[Author’s
note: Social thinking is a concept and method of teaching social skills that
was created by Michelle Garcia Winner. I learned about the social thinking
method at the 2010 Autism Society of
This is the story of how, through highly unconventional means, a series of social situations occurred in my life that finally enabled me to understand the nature of social skills in ways formal instruction was unable to do so. Do not try to copy or do what I did—every autistic person is different, and we all need to take different paths in this world. I am sharing this not to tell everyone to do what I did, but rather, so show ways people with autism can be empowered to create their own unique social paths in society.
The
following is a personal account of my own development of social thinking. This
is not the full story—no essay can cover this whole story. However, it is a
story 23 years in the making, and still changes every day.
Probably
the most valuable lesson I have learned in my adventures in the social world is
that I cannot follow a set of rules to achieve social success. A social mishap
in one setting can give you social success in another. Many social curriculums
often are focused on following social rules. And I was taught social skills
based on a set of rules. However, my experience has made me conclude that rules
can only take you so far. And no one set of social rules has given me success
anywhere—if anything, achieving success for me has required a more important
skill—knowing when to bend them when the social climate necessitates it.
Michelle
Garcia-Winner’s concepts of social thinking, in my opinion,
bridges the gap between rule following and socializing. It acknowledges
that social rules are not set, and explains how social rules differ in
different social contexts. And it also helped me understand why I built so many
friendships based on “inappropriate” rules. Most of my friends do not base our
interactions on a rulebook and routinely do things that are not entirely appropriate,
but they are based on mutual agreements of accepted behaviors in our
friendships. I am not exempt from social thinking because of my “rule-breaking”
friendships because the “rule-breaking” that occurred wasn’t rule breaking in
those friendships. And in fact, through those friendships I learned more about
social skills than I did in any social group of social skills classes. As a
child, I was taught social skills through role-playing and through sets of
social rules that didn’t always seem to help me make friends. Today I realize
what went wrong—I was being taught rules without being taught how to properly
use them and when and where to use them and not to use them.
My
personal saga into becoming “curiously social,” as Michelle calls it in her
book, Socially Curious and Curiously
Social, began when I was 18. My 18th year of life was a time of
social change. I had been home schooled since the age of 11, my last day of
full-time public school having been the completion of 5th grade.
When
I turned eighteen, I did not have a literal “social life,” in that I did not
have many friends, nor did I socialize informally with many people my own age.
At the same time, however, I was an active member of my community, where I
volunteered in child-care and at a small, local church. The people I
volunteered with were my friends, and I was an accepted member of a small
church of predominantly senior citizens and families with young children.
Through my child-care work I became a known and respected member of my local
community. And although I was taking one to two courses per semester at my high
school, I did not build social ties with most of my classmates, preferring to
just focus on my work.
But
then, things started to change for me socially. During the winter and spring of
2007, I was invited to serve as a tutor for a local elementary school’s
“homework club,” a club where students could go and get assistance with their
homework. I became well respected in the club, especially amongst one of the
club sponsors, a special education teacher at the school. She revealed to me
that this homework club was actually a place where many students with special
needs with to get assistance, and started sending me to those students to give
them extra help. It also turned out that she had a daughter, Molly, who was a
student at my local high school. Molly met me and instantly showed interest in
being my friend. I was unaware, however, that she showed this interest, but
realized that she had a clear interest in being my friend when she was one of
the few people that said hello to me when I was at the high school during the
one class I took each semester.
Another
social development occurred at this time. Every Friday night since I was a
child, my father and I went swimming with my siblings at the local YMCA. My
father started to tell me about how a new girl had started lifeguarding—a girl
from my high school. I came one day to meet her and she turned out to be another
student from my high school—her name was Christine. Christine and I became fast
friends, and I started to go to the pool just to talk to her. I forgot all
about swimming with my dad. Instead, I spent time talking with her. Through her
I learned something else that excited me—that Molly also worked as a lifeguard
at the YMCA. I also learned that virtually all of the lifeguards at this time
at the YMCA were girls, for reasons that no one could explain.
Christine
and I talked about virtually everything together. I told her about the
struggles I dealt with due to my autism and she told me about the struggles she
had with her own life. She also started to tell me about the social rules of
being a teenager, and being in high school. I soon learned that the rules for
fitting in were far different than I expected, and she not only explained many
rules to me but also the reasons for them. She also explained to me many
variations of the rules based on what social role you played at my high school.
Through her endless stories of social interactions, Christine revealed herself
to have advanced social skills, and told me all about her ability to hang out
with many different types of teens at our high school. Paradoxically, her
social intelligence did not mach her academic skills--she was academically
behind and failing most of her classes.
