social skills – Page 29 – Real Social Skills

Nonviolent Communication can hurt people

July 13, 2014June 21, 2021 Real Social Skills

People who struggle interpersonally, who seem unhappy, or who get into a lot of conflicts are often advised to adopt the approach of Nonviolent Communication.

This is often not a good idea. Nonviolent Communication is an approach based on refraining from seeming to judge others, and instead expressing everything in terms of your own feelings. For instance, instead of “Don’t be such an inconsiderate jerk about leaving your clothes around”, you’d say “When you leave your clothing around, I feel disrespected.”. That approach is useful in situations in which people basically want to treat each other well but have trouble doing so because they don’t understand one another’s needs and feelings. In every other type of situation, the ideology and methodology of Nonviolent Communication can make things much worse.

Nonviolent Communication can be particularly harmful to marginalized people or abuse survivors. It can also teach powerful people to abuse their power more than they had previously, and to feel good about doing so. Non-Violent Communication has strategies that can be helpful in some situations, but it also teaches a lot of anti-skills that can undermine the ability to survive and fight injustice and abuse.

For marginalized or abused people, being judgmental is a necessary survival skill. Sometimes it’s not enough to say “when you call me slurs, I feel humiliated” – particularly if the other person doesn’t care about hurting you or actually wants to hurt you. Sometimes you have to say “The word you called me is a slur. It’s not ok to call me slurs. Stop.” Or “If you call me that again, I’m leaving.” Sometimes you have to say to yourself “I’m ok, they’re mean.” All of those things are judgments, and it’s important to be judgmental in those ways.

You can’t protect yourself from people who mean you harm without judging them. Nonviolent Communication works when people are hurting each other by accident; it only works when everyone means well. It doesn’t have responses that work when people are hurting others on purpose or without caring about damage they do. Which, if you’re marginalized or abused, happens several times a day. NVC does not have a framework for acknowledging this or responding to it.

In order to protect yourself from people who mean you harm, you have to see yourself as having the right to judge that someone is hurting you. You also have to be able to unilaterally set boundaries, even when your boundaries are upsetting to other people. Nonviolent Communication culture can teach you that whenever others are upset with you, you’re doing something wrong and should change what you do in order to meet the needs of others better. That’s a major anti-skill. People need to be able to decide things for themselves even when others are upset.

Further, NVC places a dangerous degree of emphasis on using a very specific kind of language and tone. NVC culture often judges people less on the content of what they’re saying than how they are saying it. Abusers and cluelessly powerful people are usually much better at using NVC language than people who are actively being hurt. When you’re just messing with someone’s head or protecting your own right to mess with their head, it’s easy to phrase things correctly. When someone is abusing you and you’re trying to explain what’s wrong, and you’re actively terrified, it’s much, much harder to phrase things in I-statements that take an acceptable tone.

Further, there is *always* a way to take issue with the way someone phrased something. It’s really easy to make something that’s really about shutting someone up look like a concern about the way they’re using language, or advice on how to communicate better. Every group I’ve seen that valued this type of language highly ended up nitpicking the language of the least popular person in the group as a way of shutting them up.

Short version: Be careful with Nonviolent Communication. I-statements have their uses in some contexts, but NVC is not the complete solution to conflict or communication that it presents itself as. NVC can be particularly dangerous for people with communication disabilities, and for people who have trouble setting boundaries.

Restraint is violent

July 8, 2014June 21, 2021 Real Social Skills

Content warning: This post is about violent physical restraint of kids. Proceed with caution.

Anonymous said:

In what cases is it okay to restrain a kid? Is it okay to pin a kid on the floor if they try to hit you or throw something at you?

realsocialskills said:

I’m guessing that you are not a police officer or emergency responder, and that you’re asking this in the context of either parenting, childcare, or education.

In those settings, it is never ok. (Edited to add: it’s never ok in the context of mental health treatment either.) Sometimes it’s the least bad response when things go very badly wrong, but it’s never ok, and it can’t be part of someone’s plan.

