Social skills

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My 11-year-old AS son is in a regular 5th grade classroom, but goes to a separate room for a few hours each week, with a small group of other aspies. They learn about social skills and do various activities. It's his favorite part of the day, and a chance to get away from the regular classroom.

One of the topics that comes up a lot in our "IEP" meetings (when parents, teachers, etc. get together to talk about what kinds of services he needs) is "social skills". They seem to recognize the need for social skills training, and that's great.

Here's what I don't get...and perhaps the issue has to do with me being a probable AS person myself:

As far as I can tell, most OTHER kids needs social skills training far more than my son does. For instance, last year my son was invited to a birthday party. He gets nervous at parties, so I came into the house with him and hung around for a bit. The mother let us in, and said, "Hello, D---! I'm so glad you could come! The other boys are in the family room playing Nintendo" and she lead us into the room and said, "D--- is here." There were about ten boys and not one of them said hello. None of them offered D--- room on the carpet, or anything, or told him about the game. Somehow, they were part of this group, and he was not. But my son doesn't want to be rude. He's not the type to just barge in. He gets the last slice of cake because he's the ONLY kid who doesn't jam himself to the front of the crowd, going, "ME!! ME!! ME!!" I've been accompanying him to birthday parties since he was a preschooler, and it's ALWAYS like that.

So, is it him lacking social skills? Or is the problem that everyone else is a selfish pig?


This post isn't specifically about that birthday party, which was over a year ago. That's just one example of the types of things I've observed his whole life, and have encountered myself many times (although when I was a kid, manners were valued more). In his social skills group, he learns about greeting people and taking turns. That's lovely, but in real life, kids don't do those things. They should, but they don't. They are not nice.


Or is the problem in me? Are my own social skills so dismal, that I'm not seeing some basic truth?

It bugs me, so I thought I'd see what you all think.

The social skills most schools are talking about are social skills so a personal can behave more 'normally' in conventional society which means like rude idiots which is generally the 'norm' of normal society. Please don't get caught up the educational systems 'improvements' for your child.

The ultimate social skills course for children video

Disability labels tend to complicate everything. The difference between your son, and the other boys is that your son is trying to be polite and behave well and the other boys are not. So yes, it is possible that these other boys need more attention than your son, despite not being labeled with anything. Problem is, because they aren't labeled with anything, their behaviour is interpreted as 'boys will be boys'. Your son, who DOES have a label, is assumed to have something wrong with him, despite his actual behaviour.

Now, I know that it's often inevitable that your kid will be labeled, because schools are becoming more adept at spotting AS. But I don't believe that parents should get too comfortable with the idea of pigeon-holing their kids into these programs, as they're very hard to get out of. Mainly because my knowledge of human nature leads me to believe that once a child is labeled, people will treat them like a label and not a person. Teachers are often very guilty of this.

I see your point and agree. However the real social skills training the average Aspie needs is not really about how to behave or manners. Its more how to respond in certain situations like what to say when someone says "how are you?" that is learning contrived responses for every occasion. Or how to read facial expressions and how to stand up for themselves without becoming a bully.

I agree the average child and adult in American society needs a good course on how to be polite and not behave like a wild animal.

What your son is lacking is chutzpah. He does need to learn to speak up a bit such as in "hey save a piece of cake for me". And walking up to the other boys and saying "hey what are you guys doing" instead of meekly watching on as the other boys play a game without him. If you don't speak up no one notices that you are even alive and breathing. If a person continues to live like a meek little mouse, especially guys, they will not accomplish much in modern society especially not making friends or getting a date. I was that meek mousie girl in school which caused me to lose out much in life because I continued that one into young adulthood. So yeah he needs social training but probably not the kind he is getting.

Its a kind of balancing act. Your son needs to learn not to be a wuss, but the other boys need to learn how to not act like baboons. We all need to meet somewhere in the middle of that.

oh, oh, ChinaShopBull, that was so worth watching!
I can sleep tonight

Merle

I totally agree your son has better social skills than the other-it's so obvious. But he's ''wrong'' in some way, I think he might be too polite and nice to be liked by his peer group. What I'm writing here now is not ment to be negative, even more, I think this is something to be very proud of. What I do mean is that other kids might not be as nice and friendly as he is, which ends up in him falling out of the group. Because he's less selfish, they don't relate to him and treat him as an outsider, since he cannot behave as they want to, and he's not ''someone like them''. It actually is what some children suffer from; I always noticed the real nice and kind people stick together or even don't have any friends, they form small groups of kind people who are mostly seen as losers or even nerds. However, the bitchy girls get everything, everyone adores them, no one says anything negative about them.

It's such a shame that the other kids treated your son this way. From what I've read, he diserves much better. It's just the cold hard truth that nice people don't often become popular. The fact he has AS might have his influence too, he might behave in social situations nice, but somehow odd, which others can dislike. Of course this still not is an excuse to treat a person bad; why should you care whether a person is odd, why ca't you look at who he is?

To the OP : it's fairly normal for the Aspie to see the world as having a 'social skills' deficit (by which, they really mean a civility deficit ... not the same thing).

Why is this ?

Because the world is generally fairly hostile towards them - and people rarely show their civilised, caring sides to the Aspie.

The Aspie's lack of social understanding means that they don't understand that there's a REASON for the world's hostility to them.
The inability to see/comprehend that reason makes it appear as though the world is totally unjustified in its hostility.

IOW, seeing only the hostility and not the reason is the source of that sense of the world being wrong.

You ask me what that 'reason' (read : justification) is.

The answer is that there is no logical justification, it's simply the way nature has wired humans for social interaction.
It's something very ancient that transcends reason or verbality that people can no more help than the need to breathe.

I think that everyone should be taught basic social skills and getting on with people from an early age. If everyone in the school follows some kind of honest and positive ethos, I've found that this helps a lot.

I found that some of the social parts of Personal and Social, Health Education helped me a lot because my family didn't teach me these things!

My family just told me basically to either "sit back and observe" or to stand up and say that my way of doing things was "right" and everyone else's way was "wrong". "Do what you wanna do." they'd say: "Don't let other people hold you back.". They seemed to think that arguments had to be won using "correct data" to achieve a task. They put their emphasis on the rights and knowledge of the individual: collaboration was never even discussed.

If this part of the PSHE programme could be elaborated on for everybody and included issues like AS, I feel that there would be much less social tension in schools. Sure, there would still be some, but the tensions would be more manageable and could be talked around better.

Some people aren't naturally born with these skills (including some parents!).
I had to learn mine by observing how other people interacted, not from Mum or Dad.

It depends. I've noticed that when people have known that I'm "aspie" they tend to be more hostile and condescending towards me because of their preconceptions of the label.

When people haven't been aware of the past labeling, people have tended to treat me better and on more equal terms.

However, I have been in discussions where people have turned against me for no apparent reason when I was trying desperately to be polite and to cooperate.

It was a big shock to be called "rude" or "insensitive" when I was trying not to offend anyone and be helpful. So, people can go from hating me one minute to loving me the next. It's an utterly bewildering and confusing experience for me. They said that I was being rude and polite at the same time or that they "couldn't read me very well". Maybe it was because I was more task orientated than people orientated?

There were also people who used to like and tolerate me no matter what I said accidentally because they judged me on my positive contributions rather than on my faux pas. I think that they were also very caring, friendly and tolerant of other people in general. They were caring and civilised towards me and said that I was a caring, helpful and civilised person.

I think that some of the world is hostile to everyone. Sometimes the world can be wrong, as I've discovered. I think it works both ways for all kinds of people.

It seems that in today's educational system politeness is a thing to be frowned upon.