Hi guys it's been awhile, I've been having a hard time thinking about what else I can talk about and then inspiration hit me!
COMMUNICATION
Whenever I call my family this is what they always say EVERY TIME
(family member) "Hey is something wrong?"
(me) "No why do you think something is wrong?"
(family member) "Well you never call so I just assumed."
different relative later....
(family member) "Hey is something wrong?"
(me) "Why does everyone keep asking that? I'm not stuck in a well or anything I'm just calling to talk."
That should not be the reaction you get when you call family or friends, I'm really bad at communicating with people. I'm not forgetting about them I just don't think of doing it and I should because keeping in touch with those close to you is important. I also ask myself, "Why do I have to call them? Why don't they call me?" Then I remind myself it's important to take the first step when you really want talk to someone. When I went to Peers group at UCLA we talked about communication and one of the exercises was exchanging phone numbers with someone in the group and calling them.
I think that was a very good exercise, one I'm still working on. I'm thinking of making appointments in my cellphone calender that is going to remind me to call my family and friends at a certain time on a certain day that way I stop getting the reaction I showed you above.
Sometimes it's hard to communicate with someone in person because you should make eye contact which can be uncomfortable, I think doing scheduled phonecall chats can boost someones confidence to the point they're going to want to hang with them in person. That's just my opinion.
TELLING TIME
I also mentioned Telling Time in the title because that is also one of the things I'm still having trouble with. I felt really embarassed learning how to tell time in elementary school because I was really slow at understanding which hand meant what and other clock lingo. Learning how to tell time was like teaching me another language. I still don't understand it, reading a traditional clock takes me about about 2 or 3 minutes where as an average joe can just glance at a clock and say what time it is. There's also that whole "It's half past ten" sort of thing, I get really REALLY annoyed when someone says that because I'll just give them a blank stare until they just say what time it is normally. I don't understand what they're saying and personally why can't they just say it's 9:50 instead of getting fancy about it?
My mom is still trying to teach me clock lingo. I'm very stubborn about learning it because it makes me mad that I can't understand it as easily as other people.
I feel other kids with autism feel this way about other subjects whether it's telling time, reading, math, or whatever. Just keep working with them and let them know their doing okay. It's not a bad thing that you don't learn things as fast as other people, it's about the journey not the destination. In time I'll learn how to tell time properly and I'll feel really good about it knowing even though I struggled I persevered.
