• It’s better to be without a friend than to be mistreated by someone who says they are a friend.
• Keep friendships and conversations balanced; coming on too strong makes NTs uncomfortable.
• Friendships require more attention as they become more important.
• Honestly knowing your strengths and needs is like having a superpower.
• Anger is a band-aid emotion. It’s a real thing—but the wound you have to heal is underneath the anger.
• We teach others how they may treat us. We must respect ourselves before they will respect us.
• Self-advocacy means clearly expressing your rights in a calm way.
• Judging your own value by how many people “like” you is a recipe for failure.
• You must be the first to respect yourself.
• Having dignity means that you will NOT cooperate with anything or anyone that humiliates you.
• If you believe you are worthy and strong, you will live up to that truth. If you believe you are unworthy of love or happiness, you will live up to that truth, too.
• NTs say confidence and dignity are the most attractive qualities someone can have.
• Before you send a text or email to anyone, ask yourself: Is it true? Is it kind or good? Is it useful or necessary?
• People on the other side of the computer are real, with real feelings, real opinions and real reactions. However, the feelings, opinions and reactions they show online may not be real.
• What you write, text or post will ALWAYS be copy-and-pasteable, quotable, sharable and traceable.
• All “friends” are not all equal. Levels of friendship still exist in cyberspace.
• Avoid texting important conversations about the beginning or end of relationships, medical diagnoses or other major life events.
• Keep the amount of contacts when messaging, emailing, texting and posting balanced; reciprocity rules online, too.
• To the right girl or guy, your quirky self is the most attractive person in the world.
• No guy or girl is worth crying over. And the one who is won’t make you cry.
• Nothing is more attractive than confidence, courtesy and self-respect.
• “Beautiful” and “hot” are NOT the same thing.
• Being a “lady” means having self-respect and confidence.
• Being a “gentleman” means having common sense and good manners.
• Aspies see beauty in pieces and parts; NTs prefer to focus on the total picture.
• The NT world expects us to get the “big idea” or “gestalt.”
• Active Listening Skills (“Mirror! Mirror!”) and Signal Words help you hear someone’s main idea.
• “Palm Reading” can help you find the main idea in anything written.
• You must be able to accurately take information in to be able to support your own ideas and opinions.
• Aspies are prime targets for bullies because we are different and often defenseless.
• Tattling is meant to get someone in trouble. Telling is meant to get someone help (including yourself).
• You are only in charge of what YOU do. Unless someone could get hurt or is being bullied, don’t be the “police officer.”
• Bullying is about taking your POWER away. Telling is about taking it back.
• Bullying among girls is really complicated. Aspergirls and their families should read Queen Bees and Wannabes to understand the roles girls play in NT cliques.
• Laughing at your mistake is NOT the same as laughing at you.
• The NT world considers laughing at your own blunders to be one of the “highest” kinds of humor.
• An action may be funny. A person is not. The joke is what you did, it isn’t who you are.
• Do not make fun of your own pain just so it’s not so bad when others hurt you. It doesn’t work and it costs you self-respect.
• NTs perceive those who can laugh at themselves as secure, confident, strong and likable.
• A person who isn’t afraid to tease him or herself makes a connection with everyone listening.
• No one can laugh at you if you’re already laughing.
What You Need to Know about the Need-to-Knows
Making Sense of the Rules
- 1 -
How Not to Make a Light Bulb
Why Everything is Hard Before It is Easy
Need-to-Knows
• Persistence means dedication even when you royally and publicly mess up.
• Skill develops over time, not overnight.
• Everything is hard before it becomes easy.
• Failure hurts. But it’s the best way to learn.
• When you feel trapped in your mistakes is exactly when you have to start getting creative.
• Success is about what you do when—not if—you fail.
• The biggest mistake you can make is being too afraid to make one.
Asperkid Logic
Have you ever watched a toddler who is learning how to walk? It’s a very clumsy thing. No matter how strong or how sturdy he is, no matter how smart or how coordinated she seems, every single little kid falls. A lot. There are a lot of skinned knees and split lips. And suddenly, everything in the house is geared toward preventing a trip to the emergency room. Diapers serve double duty as tush padding. Baby gates suddenly appear everywhere. Table corners are covered with foam bumpers. Catalogs offer baby crash helmets, and even mini elbow or knee pads. There are even “professionally certified babyproofers” (I am being completely serious, people) who, for several thousands of dollars at a time, promise to help safeguard toddlers as they, well, toddle around their homes.
OK. Got it. Learning to walk is a super-huge life moment, an enormous business, and very ungraceful. So?
Well here’s my question to you: do you remember learning to walk? Of course not. Yet you obviously did it at some point. And it was a big deal to your little baby self (this was serious exercise and not a little bit frustrating). You wanted to check out some shiny thing or reach that cracker. You didn’t want to wait for somebody to get your favorite stuffed animal or hand you a sippy cup. You wanted it, and you wanted it NOW. You wanted to be part of the fun. Maybe follow your dog or your brother. There may have been times when you screamed your head off in frustration. Or maybe you sat and thought about it, trying to plan your next daring escape from the crib. Whatever you did, the fact is that for a good long time, no matter how badly you wanted to walk, you just couldn’t.
