social skills – Page 60 – Real Social Skills

Social skills: Considering communication an obligation

October 13, 2012June 21, 2021 Real Social Skills

Sometimes, when people learn methods of communication that sometimes work for people with disabilities, they use them only to get compliance. Or to make things more peaceful and calm. And they expect that things will become easier. And some things will, but…

If you’re doing it right –– if what you’re doing is real communication – you should be hearing NO a lot more than you used to. And some things should become more complicated than they were before.

And you should be understanding and respecting NO more than you used to. The communication should sometimes, probably even often, interfere with your plans and challenge your assumptions. If your interactions almost always make things more convenient for you, what you’re doing is probably not really communication.

Even if the person you’re talking to is a little child – even two-year-old kids who don’t have disabilities are allowed to say no and make it stick sometimes. Little kids who need help communicating, need help communicating things adults *don’t* want them to say, as well as things adults *do* want them to say. It’s important for them to learn how to *decide* what to say.

And, especially – if you’re treating an adult in a way that makes it impossible for them to communicate boundaries even a two-year-old child is allowed to have, somethings is going seriously wrong. And you should be fixing it, and you should expect that fixing it will be inconvenient and lead to you having to change what you do because the person you are communicating said no, or said something unexpected.

Learning to communicate is not just a matter of learning to talk to someone; it’s also a matter of learning how to listen.

And, in pretty much every culture there is, listening to people with communication disabilities is considered optional, and learning how is considered to be a special skill gained by special people who have extra special patience for Working With People Like That. (And, it’s not even routinely expected of people whose primary job is teaching or supporting people with disabilities. It’s considered something *exceptionally good* people in such roles might take on.)

But listening to and communicating with people with disabilities isn’t optional. It’s a basic social skill that everyone needs to acquire (unless they have a disability that prevents it).

And – considering communication optional makes it harder. Acknowledging that others have the right to communicate, and that listening effectively is basic decency and not a special favor you’re doing someone, makes it a lot easier to learn how to communicate properly.

Social skill: Something you should know about sarcasm

October 10, 2012June 21, 2021 Real Social Skills

It’s widely believed that autistic folks have trouble detecting sarcasm and irony. This is in fact true for a lot of people.

However, something else is also true.

People lie about sarcasm and irony. Sometimes people say something they really did mean, and then after the fact claim not to have meant it.

Despite having meant it, they might say things like:

I was just joking
I was just being sarcastic
I was just being ironic
Of course I didn’t *mean* that

There are several reasons people might do this, including but not limited to:

After the fact, they regretted what they said and want to pretend they didn’t say it (sometimes for benign reasons – people do speak without thinking and then realize that what they said is something they don’t want to have said)
They realize that they don’t actually want to discuss that topic with you, and are trying to close the subject so they won’t have to
They are afraid of looking stupid, and they think you consider what they said stupid, so they want you to think they don’t mean it
They said a bigoted or otherwise messed-up thing and don’t want to take responsibility for having done so (so they pretend it was a joke in some way)
They are intentionally messing with you and want to confuse you

So, if you’re often told that you don’t understand sarcasm/irony/humor, it might be true. But it also might mean that you *do* understand what people are saying, and that they’re falsely claiming to be sarcastic/ironic/joking when they don’t like how you react to what they say.

Some things to consider:

Do you understand irony/humor/sarcasm some of the time, but not other times? Is there a pattern you can detect?
Do you understand humor/irony/sarcasm about some topics, but not others? Are the topics you don’t understand irony/sarcasm/humor topics that people say obviously intentionally hurtful things to you about? (If so, it’s likely that at least some of the sarcasm you’re failing to detect actually *is* meant literally).
Are there particular people whose irony/sarcasm/humor you consistently fail to detect, even though you understand it in others? If so, it’s worth watching carefully and examining the content to see if it’s actually irony/sarcasm/humor. It may be the case that you just find some people more confusing than others, but it’s also likely that you actually *do* understand what this person is saying and they just wish you didn’t.

