Interpreting Social Nuances

Interpreting social nuances!

I'm fairly certain that this is something that every adult, regardless of whether they are neurodiverse or neurotypical, had issues with as a teenager - interpreting what other teens did and said. But over time, most people become fairly apt at interpreting hat others do and say.

Individuals who are Autistic, or are neurodiverse in other ways, may have ongoing struggles to understand and interpret the social nuances and other subtleties that are present in our every day communication with others.

This is something that we have been dealing with over the last few years as the little superheroes grow older and their social interactions with others become trickier to decipher. We're often told "it's just teenage children being typical teenage children," but both little superheroes are far from being "typical" children.

The interactions that they are struggling with are typical teenage children interactions, but when you put Autism and ADHD into the ring with the interactions, both little superheroes genuinely struggle to understand what others are saying and doing.

Deciphering hidden messages and meanings, sarcastic comments (when you may not understand sarcasm,) non-verbal communication messages - all of these can cause communication with others to be quite difficult as the Autistic individual may not be to understand what is being communicated.

Autistic individuals are often very literal - they say what they mean - and they are often very direct. We often make the comment that you shouldn't ask either of the little superheroes a question that you don't want an honest answer to! They will tell exactly what they think. And from their body language we can also tell exactly whether they like, or don't like something!

Being literal in their communication style does not mean that there is anything wrong with how an Autistic individual communicates - it is just a different communication style.

So what can you do when communicating with an Autistic individual to ensure that there is little confusion on their part?

You could try to ensure that you are direct in your communication with them - say what you mean, and mean what you say. This means trying not to use figure of speech - in other words, speech that has hidden meanings. Figure of speech is often used to hider the true meaning of speech without being sarcastic. other times people may want to say one thing but directly imply the opposite. Figure of speech can also be used to say something nice in a rude way, or something rude in a nice way. 

Figure of speech can be incredibly confusing even at the best of times - I always struggled with this communication style as a child especially when it was one of my favourite uncles who used it. His sense of humour was, and still is, very dry and he showed very little emotion when using figure of speech, so trying to interpret what he was saying was near impossible.

Try not to hide the true meaning of your speech.

Unless you know that an individual understands the concept sarcasm, try not to be overly sarcastic in your communication.

Autistic individuals, as well as other individuals are have different abilities can be taken advantage by those that they come into contact with - often it is due to the literal nature of these individuals as well as the fact that many who are disabled only see the good in others. If you have a hunch that this is occurring, please step and say something. Be the person for the Autistic individual in that moment.

If an Autistic individual confides in you that they struggle to understand and interpret social communication, please be understanding. Take the time to talk with them about what could be meant by others.

Stop Motion Animation #Stikbots

**** Please note that we do not receive commissions of any description for this review. 
It is simply a product that we have found useful. ****

I have always loved watching stop motion animations, some of my all time favourite stop motion movies and shows are the Wallace and Grommet series, the Shaun the Sheep series, Kubo and the Two Strings, The Boxtrolls, The Pirates and Chicken Run. My brother really likes watching Pingu too. But while watching them, I have always been very curious about how they make them.

I really like watching the extras on DVD's because I can learn new and interesting facts about the movie that I just watched and on some of the stop motion movies, they have how the animations were made. Just from watching these, it looks really difficult and very time consuming.

Here's some information about Stop Motion Animation, just in case you're not sure what it means.

Stop Motion Animation is a technique that film makers can use to bring static objects to life - the film makers can basically make a character look like it is alive, even though it might be made of plastic or plasticine. Film makers do this by taking a series of still photos of the characters in the film. In each photo frame, the character has to move a tiny little bit so that when the photos are played in sequence from start to finish, it looks like the character is moving. My brother said that the sequence of photos are a bit like a flip book. Just in stop motion animation, the sequence of photos are played at a super fast speed.

When film makers are making a stop motion animation, they will usually use clay figures, puppets,plasticine, miniature figures with movable joints and sometimes even paper or fabric. The reason that these are commonly used is because all of these art mediums can be easily handled and re-positioned in small increments.

