Stop thinking you’ll get by on your high I.Q.
My son’s I.Q. is in the top .05% of all preschoolers, but he attended preschool in a special education classroom. He has Asperger’s Syndrome, a form of autism typified by a distinctly high I.Q. and a notable lack of emotional intelligence. Asperger’s is thought to be genetic, and it is surging among kids in places like Silicon Valley, that attract math and tech geniuses who often have sub-par social skills.
We know one boy with Asperger’s who taught himself to read books when he was two years old. Scientists surmise that learning to read books so fast consumes the part of his brain that should be learning to read social cues.
My son’s special education classroom was full of kids like that one — who used to pass through the education system labeled eccentric geniuses, only to graduate having never learned social skills and consequently falter in adulthood.
Today, educators take a child’s lack of social skills seriously. Parents should also. For educators, any nonverbal learning disability (like not being able to tell if someone cares about what you are talking about) is treated as significantly as a verbal learning disability (like not being able to speak.) Yet I am stunned by how many parents brush aside recommendations from educators to get help for their children by saying to themselves, “My child is so smart.”
Smart is not an endgame. Even in a toddler.
To understand why, look to the workplace. After where you go to school, social skills are the most important factor in whether you succeed or fail. I link to this research all the time, but frankly, if you need research to understand that the people who are best at office politics succeed at the office, then you are missing basic social cues already.
But here’s more evidence: Nine out of ten business schools consider communication and interpersonal skills “highly underrated as a differentiating factor for students,” according to CareerJournal. And Jeff Puzas at PRTM echos a cacophony of workplace voices when he says, “Most of what I do every day as a management consultant has to do with interpersonal skills, not my I.Q.”
And when you think about someone finding his way to success in the real world, consider the Wall St. Journal’s list of the traits that recruiters look for in business school candidates:
Communication and interpersonal skills
Original and visionary thinking
Leadership potential
Ability to work well within a team
Analytical and problem-solving skills
Notice that most of these skills are independent of intelligence. Smart is even less of an endgame for adults than children-and the standard for ability to work well with others is only getting higher, not lower: Generation Y is more team-oriented than prior generations.
So, it’s time for us to stop making excuses for poor social skills and start taking the problem as seriously as educators do. It’s painful for both children and adults who cannot navigate social settings. Kids sit on the sidelines on the playground; adults can’t maintain close relationships. It’s a limited life and it’s limited in the area where people have an inherent need to thrive.
I sense that people are going to argue with me here, but please consider that all the positive psychology research points to the fact that work does not make people happy. Relationships do. But we see the history of people with Asperger’s – Einstein, Mozart, John Forbes Nash – they did amazing work but could not maintain stable, intimate relationships.
Parents: Stop pretending that your child’s I.Q. matters more than their social skills. Get treatment for your child as soon as a professional recommends it. Respect that the risk of not being able to transition to the work world is significant, and so is the risk of waiting to see if your child will fail despite being brilliant.
Human beings learn social skills best at a very young age, when their brain is still forming. So celebrate that the government provides free training for children lacking social skills by using it. Start studying the playground. Respect what often seems insignificant to parents with small children-diagnoses of speech delay or disorder, and diagnoses of sensory integration, for example. Those issues threaten future development of social skills.
As an adult, one of the hardest parts of having low emotional intelligence is that you don’t realize it. People who are missing the cues have no idea they are missing them. So the most unable often have the least understanding of where they fall in the spectrum.
I’m going to tell you something harsh: If your career is stuck, it’s probably because of poor social skills. People who don’t know what they want to do with themselves but have good social skills don’t feel stuck, they feel unsure. People who are lacking social skills feel like they have nowhere to go.
Lost people feel possibilities. Stuck people do not feel possibilities. Ask yourself which you are. And if you feel suck, stop looking outside yourself to solve the problem. You need to change how you interact with people.
Another idea for how to figure out where you fall in the social skills spectrum is to take a self-diagnostic test. Here is one at Wired magazine about Aperger’s, and here is one about emotional intelligence. Or give a test to the people you work with – a 360-degree review will tell you in no uncertain terms if you are being held back because people don’t like you.
Hold it. Did you just say, “If people don’t like me maybe it’s their fault!” Forget it. People with good social skills can get along with just about everyone.
So help your kids to form intimate relationships with peers, and help yourself, too. In fact, as an adult you can learn how to compensate for lack of social skills by watching how schools are teaching the kids to do it.
Pay attention. Because when it comes to our job – no matter what our job is – it’s the relationships that make us happy, not the work. That’s why I.Q. doesn’t matter.
When I was in pre-school, I had to take an IQ test, and guess what, I was in the top half of one percent also. Do you know what happened then? My parents had the tact and class not to write about it for the whole world to read. If you have a high IQ you should be smart enough to already know you can’t get by on that number alone.
“A bunch of links pop up if you Google some…” doesn’t mean something is real.
The only two known causes of autism are rubella during the mother’s pregnancy, and genetic causes (this would be why it’s run in my family for generations despite living in a whole lot of different places).
However, there are a lot of snake-oil salesmen out there who want to make a lot of money out of bogus and even dangerous “detox treatments”. I suppose one could call them successful because they have “very good social skills”, but they prey on the fears and hopes of parents, and it’s the results of their nonsense that you are probably ending up Googling. It’s become a big business, making lots of money (which is why they deny there is anything genetic about autism).
