Which came first: the Asperger's or the egg?

That's the way it is here too, Linkat.

But there are a lot of kids that you just NEVER see except between the car and the door.

I sometimes think they're googling to find out if there's a convenient excuse for being socially lazy.

I do think we've become phenomenally paranoid about our children. I live two blocks from the local elementary so my children have always walked/rode bikes to school. At least ten times I've had someone ask "aren't you worried about letting your kids walk to school?" It's two blocks through a good neighborhood with sidewalks. No, I'm not. The piano teacher is five blocks away. I get the same question. When I was nine, I walked from the apartment complex where we lived past the local bars and adults only apartment complexes to the local gym to play basketball. It was often dusk or dark when I walked home. No one thought anything about it.

Just because a great swath of society is abusing truly measurable medical and scientific terms (phobias for example: I claim a phobia with ear wigs. If I really had a diagnosable phobia, then I would be socially crippled and couldn't leave my house in the irrational fear of encountering an ear wig. I've met plenty of ear wigs without having the extreme reaction someone with a legitimate phobia would have.

Saying I have a phobia (self-diagnosed) and others claiming self-diagnosed Aspergers is truly misunderstanding what it means to truly have clinically diagnosed phobies/Aspergers, etc.... It confuses the global issues in mental health. It continues the spread of misinformation in society on these VERY IMPORTANT issue and its out and out erroneous hyperbole. It's not however evidence for some societal trend.


I don't believe it's a growing problem. Just a misreading of the anecdotal evidence and seeming blooming trend that really doesn't exist.

Diplomats get training in diplomacy.

Doctors get training in bedside manner.

you don't have to believe it - but the research on this has been coming out pretty steadily for well over a decade now - there are arguments about the cause/s, but the results are pretty consistent, it's a different world for all of us because the Gen Y's are really different

http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/13676260600805713

http://magazine.biola.edu/article/10-fall/how-is-technology-shaping-generation-y/

http://www.usatoday.com/money/workplace/2005-11-06-gen-y_x.htm

http://www.etiquetteoutreach.com/blog_new-york-etiquette-guide/bid/53453/Business-Etiquette-Expert-Grades-Gen-Y-Shortcomings-and-Strengths

http://www.civiced.org/papers/research_engage.pdf


http://www.charteredaccountants.com.au/News-Media/Charter/Charter-articles/Business-management/2012-08-Who-Where-Y

http://www.quintcareers.com/Gen-Y_workforce.html



http://www.smartcompany.com.au/hiring/who-d-hire-a-gen-y.html

I never said that there wasn't difference between generations. In fact, that's my exact point. I know that there are major societal chasms between the generations. I am saying that the differences between generations isn't a social implosion on a pandemic scale (AKA something bad/worry about).

I'll try and read a few of these articles after work this coming week. Thanks for the appropriate lit to read.

there is a LOT more research - probably 800 pdf's of papers

employers and researchers aren't in agreement with your take on it

Yes - I've seen a boy I haven't seen before until yesterday at the bus stop.

I have no idea whether this is a growing phenomenon or not. Seems like it may be. Certainly there have been myriad anecdotes about children not playing outside the way we did in the fifties. Whether that translates into numbers re more children being socially awkward, I gather that is being researched.. but who researched it back in the fifties to compare numbers with?

I was awkward as an effect of hardly having any other children to play with until we moved to Chicago when I turned nine (only child and we moved a lot). Talk about shy. Plus my mother was shy as well, a lot of the time. I got over it, starting the day I got a job at sixteen. But even as little miss shy, I'm not sure I was a complete mess the few times I was in situations outside of school, visiting parents' friends who sometimes had children. But let's say I had a great deal to learn at nine.

I do think that my reading over the years helped socialize me.

In contrast to me, my niece was taught by her father how to take the buses way across Los Angeles when she was nine or ten. That was for a reason, as her mother lived far across town. He always tried to develop her ability to get around, be it on bicycle or bus. Nothing horrible happened with all that, and she's a very capable woman now, in her early twenties. Great socially too.

