(This was a private message I wrote to someone, but I liked what I had written and thought that it was poignant enough to share.)
Kids may be coddled at home and given more creature comforts and material possessions, but the schoolwork and social expectations seem to be much more demanding on kids over the last 30 years. Perhaps it will balance out. Kids seem to be getting burned out with schoolwork and overzealous participation in extracurricular activities. They say that as early as mid-high school kids who are being pushed to the limit are developing a huge sense of resistance against the continued pressure cooker of 14 hour days of homework and activites. It seems like kids are really getting overburdened despite being more endowed with material possessions. Besides, "success" in school and the kids' clique is calling for more emphasis than ever on social cognition and the ability to "say and do the right thing." I think that kids sort of feel like that they always have to be on their toes.
For someone like me who was far behind the curve as far as social development, I had no chance of success in succeeding socially in middle-school or high-school. Other boys my age had moved on and were starting to talk about girls and cars and jobs, and I was still thinking about the piano and history and the same stuff I was doing when I was 10. I didn't keep up with the fashions and even though my mom bought me designer clothes, I would still put together my own mismatching outfits. I didn't look or act like I belonged there. Really, I was kind of turned off by the superficiality of the whole High School scene and the whole peppy atmosphere. I remember feeling terrified walking through the halls with all of the kids jumping and screaming around me. I hated being part of the group and classified as a "kid." I have always had a hard time "going with the flow."
I do think the reason that AS is on the rise is because society is becoming more and more social and you have to have social skills to succeed. Perhaps 40 years ago, a guy with AS would have done just fine in a routine manufacturing job. But it seems like if you have to get a job, the only jobs that are available are ones where you have to deal with customers or be a functioning part of a team. In school, obviously, you have to have good social skills to be successful and be able to participate in group work and extracurriculars. Even getting good grades these days is not so much about being smart but being "good" at school. This means that one has to be able to get on the teacher's good side, keep his materials and homework organized, function in group work, and about 25 other things. It isn't so much about knowing the right answer as it is about being able to properly carry out all of the steps and show that you can do things as "normally" as possible. Kids are all but getting graded on how well they are fitting in and meeting standards, not on raw intelligence. The main thing that the teachers are looking for is how well a kid is acclimating to his social environment. They want to see that you can follow the "order of operations," and be socially functional.
The other problem is that since about 1970, there are no longer any "back doors" to adult careers. The only chance for a kid to become a professional and get out of the customer-service jobs is to claw his way to a college scholarship. It is not enough just to display raw skills in an area to get hired, but companies demand a degree. For a kid who doesn't have the social competence necessary to succeed in school or college(even though he may be a savant in some area such as computers,) he can't make it in the world unless he meets the prerequisites to show that he is a well-rounded person. Thus, because he can't be demonstratably normal and earn the confidence of others, he gets stuck in some occupation for which he is not suited and thus he is wasted. A society has been created to which there is only one route to success; the Alpha, NT route. AS people with poor social skills can't complete all of the prerequisites and thus never get a chance. Job interviews themselves have become ultra-filters for weeding out "odd" people such as myself.
I was never given a chance to run with the things I was good at. My mom forced me to try and be as normal as possible and spent all of her and my time trying to correct my weaknesses. My problems stem from AS, but only because I live in a society in which social-skills and multitasking are absolutely vital to live. If I had lived in an earlier time when physical-strength or mental-competence was the only requisite and poor social skills could perhaps be overlooked, I might have done better. You seem to have the same problems that I have had as far as being thrust unknowingly into social storms. Our society this day is not a results-based society and the emphasis is not on the ends but the means. It is not about what you do but how you get there. Normal people are equipped with the skills to "get there." People with AS can already provide the finished product in the area of their interest but no one will give them a chance. AS individuals like myself just want to go to work without having to do all the preliminaries or social niceties.
19 May 2009, 10:58 pm