It’s Silicon Valley, not Silicone Valley. I’m the classic description of why it really happens: My parents (who both had autistic people in their families already, one of whom is autistic) met elsewhere and moved to Silicon Valley for technical jobs. Then they had two autistic kids and one non-autistic kid between them. Which given the family track record is absolutely normal. At any rate, that’s one of the big hypotheses as to why it happens, and it at least in our family fits that hypothesis exactly.
They have found a number of genes that do correlate with specific aspects of autism, it’s likely a polygenetic condition. Which, I know, doesn’t have the drama or the environmentalism of the other causation theories but it does have a fair bit of science behind it. (Maybe this is why a certain amount of technical skills are necessary, though, regardless of social skills: Someone needs to sort out the sense from the nonsense regardless of whether it really bothers people to hear it.)
Norah hit it dead on. Us Aspies already know we totally suck at all the social stuff. How could we not know, when we get it shoved in our faces daily?
So where does this leave us Aspies? Are we forever doomed to be unemployable and alone? Our technical skills, different outlook and flashes of brilliance may save the company, but will get us fired because we just don’t get the social skills stuff.
It sounds like we’re consigned to being Dilbert’s Floyd the Garbage Man: brilliant and incisive, but working a low end job, just because we just don’t understand office politics, can’t read nonverbal communications, and can’t comprehend why anyone would need to socialize when there is serious work to be done.
The decades of classes, books, training, coaching and therapy have given me some help. But after all that, navigating the social arena is still like blundering through a minefield blindfolded. I’m exhausted at the end of the day, attempting to extend my awareness to other people, only to find I’v been successful intermittently.
I’ll never have great social skills, never have the ability to manuver through the political landscape, and I’ll never have the ability to network easily (unless you’re talking about IEEE 802.XX, but that’s a different matter).
So, since social, political and personal networking skills are so crucial, that you can be totally clueless and incompetent and be promoted, much less keep a job, is there any place for us Asperger’s and those of us who hate the extroverted games of current office life?
I agree with you that the work thing at present just does not work for most *aspie people, but we all need to speak out and have a positive attuide for not ourselves, but the next generation. “we all need to stop trying to get our children to conform and let them be who they are, stop trying to change them and educate society that there is in fact a whole group of people who are just different…”
Aspergers Parallel Planet
Got this from the Jargon File, edited by Eric S. Raymond
1994-95’s fad behavioral disease was a syndrome called Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD), supposedly characterized by (among other things) a combination of short attention span with an ability to Ëhyperfocus” imaginatively on interesting tasks. In 1998-1999 another syndrome that is said to overlap with many hacker traits entered popular awareness: Asperger’s syndrome (AS). This disorder is also sometimes called Ëhigh-function autism, though researchers are divided on whether AS is in fact a mild form of autism or a distinct syndrome with a different etiology. AS patients exhibit mild to severe deficits in interpreting facial and body-language cues and in modeling or empathizing with others’ emotions. Though some AS patients exhibit mild retardation, others compensate for their deficits with high intelligence and analytical ability, and frequently seek out technical fields where problem-solving abilities are at a premium and people skills are relatively unimportant. Both syndromes are thought to relate to abnormalities in neurotransmitter chemistry, especially the brain’s processing of serotonin.
Many hackers have noticed that mainstream culture has shown a tendency to pathologize and medicalize normal variations in personality, especially those variations that make life more complicated for authority figures and conformists. Thus, hackers aware of the issue tend to be among those questioning whether ADD and AS actually exist; and if so whether they are really Ëdiseases” rather than extremes of a normal genetic variation like having freckles or being able to taste DPT. In either case, they have a sneaking tendency to wonder if these syndromes are over-diagnosed and over-treated. After all, people in authority will always be inconvenienced by schoolchildren or workers or citizens who are prickly, intelligent individualists, thus, any social system that depends on authority relationships will tend to helpfully ostracize and therapize and drug such Ëabnormal” people until they are properly docile and stupid and Ëwell-socialized”.
So hackers tend to believe they have good reason for skepticism about clinical explanations of the hacker personality. That being said, most would also concede that some hacker traits coincide with indicators for non-hyperactive ADD and AS the status of caffeine as a hacker beverage of choice may be connected to the fact that it bonds to the same neural receptors as Ritalin, the drug most commonly prescribed for ADD. It is probably true that boosters of both would find a rather higher rate of clinical ADD among hackers than the supposedly mainstream-normal 3-5% (AS is rarer at 0.4-0.5%).
http://www.catb.org/~esr/jargon/html/index.html
Amanda,
I did not say environmental toxicity causes autism or Asperger’s, I merely wondered if it could be the cause, or one of the causes.
Whether something is ‘scientifically proven’ doesn’t mean much to me. There is only so much that the science can tell us at this point, & true scientists themselves will be the 1st to admit it.
The official medicine will say rheumatism cannot be cured & that people just have to ‘learn to live with the pain’. And they promptly prescribe painkillers. My Dad started reading books on nutrition & improved his life 100%. Now he only gets pain when he eats stuff that is bad for him. His doctor didn’t tell him that, he had to find the knowledge himself, & experiment.
An online friend told me gluten-free food helped her with a back injury. Did I go search for a 100 studies ‘proving’ it? Hell, no. I was too much in pain! I tried it & it helped!