This whole walking thing was also a big deal to everyone watching close by—those people who cared about you, helped you up if you stumbled, and cheered when you tried again. They may have even made home movies as you pulled yourself up, cruised along the furniture, carefully tried to balance…and then fell flat on your face. Repeatedly. Eventually, though, you got strong enough and had enough experience in what NOT to do to manage to keep your balance for a step, or even two. And within a matter of days if not weeks, your wobbly toddle became a “Frankenstein-ish” waddle and then a ridiculously fast (though not at all coordinated) run that probably terrified your parents all over again.
If someone were to watch that last bit, it might have even seemed that Baby You went from floor-bound crawler to nutty little marathon kid practically overnight. But you didn’t. Don’t forget the face-plants and split lips, the safety gates and bruised tush. No, this wasn’t an overnight success. It was hard-won and worked at—by a small child, yes, but an achievement made no less worthy or admirable because of your age.
That’s why you need look no further than your first triumph to remember this rule: everything is hard before it becomes easy. That’s true for walking, talking, riding a bike, driving a car, doing multiplication, figuring out irregular verbs, quantum mechanics, going on a date, job interviews, and everything else that comes along. Life, in general, takes persistence. Which doesn’t just mean long periods of dedication. Persiste
nce means dedication even when you royally and publicly mess up. It means falling on your face and getting hurt. Feeling completely mortified when someone (or everyone) sees you topple over. Walking into a party with your skirt tucked into your underwear (OK, that might have happened to me), then getting over it, NOT running away, and sticking around to try again.
As one of my favorite TV characters of all times (and a total Aspie), Dr. Gregory House, said, “If you are not willing to look stupid, nothing great is ever going to happen to you.”
Television talent shows make a huge industry out of taking folks and turning them into superstars. Of course, they don’t show the backstory—hours of music lessons or practicing scales or getting laughed off stage. They don’t show that because it’s long and not too exciting to watch. But those bumpy days happened. Because everything is hard before it becomes easy. Skill develops over time, not overnight.
Being patient can be really hard—I know—especially when it comes to what we, Aspies, expect of ourselves. Ever try a new kind of math equation and end up completely furious with yourself, or lose it when you didn’t “get” a new lesson immediately? What about trying to learn to jump rope and being the only one in the class who couldn’t get the hang of it? (My hand’s up, here.) Usually, this is when Asperkids want to quit…or scream…or just freak out at anyone who gets in their way.
Exactly why, though, should we know how to do something expertly right away? How come we think that—unlike everyone else—we don’t need to put in time and effort before we are able to do (or maybe even fabulously achieve) something? The answer, of course, is that we can’t do everything well the first time we try. And we shouldn’t expect ourselves to. EVERYTHING is hard before it is easy…for a reason. If you can stick around through feeling embarrassed or disappointed or frustrated, there is something to be gained in the time it takes to learn. Something you can’t gain any other way. Character and creativity. Resilience. Winston Churchill, that great, stubborn force, famously said, “Success is not final, failure is not fatal; it is the courage to continue that counts” (Vilord 2002, p.36).
As a baby, your legs got stronger by having to get back up over and over again. Your arms got more flexible from having to pull back up. Your reflexes got faster at detecting off-kilter balance only from learning what it felt like to fall. So, yes, this rule is partially about being nicer to yourself, and being more forgiving of mistakes. And it is partially about tossing the idea that anyone else thinks you ought to do everything right the first time. They don’t (really) and you shouldn’t (really).
Somewhere, we get this crazy idea in our heads that smart people or cool people or people who are just generally worth having around don’t fail. Wrong. They do. Happy people, content people…they just won’t allow a blunder to be their final statement. The biggest mistake you can make is being too afraid to make one.
“No” or “you’re wrong” or complete and total public humiliation—as awful as they feel at the time (and I am so agreeing that they DO feel awful)—can give you the chance to do and imagine and be things you never imagined. Give yourself a little time to see what can happen. When you feel trapped in your mistakes is exactly when you have to start getting creative. It’s when you really get to see the genius you have inside.
The fact is that everyone—EVERYONE—messes up. Fails, even. That’s not what determines who succeeds in life and who doesn’t. In fact, many people will let early successes give them a false sense of confidence, that everything will come easily to them. Like I did at dance.
I started dance at age two, and right from the beginning, I was really good at it. It felt wonderful and without much effort, I could do whatever my teachers asked, and more. So pretty quickly, I just took for granted that dance would always be a no-brainer for me. Then, somewhere around age thirteen, I had the chance to audition for my first off-Broadway company. Everyone in the room was older than me, they filled out their leotards a lot differently, and they just seemed to walk around like they owned the place. I was totally psyched out.
