Asperger's and Girls (13 page)

One thing I deeply wish that I’d learned much sooner is that “normal” isn’t necessarily “best” or even all that good. I don’t mean any insult to neurotypicals, or to normal people, whoever they may be. It’s just that normalcy doesn’t equal happiness, while struggling for a false image of normalcy usually equals unhappiness.

I have had many opportunities to talk to parents of teens and pre-teens with AS, and the questions they most want an answer to is, “How can I make my child socially adept? How can I get her to want to be sociable like the other kids?”

The answer is, of course, you can’t. The more important answer is you
shouldn’t
. Girls with AS need more time to recover from social interactions than typical girls, and they must work harder in social situations than typical girls. Trust me, even when I am in a social situation I’ve learned to deal with well, and it looks like I’m just blending in, it’s a huge effort. That doesn’t mean I never have fun in a social situation; it just means that I need less time socializing and more time recovering in order to manage. You can have fun hiking all day, but there is a limit to how much hiking a body can stand.

Frankly, this whole socializing for socializing’s sake thing that neurotypicals do is rather unappealing and fairly incomprehensible. It’s even more puzzling than chewing tobacco; at least one can understand that some people like to ingest stimulants in various forms. Why some folks will go out to dinner with friends the same day they’ve attended an
entire
baby shower is a mystery to me, and to a lot of my Aspie sisters.

Yes, we with AS do jump at the chance to join a social group from time to time. After all, no one wants to be totally left out.

The pressure from one or more family members to be “like the other kids,” and get involved with a social group, any social group, can make a girl desperate to find a way to stop the nagging and put-downs. The thousandth time a girl hears, “Why don’t you just
try
to make friends?” she will feel pretty low. Even outside of the dating world, this can have a negative effect. You see, the easiest ways to fulfill outside pressure to be sociable are the worst ways to be sociable.

The easiest way for a teenage girl to be more popular and have more people to hang out with is for her to do the exact things no caring person would want her to do, such as drinking, smoking, and sleeping around indiscriminately. It’s much better to be a bit of a loner than to get tangled up with kids who show their group loyalty and identity by hanging outside the liquor store trying to talk adults into buying them booze.

The same goes for adults, unfortunately. The easiest way to find a lot of “friends” fast is to be more or less self-destructive, and to run up credit-card debt buying rounds. The easiest way to get married fast is to stop being fussy and settle for a guy who is just using you.

Sadly, a girl (or boy, or woman, or man) with AS who is being shoved into social situations will know, for sure, that the person who is pushing her that way does not accept her for who she is, nor want what is actually best for her. What makes a neurologically-typical parent, grandparent, or sibling happy and fulfilled is not going to be healthy or helpful for a girl with AS.

So can a girl or woman with AS find and develop a long-term (or short term) romantic relationship? She certainly can, if that is what
she
wants.

As you might have guessed by now, those of us who are females with AS often need to approach developing the social skills for dating and relationships in ways that are a bit “different.” But we still can benefit from advice and support from parents and other family members.

Do we need some kinds of advice and information? Yes. Oh, heck, yes! Factual information about typical guy and girl dating behavior can save us a lot of grief. Girls with AS need lots of factual information, rationally put, about everything from how to turn down a date to the fact that each of us is in charge of her own body and should never have to compromise that.

Factual information about typicals? Yes, please. Typical expectations? Not so much.

Relationships Skills for Girls with AS

The most important skills for dealing with relationships have little to do with the traditional idea of “what to do on a date.” The single most important set of relationship skills are, in fact, friendship skills.

Many girls with AS have trouble developing basic friendship skills: the give-and-take of mutual conversation, the issue of being clean and neat so as not to stink, and other basics often elude us. The main reason we don’t develop friendship skills is that we don’t develop friendships. The main reason we don’t develop friendships is that we spend most of our childhoods exposed only to people we can’t make friends with.

The reality is that most typical peers, especially from ages five to twenty, are not suited to Aspie friendship. These typical kids go through an assorted set of rapidly discarded social skills and expectations—skills that change every few months, so that what was completely cool for the kids who were three months into sixth grade is totally geeky for kids who are five months into sixth grade. This goes on for at least one and a half decades of life!

The best basis for friendship is common interests. The best basis for marriage is a solid base of common interests, values, and a shared idea of what married life should be like. Knowing this, take a guess: how likely is it that a teen with AS is going to find someone they can have an actual relationship with who fits the NT profile of an appropriate friend or partner?

The answer is just about nil. The good news is that there are a lot of grown-up people out there, both male and female, who share the kinds of interests and ideas of fun that we Aspies have. They are usually called “geeks.”

So where does the girl with AS meet people?

She meets them in common interest groups. There are dozens of science-fiction book clubs, model train clubs, chess societies, Sherlock Holmes reader societies, Scrabble
^®
clubs, and other groups of dedicated geeks, wonks and nerds all over the place.

While internet dating is fraught with peril, the internet is a good place to find groups that meet in the real world. Enter the kind of special interest and your location into any decent search engine and you have a good chance of finding something.

Common special interests are the most important social tool and basis for social contacts among Aspies.
Read that again. And again. And again. Okay, now you can stop and go on.

You may not feel your daughter’s dream man should speak fluent Klingon, but she may be happiest if they write their own vows in it. For other girls with AS, what matters most is size—the size of a fellow’s Lego
^®
model train layout, that is. And some girls will go ga-ga over a guy who has been on every major wooden roller coaster east of the Mississippi.

