Over at Mris’s journal, there’s a great post about social skills and Asperger’s. People with Asperger’s are often told that they need to “learn social skills,” but M’ris asks:
I’m curious, though, about what you all think this “learn social skills” thing
actually means, or should mean. What are we taking for granted that “of course
everyone knows” that may well be learned behavior on the part of neurotypicals?
If you’ve got Asperger’s yourself, what social skills have you learned the hard way,
or what did you wish someone had explained to you in your late teens and
early twenties?
I commented briefly at M’ris’s place, but here are my thoughts in more detail.
I don’t have Asperger’s, but I am an introvert. When I was younger I was so awkward that I was basically unable to deal with anyone other than close friends and family. Often not even them.
At college I was suddenly cut off from the friends that I had (somehow) made in elementary school, and it soon became clear that I was hopelessly at sea. My classmates were generally very nice, but I had no idea how to chat with strangers and make new friends, even surrounded by fellow geeky engineering types. Social circles gelled far too quickly.
During college, particularly my miserable sophomore year, I did a lot of re-thinking. It was clear I couldn’t exactly count on Eric and Pat and Sam and Mike and Byron and Nancy to parachute in whenever I wanted company. I needed to learn to make new friends. But that required talking to strangers, for extended periods of time, without wanting to run away. Impossible.
I would have been in even bigger trouble if I’d had Asperger’s. But I didn’t, which meant I already had the skill set of reading and processing facial expressions, tone of voice, and body language without having to consciously think about what I was doing. So what I needed to do was start putting things together. Is this clump of people at the party interested in welcoming a stranger? Was that an opportune moment to join the conversation? Or am I just going to tick them off? Solving this kind of problem requires processing countless tiny cues very quickly in parallel. If “social skills” are analogous to “math skills”, then understanding nonverbal cues is the equivalent of arithmetic. Meanwhile, we neurotypicals are yelling at these kids to go run off and learn Algebra I.
Fortunately for me and my particular goals, I did know arithmetic. A decade later, I’m still introverted, and proudly so. But I have gotten better at schmoozing. I can talk to strangers at parties. I can speak extemporaneously. I can give presentations to groups — badly, but I’m getting better. I can make new friends. The reason I’ve worked on these skills is that to me, these skills are important and worth exercising. I actually like talking to strangers now, up to a point. I’ve also chosen a career that requires a fair bit of socializing. If you’re an engineer and the other engineers don’t like you, you can still be successful if you’re really, really good at the technical stuff. But if you’re a tech writer and the engineers don’t like you, it doesn’t matter how good a writer you are: you’re screwed.
These skills are important to me for various reasons, but to others, not so much. That’s why the injunction to “learn social skills” is so pernicious, particularly when directed towards people with Asperger’s. First, you haven’t given any specifics about what skills you should be learning. And second, you haven’t stated what the end goal should be. Being able to politely convey information to another human being? Running for Mayor? What, exactly?
Anyway, the weird thing about this shift is that I’ve made friends in my late 20s and early 30s who never knew me in my younger days. They think I’m an extrovert.
But they’re wrong, and the reason I know they’re wrong is that even though I enjoy socializing, it’s draining. I get my energy from being alone, and I burn it up by being around people. I do have friends who are real extroverts, and they actually gain energy from being around a whirlwind of people. I’m thinking, “I’ve been enjoying this party for three hours, but now I just need to crawl away and hide.” My extrovert friends find this baffling. “As long you’re still enjoying the party, why would you ever leave?”
I never thought you were an extrovert.
But then, I’m the one shouting back over the noise of the party, “What? Did you say something about enjoying this? Me, too, but I have to crawl away and hide now!”
I was at least as hopelessly introverted and socially awkward as yourself.
What am I doing now? Becoming a teacher. A little extreme, perhaps, but there you go. Funny thing is, I just observed a class today, and the teacher we watched got started in the profession for exactly the same reason.
M’ris — No, I don’t think you were ever fooled. 🙂 I think that my newer friends (read: five years or less) do learn that I’m actually an introvert. But business colleagues and other casual acquaintances are another story.
Chris — I did a year of teaching in grad school (well, TAing). It made a difference, although I just never got comfortable standing up there. I can deal with one pair of eyes looking at me, or five, but twenty or more still freaks me out.