Meanwhile,
Molly and I also established a friendship during the time Christine and I
became friends. Our friendships emerged at the same time but were very
different friendships. It was through these friendships that I finally
understood, after years of being taught this but not really “getting it,” the
concept of different levels of friendship. Although both friendships involved
discussing intimate personal subjects, my friendship with Christine often
involved social instruction whereas Molly and I rarely ever discussed social
rules. In addition, Christine had emotional struggles and issues with her past
that Molly did not have, whereas Molly was the daughter of immigrants, and we often
talked about the differences between American culture and her ethnic
upbringing, differences that Christine did not experience. Molly also explained
to me that because of her ethnic upbringing, many of the subjects that we spoke
about freely (but would be considered inappropriate subjects in many other
social settings) did not make her uncomfortable, since she spoke about them
freely growing up.
As
these friendships emerged, Molly and Christine started to introduce me to other
lifeguards at the YMCA—Allie, Julie, Sally F., Sally M., Carol, and Millie.
These seven girls, five of whom were students at my local high school, became
good friends with me. I would spend more and more time at the YMCA to visit
them, and we had fun together, often hanging out as they rotated shifts. I soon
learned that the lifeguards had created two distinct social “cliques”—and that
although I became friends with girls from each clique, the girls themselves
were not friends with the members of their opposing clique.
However,
I was still respected by them and was even given an informal “initiation rite”
to become an honorary member of one of the cliques. The girls also verbally
taught me many of the social rules I needed to fit in with them during the
course of our emerging friendships, as well as the concepts of social thinking,
even though many of them were unaware of the term. Their lessons changed my
life, and forever shattered my views of social skills.
The
rules themselves were different and unique. And they also were unlike many
rules I had learned before. What constituted appropriate versus inappropriate
behavior was very different when fitting in with this social group. These rules
were different than anything my parents told me to fit in, and anything any
teachers told me to help fit in either. In fact, the girls made that very
clear—they explained that no adult ever truly knows the social code of
adolescents, since such a social code is purposely hidden from adults. One
other thing that the girls also stressed was that if any teenager with autism
were to learn the true social code of teenagers, they should learn from the
teenagers themselves. Examples of such rules of the adolescent code, as they
explained it, were:
Always call your friends on
their cell phone and never their home phone unless you have permission from
them first.
Girls are entitled to blow
you off in order to hang out with her boyfriend, and that does not mean she
doesn’t like you. It means that she wants private time with him, and likewise,
don’t invite yourself to hang out with a girl and her boyfriend unless you are
invited to.
Although
they never used the term “hidden curriculum,” they routinely explained that
these were unwritten rules that most adolescents knew.
The
girls also explained to me that these social rules were not arbitrary—in fact,
they made logical sense based on the comfort zones of the adolescents. The cell
phone rule existed because many teenagers didn’t feel comfortable, as they
explained, risking their parents knowing all of their friends by having someone
call on the home phone. In addition, many teenagers wanted their social lives
to be separate from their families, and felt that their cell phones gave them
sufficient separation.
The
boyfriend rule existed for another comfort reason—many girlfriends and
boyfriends often want to spend a lot of time together alone. By explaining the
reasons behind the social rules, they helped me realize that these social rules
existed because they made people feel comfortable, and by understanding the
reasons of these rules, I was far less likely to break them. And when my new
friends taught me the reasons behind the rules, it was a lot easier for me to
follow them and to properly use them in the correct social settings, since I
understood them better.
After
being given this social instruction, I returned to public high school after
being granted 3 years to acquire a modified high school diploma. I had many
social adventures during my high school career—both positive and negative. Some
friendships that I formed lasted. Some came and went, and some friendships did
end. But it was during this unique high school experience that I truly
understood the concept of social thinking. My friends and I did not always do
things that would be considered appropriate in a rulebook. But we still valued
our friendships, and we based on them based on our mutual preferences for
friendship.
There
were some rules that were given to me specifically that did not apply to
others. Although these girls were very accepting of me, they made sure that I
was aware that I was still a guy, and that specific rules were going to be
expected if I was going to join them. One thing that the girls made clear was
that if I was to hang out with them, I would have to join them and follow some
of their social expectations.
When
I went back to high school, I soon realized that my friends would be mostly
female. This was not entirely because of my inability to get along with other
guys, or because of my social identity. Rather, it was because of the social
rules that governed my high school—at my high school, it was expected that if
you were autistic, or deviated in any way from your gender’s social
expectations, your friends would mostly be of the opposite gender. Girls with
autism would tend to have mostly guy friends as well at my school. It was also
because unlike most of the other guys, I didn’t really have a lot of interest
in “doing stuff” with girls or lying about it, and many guys would often pick
on me for not pretending I was “doing stuff” with other girls.
As
I made more female friends, one thing that the girls and I decided was that if
I was going to join their groups, I would have to become one of the girls, and
that we would all have to be comfortable discussing “girl talk” in my presence.
Examples of such talk involved discussions of menstruation, leg-shaving dramas,
boy problems, and bad hair days. I was entertained with countless stories about
the struggles my female friends faced with other guys and their boyfriends.
Every girl, and group of girls, differed in the level of comfort they had
regarding what “girl talk” they would share in front of me, but usually some
form of “girl talk” was discussed while I hung out with my female friends. It
also went without saying that whenever I became friends with one girl, I was
expected to build either friendships or become acquainted with the friends,
male or female, in her social group. And while I built those friends, I could
always rely my original friends from the YMCA to give
me coaching and feedback regarding how to socially fit in with them.