When I did some research on Stop Motion Animation, I found out that Stop Motion Animation was developed in the late 1800's. That's a very long time ago. The very first movie that used Stop Motion techniques was a movie called The Humpty Dumpty Circus. It was made in 1897 by J Stuart Blackton and Albert E Smith and was about a toy circus of acrobats and animals that comes to life. The two film makers used their daughters toys and dolls as the props. I also found out that this movie has been lost - there's only one screen shot that can be found - and that the reason the movie is lost is because the movie is really, really old and film makers back then probably didn't know how to save their creations. It's not like they had a phone or computer or USB to save it on.

A few weeks ago, my Mummy surprised my little brother and me with two Stikbot people figures and a Stikbot Dinosaur. My best friend, G, had come over for a play, and we were all a bit bored because it was too wet to go outside to play.

Stikbots are really cool because they are pose-able robot looking figures that have suction cups on their hands and feet. I think the dinosaur Stikbot is meant to be a T-Rex because it has two little arms and two big feet like a T-Rex. It has suction cups on it's big feet.

The suction cups mean that the Stikbots can literally stick to any surface, it's really cool. And because the Stikbots head, arms and legs are all joined to their body with tight stretchy elastic, it means you can change how the Stikbots stand and move around.

The other really cool thing about Stikbots is that they can be used to make Stop Motion Animation and there is an app that can be downloaded onto phones or tablets.

Mummy showed G, L and me how to move the Stikbots really slowly and then showed us how to use the app.

The app is called Stikbot Studio and Mummy downloaded it from the Google Play Store. It's a free app, so that is good too. Daddy had a look on his phone because it is an Apple phone and you can get the app in the Apple store too and it is free as well. Once Mummy had shown us how to use the app, G, L and me made some stop motion animations. The one just under this is the first one we made. We set up an animation studio in our garage and wouldn't let Mummy and Daddy in until we had finished!

Did you like that one? It was lots of fun to make.

I'm going to try to explain how to use the app.

1. When you open the app on your phone, Mummy has the app on her phone and her tablet but the lighting is better on her phone, the screen you should first see looks like this. Can you see the four icons along the bottom? There is Create Movie, Capture Photo, Gallery and Help. When we first opened the app, we had a little play to see what was on it.

2. The Help icon is really cool and useful because there are lots of video tutorials on how to use the Stikbots and how to make animations. We watched the first three tutorials before we made our first Stop Motion Animation.

One of the tutorials explains that to make a Stop Motion Animation that is one second long, you need to take at least 10 different photo frames. Can you imagine how many photo frames they need to take to make a movie that is an hour long? Now I know why Stop Motion Movies look so time consuming and complicated to make.

3. When you go into either the Create Movie or Capture Photo icons they both look basically the same. The only difference is that in the Capture Photo icon you can only take one photo at a time. 

In the Create Movie icon, that's where you capture lots of photos in a sequence. Each time you press the red camera button, the app captures a photo frame. What's really cool is that once the photo is captured, a faint photo that you just took stays on the screen so that you know where you moved the Stikbot to.

Once you start capturing frames for your Stop Motion Movie an arrow comes up in the top right hand corner of the screen. Once you have finished your movie, you press the arrow in the top right hand corner and it saves the movie.

4. When you go into the next screen, this is where you can edit your movie creation. You can add a soundtrack to your movie or you can add your own sounds. You can also play your movie to see what it looks like.

If you go into the icon on the top right that looks like a flower, you can change how many frames per second - fps - that your movie will play at. So you can make it go super slow mo or really, really fast. But remember to have a good Stop Motion Animation you need to have at least 10 frames per second.

After my friend G went home, I made some Stop Motion Animations with our Lego minifigs! These were fun to make but much harder to move the minifigs because they are much smaller than the Stikbots.

Now this is where it gets really exciting. Last week we had to go to Kmart and while we were looking in the toys because my little brother likes to look at the toys, I found some more Stikbots. I was really excited to find a Green Screen Stikbot Studio kit. Mummy brought it for me and L to use because we have been making lots of Stop Motion Animations.

The Green Screen Stikbot Studio has both a green screen and a blue screen (it's just a big cardboard box with a green side and a blue side, two smaller cardboard boxes with green sides and blue sides on them, two Stikbots and what looks like an art easel that can hold your phone while you're creating Stop Motion Animations. The easel is really clever because it will keep your phone in the same position while you create your Stop Motion Animation.