That happens a lot here in NYC with the subway system as well. Go figure...

But just because you don't see him doesn't mean that he doesn't have friends, or fun, or freedom.

We live less than a block from the school and I got the same question, engineer. People would always comment on how "independent" and "resourceful" Mo was. In his later years there, parents were asking me HOW to get their kids to walk to school by themselves because they (the kids) were afraid to.

The school Mo is going to now allows high schoolers off campus privileges for lunch. As far as I can tell it is the only school that trusts these near adults to do that.

I don't think I'm imagining things and the research backs me up.

What I'm saying is that people are gloaming on to a medical designation to describe a social problem. Children aren't given much time for free play and competition has taken the place of collaboration -- especially in schools. I think this is a problem. Parents lock their kids indoors, not allowing them any freedom because they are afraid and I think this is stunting kids social maturation.

I'm not a diplomat but I use diplomacy every day. I think it's an essential skill.

I've had doctors that had no bedside manner at all. They weren't my doctors for long.

I really don't think it's something you can teach. I think it has to be learned through experience.

Thanks so much for all of the links, ehBeth! I've got some reading to do.



I think the laziness comes from inexperience.

Of course - but the bus stops (and this irks me too) every block. So this kid basically lives next door to us and we haven't seen him.

Yes - he could be playing elsewhere, but the premise of kids not playing outside in their neighborhood - he fits the bill. He hasn't all summer been out in the neighborhood playing. We knew he lived there as our neighbor filled us in on who lives where, with kids, etc. So we knew he was there, but never made an outdoor appearance until the first day of school.

This doesn't constitute a reasonable diagnosis for poor social skills. It just means you haven't happened to notice the child before getting on the bus. You weren't in the right place at the right time to see him do whatever social thing he does each and every day. Just one coincidental event that doesn't lead up to a trend.

Nobody has said that.

There has been shift in social skills. People have noticed it, business has noticed it, social scientists have noted it (and are studying it) and we're discussing it. I'm not sure why you're so defensive about it.

I feel more and more out of the loop on these conversations since I'm not in touch with that many parents outside of my community anymore, and my community seems atypical.

I definitely agree that kids have less unstructured goofing around time than they used to, and I don't think that's good. The whole death of the daytime neighborhood thing.

We experienced that up until third grade or so. I did find out later that we're in a relatively dead pocket of our area -- lots of older people and retirees, and the kids who were around tended to go to daycare and such. Other areas (like, blocks away) are crawling with kids 24/7.

But from 4th grade on its been much more freerange. This was part of why we moved to the area, we saw it when we were house-hunting.

Kids walk almost everywhere, and when they're not walking they're riding bikes (or skateboarding).

My own kid is off doing whatever with friends from when the school bell rings until dinnertime (if I can get her home for dinner). She walks home (or to a friend's house or wherever they wind up) so I frequently don't see her for 12 hours or so, from before school 'til after dinner.

She does have some scheduled activities in the evening -- soccer, dance -- but generally she's just running wild for hours. This summer was the first one where I had nothing to do with the pool, and I sometimes would go a week where I barely saw her (definitely at that tipping point between being relieved when she goes off to do something so I have some time to do my own stuff, and missing her because she's gone all the time, but that's a whole other thread).

So, that's our experience here, but I don't think it's that typical these days.

I can believe that social skills are suffering as a result of fewer opportunities for unstructured socialization.

One benchmark I guess I have is that adults within the community like sozlet but take her pretty much in stride -- people outside of the community are more likely to be really impressed by her. (She's quite the social being.)

Just thought of another benchmark actually -- our good friends moved to South Carolina a couple of years ago and the kids are having the hardest time not chatting at school. They're very used to just sort of constantly bantering in a way that is frowned on, there.

So it's possible our community is freakish, I dunno. I certainly like it and am glad we found it. (With, I always feel compelled to add here, considerable help from Setanta.)