Thought about posting to the original, but I felt odd about that…. so here’s my blurb.
I had a friend in HS who had issues of some sort that made it hard for him to parse the social skill set. We were too young to diagnose wtf was up, but he was a nice person regardless (introduced me to Devo).
What was scary was that he made me look highly functional, when I was the biggest social dork until 17-18 at least, so I was/am hardly a good role model, but there you have it.
The biggest thing was getting him into a drama program. that let him experiment, while also giving him some useful structure of feedback from others.
We (other socially inept male teens) taught him some of the standards:
– don’t pick, itch or scratch things in a group setting, go to the rest room if you need to.
– people aren’t expecting to actually stop and chat with you when they say any of the brief existence indicator “hi, how’s it going, ‘sup, yo” etc.
– your vocal volume should match the other nearby parties.
– other people significantly interpret mood by vocal tone as well as words choice. (this was hard)
– training on pitch and tone. (practice is all you can do with this.)
– communicate your emotional feelings clearly when asked about them, but leave your bodily functions out of conversation.
– maintain eye contact with people who ask you a question, maintain diffuse eye contact with the group if in a general conversation (pop from person to person when in doubt to read mood/body indications), do not stare at the wall, ceiling, etc. exit the conversation if it bores you that badly, but do so with a conversation closer.
– learn other’s personal space by observation of the distance they put between themselves and others. stretched out arm is an adequate rule of thumb. (this is different for all sorts of social norms though)
– if people are shifting balance a lot and not looking at you, they probably want to leave the convo.
– some good conversation closers “hey I gotta get ready for class” “hey its been fun, I gotta run” etc.
– one area that really helped him was to have a peer group who understood his issue, but wasn’t similarly impacted. we’d chat and if he fell of the social track, we’d tell him straight up, and why he’d fallen off.
– I cannot for the life of me recall the series name, but at one point there was a series of instruction manuals from the State Department for the formative spies^H^H^H embassy workers on learning the culture. Ettiqite books helped some, though you need to work them through with a dose of reality. We had a bunch at school because of the location.
– we also helped him think of things like a branching program structure built off of feedback, and fed him typical parameters for social interaction. we made a bit of a game out of it, geeks that we were. it helped him default to “normal” so if he got stressed he didn’t crank the volume or drop all the social skills.
– something I wish I’d learned earlier: when to know you’re dominating the conversation. especially when excited about the topic at hand.
– make sure he reads up on/ takes an interest in common conversation topics. I picked up hockey and its made life much more smooth in the working world to be able to discuss something mainstream with people.
I think the biggest thing is to have a peer group that is ok with him being awkward, but has an array of social interactions. The more he practiced the smoother he got. Hell, he ended up with more dates that I did at the end of HS. 🙂
anyhoo, there ya go.
That’s an excellent list, Dru!
I’ve been thinking about it a lot since reading _Speed of Dark_ and Lou reminded me of J____, and myself in many early incarnations.
Hockey makes everything better, Dru. The answer isn’t *always* “more hockey!!!”, but it’s the way to bet.
Evan, we’ve been friends for longer than five years now. We met in the fall of ’00. Yes, really. Why? Because we are just that old.
I was very introverted as a boy, and had many symptoms of Asperger’s syndrome: I couldn’t or wouldn’t make eye contact, I talked to loudly to people who weren’t interested, I had no understanding of people my own age, and I was happiest dealing with adults or spending time on my own. But when I left for college, I made a concentrated effort to have fun and make friends by faking it. If I couldn’t make eye contact, I could stare at people’s noses. Hacking social conventions paid off, and I made a lot of great friends.
I now have a son with autism. I’m trying to teach him some of the tricks I used, but at this point we’re just working on the basics. He’s in first grade now in a regular school, and has an assistant to keep him focused and a whole pile of therapists that work with him on social skills, asking questions, making eye contact and other things he needs help with.
M’ris should make sure that her friend’s kid is getting all the support the school district has to offer. Most schools have a significant special education staff that can be very helpful. It’s odd to think of a kid with AS going to special ed, but my son is at least a grade level ahead of any other student in his class academically.
Yeah, I have that “introvert who does a decent imitation of an extrovert” thing, too…
Interesting. I find that just smiling a lot will help ease any intro into a new social setting. Smiling and beer…….