Even though I am (probably bluntly) honest with my children and give them straightforward critiques of their efforts, I obviously do not agree with Chua's extreme parenting tactics. I want to know my children, I want them to trust me to be honest but fair with them, to know my unconditional love for them--not to be their bestest ever friend, but to be someone in whom they can believe and turn to with trust. Brutalizing their psyches for the sake of extrinsic success is not the way to achieve that.
I knew, quite well, a girl whose Chinese parents drove her in this way, scarcely ever letting her out of the house for social interaction, having her practice SAT problems all through lunch when she didn't "perform" well enough on the test, having to wear a block on her teeth at night because she ground them so much from stress. Stress is an ugly thing that wears out the body and soul, and that young woman was one of the most stressed people I knew, weighed down on the inside as heavily as she was on the outside by her ever full pair of bookbags.
But she also attended school, engaged with people at all of our local piano competitions--in which I also participated--was involved in several extracurricular activities (likely for the purposes of college applications less than for the fun of it), and you know what? In spite of never attending a slumber party and rarely being able to go to a movie, she did just swell socially. She was quiet, but she was sharp, and her interactions were absolutely fine. She was certainly not the "odd one" in our school.
In what seems to me like a gambit to shock more than anything else, Brooks accuses Chua of being soft on her kids by not forcing them to socialize with other children, and he cites studies suggesting that recognizing social cues is strongly associated with one's success in life. I'm assuming Chua's children encountered other people in their travels through their mother's experiment in parenting. You don't participate in music competitions or math competitions or hard-core school activities without engaging with other people, probably the other smartest people in the room. You don't develop the poise to perform at Carnegie Hall at age 14 by being socially inept.
In addition to suggesting that Brooks may have overlooked the intense socialization that occurs in the situations of these girls' lives, I submit that these studies Brooks cites are irrelevant if your tendency to social skills is on the red side of the balance sheet. Plenty of us out there have experienced some form of what Chua--and Brooks--describe. And there are plenty of us for whom the most in-depth socialization experiences are ineffectual. I lived in a girls' dormitory at a boarding school my freshman year in high school, when I was 13. Being neck deep in the 24-7 social skills development of one long, tortuous slumber party didn't do a damned thing for me, and it didn't make me any more or less a team player. Some of us who are inclined to formal learning and isolation are rather impervious to immersion in social skills practice, it would seem.
Chua's children may not have spent a lot of time at slumber parties, but they've been around people. If they've got a native tendency to understand human interaction, they're doing just fine, thanks. If they don't, then attending a slumber party every week wouldn't have done them any good. The world of competition is an insular place where everyone who's anyone knows the other anyones. Schools require all manner of project development within a team these days, working in pairs, in groups. These girls haven't done well in school in a vacuum--there's been some kind of yardstick against which they were measured--besides their mother's--and that yardstick was other people. I submit that not having attended slumber parties does not somehow negate their exposure to social experience, and when it comes to social skills, you've either got it--or you don't. That friend of mine from 25 years back? She's a highly respected MD researcher at a top medical school. Her siblings are similarly successful.
Brooks asserts that mastering social skills is the "very essence of achievement." I take issue with that assertion, and not only because I can conjure in my mind a lengthy list of fairly socially inept people who have done quite well by most standards of what "achievement" is. I also take issue with it because it negates the potential of a large group of people--not only autistic people whose very descriptive implies social deficits--but also any of us who succeed on our own, without this "essence of achievement." The world would be empty of PhDs, especially in the sciences, if social skills were the very essence of achievement.
We can achieve, thank you, even if we, as Brooks puts it, lack "the ability to trust people outside your kinship circle, read intonations and moods, understand how the psychological pieces each person brings to the room can and cannot fit together." There are many of us out there who duck the team interaction, work alone, like it alone, and succeed alone. We are successful, and we are legion--at least in the natural sciences.
11 comments:
I've come a long ways over the years in my ideas of what constitutes "social skills" and the teaching thereof.
Some say homeschooled kids don't get any socialization. Do they not interact with people in stores, at the Dr's, outside activities, their families.... they aren't kept in a bubble and not allowed out of their rooms. Therefore they learn to socialize. When you say that then you get the "well they need to learn to deal with bullies" Why?? Why shouldn't bullies learn to stop bullying??