I asked a friend who has more experience than I do caring for disabled children (I’m assuming the kids in this scenario are disabled because people generally assume as a matter of course that it’s not ok to treat nondisabled children this way), and she said this:

Sometimes mistakes are made and situations escalate to a point where a restraint is the least harmful option. That doesn’t mean it’s not harmful. That doesn’t mean it’s okay. When that happens, it is really important to acknowledge the harm that has transpired and to go back over the incident and events leading up to it and figure out what went wrong and how we can prevent it happening again. (quote ends here)

In the same way that, if a kid pinned another kid to the floor, you’d consider that unacceptable and plan to make sure it doesn’t happen again. It’s even more serious when an adult does that.

It is never ok to put restraint into someone’s care plan. It is never ok to see it as a solution. Restraint is a failure, not a solution.

Restraining someone is an act of physical violence. Pinning someone to the floor is a particularly invasive kind of physical violence. It’s a brutal and physically dangerous act.

Violence against kids counts as violence. Violence against people who can’t talk counts as violence. Violence against people who are physically aggressive counts as violence.

It is never ok to restrain someone as a punishment. Or a consequence. Or to teach them a lesson. Or to prevent them from getting away with something. Or to send the message that their actions are unacceptable. Or to make them calm down. Or anything remotely like that.

If you’re coming here looking for absolution, I’m not giving it to you. If you’ve pinned someone to the floor and you’re wondering if it was ok, no, it wasn’t, and you need to figure out a way to solve the problem so that you don’t do that again. It doesn’t mean you’re a terrible person or incapable of supporting the children in your care, but it does mean there’s a problem and you need to find a better solution.

If you’re a teenager or a kid, and an adult responsible for taking care of you pinned you to the floor and you’re trying to figure out if it was ok, no, it wasn’t. I’m sorry that happened to you. It shouldn’t have. No one should do that to you. No matter what you did, that wasn’t ok. If you’re violent and you hurt other kids or adults, that’s a problem you need to work on solving, but it doesn’t mean it’s ok for adults to pin you to the floor. They should be finding better ways to help you.

For more information, check out Stop Hurting Kids: Join the campaign to end restraint and seclusion abuse in schools. In particular, this fact sheet about restraint and seclusion is a good place to start.

You don’t owe anyone a platform

July 7, 2014June 11, 2021 Real Social Skills

Two basic facts about the internet:

Unmoderated comment forums are terrible. They get overrun with trolls, low quality content, and off topic remarks.
If you moderate a comment forum, angry people will argue with you and accuse you of censorship

Moderating isn’t censorship. Moderating is deciding what kind of community or forum or page you want to build, and making sure things that are posted that are consistent with your objectives.

Everyone has the right to say whatever they want – but they don’t have the right to make you say whatever they want, or a right to make you publish whatever they say.

You have to right to decide what to publish, and what kind of speech to allow in a forum you’re moderating. That’s not censorship. That’s building a high-quality platform.

People who want to participate in a site that works differently are free to go elsewhere, or to build their own platform. They’re not entitled to yours.

Moderation is necessary to building a good platform, and you can’t do it without making some people angry. People being angry doesn’t mean you’re wrong. It just means they’re angry.

When parents ask invasive questions

July 5, 2014June 21, 2021 Real Social Skills

A reader asked:

Hi. My parents are always asking me why I do things like rock back and forth or become unable to talk. When I say “I don’t know” they press me until I throw wordsoup at them. If I answer “I was overloaded” or whatever “Why were you overloaded?” “The lights.” “Why did the lights bug you today and not yesterday?” “I didn’t sleep well.” “Why didn’t you sleep well?” They go farther and farther until I say I don’t know, then press me until I make up reasons. I hate it. Help?

realsocialskills said:

That’s hard. There are no universal strategies that work for everyone in this case, and you might not be able to get them to stop, particularly if you are still living with them. That said, here are some possibilities:

Depending on your relationship with them, it might help to talk to them about it when you’re all calm. If they care about how you feel, it might help to tell them that it’s hurting you, possibly along the lines of:

Mom, when I am rocking back and forth or unable to speak, the last thing I want to do is talk about it. It really hurts my feelings when you press me for answers. There’s always a reason, but I don’t always know it, and it’s not something I want to talk about when I’m in that state of mind. When I’m rocking or unable to speak, I’d prefer that you leave me be.
or:
Dad, I get the sense that when I rock or can’t speak, it makes you very worried and you want to find out exactly what’s going on. I know you mean well, but that doesn’t help. Rocking and losing speech sometimes is actually fairly normal for autistic people, and it hurts my feelings when you act like it’s a problem to be solved. When I rock or can’t talk, that’s ok, and I’d prefer that you let me be and stop trying to investigate.
This only works if your parents care about your feelings and are likely to believe you. I don’t know you or your family, so I can’t tell you whether or not you have that kind of relationship.