I agree with what jrandom42 posted. The ‘official’ policy of just feeding pills to the masses just does not apeal to me.
I do understand in some cases it may be necessary, but a lot can be done for prevention.
There have been studies on the effects of nutrition & toxicity on other diseases & conditions, including mental disorders like depression & schyzophrenia. One that I read of said that improved nutrition even improved behaviour of young criminals in a confined institution!
So FORGIVE me for making a huge leap & assuming nutrition & toxicity could perhaps have something to do with /gasp!/ other things too!! (apart from rheumatism, cancer, diabetes, heart disease & whatnot)
An online forum /yes, a terribly reliable source of information!/ of parents reporting effects of sugar on their kids laughed out an ‘expert’ who said that a link between sugar & hyperactive behaviour is not scientifically proven! (& again, it may have a different effect on various kids, but if my kid were acting hyperactive sugar would be the first thing to cut.)
I do not deny a possible link with genetics. Predisposition to cancer or heart disease (& bad nutrition habits) can run in families too, but lifestyle & environment have quite some influence on whether one will get ill, & to what extent.
I am not selling any ‘snake oil’, nor buying any.
I do sympathize with parents and siblings of autistic children.
Maybe I did oversimplify & jump to the conclusion too soon.
Maybe you implied something from my posts that was not intended-? I did not mean to attack anyone, or just ‘yell for attention’… I was naturally curious.. & wondered if maybe someone else will have some more information.. So thank you for (hopefully verified) info on the possible causes – I didn’t know that, & it’s interesting to know!
I apologize for the typo – I am not a native speaker of English, nor an American.
Oh, & I forgot to say I sympathize with people with autism too, & have heard my Mom say I might be in the milder spectrum too. ;)
Hi Penelope,
I’ve been playing catch up on your blog.
eeek. I hope you don’t patronize your son like you patronized Norah. Aspies have enough social prejudice to deal with.
You didn’t address one of her points (although I concede she probably watered down this point by making so many points): aspies have poor social skills. This bothers you, but it might not bother them. So why is it imperative that they change?
This article (http://www.wired.com/medtech/health/magazine/16-03/ff_autism) opened my eyes to the idea that we – the neurotypical masses – are the ones looking at this all wrong.
A good counterargument is: having poor social skills will hold you back at work. Okay, but you know, you’re in a position of influence Penelope. Why not use your influence to reform the system, rather than reforming aspies to meet your expectations? The latter idea seems regressive and arbitrary, in my opinion. If they’re happy and smart, then why are you, Penelope, saying there’s something wrong with them?
As for reforming the system, look at Microsoft and its efforts to liberalize our immigration laws so that we can import more asian programmers. Why are we going to Asia when there are so many underemployed high-IQ would-be job applicants right here? Why should a social impairment get in the way of successful web development or programming? We build ramps for the physically handicapped. Surely there’s a way to accomodate these intellectually gifted yet socially impaired individuals.
I challenge you to question your own assumptions. And beyond that, I challenge you to help pave the way for our children.
You write about early intervention and special ed and whatnot. But at the end of the day, your son is going to have poor eye contact and feel the need to stim. You can fight this, or you can help reform the workplace.
*gets off soapbox* Sorry for rambling.
Laura, please re-read what I posted from Eric Raymond’s site and his thoughts on Asperger Syndrome:
“After all, people in authority will always be inconvenienced by schoolchildren or workers or citizens who are prickly, intelligent individualists, thus, any social system that depends on authority relationships will tend to helpfully ostracize and therapize and drug such Ëabnormal" people until they are properly docile and stupid and Ëwell-socialized".”
As to why Penelope is not addressing this, I can’t speak for her, but judging from her blog entries, here’s some of my thoughts.
1) The problem is not staring her in the face. For whatever reasons, she’s not dealing with her Asperger son day to day. That’s left to his teachers, the nanny and the house manager.
2) It goes against her contention that being likeable and incompetent is superior to being brilliant. Some places can get away operating like that. Nobody in engineering, R&D, aerospace, technology or manufacturing can do so for very long. In those areas, you either innovate, apply scientific principles to the product or you file for Chapter 7. I’m not sure where she got the idea that analytical and problem solving as well as original and visionary thinking are divorced from intelligence. It sounds like the Forrest Gump method, but then Forrest never had to be an engineer, technician, mechanic or someone who needed those “hard” skills.
3) Reforming the system is something that can’t be gamed by “networking” and doesn’t provide the instant credibility and rewards that she seems to advocate. Something like this can take years, if not generations. It’s hard, grindingly boring, unglamorous, and generally not fun and instantly rewarding. You have to do real work and no amount of gimmicks or tricks are going to make it easier or shorter.
Finally, all is not lost. Many companies have made accomodations or have even been founded by Aspies. Microsoft and Google are commonly cited examples, but there are others like General Electric, Lockheed and Hewlett-Packard. The revolultion is moving, but like glaciers, it can be hard to see progress.
Yeah well my biggest issue is not my high IQ or my social skills. I struggle to keep track of what I’m doing at a detail level and struggle to juggle multiple tasks. I also have a motivation problem. Everything is just so f****ing boring that I procrastinate. I probably have ADD or something.
I don’t like the tone of this article. You make it sound like children won’t learn how to talk with others unless we “teach” them how. And if we don’t do that, they won’t be able to play with other kids nor collaborate with others. They’ll be set on solitude for good.
