope this doesn't stir the pot any further:)

Cheers,

Melissa

On AFF, there is currently a guy who believes very much in the "hard knocks" school of learning and he is acting like a complete pain and a bore. I agree there are times when kids have to take the consquences of their actions but they have to have the maturity and capacity to learn from the experience.