Also depending on your relationship with them, you might be able to unilaterally refuse to talk about these things. This depends on how much power you have and how they are likely to react, but it’s a possibility worth considering:

If you refuse explicitly and say “I do not want to talk about that”, they will probably get angry
But it’s hard for them to argue with, particularly if you adopt a broken record approach and don’t answer questions like “why not?”, or answer them in closed ways like “That’s private.”
Whether this is a good idea depends on what your parents are likely to do if they get angry, and whether you consider that consequence bearable.
If all they’re likely to do is get angry or yell at you, it’s probably in your interest to develop a tolerance for yelling and anger
This is a good post by Dave Hingsburger about a man with a developmental disability learning to tolerate parental anger

Another possible broken-record approach:

When they’re asking, it might help to say “because I’m autistic”, and “because that’s what autistic people do” in response to all of their questions
Or something lighter like shrugging and saying “My brain works in mysterious ways”, if you can pull off a light tone with that.
This might work better than outright refusing or saying “I don’t know”, since it’s an answer, but it doesn’t get into details

Another possibility: infodump and bore them:

If they want to ask you about rocking or losing speech, you might try telling them every single thing you can think of about rocking and losing speech, in as verbose a manner as you can manage
And answer every followup question with another longwinded monologue
Infodumping can be a superpower of self defense. As Laura Hershey put it about wheelchair users blocking inaccessible doors, such power should not be wasted
If you’re infodumping and answering the question you want to answer rather than the one they want you to answer, that gives you power

Another possibility: lie

It might help to make up something that sounds plausible and just answer that every time they ask
Lying can be easier than trying to tell the truth
Particularly if you practice the lie and refine it to become an answer they find satisfying
“Why were you rocking?” “Because I was overloaded.” “Why?” “Because of the lights.” “Why did the lights bother you today and not yesterday?” “Today the lights were different. I think the bulbs are burning out.”
It is ok to lie when people are harassing you about things that are none of their business, even if they love you, even if they are your parents

Another possibility: Aggressively change the subject when they ask questions you don’t want to answer;

This is particularly effective if they have things they are particularly interested in
Eg “Why were you rocking?” “So, are you looking forward to the big game tonight?”
This doesn’t work on everyone, but it can be very effective with some people

Another possibility: Talk about the things they’re objecting to in positive terms:

“Why were you rocking?” “Because rocking is awesome!”
“Why weren’t you talking?” “Because words are overrated and the space outside of words is beautiful”
This can be disarming, in part because it’s rude to argue with people about things they like
They might follow up with: “But other people think it looks weird”, which you can answer “That’s their problem.” or “That’s ok.”
They might also say “That’s inappropriate”. I don’t know a great rhetorical response to that one, but people who say that are in fact wrong.

Another possibility: Turn the questions back on them:

“Why were you rocking?” “Why do you ask?”
This can be surprisingly effective with a lot of people, particularly if you can manage to sound curious or therapeutic.
Having a snarky/offended tone isn’t quite as effective, but it can sometimes work too, because it implies “that was not an appropriate question”. That tone will get some people to back off; it will cause others to argue

These are some of the strategies I know. Captain Awkward also talks about parents and boundaries a lot. You might want to take a look through her archives. (That said, take her advice about therapy with a grain of salt. What she says is true for a lot of people, but it isn’t necessarily going to be good advice for people with disabilities, particularly teenagers).

Beyond that, in any case, I think it’s important to keep in mind that this isn’t your fault, and that your parents should not be doing this. They may not intend any harm, they may well think they’re helping you, but they’re being mean. The problem is not caused by autism. The problem is caused by them being wrong about how to treat you.

These three posts about dealing with people being mean to you might help: “You’re ok, they’re mean.”, Learning self respect, and When people you love are mean.