The truth is, you can’t “teach” social skills, insofaras the student must connect with others himself. There are no physical maladies so great that they override free will. The kindergartners are free to socialize with the other kindergartners on the playground, and if they do not, they do so by their own choice. Children are the same as adults in that regard. I remember being 5, and I was perfectly capable of talking to other kids, and then on sometimes I’d prefer to think quietly than to socialize.
Sure, we can reinforce self-esteem in children by how we describe the world to them. But ultimately, this is a crutch until they build their own legs of self-esteem. You don’t keep walking around on crutches when you have good legs.
I think you have a model of social interaction based on compromise and no surprises. Unfortunately, that assumes everyone knows what they want out of social interactions. The truth is, you may really want someone to come along and show you a problem in a whole different light, even if it contradicts your beliefs / religion / ideals or whatever. You can’t get that with “trained” social behavior.
I think you’re looking at this in black and white.
Of course social skills are important but to say that IQ is not is ridiculous. Low IQ + High social skills = Do you want fries with that? Even though forming relationships is necessary knowing what you’re doing is to. And I agree it’s important. Just because someone has poor social skills doesn’t mean they don’t like to socialize. I don’t personally know if I have any kind of condition, but I know my social skills are lacking but at the same time I love to socialize and want more and more friends and hate being alone. My social life is not progressing as fast as I’d like and it makes me depressed.
I hope that program, while teaching your son social skills is also nurturing his natural gifts. Maybe he can grow up to be the next Einstein. Good luck.
Hello,
I think many people here have some very good points.
Laura, you certainly have a good point about blame. There certainly is a good deal of merit to the view that the world should not operate on some of the premises that it does. After all, some operating premises have included (and still include in many parts of the world) “All the smart and good people are in one race,” “Women are only good in the kitchen and the bedroom” and “Some human beings have the right to own and even kill others.”
Now, if you found yourself in one of the societies cherishing one or more of these beliefs, would you focus on getting everyone around you to change their beliefs, or getting the heck outta Dodge? Probably the latter. The more might yield better results in the long run – and as John Maynard Keynes pointed out, in the long run we are all dead.
Getting back to the scenarios we have here, we’re lucky: we can to some extent adapt. We can change the things we say and do to meet the expectations of the people whose opinions – for better or for worse – determine how far we go in life.
Is working for social change a good thing? Yes.
Is it something we can do all by ourselves and produce results quickly enough to benefit us? No.
Is it mutually exclusive with conforming to the standards we want to change? Also no.
Akro and JRandom42 have a good point: no company can afford to focus on social skills at the expense of of intelligence. Once in a while, managers hire glad-handing dunderheads. They pay for their mistakes sooner or later.
The only problem is, it’s like talking about the respective advantages of speed and accuracy. It’s not a matter of either-or. The bosses want – and will get – both.
I’m a highly intelligent Aspie myself. I went through the gifted programs, and my alma mater is a full member of the Ivy League. I’ve also earned graduate degrees, including a doctorate, in Economics. So perhaps I can share a few insights into the universe of smart people:
Lots of smart people also have average – and often above-average – social skills.
That means that someone who wants to hire, say, a video game programmer or a network security person – to say nothing of the less technical occupations which are even less hospitable to the socially challenged – isn’t going to be limited to two candidates: Eddie the Eccentric with a 180 IQ, a BS and MS in Computer Science which he earned after only four years at Harvard, Phi Beta Kappa and no friends or dates whatsoever and Fred the Friendly who just squeaked by East Overshoe State University with a double major in Basket-Weaving and Greek and hundreds of friends and partners.
No, they’re also going to have a resume from – and quite likely a call or two from supporters of – Vera the Versatile, who earned her BSCS after four years at Regular State University or even Cornell or Harvard, cum laude if not magna or summa cum laude, including terms as athletic team captain and club officer, with classmates, professors, friends and of course romantic partners who think the world of her.
Vera might or might not be able to program exactly the same things as Eddie can, at least in the same amount of time. But she can do the job – and that means making a good product as defined and perceived by the people who can make or break the company and her prospective boss. So Vera gets the offer at a good salary, Eddie gets one more ding letter for his Grudge File Against The World and Fred finally learns to move on.
Norah has some excellent points. Of course, she is speaking from her own experience.
I respectfully suggest that as Aspies, we know darned well that social skills are not obvious. And thus neither is our (and some other people’s) lack of same. Just like smokers, overeaters/underexercisers and folks who sleep with a different married person every month, we need a wake-up call.
Whether or not we agree with every single thing that Penelope Trunk says, she is performing a valuable service. She’s certainly right in that poor social skills – especially if they’re due to AS or autism – can have a vicious cycle: the very interpersonal problems we have can cause us not to think we may have them. It’s as if tooth decay anesthetized our teeth instead of giving us toothaches.
I don’t think that Ms. Trunk’s response to Norah is necessarily patronizing. I do hope Ms. Trunk understands where Norah is coming from.
Norah may well be right in that some Aspies just don’t want to have intimate relationships and/or professional jobs with lots of office politics. And if that’s so, more power to them – especially since we still do need letter carriers, farmers and the like.
On the other hand, as the song goes, at least many of us – if we can’t be with the ones we love, then we love the ones we’re with. It’s called adaptive preferences. It’s agony to think that there’s something we want so much but can never have. So if we believe we won’t ever get something, we stop wanting it so much.
