• Find alternative activities. The alternative activities you decide to provide for your child depend on what you’ve figured out in your analysis. If your child is using the computer as a way to escape the challenges of interacting with real people in the real world, then you need to start her on a program that will make real-life socializing easier and more successful. (See stories that follow of those we have helped.) If your child is able to connect online with people with the same interests in a way he hasn’t been able to with people in your community, look for a club or group that’s based around that interest. (Or maybe allow him extra time online for this pursuit if you think it’s ultimately a positive thing.) If your child is surreptitiously looking at porn, talk to him frankly about his developing body and make it clear to him that some pornography is illegal to download and that even porn that isn’t illegal can give him misleading and inaccurate ideas about the opposite sex. Make sure you read our chapter on sexuality so you can help him deal with these urges appropriately.
Adam’s Internet Relationship
Adam was a college student with Asperger’s syndrome who was brilliant, physically fit (he worked out every day), and doing well in his classes until his only friend decided to transfer to another college. This put him into a severe depression. He stopped going to classes and stayed in his dorm room all day long. As he began failing his courses, the school made some efforts to contact him but he didn’t respond. Eventually he moved back home with his parents, who lived about forty-five minutes from our Center. They brought him in for treatment, but by this time he had socially secluded himself to such a great extent that he never left his room—or his computer. He was spending all day sequestered in his room surfing the Internet, entering chat rooms, and playing video games. He also admitted that he had gotten to “know” a girl online who had Asperger’s syndrome too, and that their relationship had brought him out of his depression. Their communications had been going back and forth for many months, and Adam honestly believed that it was a real relationship, even though they had never met face-to-face.
What We Did
Adam’s Internet girlfriend was the only thing that made him happy. He wanted to have a girlfriend so desperately that he clung to the hope that Savannah was the perfect mate for him.
Her acceptance gave him the false impression that he didn’t have to work on a major social problem that was preventing him from making other peer relationships, namely, his need to correct others. Adam was very smart and constantly researched different subjects. For most people, this would have resulted in the ability to carry on an interesting conversation but, unfortunately, Adam used his greater knowledge very pedantically, showing off his superior knowledge of subjects rather than engaging other people in acceptable dialogue.
We needed him to see that showing interest in another person—instead of just showing off how much he knew—would improve his social life, and that engaging friends without constantly and rudely correcting them might actually get him some real dates instead of a virtual relationship.
Our first step was to give him feedback about what was appropriate conversation and what was inappropriate by using video modeling (see Section I, Chapter 2 for more details on a video-modeling program). Once he was able to sustain a conversation without turning off his conversational partner, we were ready to take him out into the real world. We asked him to rate potential social situations and outings according to how comfortable he would feel entering them. With that as our guide, we started to take him out, slowly and gradually moving from the most comfortable situation to the least, and enlisting another college student to accompany and provide support for him.
Eventually, over a year-long period, Adam began leaving his room on his own, meeting new people, and successfully interacting with other young people. At this point, he doesn’t have a steady girlfriend, but he has a lot of opportunities to meet people his own age. While he continues to correspond with Savannah, they still haven’t met in person (and I doubt they ever will). But I’m very hopeful he’ll have a real-life girlfriend one day fairly soon.
Sam’s Crisis
We all know that kids can be cruel and, sadly, kids on the spectrum often end up being the butt of the joke.
Sam was a small, slim high school student who had always had social problems and had never received the help he needed. While the girls at his school actually found him interesting, other students, particularly the boys, tended to be mean to him, sometimes even physically shoving or hitting him. One boy continued to harass him throughout the school year and even started forcefully pushing him as if he were going to pick a fight, so Sam eventually left. He went home fuming and just couldn’t get over the incident. He went online, where he felt more comfortable opening up to others and described the incident on a bunch of chat lines. Eventually an unknown person told him there were ways he could get revenge on the boy who had mistreated him and proceeded to describe some of them. Unfortunately, the idea that Sam seized upon involved calling the person and threatening him. His parents were stunned when Sam was arrested!
While most kids have some type of social support network to help them blow off steam and receive appropriate sympathy when someone is mean, Sam didn’t, and his attempt to find solace in the Internet led him down a dangerous path.
What We Did
Sam, like many kids on the spectrum, doesn’t have a mean bone in his body. He just didn’t understand the fine line between appropriate and inappropriate.
The first thing his parents did was to take away his computer privileges so he couldn’t get into any more trouble with it. Meanwhile, we began working on his social skills by using video modeling.
It became instantly clear that, like many kids on the spectrum, Sam didn’t know how to maintain a social conversation. He wasn’t asking many questions. In addition, he inadvertently interrupted frequently, giving the impression that he wasn’t really listening (mostly, though, he was just eager to say something).
Using many of the interventions described in Section II, Chapter 2 on social conversation, we’ve been improving Sam’s conversational skills. We’re also specifically teaching him how to deal with kids who bring up the incident by shrugging and saying, “Yeah, that was a stupid thing to do,” rather than getting into a discussion that often makes him lose his temper.