Social skill: Making a building’s accessibility features useable

October 9, 2012June 21, 2021 Real Social Skills

Many buildings are built such that they are possible to use in a wheelchair, and then mismanaged in ways that make them completely and needlessly inaccessible. Here’s some things you can do to avoid that problem:

If some of the entrances to your building are not flat, post signs that clearly state where the accessible entrances can be found.
If you need to control access to your building by locking some of the entrances, make sure to keep at least one accessible entrance open. Even if this means you don’t use the fancy entrance. Being accessible is more important than being fancy.
If some of your parking lots lead to accessible entrances, and others lead to inaccessible entrances post that information and directions to the correct parking lot *at the entrance to the parking lot*.
If some of your entrances look accessible at first but then lead to stairs, post signs that make this clear and that direct to an actually accessible entrance. Do not make people waste their time with decoy entrances.
Make sure the elevator is as easy to find as the stairs. (For instance: If the elevator is not next to the stairs, post signs by the stairs with directions to the elevator). Do not post signs telling people that taking the stairs is more virtuous than taking the elevator.
If the passenger elevator is broken but there is an alternative (freight elevator, service elevator, etc) post this information with the out-of-order sign, and provide a cell phone number or other way someone who needs an elevator can contact help getting to the alternative elevator.
If you have a website, accurately describe the accessibility of your building. If some areas aren’t accessible, or are only sort of accessible, be honest about it. That allows people to plan. Provide a phone number or email address people can use to ask accessibility questions, and make sure the person answering it knows what they are talking about and cares.
Make sure your building maps accurately describe your building from the perspective of someone on wheels. For instance, if the pedestrian bridge linking two parts of your mall has two steps at the entrance, your map needs to say this. Likewise, if there is a step to get into the food court from one direction but not the other, the map needs to say this. Misleading maps waste a lot of time.
Listen to what people with disabilities tell you about accessibility. If they tell you something is a problem, believe them and fix it.

Social skill: Don’t be the Nice Guy

October 1, 2012June 21, 2021 Real Social Skills

There’s a phenomenon that’s been discussed recently as niceguyism. Niceguyism narrowly defined is when a man wants to date a women, and pretends to be her friend, and then gets angry and disgusted when she thinks that they are friends and does not reciprocate his interest in dating.

It’s been summed up as “treating women like vending machines into which you insert friendship and get out sex”.

I think it is actually much broader than that. First of all, although it has a gendered variant, people of all genders do this, and it’s not always for sex. Here’s what I think niceguyism is, broadly defined:

When someone unilaterally decides that they have a particular kind of close relationship with someone, and then treats the other person as though they have an obligation to act like it is true.

All close relationships require the ongoing consent of both parties. You can’t unilaterally *create* a close relationship, you can only unilaterally *offer* to enter into a relationship.

This plays out in romantic and sexual terms, where one person might unilaterally decide that they want to date someone, give that person presents or assistance, and then get furious when that person dates someone else.

It also plays out in friendships – one person decides that someone else should be their best friend, unilaterally acts like they are best friends, and then gets angry and disgusted when that person spends more time with or exchanges more confidences with other people.

It also plays out in a particular way with people with disabilities – people decide they want to be someone’s helper, or open their life up, or empower them, or give them hope to overcome their disabilities – and then proceed to run roughshod over that person’s boundaries and heap abuse and derision on them when they object.

It is never ok to decide you would like a close relationship with someone, and then unilaterally act as though you already do without regard to their consent. Don’t be that guy.

Social skill: Communicating with strangers on the internet

September 30, 2012June 21, 2021 Real Social Skills

On Tumblr, email lists, comment forums, and other types of social media, it’s really easy to get bogged down in destructive conversations. People can end up spending lots and lots of time talking to people who aren’t really worth talking to, and having conversations that are draining and don’t do anyone much good.

Here are some rules that I try to observe that I think mitigate that somewhat and help me to find better conversations. They probably aren’t the right rules for everyone, but they work well for me and I think there are good reasons for that:

1) If you don’t want to talk to someone, don’t. You don’t owe strangers on the internet your attention.

2) Don’t have extended conversations with people who aren’t interested in understanding your point. (Unless you’re responding to them publicly for the sake of communicating something to your followers who *are* interested in understanding what you’re saying.)

3) Seek out people who are worth talking to and who have decent values and say interesting things. Conversations with those people are a much better use of your time than extended conversations with willfully clueless jerks.

