Do your family and friends help you socially?

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I'd say I'm fortunate for having so many cousins and aunts who help me with my social mistakes without being harsh. They even helped me before I was diagnosed; they always knew I had poor social and behaviour skills.

One thing I need to get the hang of is remembering what is appropriate to talk about and what isn't. For example I cannot talk about human waste, gore, or pick at my face while people are eating food. I never got the hang of that one.

And I still have no clue how to act in public it's a lot of trial and error, like I can't skip, scream, sit on the floor, lay on the floor, hit my head, run, or push people in public.

They just yell at me a lot for my mistakes, which doesn't seem to help.

I do get corrected a lot by my mom (who has a lot of aspie tendencies but I don't know if she qualifies for a diagnosis). She always informs me when I talk at the wrong volume, when I start talking at the wrong time, when I have talked about something for too long, and stuff like that which I can't seem to figure out. It is rather annoying although it is somewhat helpful I guess because I have been slowly improving with those things over time.

I also do have my 17 year old brother who seemed to have inherited all the social skills that I lack and he has a ton of friends (his nickname is "Rusty" and there are a lot of people who know me as "Rusty's brother" because he is immeasurably more popular then I am). I have asked him for advice a few times and he has been quite helpful to me with dating because he actually knows what he's doing. He is definitely nice to have around.

Yep. My closest friends and my mom, in particular, would often translate between me and the world and explain social situations to me (what was happening/would happen/had happened, what to say and do) -- even outright explain me to people in the moment (ie. "he doesn't mean...." "he means...." "he's just different/special/[specific explanation of weirdness]").

My aunt does occasionally, but it's usually things like when someone says something to me and I'm not paying attention she lets me know. She also sometimes tells me if I had offended someone in some way, which can be helpful, but no one really helps me with more specific things, like vibes I might unintentionally be giving off.

Well, on WrongPlanet.net, Rusty can be better described as mikeman7918's brother.

My 81-year-old mother reads me the riot act whenever I eat too fast.

My mom will not tell me certain things until later on because I sometimes talk about things at the wrong time that is not appropriate. She will also tell me something is between me and her because in the past I have opened my mouth and didn't know I wasn't supposed to share it.

My husband will sometimes correct my social mistakes and also tell me to not say anything to someone about it.

Hardly. Whenever I am in a situation that requires me to "be social", I become very self-conscious that my mom sees it as a reason to force me to be social.

As an Aspie-mom, I try to do this for my kids as much as possible. My mom is easily on the spectrum but was raised using etiquette (enforced by shaming) as a standard, so that's how she taught my sisters and me. I'm trying to blend the two so my kids will know both the formal and informal rules. Problem is, my only knowledge of the informal ones was gleaned by a half-lifetime of observation, so it's just barely enough to get by. Lately in social situations I'm finding myself having a constant narrative to my daughter as to what people are doing around her and why, both when they are interacting with her and only with each other. She's soaking it up like a sponge b/c it's really mysterious otherwise.

I would rather not be social at all,and I talk so little that most of the social interactions I have are either with close friends/family or just saying hi.

haha kind of.
i love my mom but she uses shame as her main teaching method, and she cares a lot about my external presentation and the perception of others have of me. she means to be helpful and a lot of it has been but it can be hard to deal with the shame. my dad is an embarrassed sort of person but he believes in not directly teaching things as a teaching method, which is a nice contrast to my mom's style.
friends have helped me by being social examples.
and my best friend is maybe not helpful in a technical way...she's not on the spectrum but she has social anxiety, ocd, and some other things, she also is introverted, and we're basically on the same social page so its nice to have that.
my boyfriend is helpful too, like he'll tell me when i do something wrong or weirdly or explain what people mean, but a lot of the times its in an angry and annoyed way. although he understands when i want to avoid certain situations and doesn't pressure me to do social things.

Last edited by seaweed on 23 May 2016, 3:28 pm, edited 1 time in total.

My close family does, coached me a bit on small talk and how not to always give my honest/rude opinion.