His parents have agreed to gradually let him back on the computer, but only under supervised conditions, and they have placed him in a number of community activities so that he can meet a new group of peers. Sam totally understands that what he did was wrong, and as he develops more appropriate social skills, it’s easier for him to make new friends and deal with challenging situations.
Joel’s Facebook Picture
Joel was a college student who was on the spectrum. He kept in touch with his friends through a social network site where they arranged most of their outings, informed one another about upcoming social events, and simply kept in daily communication.
Joel had joined a fraternity, and one weekend one of his “brothers” (I put this in quotes because a real brother would never do such a thing) decided it would be funny to have Joel pretend that he was having sex with one of his brother’s dogs. To make matters worse, he got Joel to post the picture on his social network site. Joel really didn’t have a clue that this was a bad idea. He was being egged on and like many kids on the spectrum, he didn’t know where to draw the line. It wasn’t a terrible picture, but it was bad enough that his small group of friends (online and real) virtually disappeared.
What We Did
First, we made Joel remove the picture immediately. Second, we primed him to explain to his friends that he had been “put up” to posting the photo and now realized it was inappropriate and he regretted it. This helped with one or two friends, but the damage had been done and there were more who still refused to be a friend on his site.
Most students clearly don’t understand what university professors have access to. I can’t tell you h
ow many pictures I’ve seen on the Internet and on social networking sites (people can see what’s on a site even if they haven’t been invited to be “friends”) of students half naked, in inappropriate sexual poses, drinking, and doing a myriad of other embarrassing things. Most of them would be horrified if they knew I had seen them like that. So here’s a word of advice for everyone: never post anything you don’t want public. Pretty much any information can be accessed, even on a “private” site.
A university student recently killed a student passenger while she was driving drunk. While she was awaiting trial she posted a picture of herself drinking with friends. Somehow the judge got hold of those pictures and was of course furious that the student was flaunting her drinking after such a tragic accident. He threw the book at her, and she’ll now be spending years in a prison cell, in large part due to the documented fact that she continued to drink even after the horrendous accident.
Clearly, it’s hard for any young person to absorb completely how public and permanent something posted online can be; for someone on the spectrum, the dangers of the Internet are even more confusing. They may clearly understand rules that are black-and-white, but when it comes to shades of gray, they may be easily manipulated, fooled, and led into poor judgment.
You need to monitor your child’s Internet use closely to make sure she understands that anything she posts may be seen by others or forwarded. Have frequent conversations about the dangers of the Internet, using examples and exploring potential consequences of online actions, and always teach positive and appropriate Internet manners.
CLAIRE
Ah, the joys of trying to filter or monitor your child’s Internet access. What fun we’ve had with that.
We’ve tried. Lord knows we’ve tried. We’re always worried that our kids will accidentally stumble onto a site that will forever sear some sick image onto their tender little brains. (I’ll never forget the time I wanted to take the kids to a farm and innocently typed “cherry picking” into a search engine. I was stunned when the results appeared—apparently those words have a meaning I wasn’t aware of.) So we’ve tried several age-appropriate filters to keep their Internet viewing safe. And you know what happens? The filters filter out everything, even the Web sites we approve of and including the ones they need for homework (like, for example, their school Web site). So then our kids come to us, rightfully complaining that they’re being blocked from everything they need to do online. Pretty soon we’re teaching them the password that allows them to access things that are blocked—and then we’re wondering what the point of blocking it is if they know how to go around the blocks.
Not that it matters—my kids aren’t idiots and they know there are plenty of other ways to access the Internet, including simply using my computer when I’m not around. They’ll always be more technosavvy than I am, so I’m fighting a losing battle if I think I’m going to protect them with computer-generated filters and blocks and the like. Anyway, they all have friends whose parents don’t control their access, so they can get access to anything they want at other people’s houses.
So we’re not going to win this battle through technology. No, the only way we’re going to protect our kids is by talking to them at great length and with annoying frequency about the dangers of the Internet. And that’s just what we do.
Just recently I joined a social networking Web site, and while the kids were watching over my shoulder, I checked out some young relatives’ Web pages. My children’s jaws fell open, as did mine, when we saw some of the stupid stuff these perfectly intelligent kids had posted, like photos of themselves drinking, fondling members of the opposite sex, and generally making fools of themselves. But it was good—it gave me the chance to talk to my kids about how if an old relative like me could stumble across these photos, so could the kids’ parents, future employers, potential girlfriends/boyfriends, and so on. I think my kids got it (the visual aids helped). And, of course, Rob and I have stated and restated that lesson many times. Many, many times. At least a google times.