What
made these open conversations work was the mutual pact that I made with these
girls, and made with virtually every girl—that we would never try to date each
other or even become more than just close friends. I also made a vow to never
date anyone while in high school so as not to cause any social drama between
myself and my close female friends. Although I had many female friends, I never
dated and never had a girlfriend while in high school. And no romantic tensions
ever occurred between me and any of my female friends in my high school.
Listening
to these stories helped me extensively socially, as these stories helped me
understand the importance of social context—as I soon realized how much of what
I heard was only appropriate to be discussed in this social context. They also
helped me understand many social rules regarding friendships and relationships,
since I soon assumed that, if the girls were telling me about behaviors that
guys did that they didn’t like, I might as well make sure to not engage in
those behaviors.
It
also took me longer to understand the differences between this group of girls
and other girls, and to realize that, for example, just because these girls and
I were openly talking about “girl talk” didn’t mean that every girl I meant was
comfortable discussing these subjects with a guy, or myself.
Fortunately, many people have given me great advice on how to negotiate
different conversation boundaries between friends. One thing I have learned—no
boundaries in my social life are set, and what’s personal and private with one
friend can be a subject that another friend and I can speak freely with. To
this day, one of the hardest challenges in my life is knowing
exactly what those boundaries are between different friends. I try to resolve
this problem by mutually communicating with my friends what boundaries can work
between us and when we are with other mutual friends, and I firmly believe and
honesty and communication is the key to successful friendship, whatever that
form of communication might be.
At the same time, this group of girls I befriended gave me a social identity. Some of my female friends revealed that they personally felt that girls should be allowed to speak freely about their girl problems in society, and disagreed with society’s taboos. This was especially true regarding menstruation, since many of my female friends had struggles coping with their periods. Some girls would tell me in great details their struggles, such as their inability and desire to use pads instead of tampons in a high school where girls often judged other girls negatively for not using tampons during their periods. Some of my other female friends, with and without disabilities, revealed to me that they felt miserable and endured a lot of pain before and/or during their periods, in some cases making them unable to attend school.
I formed a social alliance with some of these girls, who became many of my closest friends while I listened to their stories freely without judgment. In exchange for listening, these girls often protected me from bullies and accepted me for who I was, overlooking many of my autistic quirks. I felt that these girls were my true friends because they accepted me, and I was willing to help them with their problems. This became a big part of my social identity, resulting in being extremely well-liked by many girls at my high school, as well as being hated by, and sometimes scaring, other girls who disliked my openness and ability to listen and speak freely about girl problems, viewing it to be weird and inappropriate. I also developed strong feelings of empathy towards the girls who had major girl problems, and let them know that I was always willing to listen to their girl problems if they wanted to talk to me about them.
Here-in lay an interesting paradox—by engaging, and sometimes initiating this subject with girls, I could bond with them and build friendships, but this very same act would also cause some girls to get scared and uncomfortable. This was sometimes challenging for me, especially since the very same social act could either create a friendship, or drive someone away from me. While some of my female friends were extremely open with each other, I also tried to make sure that some of my other female friends, some of which had similar issues, did not know about how I was open about them with some of my friends, so they would not feel embarrassed or uncomfortable around me.
And
not all friendships that I made lasted. I lost many friendships during my high
school career as well. One thing I learned through those experiences is that
everyone loses friends regardless of their social abilities or social skills.
In fact, many of my friends lost friends during their high school careers as
well, and sometimes my friends and I would mutually lose a friend together.
After
graduation, I immediately developed social ties with an equal amount of people
of both genders, and I always had male friends outside of the school
environment. And the few guys I did become friends with in high school all had
mostly female friends as well and had been given that fate due to the social
rules of my high school. Those guys often valued my friendship, feeling happy
they were not entirely alone in having mostly female friends. And these guys
were probably the most respectful guys that attended my high school, who
treated most people with kindness and respect.
During
this experience, I also became empowered to create friendships that I valued,
and to communicate the social deficits that I still do have to prevent social
mishaps. For example, no amount of social training can change the fact that I
still struggle with knowing if people are being polite to me or being honest, a
limitation I will always have throughout my life. I now let people know that if
I become their friends, and that they need to be
willing to tell me if I have upset them, as I will never be socially perfect.
When my friends are not able to tell me when I upset them out of politeness, my
friendships with those people tend not to last.
Today
I have left high school, and live in the outside world as a presenter on
autism. Some of the friendships I built in high school still last to this day.
I graduated with a modified diploma in 2010, at the age of 21. Today I travel
around the
But
I have yet to meet a person without autism that has not made social mistakes in
their lives as well. To this day, friendships end in my life, and I have come
to accept that as a part of life. And I also have a full social life with
friends whom I relate to based on mutual agreements of what we both want in our
friendships. And I also have a best friend, a person with autism I have known
for 7 years. Mistakes still happen, and friendships don’t always last in my
life, but as all my non-autistic friends keep reminding me, social mistakes can
happen to anyone.