I can never say that any particular person necessarily has adaptive preferences. I don’t even know you. Only you, as an individual, can determine for yourself to what extent, if any, you might start wanting something again if it were placed within your reach. All I can say is that you should at least ask yourself that question, because for some people the answer could be “Heck yes!”
Like I said, I’m an Aspie. I’m no spring chicken, either. I’m certain my life would have been and still would be much better if AS had been understood and treated more when I was a child, teenager or even young adult. It was left to the first and only girlfriend I ever had – whom I met at age 29 1/2 – to even tell me that AS existed. She is now Mrs. Deutsch. (She is also fit to be tied regarding me sometimes, but that’s another story. =|8-})
Anyway, I’ve noticed that there are relatively fewer resources out there for Aspie (and autistic) adults. It might be because some people think there’s much less “bang for the buck” – kids learn more easily and more quickly than adults. But no one wants to write off the adults either. I belong to Asperger Adults of Greater Washington and I’m interested in hearing about other resources for Aspie and autistic adults.
I’ve blogged about this article here.
Cheers!
Jeff Deutsch
Just a thought!
Its has been said that 40% of all school children have some sort of neurological difference (includes ADHD, ADD, Dyspraxia, dyslexia etc…) and as ASD is a neurological difference, neurologically maybe we will take over one day, the tide seems to be turning!
I also like to think the world differs greatly, as where you at at any given moment the majority are who dictate how we should all act and be, so like last night in an ASD meeting we were the majority, so if any someone arrived without having a neurological addition like us, they would of been the minority.
I feel the biggest issue is often as children we get put down so much, we often end up with zero confidence and respect for self, I truly believe as with my life now with real understanding, if we were embraced for who we were when born we would have the confidence to live a differently able life on our terms not everyone else’s and to me thats where the problem lies.
We have so many misunderstood differences “empathize” I feel wrongly a biggie, to me Empathy has many shapes and forms, we just do, see, view things differently from many in this world, but I also like to think the majority of what is right is only where you are at a present moment. So surrounded by all ASD people, does that mean others do not have empathy if show differently from us!
I also feel this is partly because so often none ASD individuals feel they understand professionally, but even those of us who have lived with ASD like myself my whole life and have many extended family members, Once I discovered self, my autism core, heart as I see it, it took me many more years to truly understand, I guess we are a little like the universe, the mysteries continue to enfold.
Aspergers Parallel Planet – AsPlanet.info
i didn’t read everything on this site but my younger brother is autsic i’m going to get my mum to put him on ozone therepy because they say it cures autism you should try it or at least read a little on the subject AND DECIDE FOR YOURSELF! hope this helps.
Autism is the core of who I am, take that away your take away my heart…. understanding, accepting and allowing is what is needed!
Autism is the core of who I am, take that away your take away my heart…. understanding, accepting and allowing is what is needed!
perhaps, but if you overcame autism it will open up a whole new world for you,people shouldn’t stop learning or bettering themselves just because they left school or let a disease take your idenitity rather than the individial beneth the condition,you are more than you’re disease.
Autism is not a disease, its a neurological diiferrnce, I have no problem having Aspergers or being an autistic adult, the ignorance of others usually my only problem!
Hello Alyson and Scott,
You both have good points.
I don’t know whether an autism cure is already here, on the way or even possible. I do know that with patience, hard work and most importantly a willingness to face certain realities about ourselves and about the world, we Aspies can, as the saying goes, accentuate the positive and minimize the negative.
Alyson, you certainly have a good point in morality. It certainly would be better if others accepted us for who we were. That’s not happening anytime soon. Even with the most generous counts of folks on the autism spectrum, the world is over 99% NT (neurotypical; not on the spectrum). Bottom line: Like it or lump it, we need to do the bulk of the learning and changing.
In fact, that goes for everybody, on and off the autism spectrum: The only behavior you can actually control is your own. If other people around you are jerks, unfairly write you off or whatever, you probably can’t change their dispositions soon enough to benefit you – but you may be able to change how they treat you by changing the material (that is, your behavior) to which they’re responding. Or you can leave for a more congenial setting – but there’s no setting in which you never have to change anything about yourself because everyone else loves everything about you exactly as you are.
What do you think?
Jeff Deutsch
As a person with limited social skills, I think you are wrong about not knowing about your shortcomings socially. I am not oblivious to being ostracized; it greatly pained me. But, I didn’t know how to address the issue. Often I would just try to ignore it or try to accept that it is my basic personality. Despite going to a therapist and dating, I am still at a loss about what I can do differently. I have compassion and empathy for others, but it is not often reflected in my personal or work lives.
Hello Steve,
First off, congratulations on taking the important step of therapy. And I wish you good luck with your dating.
I’m an Aspie life coach who helps fellow Aspies (and NTs who deal with us), and I know what you’re talking about.
Let’s switch the analogy a little bit. It’s not a toothache, it’s cardiac pain that masquerades as indigestion. You know something’s wrong, but you don’t know what.
Since you just don’t see what’s going on – subtle cues that aren’t verbalized and even when they are, are phrased subtlely and euphemistically – you don’t even know that’s where the problem may lie.
And it can become a vicious cycle: as you become isolated from people, you miss out on the osmosis-like introductions most of us get to social life and unwritten social codes. Then as you emulate the proverbial bull in a china shop, people further pull back from you. They figure you have a bad attitude, not that you just lack certain knowledge. That can become a self-fulfilling prophecy. It can also throw you off the track of where to look to solve your problems.
