To change or not to change, that is the question

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League_Girl
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28 Feb 2015, 4:25 pm

I guess my ex aspie really was an ass because I would try and explain thing to him and he was too willful so he continued his behavior and thinking. I describe him as willful ignorant than naive. I thought he was naive when we first met. Plus everyone keeps telling me he was an ass. Someone asked me online recently what drew me to him in the first place. I sometimes think he used his AS as an excuse but yet would talk about how he wants to be normal and wishes he could be. :? But my question is how do I know if he was truly an ass or he truly didn't get it? You can try and explain a algebra problem to me and I still won't get it after you have already explained it to me or I can tell my 4 year old son the bagels need to thaw first before I can serve it to him but yet he still won't get it because he will ask me it a few minutes later for a bagel and I can tell him I will get it to them once they have thawed out and he will still keep asking for one. I do wonder the same about NTs too when you try and explain things to them, how do we know they truly don't get it rather than just being willfully ignorant and choosing to not listen? You can tell an ASD person you are not interested in (insert their passion here) but yet they continue going on about it and get mad at you when you tune them out or weren't listening so how do you know they truly don't get it or if they are just being a self centered ass?


I think this logic would apply here:
My mom has told me about other people "You don't need to understand, you just have to accept it" and I have heard a member here saying "You don't need to understand why something is offensive, you just have to accept the person was offended by it so you just apologize and move on and don't do it again." I think this can be said about TOM and other things such as about people not being into what you are into such as your passion. Luckily my ex aspie understood I was not interested in cars and stuff so he never told me about them or went on about it. He didn't blab about his passions because he knew not everyone wanted to hear about them. I don't know if he got it either. As my mom says, you don't need to get it, you just need to accept it.


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Son: Diagnosed w/anxiety and ADHD. Also academic delayed.

Daughter: NT, no diagnoses.


ASDMommyASDKid
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28 Feb 2015, 6:27 pm

League_Girl wrote:
I guess my ex aspie really was an ass because I would try and explain thing to him and he was too willful so he continued his behavior and thinking. I describe him as willful ignorant than naive. I thought he was naive when we first met. Plus everyone keeps telling me he was an ass. Someone asked me online recently what drew me to him in the first place. I sometimes think he used his AS as an excuse but yet would talk about how he wants to be normal and wishes he could be. :? But my question is how do I know if he was truly an ass or he truly didn't get it? You can try and explain a algebra problem to me and I still won't get it after you have already explained it to me or I can tell my 4 year old son the bagels need to thaw first before I can serve it to him but yet he still won't get it because he will ask me it a few minutes later for a bagel and I can tell him I will get it to them once they have thawed out and he will still keep asking for one. I do wonder the same about NTs too when you try and explain things to them, how do we know they truly don't get it rather than just being willfully ignorant and choosing to not listen? You can tell an ASD person you are not interested in (insert their passion here) but yet they continue going on about it and get mad at you when you tune them out or weren't listening so how do you know they truly don't get it or if they are just being a self centered ass?


I think this logic would apply here:
My mom has told me about other people "You don't need to understand, you just have to accept it" and I have heard a member here saying "You don't need to understand why something is offensive, you just have to accept the person was offended by it so you just apologize and move on and don't do it again." I think this can be said about TOM and other things such as about people not being into what you are into such as your passion. Luckily my ex aspie understood I was not interested in cars and stuff so he never told me about them or went on about it. He didn't blab about his passions because he knew not everyone wanted to hear about them. I don't know if he got it either. As my mom says, you don't need to get it, you just need to accept it.


I don't know that I really analyze if someone is an ass per se. It is a word I use perhaps not altogether precisely. To me a word like that fits when you understand (or think you understand) someone's motives as being mean or something in that family. Sometimes it is more casual; like if a stranger cuts me off on the highway, or something.

In terms of people in life, I don't necessarily analyze it very thoroughly because often it doesn't matter. if there is behavior I cannot tolerate, it doesn't really matter if the person is an ass or not. I don't put up with it.

Sometimes motives matter in the sense of if someone is not an ass, I cut them slack in terms of how I communicate with them and that kind of thing. If I feel it is not on purpose, I naturally have more empathy, and change how I communicate with that person, or maybe am more apt to let things go. This happens naturally, though, and I don't know that I often examine my algorithm for this.

Sometimes it is important to figure out motive, like if you need to deal with a child's behavior and know how to handle it; Not that I would call a child an ass unless he/she was a bully or something.



ASDMommyASDKid
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28 Feb 2015, 9:08 pm

Clarification to above post: I probably should have been clearer that I wouldn't call a child an ass to his face. I meant if I were telling my husband about a bully or something.



carpenter_bee
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05 Mar 2015, 4:35 pm

I see a lot of black-and-white thinking in OP's posts. I too find a lot of appeal to black-and-white thinking, and it can be almost soothing when I'm tackling a problem. It can give me a road map so that I know what to do and what NOT to do. But it's more of a TOOL than a TRUTH. Truth is often much more complicated.

While I think OP's approach & attitude is quite rigid, there is also lot of interesting stuff in his approach and his thoughts and so I hope, as others have said, he's able to edit his books and/or modify his approach so that the interesting and useful stuff can reach the right people.

To be a very effective writer you sometimes have to jettison words, phrases, characters, ideas, jokes, etc that you personally want to cling to because you feel they are particularly clever or poignant or witty or whatever... but if they get in the way of conveying your message/story to the reader, then they don't belong in the work. OP can still privately think some of the less-popular things he's said (like the one about the "low-functioning" kids simply being "undeveloped") but stuff like that shouldn't be in his book. It may turn off the people who could benefit most from trying new approaches. He could actually still express basically the same sentiment, but in a less-offensive way (e.g., "Children will benefit when those working with them believe that they can continue to learn and develop."

Maybe OP feels that this kind of language is sorta "B.S." and in a way he's right. But to communicate effectively with your audience, you have to find the right kind of language to make them comfortable and show them that you're on "their side". Just today, I was writing a note to school staff and I was using phrases like, "I want to help [my son] find the tools he needs to succeed in the classroom." I hate writing like that. But it makes THEM comfortable, and then they will listen to what I'm saying in between the "B.S."

So far, the main thing the OP has said that struck me as flat-out wrong was the thing about people with ASD not being able to manipulate. My son is a skilled manipulator. I have to try not to laugh when his teachers tell me about the stuff he does at school to get out of doing his work. And that was probably the main thing that rubbed me the wrong way -- I have little patience for generalized statements about what "autistics" CAN and CAN'T do.