We have other set speeches too. If we walk by when the kids are exchanging instant messages with a friend, we frequently stop to remind them that there could be another person reading over their friend’s shoulder and so they should never say anything they wouldn’t want someone else to read. (And to be especially careful if someone says something like “What do you think of Diana?” because I’ve heard too many stories about “Diana” being right there watching the answer, or at least having the answer forwarded to her.) We also have a whole lecture about never communicating in any way with anyone you haven’t met personally. Andrew once responded to e-mail from someone who claimed to be a friend of someone he knew only distantly. We refused to let him continue to interact with this stranger. As we always tell the kids, anyone can claim an acquaintanceship online and pretend to be someone he’s not, so don’t respond unless it’s an established friend with an e-mail address you recognize. And of course there’s the granddaddy of all Internet-related advice: never agree to meet with someone you met online. Never, never, never.
Our kids have heard our advice so often that sometimes when we launch into it, they’ll start saying it for us, to get us to stop already. Fine with me: it means they’ve been listening. Are we being overly cautious? Probably. Are we going to relax a little? Never.
DR. KOEGEL
Use It for Good, Not Evil
It’s up to you to ensure that your child will utilize what’s best about the Internet without getting trapped by its dangers. Don’t assume he’ll automatically know the difference between what is appropriate online behavior and what is not. Before any problems arise, talk to him about staying positive or neutral in e-mails and instant messages rather than gossiping in ways that may be hurtful (and passed around). Let your child know that many teens and young adults are contacted by complete strangers, some of whom are predators. Make sure he understands that spending too much time online may ultimately harm his real social life. And finally, make sure your child stays fairly busy with activities out in the real world. If you find that computer time is gradually taking over his life, pull the plug (so to speak). In short, it’s up to you to make sure that your child’s computer is a useful and not a harmful tool.
ANDREW
I am the kind of guy who is on my computer a lot. I am on my computer a lot mainly because I think that computers are amazing nowadays and there is a lot you can do on them. Whenever I am on my computer, I like to play flash games, look at news about my interests, IM, e-mail, watch videos on YouTube, and chat with friends through Facebook.
A lot of the time, I try to follow my parents’ rules about the computer and I do, although every once in a while, I may end up chatting with someone whom I do not know who pretends that he or she is a friend of mine when that person is actually a hacker. I do not like to talk to people who pretend to be others on the computer, but sometimes I am out of my mind and really think that those people are who they say they are (mainly the names of friends whom I know).
It is also hard for me when friends of mine like to look at inappropriate stuff online and it is hard for me to say no when I feel that it really is not right to do. I almost never disobey my parents’ rules nowadays, but I used to when I was twelve. When I was twelve, I used to look up pictures of naked people on Google, since I thought that was funny. But after my parents found out that I was being immature on the Internet, they did not trust me anymore and that resulted in about three or four years without Internet in my room. I thought that it was really unfair but I definitely learned a lesson from that.
I do have suggestions about Internet use for other teenagers: first of all, listen to what your parents say and be smart about what you do online; second, do not chat with anyone you do not know and also do not chat with anyone who you assume is pretending to be someone else; last, if you are worried about somebody who seems unsafe online, in my opinion, the best idea is to honestly tell your parents about it—if they don’
t trust you, though, then talk to a therapist about it privately.
If I had to choose between hanging out with a friend or doing stuff on my computer, it would really depend on what I am up to. If I am really awake and feel like doing something active, then I would prefer hanging out with a good friend. If I am really tired and feel like a couch potato, then I might prefer doing nothing but sitting at my computer and playing games and checking news.
Every once in a while, I like to play video games. I like to play mostly shooting and adventure games. My least favorite video games that I like to play are sports games. I also like my cell phone and iPod, but probably my iPod more. I have the iPod touch which has Internet on it and many more applications that make it feel more like a mini high-quality laptop, although it is also touch screen.
I really like electronics that have high performance and can do many things. I also like my cell phone, because I can call, text message, take photos, and record videos on it. My phone flips in two directions and has a small keyboard on it, which is great for text messaging.
Out of my computer, video games, cell phone, and iPod, it would probably be easiest for me to give up my cell phone, because there aren’t great graphics on it and it also does not have great Internet access. The Internet on my phone is slow and expensive, but my computer has fast Internet, high performance, and a really good flash player. It also stores about 200 GB, which is a great capacity for a desktop computer.
Frequently Asked Questions
My teenage son is looking at online porn—I can tell from checking the Web history. My husband laughs and says that at that age he did the same kind of thing and we should just let him keep doing it. But it makes me uncomfortable. Should we let him go ahead or insist he stop?
The problem with OK’ing this activity is that you may inadvertently be rewarding a pattern of behavior that leads to destructive behavior down the road. We have had underage kids develop such a fascination with pornographic material that they ended up ditching school to seek it out. One high school boy got arrested for truancy when he left school to go to a local bookstore that had adult materials (yes, the bookstore called the police). Again, finding alternative activities may be helpful for your son.
Growing Up on the Spectrum Page 34