And being human, you don’t instinctively look in the mirror for the cause and the solution. You’re ostracized, and like most humans you deny it, rationalize it, blame anyone and everyone but yourself.
Three things I reinforce to my clients:
If you keep doing what you’ve always done, you’ll keep getting what you’ve always gotten.
You are the only person whose behavior you can control.
If it were easy, everyone would be doing it – including you already.
If you don’t like what’s going on, you need to find out what you can do to change yourself and change your life. And then you need to do some hard work and learn some not necessarily pleasant things about yourself.
Please feel free to drop me a line anytime, Steve. My fingers are crossed for you.
Jeff Deutsch
I think your post has an important message, but to be honest us high IQ types are already well aware that other people really value social skills- we’ve been told a million times already! What I don’t understand is why your article seems to assume that high IQ and good social skills are mutually exclusive. I know you talked about the autism spectrum, but that is an extreme and not really representative of high IQ people in general. Instead right now it seems like the trend is towards EQ/social skills/street smarts, with the result that people just enjoy bashing IQ/academic skills/book smarts. In reality the most successful people need a measure of both- not really rocket science is it?
Hello Gifted Girl,
I completely agree with you that IQ is important. And I think Ms. Trunk agrees with us too.
Her point is that IQ may be necessary but it is not sufficient. People would rather work with a likable dunderhead than a brilliant boor…and these days, people don’t even need to make that choice all the time. Even where brilliance overshadows boorishness, there are plenty of brilliant and likable people running around. We need to be likable too.
What do you think?
Jeff Deutsch
I agree with your basic point that kids with Aspergers can benefit from help with developing and improving social skills.
Please, though, be careful with quotes like “…adults can’t maintain close relationships. It’s a limited life and it’s limited in the area where people have an inherent need to thrive.”
I’m a 51-year-old with Aspergers; as a child I had no special training in social skills. I have a spouse of 22 years, many close friends and a wide social circle, and am generally well-liked at work (I have worked full-time for the public library for 29 years). I write science fiction & fantasy (I have 11 books currently in print) and do a monthly book review column for the nation’s leading science fiction magazine. I’ve traveled all across the country and outside it, and basically have a very enjoyable life. I don’t consider my life “limited” and I don’t think any objective observer would, either.
Yes, training in social skills (had such been available 40 years ago) would probably have made my awkward adolescent and teen years go a bit more smoothly…but whose adolescent and teen years did go smoothly?
Great set of articles. I have a special kid in my life with Asperger’s He had struggled up until junior high when he demanded that the “special ed. aides” stop following him around. Since then “aide” free he is working out the issues he has run into with a lot of diet and supplement help from his family. Because he has a great sense of humor which we encourage he is able to not sweat the crazy stuff.
Excellent article. I am a senior at NYU Stern and have been trying to figure out why job interviews are going so poorly. I have gotten every interview that I apply for (over 20 interviews) but have never even been invited for a second round! Meanwhile, some morons with GPAs and GMAT scores far lower than mine are raking in offers left and right! It seemed unbelievable to me, but perhaps my social skills (or lack thereof) are hindering me.
I guess being a 3.94 GPA student with a 690 GMAT from a top-ranked business school isn’t enough for the likes of PricewaterhouseCoopers or Deloitte & Touche. Any thoughts on how to improve my social skills? I’m desperate for employment!
Hello Phil,
I know what you’re talking about. I myself graduated from college right before a recession.
As career strategist Marilyn Moats Kennedy pointed out during our last major recession, when the economy goes bad the employers focus even more on personal style and polish.
I work with fellow Aspies on employment issues among other things. Please let me know if you feel I can help you.
Good luck, Phil!
Jeff Deutsch
Hey Jeff,
Thanks for the optimism. Ironically, my first job offer came in today (at Accenture)! Guess trying to be more personable and sociable is working!
Best,
Phil
Penelope,
Thank you for posting this article and for being so open about Asperger’s in your blog. I’m farily certain that I have it and have spent my lifetime not knowing it. I took the first test following your link and scored a “38” while the cut-off for this type of autism is a “32”. Thirty some years ago as a teenager, I was diagnosed as being ‘asocial’ but now I see that the clinician did not quite hit the nail on the head. The asocial diagnosis has never particularly bothered me (so what? people just aren’t that hot anyway-I prefer animals.) Although perhaps underemployed, I’ve achieved some relative degree of stability and success in my life. Your blog has helped me to understand the undue anxiety that I experience when I have to drive myself someplace I’ve never been before or when I have to weave my way through some bureaucratic maze that I’ve never encountered before. It also helps me to understand why it’s useless for someone to give me verbal directions to get somewhere. I just can’t piece it together or remember all of the steps in the correct order- it feels impossible and just overwhelms me. I’m not able to derive any sort of map in my head from what they are saying. It helps to know that there is a reason for it.
This particular post made me wonder if some parents don’t unknowingly push their children toward autism. You made mention of the child teaching himself to read at 2. My parents are both HIQ and we were forced to learn to read at two. I remember hating it, my Mom sitting there with flash cards for hours on end, my sobbing that I didn’t want to do that, her insisting. We were forced through hour-a-day piano lessons from about the age of four onward. Bringing home a “B” in anything was absolutely unacceptable when we were in school. It seems to me that envrionment might play a role in this autism outcome.