4) Don’t be a sadist, and don’t seek revenge. It’s not good to seek out people who are wrong and lash out at them with the primary purpose of hurting them. (It’s ok to post things that hurt things, there are vital things that can’t be said without hurting anyone. What’s not ok is posting things *in order to* hurt people.)

5) Don’t post replies in order to satisfy a feeling of anger (or automatic emotional responses generally); only post in ways that express anger if you’ve thought about it and decided it’s a good idea. Anger isn’t bad, but the fallout of angry posts that haven’t been thought through properly can be.

6) If you don’t want to talk to someone, block them. Err on the side of blocking people if you think you don’t want to talk to them. There are plenty of people to talk to. Blocking someone doesn’t mean that you think they’re a terrible person and should be banned from the internet forever. It just means you don’t want to talk to them and so aren’t answering their calls.

7) Don’t try to pick a fight with someone to make them go away and stop talking to you. It’s often not effective, and it’s not necessary – you can unilaterally end the conversation if you don’t want to continue it. Trying to make them go away suggests that you think you need their permission to end the conversation, and you don’t. It’s also draining, and wastes time and energy that could be spent having actually good conversations.

Social skills: noticing when repetition is communication

September 29, 2012June 21, 2021 Real Social Skills

So there’s this dynamic:

Autistic person: The door is open!

Other person: I *know* that. It’s hot in here.

Autistic person: The door is open!

Other person: I already explained to you that it’s hot in here!

Autistic person: The door is open!

Other person: Why do you have to repeat things all the time?!

Often when this happens, what’s really going on is that the autistic person is trying to communicate something, and they’re not being understood. The other person thinks that they are understanding and responding, and that the autistic person is just repeating the same thing over and over either for no reason or because they are being stubborn and inflexible and obnoxious and pushy.

When what’s really happening is that the autistic person is not being understood, and they are communicating using the words they have. There’s a NT social expectation that if people aren’t being understood, they should change their words and explain things differently. Sometimes autistic people aren’t capable of doing this without help.

So, if this is happening, assume it’s communication and try to figure out what’s being communicated. If you’re the one with more words, and you want the communication to happen in words, then you have to provide words that make communication possible. For example:

Other person: Do you want the door to be closed, or are you saying something else?

Autistic person: Something else

Other person: Do you want to show me something outside, or something else?

Autistic person: Something else

Other person: Are you worried about something that might happen, or something else?

Autistic person: Worried

Other person: Are you worried that something will come in, or that something will go out?

Autistic person: Baby

Other person: She’s in her crib, and the baby gate is up. Is that ok, or is there still a problem?

Autistic person: ok

Social skill: Interacting with a person walking a dog

September 25, 2012June 21, 2021 Real Social Skills

The rules of interacting with strangers are different when the stranger is walking a pet dog.

It’s generally considered acceptable to initiate a conversation in order to compliment someone on their dog or ask certain questions about the dog. (Infodumping about dogs is *not* considered acceptable, and criticizing their approach to their dog is considered rude).

It’s also generally considered acceptable to ask if it’s ok to pet the dog. Keep in mind that sometimes the answer will be no, and act in ways that make it clear that you understand this. Do not make any move to pet the dog until you have been told that it is ok. And if it is ok, make sure to approach the dog carefully. Let the dog smell your fingers first, then pet the dog if it seems to be ok with the dog.

If someone is walking with headphones, that is a signal that they would prefer not to be approached. Don’t initiate a conversation with them unless you have a solid reason to believe that they would welcome it. (A desire to flirt with them is *not* such evidence; neither is having had dog conversations with that person in the past, neither is their apparent awareness that you are present).

The rules for service dogs are different. Service dogs are not pets, and being out with a service dog is *not* an implied invitation to pet-related social interaction. Service dogs usually wear either harnesses or vests. If you suspect that a dog is a service dog, err on the side of assuming that it is one. You should not approach or interact with a person with a service dog unless it would be appropriate to interact with them if they did not have a service dog. Especially, you should not attempt to interact with the dog; it’s rude and distracting a service dog can can someone injured or killed. You should not ask to pet the dog – the answer is almost certainly no, but someone might be uncomfortable asserting that. Asking to pet a service dog is a microaggression. (All of this is assuming that you don’t have a service dog or a disability relevant to service dogs. I don’t know what the rules are about interactions between people who both have service dogs.)