I’m sorry you’re dealing with this. It’s an awful situation to be in. I hope that some of this helped.

When people you love are mean

July 3, 2014June 21, 2021 Real Social Skills

So, in a recent post in which I referenced “You’re ok, they’re mean” as a response to ableism, I got responses along the lines of:

“But what about when it’s my parents? Or people who are really nice in other ways? Or my friends? Or people I respect? How can I say they are mean?”

The short answer: people are complicated.

It’s possible for someone to be mean sometimes, but not always. Actually, most people aren’t mean all the time. (Even if they are mean to *you* all the time).

Hateful aspects of someone’s personality or behavior don’t cancel out the parts of them that are loving and respectful. They coexist.

And it cuts both ways – the loving or respectful aspects of their personality or behavior don’t cancel out the parts of them that are mean.

When they are being mean, it’s important to recognize that they are being mean, and that it’s wrong for them to be mean to you. Even though they aren’t mean all the time and you respect them in other ways.

Sometimes, when people who you love are mean, it’s possible to talk to them about it and show them that it hurts you. Sometimes they don’t realize they’re being mean, and sometimes they stop once they realize. But not always. Sometimes they don’t believe you, or don’t care. You have to use your judgement about which kind of situation you’re in.

And in any case, it starts by recognizing the mean behavior or attitudes as mean. If people think less of you because of your disability, or who you love, or anything else like that, they’re being mean. It’s a reflection on them, not you.

You’re ok. They’re mean.

Stop romanticizing neurotypicality

July 2, 2014June 21, 2021 Real Social Skills

When I hear people, autistic or otherwise, talk about autistic social difficulties, they often say things along the lines of:

“You and I just know all of these rules intuitively, but people with autism find them mysterious and have to learn them explicitly”
“All of these rules that you neurotypicals pick up naturally are very very difficult for those of us on the spectrum”

There is a myth people who aren’t autistic just automatically know social rules, and that it’s only autistic people who need to put serious effort into learning them.

It’s not true. Neurotypical people have to learn all kinds of things on purpose. For instance:

In business:

When people are applying to schools, or first learning how to apply to jobs, they are advised to do practice interviews. This is not special advice for the disabled; it’s standard advice for everyone
Colleges have career centers aimed at teaching students how to get jobs
Ask A Manager is a popular column about social skills for the workplace, for every role including management, employees, and job seekers. It’s not aimed specifically at people with disabilities, most of the articles are written assuming a neurotypical audience and most of the questions are asked by people without disabilities
Fuck you, pay me is a popular talk about gaining the social skills to insist that your freelancing clients pay you for your work
Everyone, not just autistic people, needs to learn a lot of skills which may or may not come naturally, in order to succeed in businesses

In personal relationships:

Captain Awkward is a popular advice blog focused on personal relationships and boundaries. Many subscribers are autistic, but many are not, and it is not a disability-focused blog.
Miss Manners is a long-running column about manners. She has been printed in newspapers for decades and has written several books. She is popular because a lot of neurotypical people feel like they don’t know the rules and want someone to tell them the rules
Scarleteen, a popular sex ed site, has a lot of information on things like dating and relationships and how to talk about safer sex, because no one is born knowing those things

In the area of disability:

A good percentage of people, autistic or otherwise, lack basic social skills needed to respectfully interact with people with disabilities
For instance, they don’t know how to notice when repetition is communication, or how to listen to folks whose speech is unusual
Or that it’s rude to take chairs away from wheelchair and mobility scooter users
Or it it’s seriously invasive to touch mobility equipment without permission
Or how to be honest with disabled children in therapy
Or even more generally, how to notice and respond appropriately to the experiences of disabled peers

It’s true that there are many specific social difficulties that autistic people often have that people who lack autism generally do not have. For instance:

Receptive body language and tones of voice:

Some autistic people have trouble understanding body language, facial expressions, and tones of voice
This makes it hard to interact with people who assume as a matter of course that everyone understands what their body language and tones are saying, and that if you’re not responding, it’s because you’re choosing to ignore it
Autistic people who have this problem have to learn strategies for compensating for it
There are different approaches that some of us take (some people can explicitly learn how body language works by studying it, some people can learn to pick up on different cues, some people can learn how to guess based on context what someone might mean and ask explicitly, some people can move most of their interactions to text where it doesn’t matter, etc etc)