Then there's the "children should be integrated" crowd for whom I was a member until Dec 2009. Sitting in a classroom, in a corner, doing alternate school work is not teaching a child socialization. Plus, IMO you cannot force people/children to be your best friend just b/c your child or yourself has an ID. Cruel... yes. You are owed respect, dignity and kindness... bestfriend status... NO. Therefore, sometimes alternate placements give you those social situations - like my son's room - where you can learn social skills, make friends, be part of a small group, discover your needs, words and thoughts have meaning and are taken into consideration instead of being ignored b/c you are expected to sit and be quiet all day.
I am currently doing the homeschool battle with my Mother. She would side with the writer that the "Tiger" parent is the "bad" parent. I figure since the more I think about it, the more likely we'll homeschool the younger (austitic) one by Gr 7.... I need to get her use to the idea first... Not, that in the end, she actually gets a say... although she says a lot... but that hasn't changed in 40yrs.
Why does it seem that so many people have "backward" logic to me ?I would assume that the reason that people with "good social skills" succeed is that we live in a culture that rewards glibness, superficial emotions, and lying over actual intellectual ability...and this is a good thing because....?
Doesn't it seem more logical to educate people about the inherit goodness of "other traits" such as compassion, hard work, intellectual curiosity and creativity rather then just educate AS individuals in how to tell social lies and manipulate people .
As to parenting skills....I think the writers focus on lack of social interactions of the kids,(rather then the obviously emotionally unhealthy parents need to garner their own self worth through the accomplishments of their offspring), is very telling of our societies blindness to it
s own neurosis.
Oh... there's now a social skills program at the S end of the city... happy skippy dance... It's a 2hr round trip twice/day for a week over the summer... The eldest does very well, but since we're headed into Gr 7 next year, some extra "survival" skills wouldn't hurt.
Oh... and he's had many a weekend Scout camp sleepover and they still haven't perfected those skills... helped... but sometimes a little extra practise doesn't hurt. My goal isn't to 'change' him, but to add skills to help make the transitions through puberty a little less bumpy.
The social skills matter in academic departments, as much as they do any corporate setting. However, I'm sure there are institutional as well as disciplinary differences.
Unfortunately, I found myself within the humanities by way of a university reorganization and was often criticized -- to my face and not -- for not attending the various social gatherings in our college and department. Honestly, I didn't and don't care to sit around drinking alcohol and talking about the political implications of pop culture.
The race for department chair was shocking to me, as people set about forming alliances and talking ill of other researchers. It was all about being liked by the right people, so you could keep the teaching assignments and office spaces you wanted.
Honestly, I found working in private industry far less stressful. If I did my work well, I was respected. If I messed up on a coding or design project, I was told so and redid the work. It was straightforward: do great work, please clients, and you'll be wanted.
At the university the measure was grant money. I worked hard to earn grants. It didn't hurt that the grants were for autism-related research. This gave me some protection and enabled me to pursue working alone without offending anyone.
Study after study does show social skills matter more than numerous other factors. But, these studies are also defining "success" and "social standing" in ways that don't apply to me.
Too often the response is that we should aim to help "impaired" students master social skills. Why shouldn't we instead teach everyone to value the works of their peers instead of false charm? I'm never going to be charming, but my works should matter as much as those of some "charming" researcher.
It's so maddening to me when (mostly well-meaning) people assume my autistic traits come from being an only child. See, there's a little flaw in that logic( well, more than one, but an easy way to disprove it). I may have been my parents' only biological child, but I was never really alone. My dad lost his job soon after I was born, and he being the kind to fall apart, my mom parlayed her psych degree into a position running a daycare center, so that she could take me to work with her until I was old enough for school. I know for a certainty that I was constantly surrounded by other children from an earlier age even than most kids, and I have verifiable memories from that time also.
Thing is, those memories do not *include* said other children. My memories of that place look as if it were truly deserted, with no other humans but me in sight, at most some shadows or voices somewhere in my peripheral awareness. I know they were there, there was a big box among my mother's personal effects of cards and photos to her from the other kids, and I remember being punished several times for telling them to go away( from my view, a reasonable request but stated with childish bluntness), but they were always far less interesting to me than the patterns in the carpet or bugs or toys or basically *anything*.
I never looked at them by choice, didn't think about them much and for damn sure didn't learn a thing about interaction by simply being plunked down amongst other kids for hours at a time. It doesn't matter how much time I spend amongst people, I just *don't* interact socially without a conscious effort I was incapable of even comprehending the reasons for until well into adulthood.
CS...while social skills do matter, it seemed to me that very few of us had them in the science departments, but maybe that was just a perspective. A subtext of what I've written here is what you've articulated: What is achievement? In my mind, it's being a whole person and rearing a whole person, not just a list of "got-its."
