My mother published a fairly seminal paper on the topic [1] 18 years ago which concludes that emotional awareness (specifically, the "Theory of Mind"[2]) can be learned by people with Autism.
At the time this was against prevailing wisdom but AFAIK is now considered accepted wisdom.
Too a degree yes, it is more case of the ability to process those emotions are slow, so as somebody with aspergers I will days later realise what I missed, sometimes years and other times be completely ignorant of what I missed.
But equally I find it hard to explain emotional states and have a real hangup on fairness to the extent that as people say "I cut my nose of to spite my face".
THink of emotions like book openings in a chess game, normal people know this naturally persay and other have to learn them, yet are able for all intent able to play chess and play well. Yet because they do not do the standard book openings, they end up with a slightly off balanced game with the other person getting upset you did not do a standard move. Not sure if that helps explain it, but for me is a good analogy.
Still emotions and body language is in effect a form of communication that many use to say what they would not say directly and that is not autisims fault for not playing that game and being upfront and direct and honest, however blunt. With that, I console myself that if over 50% of the World was autistic, ther ewould be less liars and normal would be autism with those with emotional hidden communication being the ones deemed too have an issue by society.
Still I do wish I had the skill set to cold-read people, certainly save much time.
Same here. I was able to learn social skills in my late teens and through my twenties.
It wasn't exactly a fun process though. I'd try to "act normal" and then get feedback that taught me I was breaking a social norm. Feedback = kids making fun of me or cringing out of pity and embarrassment for me. And I wasn't very sensitive to the feedback so it took a lot of feedback to learn.
Now I seem normal-ish and life is peachy and my different ways of thinking feel like a superpower rather than a handicap. But man, teenage life was hard.
Disclaimer: I was never actually diagnosed with ASD (I was just called "weird" and "nerdy" and other things), but I have no doubt I would be diagnosed ASD if I ever got diagnosed.
My story is similar to yours except I made a conscious decision to buck the trends and didn't work too hard on acting normal. I worry about what will happen to the kids growing up in this new safe-zone anti-bullying world? That feedback was invaluable to me, in fact it was probably the most important thing I learned in high school.
So do you, or anyone else, know good methods and resources for teaching children with autism theory of mind?
My son is ASD (as I probably am). And I want to help him out so that he doesn't have to learn the hard way as I did. I'm going to buy the Social Stories book (mentioned in your link) off Amazon. I'd love to hear any other helpful ideas.
I also read several body language books over the years. The best is What Every Body is Saying, in case that's helpful for anyone. Unfortunately, reading a book is not as good as practicing.
But equally I find it hard to explain emotional states and have a real hangup on fairness to the extent that as people say "I cut my nose of to spite my face".
THink of emotions like book openings in a chess game, normal people know this naturally persay and other have to learn them, yet are able for all intent able to play chess and play well. Yet because they do not do the standard book openings, they end up with a slightly off balanced game with the other person getting upset you did not do a standard move. Not sure if that helps explain it, but for me is a good analogy.
Still emotions and body language is in effect a form of communication that many use to say what they would not say directly and that is not autisims fault for not playing that game and being upfront and direct and honest, however blunt. With that, I console myself that if over 50% of the World was autistic, ther ewould be less liars and normal would be autism with those with emotional hidden communication being the ones deemed too have an issue by society.
Still I do wish I had the skill set to cold-read people, certainly save much time.