Language

Some autistic people have trouble with receptive language, and have trouble understanding what people say
Some of us have trouble with expressive language, and can’t say the socially expected thing in the socially expected way even if we know what it is
Some autistic people are unable to produce tones of voice or modulate volume in socially expected ways (some autistic people can learn this through practice/therapy; some can’t.)
Language difficulties also can interfere with social skills acquisition because people learn these skills and expected modes of behavior through practice, and people whose receptive and expressive language is atypical tend to be excluded from contexts in which most people practice and learn these things
Similarly to reading body language, different autistic people learn different ways of dealing with this.

Movement

Some autistic people have trouble with voluntary motion, and may not be able to do some expected social gestures or movement even if they understand the rules perfectly
Some autistic people get stuck in situations in which it is considered socially important to keep moving (eg: in line, in a movie theater, at the end of a ride)
Some autistic people need to move in ways that are socially stigmatized in order to function
Some autistic people do not have the motor control (or cognitive ability, there are several reasons this can happen) necessary to produce speech, and communicate using AAC devices, RPM, books of picture symbols, or FC. (Most neurotypical people (and probably most autistic people as well) lack the social skills necessary to interact respectfully with people who communicate this way. This creates a social difficulty that gets blamed on lack of speech, but which is actually caused by lack of respect.)

Sensory issues:

Many autistic people are unable to tolerate the noises, sounds, smells, lights, or crowds in places that most people like to socialize
Some autistic people can’t tolerate being outdoors for long periods of time
This complicates socializing or business networking in a world that expects social interactions to take place in those kinds of settings

There are any number of other examples of ways that autistic people have to learn skills that neurotypical people usually do not have to learn. But that doesn’t mean that we are uniquely deficient, or that “having to learn social rules” is an autistic thing.

No one is born knowing the rules. Everyone has to learn the rules, and everyone has to learn some of the rules explicitly. Everyone learns how to interact with others over a period of years, and no one is good at it without practice. For neurotypical people, the need to learn social skills is treated as normal, expected, and honorable.

For autistic people, our need to learn social skills is treated as disgusting, defective, and in need of normalizing therapy.

People teach us that we autistic people, specifically, are bad at people and interaction and that this needs to be corrected. It’s not true. We are not uniquely bad at social interaction. We have specific needs to learn specific things.

Some of the social skills we have to learn are coping mechanisms for being heavily stigmatized. We have to learn these skills because something is wrong with society, not because something is wrong with us.

There are skills we have to learn differently because of physical differences between autistic and neurotypical people, but that is not something we are missing either. They treat us like we are neurotypical with missing pieces that need to be filled in, but this is not true. We are a different shape, and that’s ok.

(And there are also social skills that come more easily to autistic people than neurotypical people. Autism is not solely composed of difficulties.)

Everyone needs to learn how to interact with others, and it is a lifelong process. The ways neurotypical people learn social interactions are respected. The ways autistic and other neurodivergent people learn to interact with others should also be respected. The fact that autistic social learning is stigmatized is a problem with society, not autistic people.

Age-appropriate interaction with autistic people

June 29, 2014June 21, 2021 Real Social Skills

A reader asked:

Hello, I am a teacher. I wanted to say thank you for your posts. I work with one student who is autistic and not quite non-verbal, but speaks very little.

I found myself talking to her as if she were much younger than she is because I had no way of telling if she was understanding. Your posts have helped me to understand that even though she doesn’t speak, it doesn’t mean she doesn’t understand, and even if she doesn’t, I should still treat her like the 12-year-old she is

On Wednesday I spoke to her to let her know that I was wrong to have spoken to her like a little kid, and that I would now be speaking to her like a twelve-year-old. She seemed pleased. I have ASD traits myself, but I’ve never been non-verbal (even when I couldn’t speak, I still signed), so I didn’t really understand that non-verbal doesn’t mean not understanding necessarily. Thank you.

realsocialskills said:

Oh wow. That is heartening to hear. It’s wonderful that you realized that it was wrong to talk to her like a young child, and that you apologized. That is such an important sign of respect for her. Thank you for taking this seriously, and thank you for telling me about this.