Did you know that a green screen, or sometimes a blue screen, is used when filming movies and not just stop motion movies, so that a different background can be added to the final movie. The actors and actresses would film their movie screens on a green screen set and then the movie editors would add the background in later. It's sometimes known as Chroma Key Compositing. Green and Blue are the two colours most different from our skin so it makes it easier for the movie editors to change the screen background without cutting off the actors and actresses body parts!!

There are a lot of movies that I have watched that have used green screen sets when they have been making the movie - Mary Poppins Returns used a blue screen in some of their sets, all of The Avengers movies, Alice in Wonderland, Captain America, Iron Man, Transformers, Thor Ragnarok, The Power Rangers Movie and heaps more.

When we went to use the green screen with our Stikbots, we couldn't work out how to use it because the green screen on the app wasn't working. We worked out that we had to turn the green screen feature of the app on. We found this out by pressing the different icons on the screen because there aren't any instructions in the kit! I think that whoever makes this kit, needs to put instructions in the Green Screen Kit on how to turn the feature on in the app.

When you first go into either the Create Movie or Capture Photo icons there is a flower icon on the bottom left. When you press that icon, four more icons open up. To activate the green screen feature you need to press the small green rectangle.

When the next screen opens up, it will probably look like the image underneath this. See how the tabs are grey? You need to slide the on tab across so that the screen looks like the next image.

When the tabs are coloured you can change the background from Green screen to Blue screen. You can also change the Colour roll Backdrop.

In Colour roll Backdrop you can choose from the Stikbot Library or you can choose a picture that is on your phone. We tried to use a backdrop from Mummy's phone, but it didn't turn out properly. I would recommend using a backdrop from the Stikbot Library as there are quite a few to choose from and the backdrops are really good.

This is what the picture will look like when the green screen is on. Can you see the Stikbot at the back of this picture? See how it looks like it has a ghost head? That's because it's head is green so it blends into the green screen. You have to make sure that if you are using the green screen, you don't use characters that are green. And if you use the blue screen, the characters can't be blue.

I made a few green screen Stop Motion animations and Mummy helped me to make some props to use. We made fire flames, some cardboard logs for a fire and some tents.

Now I wanted to show you some of my green screen Stop Motion Animations that I have made. I prefer to use the Stikbots because they are easier to move around and Mummy helped me with the Lego Minifigs.

I would really recommend the Stikbot sets to anyone who is interested in learning how to make Stop Motion Animations. They are really easy to use and lots of fun. It looks like there are other sets that you can buy like a set that has a Dino theme with lots of different accessories for the Stikbots and Stikbot Action Packs that have helmets, plastic hair and musical instruments for the Stikbots in it. I really would like to get a few more sets but we couldn't find them. Playing with the Stikbots, the green screen and the app has helped me to learn a lot about making Stop Motion Animations.

Now my Mummy wants to add something. Thank you for reading my review on Stop Motion Animation and the Stikbots.

From O 😍💕😻😸

Stop Motion Animation is a topic that O has always been interested in so it was wonderful to find a product that she could use to create her own animations. We found them in the toy section of Kmart but I would imagine that you should be able to find them in other department stores and toy shops.

While all of the Stop Motion Animation is done during screen time, we figured that at least O and L having been doing something constructive! O and L have also been doing a little unschooling when making their animations as they've had to work out how best to move the characters so that the movement looks semi natural on screen, which colours work best on the green screen and many other aspects of Stop Motion Animation. Oh and if your children do ask to use your device to create some Stop Motion Animation, be prepared that your devices battery may go very flat. The app is brilliant but it does chew up battery power!

22/8/19 Edited 

We've since found two more Stop Motion Apps that O also loves to use.

Stop Motion Studio is a free App available in Google Play which O finds much easier to use. We also found an App called Green Screen Video (also available for free on Google Play) and as the name suggests it can be used to create live green screen videos.

Being Me. The Socially Awkward One!

I haven't had much time for self reflection until just recently.

It was while talking with O recently about social interactions at school that were puzzling her, that I began to take a step back into my inner self, and boy did the memories come flooding back.

At times when I am talking with O or while I am managing one of L's meltdowns or talking with the little superheroes therapists and specialists, I am able to take a step back and I have flashbacks to my childhood, teenage years and even memories of while I was a young adult.

So much of my life has begun to make sense now that I have two children on the autism spectrum. In the last 18 months or so, I have had a lot of "a ha" moments.

As a child and a teenager I knew that I was different, I just didn't know what the issue was.