Different personality types may respond differently to the same stimuli and there are seem to be basic hard-wiring differences from one brain to the next. My brother, a product of the same environment, became number-obsessed. He would count the number of telephone poles between two cities when we would travel somewhere and years later remember how many there were. To this day he can add up, in his head, the cost of a huge cartful of groceries including the tax calculation on taxable items and knows the total before the cashier can tally it on the register. He memorizes sports statistics and can tell you the final score of the 1976 SuperBowl on a dime. He counts the number of dishes he gets into the dishwasher with each load and remembers what his all-time record is and how many he got in there last Thursday. His response to the environment of forced over-achievement was the opposite of mine. He became a chronic under-achiever and was still delivering pizzas for a living while in his thirties. For at least a decade, he seemed to be unable to maintain a car, a job and an apartment all at the same time. To this day I consider him to be HIQ but ‘only barely functional.’
I wound up becoming the over-achiever. I’m mathematically challenged but scored in the 99th percentile in the country in English on my SATs. That was without the benefit of any acutal high-school education since I became a self-emancipated minor at the age of fourteen and hitchhiked all over the country for five years, settling here and there to wait tables now and again. (My home life had become unbearable and really, this was the best outcome that could have been achieved.) I can’t exactly remember the numeric price of an item that I bought a half hour ago, let alone add up and know the precise total of five items including tax at the checkout. I’m enterprenurial, owning my first business at nineteen and starting a successful corporation at twenty-one. I have since divorced that husband and endeavor and have moved on. I have ‘career ADD’ and I’m sure I’ll move on to yet another entirely different, completely unrelated field before long. I also have had ‘educational ADD’ where I’ve changed majors at least five times, started and stopped and restarted college over and again have amassed numerous credit hours with a 4.0 GPA in everything except math, yet have no degree. I have more than enough credit hours number-wise to have a degree but they just aren’t organized correctly. I presently have a secure marriage, secure job and a middle-class DINK lifestyle. I have managed to remain functional, content and am planning for our happy retirement. My husband may also have some sort of autism; he is mechanically gifted but is challenged by other aspects of life. At times, it seems that we are the other half of each other’s brain. He is no more social than I.
It seems to me that my brother and I both would up with some degree of autism, though it appears to be either of two different types or polar opposite incarnations of the same type. I’m pondering how our environment may have played a role in our outcomes. I guess I write this to warn HIQ parents to reconsider stressing academic achievement alone in a child’s environment. There is much more to life than high SAT scores.
Thank you, Penelope, for the timely insights and for being a beacon on my path.
Lisa
@Gav That’s really interesting. Steiner/Waldorf educators don’t teach children to read until they’re seven. Maybe they’re on to something!
You know what, I am a person who has dealt with Asperger’s sydrome, trying to better myself and I am sick and tired of other people with Asperger’s sydrome bitching and making excuses and not trying to learn good social skills and being lazy in life. I was in Special Ed In High School and now I am trying to become a straight A student, and in later semesters, to get all As in my classes and I am also very involved in school and I know how to drive. I also am dealing with the social aspects of succeeding in life. To all you Aspies out there, stop complaining, stop pouting, and go make something out of yourselves instead of acting like as if it is the end of the world.
I started reading (and drawing) young.
I just moved home and all of my books are still here. It’s nice!
A friend just pointed me to your blog, in response to my most recent blog post in which I talk about the social gauntlet of my sweet 13 year-old son who has AS. I appreciate your insight and have forwarded your blog to him.
It’s well and good saying all of this but trying to get help from the so called professionals is a minefield. They don’t listen to anything you say!!!!!!!!!
Penelope, I hope you won’t take this as a (complete?) insult, but my first impression of you (from the resume writing webinar you did earlier this year) was extremely negative. I thought you were needlessly rude and condescending (although it did seem to me that you probably had Asperger’s and just didn’t realize you were coming off that way.)
However, I found your blog today via an unrelated query, and I’m glad I got to see this side of you. I looked at the posts about life/career advice and was pleasantly surprised to find you more introspective and self-aware than I’d previously thought. I respect that.
You think Einstein had Aspergers?? Why? Simply because he was brilliant? He was known to have a great sense of humor. I’m tired of people assuming that brilliant scientists all have Aspergers. Insane.
The man didn’t even talk until he was almost 4 yrs old. How many Aspergers kids do you know that are speech-delayed??
Albert Einstein was also a civil rights activist and fought hard against racism (see http://www.einsteinonrace.com/ !), instead of calling black people niggers and then going “you were supposed to know I didn’t mean to be racist when I said that!!!” (a la http://life-with-aspergers.blogspot.com/2010/02/some-thoughts-on-intolerance.html )
I’m not an Aspergers expert by any means, though my son has the diagnosis, but delayed speech is a common feature from what I’ve read. Delayed or early, advanced speech. And my son has an outstanding sense of humor. I’m beginning to tire of the diagnosis altogether, particularly because it looks so different in each individual who receives it. To us, the only thing valuable about the diagnosis is that it requires the public school to assist in in ways he needs support.
i don’t think people with AS necessarily all have high IQs. Maybe that makes you feel better about having AS, or maybe YOU, in particular, have a high IQ. But plenty of people are diagnosed with AS and do not also have high IQs.