Even if your daughter’s special interest is focused around
Pride and Prejudice
, and the local Jane Austen club is a little short on available men, it’s a great way to get social. Friendship skills
are
relationship skills.

If the local model train club consists entirely of happily married old fellows, that will still provide the Aspie girl with a chance to develop friendships so that she learns to relate to other people. Even a ten-year-old with AS is more likely to make friends at such a group than at school.

And everyone in that model train club, Jane Austin book club, or other group will also have a family and friends. They have brothers, sons, grandsons, or nephews. The grandson of a model railroad buff or other special-interest geek is more likely than average to be “AS friendly”; he’s been programmed by genetics and upbringing either to be one or to live with them!

No special interest groups around? There is another opportunity no girl with AS should miss: volunteering!

When I was in my early teens, my mother got good and sick of having me mope at home all summer. She did a little research and found that I was old enough for the summer volunteer program at a local nursing home. She knew that particular home very well, as my grandfather volunteered there often.

At the nursing home,
everyone
was happy to see me—it was like the opposite of school. The residents liked having someone to talk to, and the nurses liked the fact that the volunteers raised the morale of the residents. My special interests of Fred Astaire movies and old-time radio shows were of much greater interest to people at the home than to any typical peer.

Just as good was the fact that I got clear but kind feedback from the volunteer supervisor, so I knew when I made social errors and got helpful suggestions to correct them. It was so great that I did it for several summers, and put in more hours than any other teen volunteer!

Trust me, you learn a lot about relationships in a nursing home. Many women there had pictures of themselves with their late husbands as young people, and many women missed their late husbands sorely. They would have gladly put up with all the snoring and golf talk in the world to have that special fellow back for another day. When you come face to face with the fact that life is short and some things just aren’t so important in the long run, it sticks with you.

Talk About It

These friendship/relationship skills are something that typical folks don’t need to be told about, but we with AS do. Girls with AS need to be told out loud about how to use these chances for developing skills, and that these skills apply in more than one place.

Tell
your daughter,
out loud
, that when you learn to interact with one person, you learn important things about interacting with humans in general.

My parents were, thank heavens, very good at teaching me how to learn from observing people. This is the reason I didn’t repeat the same stupid relationship mistakes more than five or six times each. That may seem like a lot, but it seems that most people make those same mistakes over and over their whole lives.

My mom made it clear that dating wasn’t what the women’s magazines thought it was. She must have told me dozens of times, “Dating isn’t about finding Mr. Right. Dating is about interacting with a variety of people and finding out what you do and don’t like about them. You can only learn what you like and what you can’t stand if you interact with people and pay attention to your own feelings and to how they react to you.”

She also told me, “Your male relatives are key to figuring out what you need in a relationship. You interact with your dad, Pop-pops and uncles often over a long period of time, which gives you a chance to figure out what traits in guys you can live with, what you really can’t live with, and what makes you feel happy to spend time with someone.”

It took me a long and roundabout route to get where I am today, but these facts, frequently stated by my mother, made it less circuitous and much less painful than it might have been. You can’t prevent all mistakes and you can’t save your child from every heartache, but you can give them a push in the right direction.

Of course, there is another area of knowledge that girls with AS need crystal clear information on.

Let’s Talk About Sex (Heaven Help Us)

Talking about relationships means the issue of sex is nearby. For girls with AS, ignorance about sex means social problems, vulnerability, and a harder time with relationships later in life.

There is a tremendous amount of adult denial about the ages at which children become aware of the topics connected to sex. Let’s start with an example from my own life.

My sister and I were quite well sheltered. My parents didn’t even let us watch
The Producers
or
A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum
before we were eighteen; they loved those movies, but we were banished to our rooms every time they were on lest we see something inappropriate. That’s right; the edited-for-broadcast versions of those films were not tame enough for us to see. However, parents do not constitute a child’s whole life.

When I was eleven, all of the kids in my class watched
Soap
, but I didn’t, because my parents felt I was too young. I did a lot of begging and pleading, as all of the other kids were talking about the show and I was left out and laughed at because I wasn’t allowed to see it.

Finally, in the second season, when I was twelve, my folks decided I could watch the show with them (at least a few times). The first time we watched, I was totally excited. I sat on the floor watching with great focus.

Meanwhile, my younger sister, Catherine, who was eight at the time, came into the room to ask my parents a question. My dad answered quickly, nervous because my sister might see a show that was blatantly inappropriate for her.

After he answered her question, just as she was turning to leave, something on the TV caught her eye and she asked, “Why is that guy talking to that other guy like that?”

My folks looked at each other, and my dad opened his mouth a few times without speaking. Finally, he said, “Jenn, can you explain this to your sister?”

I turned to her and said, “He’s gay, Cath,” and went back to watching the show. Cath said, “Oh,” and left the room.

My parents were stunned, totally stunned, especially my dad. How could his eight-year-old daughter “get” such an answer? And she was so calm about it, as if she’d always known.

The things that a typical eight-year-old like my sister was comfortable discussing with other girls were simply far and away beyond what my parents dreamed. And this was in 1978, when having a gay character in prime time was a big honkin’ deal, and would never have been allowed before 9:30pm.

The reality is that typical children often hear and talk about sex and related topics quite young. Once a typical child is over seven, the vast majority of his or her social interactions with other kids are totally hidden from adults. Please don’t think your child’s school is different because it is private, or religious, or in a small town. Kids talk about sex. If you’re ten, knowing a dirty joke is worth a world of “street cred” on the playground!