As a teenager and young adult I always felt socially awkward. I craved acceptance and understanding from my peers but it felt as though I never seemed to be truly accepted for who I was.

I was seen as the weird one. The odd one. And at times I felt very isolated from those around me.

And those peers who I was most desperate to impress, eventually excluded me one way or another, either intentionally or unintentionally.

I was laughed at. I was bullied.

I always struggled as a teenager to understand why my peers said the things that they said and I struggled to understand their actions.

Why does someone say that they are your friend but then act the complete opposite? Why do people say one thing but mean the opposite?

I became a master at reading other people to ascertain who I would or wouldn't open up to and this was due to an overwhelming fear of being ridiculed or ostracised.

But by my late teenage years, this skill would fail me on a regular basis when I would begin to open up to people and then be burnt by them within what seemed like a matter of minutes.

So my solution was that I would steer clear of and avoid those that I didn't understand. The only issue with this solution is that becoming a hermit at the age of 17 isn't good for your mental or emotional well being.

Engaging in conversations were always an effort for me as a teenager. I'd have a tremendous feeling of trepidation leading into every single conversation.

I preferred to be alone in my thoughts. I was often alone in my thoughts.

I found navigating the politics of social groups and gatherings extremely challenging. Even in my twenties and thirties, this was a challenging task for me to actively participate in.

Social settings have always, and still do at times, provoked my anxiety into action.

What feels like a million questions would flood my brain and cause my anxiety to go into overdrive. 

How do I act? What do I say? How do I take the first step into a conversation? Do they think that I am weird? Do they like me? Did I just say something stupid? Do they now hate me? Am I missing any social cues that make them think that I am weird? What social cues am I meant to be looking for? Oh god, am I staring at them? At what point can I leave?

I'm then always worried that I am acting weird, because let's face it, with all of these questions running through my head, I may have seemed aloof, away with the fairies.

So then I'd be conscious about just concentrating on the conversation but by then I'd missed what the conversation was all about so I was back to the questions.

It really is a vicious cycle and it is incredibly difficult to get out of the cycle.

I've been stung enough times to know that I don't know all of the social rules that apply to social gatherings.

The thing about social rules is that they are unwritten. Everyone just knows these social rules. But if you are socially awkward to begin with, unwritten social rules are a nightmare. Generally, you only know that you've broken a social rule AFTER you've broken the rule when you are being ridiculed for your mistake.

There were those that knew, and still know, the real me. They accepted me for who I was, for who I am. And I am grateful for their friendship. But getting to the place where I'm no longer reserved with people and comfortable enough to show the real me, takes a lot of effort on my part and also time. I have to trust myself to open up but also be prepared to be shot down.

I have always had to exert a little more effort to master the social rules that the majority of the population seem to master with ease.

Being socially awkward meant that I spent a lot of time sitting back and observing people. Observing and taking mental notes on different social rules. I could see people for who they really were.

But sitting back and observing, when I probably should have been socialising, meant that I came across as the shy or quiet or reserved or standoffish one. But I am none of these. I am introverted until you get to know me.

It isn't the best feeling in the world being socially awkward. It can be very isolating. I did spend a lot of time alone, which meant that I was happy in my own company but it also meant that I had a lot of time to run over and over conversations and interactions. This is not a good thing for someone who is socially awkward.

I have felt this way for pretty much all of my life and I have always blamed weakness or depression or anxiety or being a moody teenager. I knew that some of my peers felt this way at times but I just thought that they coped better than I did with these feelings.

It is a relief to now know that there is a reason behind why I didn't understand social interactions - Autism, Aspergers, being an undiagnosed Aspie girl!

I have grown so much as a person, as a mum, since having both children diagnosed with autism, especially now with O.

I see so very much of myself in O and her struggles at school in understanding her friends.

I want O to know that being socially awkward doesn't make you any better or worse than others around you. It simply means that you view the world differently.

I want both of my little superheroes to know that they are never alone in their thoughts and their struggles as I have been there. I know how it feels and I understand just how lost these thoughts and struggles can make you feel.

And I am determined to equip both O and L with the skills that they require to navigate the minefield that is social interactions.

I have accepted that being socially awkward is a part of what makes me me and I have stopped getting caught up in my fears about what others think and feel about me. 

I am who I am. The socially awkward one!