Telling It Like It Is
The scene: A warm, early fall evening. A party is being held at a residential home. Guests are arriving, hugging, greeting each other warmly. They appear to be extended family and close friends. Over a dozen of them mill around the entry way as the last one arrives, an older woman with short curly brown hair. She appears to be about ninety years old, shrunken a bit by mild osteoporosis. She is carrying bags with food and gifts, and a woman in her thirties greets her with a hug, says, “Hi, Grandma,” and takes the bags from her. As they walk into the kitchen with the other guests, a gangly teenage boy enters the room.
Teenage boy says in loud voice: She looks more and more like a Hobbit.
Those near the boy quietly laugh while the older woman is distracted greeted by someone new. The woman in her thirties stifles a guffaw and briefly wonders how the rest of the evening will go.
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6 Responses to “Telling It Like It Is”
October 1st, 2008 at 6:44 am
Good morning Tanya,
Yes, a talk on filters is called for.
I’m thinking that in many, probably a majority of cases - albeit not all - a behavior modification system can help.
So, a talk on filters and other rules would also include the concepts of “yellow card” and “red card”. Once he has been specifically told not to do a certain thing, doing that thing should earn him an immediate yellow card (or an immediate red card for something flagrant).
A yellow card is a heads-up that next time he does that or anything else he has been told not to do, he gets a red card. It may also be a good idea to give him a time-out. A yellow card should make it less likely that he’ll get some privilege later on, such as staying up late or whatever.
Of course, a red card means immediate ejection from the event with no possibility of re-entry, and with punishment to follow.
Needless to say, he should always have the option of a “voluntary red card” with no punishment at all.
What do you think?
Jeff Deutsch
October 1st, 2008 at 4:22 pm
oh yes, telling it like it is…
October 1st, 2008 at 8:23 pm
How would you cover for this one? Tell her he said, “She looks like Lorena Bobbitt”?
October 1st, 2008 at 8:47 pm
Jeff, thanks so much for your ideas. Nigel is usually accepting when I tell him after the fact that something he’d said was inappropriate; he apologizes and doesn’t say it again. The challenge is trying to get him to think about his comments before he says them and if they would be appropriate or not. I’m thinking that’s a difficult thing for an ASD teen to do, but I’ll keep working on it with him. Thanks again.
Mama Mara, I can’t even begin to tell you how funny your suggestion is! Especially remembering my grandparents’ tumultuous marriage.
October 2nd, 2008 at 7:43 am
Good morning Tanya,
There’s the rub…getting people - especially but not only autists and Aspies who don’t always have much social reinforcement - to internalize norms so that they violate them only rarely in the first place. I’m sure you’ll agree that an ounce of prevention is worth several pounds of cure.
That’s where I think behavior modification comes in. The idea is that by reinforcing good behavior and de-inforcing bad behavior, we enable the person to build good habits and discard bad ones.
I think that - and I believe research shows this too - people mainly act according to their habits, good or bad. And by far the best time to build habits is before adulthood.
This is basically for the benefit of your readers, btw. You obviously know best wrt Nigel and you seem to have made it clear that this approach probably won’t work with him. With a great mother like you he’s very unlikely to go wrong.
Cheers,
Jeff Deutsch
PS: Lorena Bobbitt was indeed quite attractive, as I recall….
October 2nd, 2008 at 4:00 pm
Jeff, thanks again for contributing. I always appreciate your insight.
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