People with AS DO tend to know about a lot more things than the average Joe, because they spend a lot of time alone – learning, reading, figuring things out, etc. But none of those things will necessarily increase an IQ.
“So, it’s time for us to stop making excuses for poor social skills and start taking the problem as seriously as educators do.”
It’s also time to stop making excuses, in the name of poor social skills, for behavior that looks just like and sounds just like *harassment*.
“Hold it. Did you just say, “If people don’t like me maybe it’s their fault!” Forget it.”
That’s especially true if your social skills are so bad that you sound just like and act just like the people who harass them!
i think that you’re misinforming people by talking about people with asperger’s as all having a high IQ. A LOT of people with aspergers do not have high IQs.
I dont think lack of social skills is as serious as it is made out to be in this article. Some people just dont need to feel psychologically ‘validated’ by others in a social ecosystem. I would like to point out this story: “Some people simply have a low need for affiliation,” from this page
http://www.psychologytoday.com/print/23750
That doesnt mean they are to be seen as ‘defective’ as someone that needs correction or help.
Hello,
Last two anonymous posts: I think Penelope Trunk understands that not all or even most Aspies have high IQs, just like not all or even most high school girls have beautiful bodies.
She’s warning that those Aspies who do have high IQs should not try to substitute them for social skills, just as those high school girls who have beautiful bodies might find it a good idea to acquire some useful skills too.
Mohan Arun L.: There are people who simply have a low need for affiliation. There are also people whose personalities would strip paint from woodwork at ten feet.* And speaking as an Aspie who used to display just that kind of behavior, we account for a disproportionate number of them.
Keep in mind that even NTs, let alone Aspies, have a hard time realistically estimating our social skills. For example, the College Board (which does the SATs [standardized college entrance exams], among other tests) found that 85% of high school upperclassmembers felt they have better social skills than a majority of their peers. In fact, 25% of high school upperclassmembers put themselves in the top 1%!
Now imagine a smart Aspie, who thinks that because he’s smart he should have no problems.** He needs to understand that technical smarts are the proverbial dime a dozen, whereas the ability to make others feel good – obviously as perceived by them – is what counts for who gets promoted, who stays and who gets canned (and maybe with a bad reference for good measure).
One person’s low need for affiliation is another person’s disrespect. If the latter is a customer or boss of the former, there will be problems…but not for long. The former will shape up or ship out.
[*] H/T: The great office politics analyst Marilyn Moats Kennedy.
[**] All too often, his peers and superiors make the same assumption – so they jump to the conclusion that his problematic words and actions are intentional precisely because he’s “smart enough to know better”.
What do you think?
Jeff Deutsch
I think the issue with AS in silicon valley seems to be assortive mating, combining what would otherwise relatively benign genes into a child who will end up with AS.
This is another note for the positive eugenics file.
I guess that breeding for I.Q. does have it’s drawbacks (one of which I was certainly unaware when looking to get married). You could end up having a kid with AS. It’s certainly something to think about, isn’t it?
And Gen Y (the Millenials) are more team-oriented because they are of the Materialist-Collectivist. This will shift (again) as the Homelander generation comes of age. You won’t see people like the Boomers and the Xers again anytime soon.
Some of this article is correct, but much of it is totally wrong. One of the most egregious statements is, “People with good social skills can get along with just about everyone.”
This is complete horse shit. This statement assumes that the only factor in social interactions is the skill of ONE of the parties. Getting along involves two or more people, and intent is as big a factor as social skill is. For example, you are unlikely to get along well with someone who hates you, no matter how good your social skills are.
Claiming that social skills are a guarantee of getting along with everyone ignores the fact that not everyone wants to get along with you.
The fact that this elementary observation completely escapes the author, in turn, casts doubt upon may of the other dubious statements in the article, which I find highly slanted and terribly simplistic.
Wow, awesome blog structure! How long have you ever been running a blog for? you made blogging look easy. The overall glance of your site is fantastic, let alone the content material!
Will listening to music make you smarter? Will learning to play a musical instrument make your brain grow larger than normal? Questions like these ones have been…
I think the age old stigma of people with Aspergers being stupid has been going on too long. People need to learn to see people as they are
I know quite a few people who are extremely intelligent, but have very, very poor social skills. I am always acting as a buffer between them and others.
Thanks for your post. My husband is a high-functioning aspie engineer and very happy with what he does for a living…he found his niche. (I don’t have Asperger’s, though as an academic, I’m around a lot of people who do). I have noticed that there is a noticeable difference in his social skills before and after he met me. Being in a long-term relationship has helped him pick up on social cues, and he has been promoted at work because of it. I would not change him in the least purposely, but I suppose I have had an unintentional influence upon him.
That said, he’s a genius at what he does, and I’m a big beneficiary from sharing his rather unique and interesting world view.
Things I have learned from my aspie husband include:
1. Everything can be related to physics if you try.
2. It is possible to figure out how machines work by listening to them.
3. Being sensitive to small sounds is a wonderful asset if you are a wildlife photographer (one of his hobbies).
4. With gaffa tape and string, you can engineer your way out of anything.
5. Loyalty
6. Honesty
7. Pragmatism
8. Love
Whilst of course social skills are important, I also think sometimes the American emphasis on extroversion is not always positive. When someone disabled is helped by one of my husband’s designs, I don’t think they worry too much if it is an effort for him to engage in small talk.
Anyhow, thanks again for your blog post.