Have aspies past the egocentric stage

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1. being underto uhderstand hw someone may think is not egotism
2. not caring what others think that do not care whatyou think isnt egotism
3. you dont need Asperger's to be egotistical
4. ifnoone else is looking out for you, then you sure better

No-one should blame egercotic (I can't remember the word is) on aspergers disorder. All children are all typical. My son Tommy has just turned 8, and he has no disorder at all. He is one of the most popular boys in his class, but when he's at home he is a bit of a handful sometimes. He doesn't seem to have any manners, and he is clumsy sometimes, and he walks in other people's homes with his shoes on. And when he goes to his friend's house, he will hog his friend's playstation without a second thought. He is very ''full of it''. But also he can be quite awkward. He doesn't want to eat with a knife and fork - he still wants to use a spoon, and i think he's old enough to be able to use a knife and fork now. He sat on the stairs crying one day because me and my husband had an arguement and we wouldn't tell him what it was about. He's very demanding - if I was in the town with him and I saw one of my friends and stood there talking, he will be very demanding and pull me away. He also sets up all his army toys in his bedroom, for example, line them all up ready to play with after school.
But he has lots of mates, and is excellent at football, and fits in well - he doesn't have asperger's at all because there's no sign of it in school. So it just prooves that all children are different - they're not all the same.
The rule isn't ''ALL aspies are awkward, self-centered, cry a lot, can't learn manners or new skills, but ALL normal children can''. It isn't like that at all. Those sorts of things are what we call ''typical children''. In fact, there's not much difference between a normal kid and an aspie kid - only the aspie kid may find it hard to fit in at school, but also shy kids can without aspergers. Also, maybe an asperger's kid may find things difficult at school and at home. My son doesn't fine anything difficult - he is just at an ''akward, selfish'' stage which he will outgrow.

So don't go blaming every aspect on autism - 96 per cent of kids are selfish and ect. It's a compliment. I love kids.

I did anyone notice the typo in the title?
I did.
It should be 'passed' because nothing comes after it.

Can anyone truly know what it is like to be someone else?

You can ask yourself what it is like. You can ask yourself how you would feel if you were in their position. But you don't live inside their head, you weren't born with their neurology and their personality type, you weren't moulded by their life experiences.

I can ask myself, for example, what it is like to be another teenager when they cave in easily to peer pressure and get drunk. But that's where it ends. I don't know what it is like to be them. I don't know what it is like to be that affected by what others think of you. What do you think??

I guess another way of asking this is : are we any more or less inclined not to understand others because of Aspiness?

It might be we actually appreciate more of some aspects of others , or maybe in a different way, but to the same degree, but of course not in a socially conventional way.

This question is hard to answer because there is no baseline from which to measure degrees of response or appreciation, because the fields have not been properly defined.

This is the trouble with general questions like this, for me.

Well spotted Ursa.

Necrobumped!

I've passed that stage, a long time ago.

for me being egocentric is just being loyal to myself, knowing what I want in life, being honest with myself, not letting myself be influenced by others, sticking to what i feel/think is right, and other things to do with self preservation. This does not mean that I discount other people because i do have some people who are close to me in real life and I consider their thoughts/feelings because they consider mine and I appreciate them, I can somewhat put myself in other peoples shoes but im not too good at it, and I try to help people when its nessisary.

I think it does depend on the individual Aspie. In my case I always had a need of people, and somehow found out that if I was going to make any good friendships, I would need to really look carefully at the people who happen by, and just try to share interests, and keep watching for signs of feelings and learning how to interpret them and respond appropriately. Before that I really was egocentric, only into self. I'm still quite like that I guess, but a little bit of sociability seems to go a long way.

It's good when I "get there" for a little while. The glass wall dissolves and you realise you've really contacted somebody, communicated with them in a good way, cheered somebody up or whatever. It sounds kind of sickly sweet like that, but when it happens it just feels like empowerment.

Loneliness doesn't just happen to us. We make ourselves lonely. OK if it can be numbed or doesn't exist, but otherwise, you have to come out and meet folks.

Good at learning metarules, remember. However weak you start out you would usually advance quite far beyond that.

This.

And I tend to not emapthise with people at times. I probably lack about just as much empathy as theory of mind.

Right. I can try to imagine yourself in another person's "shoes" so to speak but I'm still me, just trying to look at things from their perspective. I don't know what it's like to actually BE that person. No one can really know that. I think it can actually do more harm than good for a person to presume to know what another is experiencing.

Jesus knew that we were all one. Any NT who takes acid knows the same. How far beyond 'egocentrism' do you want to go?

We may run into difficulties with interpreting other perspectives, yet it is offensive to assume that people with our cognitive profiles can only be egocentric without having a coherent set of views, interests, tastes, and preferences that do not take into account others.

I am not sure about other spectrumites, yet I dread cognitive dissonance, therefore I conciously try to understand all views of people unless I could be immediately certain that someone else could be discredited.

Those of us who are perfectionists try to eliminate this depraved thing called "the ego" and replace it with a coherent self based on ideas and observations from personal experiences and their contrasts with those of other people.

O_o

NTs are the VERY LARGE MAJORITY of the population.

Of course there are many, many, many NT adults who are egocentric and display absolutely no traits of autism whatsoever.

ANYONE who is self-centered or egocentric is so because of their "wiring".



WrongPlanet rule # 897249: Any trait that smacks of "bad person" that's associated with autism is/was only the result of society's mistreatment/rejection of the individuals in question.

...just don't ask yourself why society rejected you to begin with.

PS) The Sally-Anne test is only failed by individuals with profoundly impaired "theory of mind". More subtle measures/tests are required the measure lesser deficits.