Rules and Timing

by Dora Raymaker

Published April 10, 2009 @ 10:00AM PT

Lots of news about Teaching Autistic Teens To Make Friends the past few days. The Program for the Education and Enrichment of Relational Skills (PEERS) at University of California Los Angeles has been (according to the articles with some success) teaching autistic teens some rules for typical teenage social behavior.

I'm pretty into learning the rules for how the regular people interact. Such rules can be extremely helpful to know in certain situations. Some rules may even serve a serious pragmatic health or safety function, such as PEER's teaching of "What do you say as a comeback when someone teases you?" Not so sure however if these rules are what actually leads to "meaningful relationships" (hold that thought), and also not so sure about how well rules will work for some autistic people in absence of accommodations from the other side (the point in this post).

I'm terribly attracted to anything shiny. A woman came to talk with me at a conference, and the first thing I noticed was a shiny thing around her neck. I made a purring trill sound and grinned and bounced and clapped, oooo shiny!

Later, something moving came at me the hallway. "______________" speech sounds / words, something pressed into my hand. A form in front of me, paused, then scurried away. I paused, head to side. What happened? Something in my hand. Open hand--object? What / where? Oooo, a woman--

"Dora, say thank you," my assistant prompts me.

Thankyou but--what-- "Thank you" cracked out of me seconds before I understand why I'd been asked to say it. OH! The form--the woman--it was the woman, she gave me her shiny!

Some time later, speech sounds finally hit long term memory. "I want you to have this," the woman had said.

Much later I realized the "shiny" was a spider encased in plastic; amusingly, I happen to be quite frightened of spiders (well, actually webs, but anything that makes 'em...). Nothing had really registered beyond the glint of light off the plastic when I first saw the bauble. (I've since put the shiny on my key chain as a reminder to have courage.)

See, I know I need to say "thank you" when someone gives me something. I know that rule full well, and I understand that me standing there doing nothing was rude. But the woman was there and gone before I'd even registered that there was a woman there at all. What I needed in order to complete the social exchange was both knowing the rule, and having the time to process what was happening.

From Aquamarine Blue 5's contributor Darius,

I still have problems in groups where there is too much information going on, or where the informational flow is too fast. I simply can't shift my attention focus quickly enough to the relevant part of the interaction process. Consequently, I miss a lot of vital information needed to interpret social messages. There is no such thing as adequate delayed social reactions. One is either quick enough to keep up, or one is weird and socially disabled.

Rules are useful but only if we are given time to use them. One rule I have is when people interact with me and I can't keep up, I immediately say, type, or press the key on my computer that automatically reads, "Could you please slow down, you're going too fast for me to process."