I want to add that, in addition to talking to her like a 12 year old, you probably need to develop better skills at listening to her like a 12 year old.

Probably most of the people you’ve known in your life who had a small expressive vocabulary or spoke only sometimes were very young children. Her speech is not like that. She is thinking much more complex things than a young child is capable of. If you’re not used to listening to nonverbal or minimally verbal folks who are not babies, you probably don’t yet know how to do so in an age-appropriate way.

So it’s not just the way you initiate talking to her that needs to change, it’s also the way you respond to what she says. She has a lot to say. Possibly through her words; possibly mostly through her actions; possibly mostly through body language. But, in any case, she is 12 years old, and she has a lot of 12 year old things to say.

You can learn how to listen to her better. It’s a matter of respect, practice, and skills you can develop.

For instance:

You can get a lot of mileage out of asking yes or no questions. (For some people, it helps to prompt with “yes or no” if it seems like answering yes/no questions isn’t a skill they have all the time) Eg: “Did you bring a lunch today – yes or no?”)
You can also use other kinds of two-option questions. Eg: If you know that she wants a book but she can’t tell you which book she wants, you can put your hand in the middle of the shelf and say “Up or down?” “Left or right?” “This one?”.
You can get even more out of asking a question with an open ended and closed response. Someone who can’t give you a meaningful answer to “What do you want to do?” may well be able to answer “Do you want to draw, or do something else?” Or “Is the answer England, or something else?”

You can also listen to what she says, make guesses about what she means, tell her what your guess is, and ask if you are right. For instance “You just said juice several times. I think that might be because you want to drink juice. Do you want juice, or do you mean something else?” Or “You just said “We’re all friends here!” and you sounded angry. Are you upset about something?“ Or “You just said “Separate but equal!”. Are you talking about discrimination?“

I’ve written about listening to atypical communication here, and here, and I wrote a more general post about how to provide respectful support to an autistic student here.

For some further perspective on this, I’d highly recommend reading the blog Emma’s Hope Book. It’s a blog written by the mother of a 12 year old autistic girl whose speech is unreliable (with some posts from her as well), and they have a lot of really important things to say about how to respect people whose communication is atypical.

Short version: Your student has things to say, whether or not she has figured out how to say them. She is already saying some of them (in words or otherwise), whether or not you understand her communication. The more you assume that she is trying to communicate with you, and the more you assume that what she says is worthwhile, the more you will be able to understand her and teach her in age-appropriate ways. Scroll up for some examples.

The limits of asking for reassurance

June 27, 2014June 21, 2021 Real Social Skills

A reader asked:

That social anxiety “are you mad at me” post, I feel what you answered was a manifestation of the problem. We with social anxiety ask/wonder it an inordinate amount, and our friends get angry, thinking we doubt them. That post was not about actual problems, but the guilt complex and fear of “did I do something unknowingly/did they hate that but are trying to help me save face?” Your answer gave me the feeling of “if you even have to ask, you probably DID hurt them.”

realsocialskills said:

It’s definitely the case that some people think that asking if you’re angry a lot is manipulative in and of itself. It isn’t, and that’s important understand. Some people need to ask a lot, because otherwise they can’t tell, and constantly wondering if someone is mad can be excruciating.

It’s ok to need to check in a lot. If you’re really insecure, chances are that when you need to ask, nothing is actually wrong.

Usually, it’s going to be your guilt complex making you feel ashamed for no good reason. But sometimes, when you feel bad, something actually will be wrong.

If you have to ask, it’s because you don’t actually know whether it’s your insecurities or an actual problem.

Most of the time it’s going to be your insecurities. But if you have to ask, then you have to ask sincerely. Which means being open to the possibility that something actually is wrong, and that the answer might really be “Yes, I’m mad at you.”

If you’re not prepared for the answer to “are you mad?” to be “yes, I am mad”, then what you’re doing isn’t really asking – it’s demanding that the other person reassure you that they’re not mad even if they are.

It’s not ok to demand that someone reassure you that they’re not mad, even if the overwhelming probability is that they are not. It’s ok to ask, but it has to be a real question. (And, in practical terms, asking sincerely is more effective at getting meaningful comfort anyway. If you’re not asking a real question, it’s harder to trust the answer you get.)