Socially Speaking (or, Don't Kiss Ruby)

I've been thinking a lot lately about Nick and his incredibly poor social skills.

Let me start with an example. Nick doesn't know when enough is enough until it's directly in his face, loud and clear. Say he wants Ruby to give him a hug. She does. But instead of going on about his business, he grabs her, tickles her, kisses her, hugs her again, until she's screaming for him to leave her alone. It's like he can't figure out social boundaries, and so he's always pushing against them. Luckily Ruby adores her big brother and doesn't hold it again him. Imagine the problems he had in middle school, when he'd offer a kid a high five and then tickled, noogied and generally harassed the poor kid until he was told to go away. The saddest part is he doesn't get it. He doesn't understand how people view him or how annoyed people get when their personal space is violated.

There has to be a way to teach him social skills. I'm taking this Positive Behavior Seminar. The main point of it is to teach teachers and parents how to change bad behaviors. I'm wondering if it couldn't be tweaked to fit social skills training as well. The main gist is to pick one problem behavior and replace it with a more acceptable (not necessarily perfect behavior.)

So let's take something simple.

The Problem: Nick doesn't listen to Ruby when she says "no" when he asks for a hug or kiss from her. His sustaining consequence is an interaction with his baby sister.

The Perfect Solution: Nick asks Ruby for a kiss, she says "no" and he says "okay" and walks away. His sustaining consequence would be that he was happy to respect Ruby's wishes.

The Acceptable Solution: Nick asks Ruby for a kiss, she says "no" and he pats her on the head instead and walks away. He will still get the sustaining consequence of an interaction with Ruby, while still respecting her right to not want to kiss him.

According to the PBS rules, I need to come up with a "million dollar reward" for Nick for the first few times he uses the acceptable behavior rather than the problem behavior. A reward that's so huge that he can't wait to try the new behavior again to see if he gets the same reward. This is where I run into trouble. For one thing, Nick is nearly impossible to reward (or punish for that matter.) I can't make a big deal about praising him, because it immediately sets off a rebound round of bad behavior. ("Yea, Nick! I'm so proud of you, you rock!" "Yeah right." Followed by a crash and something breaking.) Punishment is also a problem, because first he doesn't take it and then once he does, he forgets all about it and it doesn't have the desired effect. ("Nick, that's it you're off the computer for the rest of the day." Imagine kicking, screaming and a general tantrum for about ten minutes here, followed by Nick forgetting that the computer ever existed.)

He doesn't do well with rewards or punishments, I think because they upset his flow and make him have to struggle to get it back. He does, however, want to know that when he does what he's supposed to someone notices.

So I'm hoping that Nick is old enough and bright enough, that just learning to get along better will be reward enough. With some luck, just a nod or some small notice of his using the acceptable behavior will be enough.

Here are some future social skills that I hope this plan will work on:

Doing something nice for someone without saying "don't I get a thank you?" afterward.

Saying "I'm sorry" properly and with sincerity.

Having a conversation with someone where he looks them in the eye, has a give and take, and doesn't interrupt to talk about something else or ask if the conversation is over yet.

Keeping a comfortable amount of personal space around himself and other people (instead of leaning against someone he's sitting next to, sitting too close, standing too close, etc.)

Autistic people have to learn social skills by rote. Did you know that language is only 7% verbal? That means that 93% is reading tone, facial cues and body language. Autistic people can't do that, so they are only receiving 7 % of the message when someone is interacting with them. Nick can't read Ruby's irritation when he's trying to make her kiss him, until she makes it very verbal and loud. He can't tell when he is annoying someone, so he has to learn by rote which behaviors are annoying and how to avoid them.