Parents can only do so much to help the kids develop great social skills. It mostly depends on the child's own personality and ability. Some kids are natural extroverts while others are painfully shy and socially awkward. But when it comes to our autistic kids, it's much more serious than just offering them opportunities for socialization. They may need a whole lot of support and therapy to achieve barely minimal levels of social skills. To tell you the truth none of the typical parenting stories and controversies hits home for me, so I'll let the parents of typical kids fight this one out.
Interesting post, Emily, you make very good points. However, I did appreciate the Brooks article a great deal.
I agree that people without a lot of experience with "extra" social interactions can succeed just fine, particularly in certain settings (science and academia being excellent examples), but there are fewer of those careers than people who would fit well into them, and the trend in business appears to be moving toward increasing social communication with customers in order to be competitive in many fields, which raises the bar on what is expected socially in a significant way.
I am not a fan of the trend in our culture toward typically developing kids being so over-booked in enrichment activities after school that they're losing out on the opportunity to play in an unstructured way with their peers and siblings; so much social communication development grows out of that. I think giving kids that time is a gift.
Clearly, it's a different story if a child is struggling with social communication, or is not inclined to spend his/her time that way; but I think that's taking Brooks' argument in a different direction. In the main, kids do need time to develop not *skills* (because I have come to hate the term social skills) but to learn how social communication works as he describes (perspective taking, reading social cues, etc.) in order to feel successful and a greater sense of competence no matter where they end up. It gives them more choices. As someone who sees kids' anxiety decrease significantly upon improving social communication, I am so happy to see him raise that point.
I don't care what Chua does or doesn't do, and I don't feel any less of a parent because I don't agree with her. But the time those girls get with other kids, as they were I'm sure exposed to peers in all the ways you mention, are adult-led and structured. I would like to see more people stop and think about giving kids an opportunity to be together without adults determining the agenda all the time. That's why I liked the piece.
Points taken and, honestly, already taken for granted from my perspective--but I'm not a Brooks fan, and I thought this piece was primarily designed to make people go "Whuh?!?" more than anything else. I just came off a New Yorker piece that he wrote that drove me nuts (I really started not liking that poor proto-child he was describing in it), and this one had a similar effect.
I think he raised the point using *the wrong example*. Sure, it's a great point in the right context (society's tendency to overbook kids, give kids more time being kids), but Chua's daughters don't seem to be the appropriate example for making it. What do we know about their perspective taking OR their social communication? What do we know about their sense of competence?
Where did he raise the point that improved social communication can decrease anxiety? Because that would have been a great point to make.
Almost all of my sons' peer-peer interactions these days are under the guidance of an adult because *they need that guidance to learn how to interact*. They are literally receiving adult guidance/instruction in things like perspective taking, etc. In these contest/school/etc. situations, kids are often left to their own devices, not under the kind of constant supervision my sons are under when learning their communication skills. For them, and this is also counter to what Brooks says, this "skills set" *has to be* taught formally. Throwing them--or the many people like them--into social situations doesn't somehow magically imbue them with social communication powers. We tried that. It didn't work.
Indeed, the whole point of what I wrote is this: Some people are born socially able, and some are not. I'm not entirely sure how much swimming with the sharks changes that fundamental difference, and those who aren't born able actually DO have to be taught...and not by free-flowing, peer-peer interactions. The other point was that there are different measures of achievement, and great social communication abilities don't necessarily feed into all of them.
Yes, her kids probably needed time to just be kids. Sure. But that's not all Brooks said. He said that social skills are the "very essence of achievement." And I call--and called--bullshit on that.
And in case my fab communication skills didn't get it across in the above, I completely agree with everything you say...except about liking that piece. In fact, our *only* extra-curricular activity--and only class for TH--is, heh, a "social skills class."
I felt Brooks' argument required being taken in a different direction because he neglected that direction entirely, and that struck me as a notable absence.
Good post!
Thank you for addressing that nagging irritation I felt at Brooks's implication that social skills are the most important thing there is. That was the main thing I felt in response to that column, even though I also appreciated his making the point that ordinary, unscheduled, unadulterated (hah!) childhood is an education in itself.
(I am also not normally a Brooks fan --- I find him glib, ahistorical and possessed of only the most superficial understanding of the psychology, sociology and neuroscience he musters to support his theses. But sometimes he writes something that makes me think, so he's not a *total* waste of a newspaper column ...)
@krex:
"[T]he reason that people with 'good social skills' succeed is that we live in a culture that rewards glibness, superficial emotions, and lying over actual intellectual ability ... and this is a good thing because ... ?"
HAH! Agreed.
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