So it’s probably no big surprise that when the choreographer broke us into trios, demonstrated the combination we were to instantly absorb and then turned us loose to show her what we could do, I choked. I can’t even remember if I managed a leap or a turn. All I know is that I ran out of the room crying. I wasn’t upset about not making the company or even about looking ridiculous in front of everyone else (OK, maybe a little bit about that—although they’d all probably done the same thing at some point). Nope. I was humiliated and angry and furious with myself because I hadn’t gotten it right immediately, as I always had before, and as other people had that day.
Here’s what I didn’t realize, though. Yes, I had the ability to dance as well as any of those older kids. My teacher wouldn’t have invited me to audition otherwise. But what they had on their side was time and experience. The experience of having attended more rehearsals, auditions and call-backs. Of trying out and getting cut, of feeling the surge of determination and then showing up to try again. Their failures made them better dancers. Maybe not technically. But in confidence, maturity and grace, absolutely.
So, I changed my game plan. The next audition I had, I prepared like crazy beforehand—and nailed the lead…a role which changed my life for the better in a million ways…a role for which I’d never have auditioned if I’d gotten the first part.
No, the difference between who reaches their dreams and who doesn’t isn’t about how well you begin. Success is about what you do when—not if—you fail. The ones who bounce back, who keep trying…they will triumph. One of the most famous players in the history of American baseball (my favorite sport) was the New York Yankees’ Babe Ruth. By the time he retired in 1935, he had hit more home runs of any other player, a record that stood until 1961. He also had struck out the most times. If Ruth had let all of his “failures” distract him, though, he never would have kept swinging for the fences—and never would have become a legend in his own time.
Want some more proof that messing up doesn’t mean you’re a mess up? Done. Here are a few famous examples of “suspected-Aspies” who didn’t get it right at first, but sure got it right in the end:
• Henry Ford—Yup, he eventually invented American-made cars (among other things), but the founder of the Ford Motor Company lost all of his money FIVE times before succeeding.
• Thomas Edison—He was told by his teacher that he was too stupid to learn anything. Before he invented a working light bulb, he failed about 1000 times. But Edison said they weren’t failures. Newspapers of the times report he insisted, “We now know 1000 ways not to build a light bulb” (Vilord 2002, p.78). Maybe not so dumb after all.
• Emily Dickinson—One of the most famous American poets of all time, she only managed to have a few dozen poems published during her lifetime. Still, she didn’t stop writing as long as she lived…thanks to her tireless work, more than 1800 of her completed pieces are in print today.
• Bill Gates—Did you know he dropped out of Harvard and bombed the first time he started a computer company? Traf-O-Data isn’t quite a household name, is it? He seems to have done pretty well with the Microsoft thing, though.
• Albert Einstein—He didn’t speak until age four, or read until age seven (he was dyslexic), and was eventually expelled from school. I’m guessing that the Nobel Prize for changing the entire understanding of modern physics and the fabric of the universe made up for it, though.
Such is the value of the learning curve. If everything came easily right away, we’d take for granted our successes, victories, skills and talents. Not to mention that we’d have little respect for people (you know, Einstein and friends) who have invested the time and effort that we haven’t.
No one succeeds all of the time. No one. What makes some people special…timeless…courageous is their willing- ness to keep trying and never, ever give up.
So the next time you try to pronounce a foreign word in front of your class
and flub it, breathe easy. Your voice cracks in chorus tryouts? It’s no biggie. You try for a double-jumping-front-kick at karate and manage to land right on your back? You’ll live. There aren’t safety gates near your stairs anymore, are there? Nope. Eventually, you learned to walk. And eventually, you will say that word, hit that note, nail that move. And you’ll be a much stronger person for having messed up in the process.
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The Potty-Training Rule
Knowing When a Thank-You is Expected
Need-to-Knows
• Whenever you think you should say thank you, you probably should.
• “Thank you” is a reward that encourages a particular behavior to continue.
• Failing to recognize others’ words or actions makes us seem unappreciative.
• “Notice, Tell, Thank” is the simple step-by-step process to letting people know they matter.
Asperkid Logic
Ever since you were little, you’ve known that saying please and thank you is simply good manners. And that’s true. But you’re older now, which means “thank you” is about much more than just being polite. Being able to say “thank you” at the right time and in the right way is an important unspoken rule with a lot riding on it.
Whoopee. I can practically see you rolling your eyes. Next rule, please—let’s skip ahead. Just give me a second, though. Everyone—Aspies included—deserves to be appreciated and to feel important. And that’s what a good “thank you” does.
Let’s think of a “thank-you” as a reward. That’s actually the way social scientists describe it. Really. Basically, the idea is that by (1) showing your appreciation and respect, you (2) create positive feelings in the other person, and (3) reinforce the specific behavior (keep being nice to me!). In other words, saying thank you will make people want to be friendly again to you in the future.
The Asperkid's (Secret) Book of Social Rules Page 4
