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"Friendship tokens"

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magz
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28 Oct 2019, 2:27 am

This is the concept of my daughter. She told me that she can't make any friends at school because "she uses all her friendship tokens on her sister". Then she said her friendship tokens renew when she's alone.

I relate to the concept. It's something similar to the spoons, only specifically for social life. You can learn a lot of social skills but if your number of friendship tokens is limited, you need to restrict your social life to remain sane.


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OutsideView
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28 Oct 2019, 3:51 am

That's a really clever metaphor, I can relate too. What's the "spoons"? I've not heard of that one before.


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magz
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28 Oct 2019, 4:04 am

OutsideView wrote:
What's the "spoons"? I've not heard of that one before.

https://butyoudontlooksick.com/articles ... on-theory/
Spoons are a metaphor used to describe an aspect of living with a chronic illness or some kinds of disability: while you are technically capable of every "normal" activity, you use up very limited resources for each tiny everyday task.


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Mona Pereth
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28 Oct 2019, 4:10 am

In my opinion, it's also a good idea to try to figure out how one can use one's "tokens" as efficiently as possible, i.e. determine which specific aspects of socializing are most stressful and tiring and try to keep those to a minimum, thereby giving one more energy for other, less stressful forms of socializing.


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magz
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28 Oct 2019, 4:22 am

Mona Pereth wrote:
In my opinion, it's also a good idea to try to figure out how one can use one's "tokens" as efficiently as possible, i.e. determine which specific aspects of socializing are most stressful and tiring and try to keep those to a minimum, thereby giving one more energy for other, less stressful forms of socializing.

Good point.
In her case, I would suspect speaking/listening is the most draining part. I've seen her having fun with other children without anyone saying a single word.
And her sister is a horrible chatterbox.

In both me and her, a challenge is to keep your focus divided between many persons around you.


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