I know what the problem is, I just don't know how to fix it.

I have a situation on my hands whereby I know what is causing the problem but I don't have the solution - many of you would already know that I am tutoring my nephew to help him get through his A level economics exam. I had a bizarre situation recently where he struggled to get his head round what was a really simple concept not because he is stupid, but simply because he was unable to get his head round to the fact that he couldn't simply see the world from his own perspective. So we were talking about the concept of price elasticity and I raised the example of luxury goods. I picked up my crocodile (that I had recently acquired from Hamleys) and I said, "imagine if this crocodile costs $5,000 - it is a luxury item, would it be price elastic or not?" My nephew's response made me shake my head in disbelief, he said that if the crocodile is so expensive, then the person buying it would be spending the majority of his earnings on it. I stopped him right there and then and said, no that's not correct. Can you tell me what would determine whether or not I am spending the majority of my income on a $5,000 crocodile? My nephew then ran through a whole range of options whilst totally ignoring the obvious. I had to explain it to him, "if I earn $5,000 a month, then I am spending 100% of my income on the crocodile. If I am earning $5 million a month, then I'm spending just 0.1% of my monthly income on it. But if I am earning $1,000 a month, then I can't even afford to buy it in the first place." I thought that was obvious, it was the kind of question where you could work out the answer just using basic common sense, but my nephew just couldn't figure it out. 

This begs the question: is my nephew simply too stupid to work out the answer? Well, perhaps I am biased and am finding excuses for him. I know what is the cause of the problem. My nephew is simply seeing the situation from his own perspective: when presented with an item that costs $5,000, my nephew would feel that it is expensive because it is not something he could afford as a student. He is completely dependent on his parents if he wants to buy something nice for himself and they wouldn't give him $5,000 to spend on a toy. He has done a part time job during his school holidays but given how little he was paid there, he wouldn't be able to afford a $5,000 toy with the money he earned. Hence it made complete sense to him that a $5,000 item was very expensive and that was why he thought that one would have to spend the majority of one's earnings on it. But in economics, he is not being asked to offer a personal perspective or opinion on the matter - he is expected to demonstrate a wider understanding of the issue that would encompass looking at all points of views. Is this a big ask? Well yes it is, but it is a useful skill to develop and that's why I am glad he is being forced to do economics - quite frankly, he will almost certainly forget what price elasticity is after he finishes his last exam but learning to see the world through the perspective of another person, learning to consider points of views that may be radically different from yours is such a vital skill that will serve him very well for the rest of his life. I'm afraid people who think like that are only too familiar to me as I have often observed this type of behaviour with my (highly autistic) parents. 

So let me give you a simple example: I once told my mother the story of Otto Warmbier, the American student who was imprisoned in North Korea after stealing a propaganda poster from his hotel in Pyongyang - he suffered a catastrophic head injury whilst in prison and never recovered from it, he died in America six days after he was returned in a vegetative state. My mother then said something downright stupid: she said tourists shouldn't visit North Korea because "you never know what kind of rules they have there." I had to point out to her that my mother didn't know anything about North Korea - she is ignorant about North Korea, but that was her problem. There are other people like myself who have very detailed knowledge about North Korea and would have a very clear understanding about how one is expected to behave and what kind of rules visitors to North Korea would have to abide by. In fact, if you were to book a trip to North Korea, you would have to be a part of a guided tour and your North Korean guide would spend a lot of time and effort explaining to you exactly what you have to do to avoid getting into trouble whilst in North Korea. No doubt, Warmbier would have been given that same important information as all other visitors to North Korea - however, the young American had been drinking heavily the night he stole the poster and no doubt, his intoxication had affected his judgement when he decided to commit the theft. My mother didn't try to verify the facts of the case with me - she simply assumed, "if I don't know the laws and rules of North Korea, then nobody knows it." The concept of considering the fact that other people may have a different perspective is completely alien to her because she is so autistic. I don't expect my mother to know anything about North Korea but when she assumed that everyone else was just as ignorant as she was, she had crossed the line. 

Oh my mother's complete lack of common sense can be incredibly frustrating to deal with - when she last visited me in London some years back, it was in the winter and she actually said to me, "I have to pack enough clothes with me as I can't do laundry in London." And I was like, what are you talking about - you are staying with me in my house here. I do have a washing machine, so you can wash whatever you want, whenever you want. She then claimed, "in winter it is so cold, so the clothes will never dry, the water cannot evaporate when the temperature is so low, that is why I cannot do laundry so I have to pack enough clothes to last me the entire trip." Yeah, she actually said that. I was like, "so you're telling me that everyone in Europe - all 750 million people - do not do laundry during winter. Like we last do our washing in October and we cannot wash our clothes until March, is that what you are suggesting?" It was the way she had dealt with the issue that just left me shaking my head in disbelief - welcome to my world, this was the kind of stupid bullshit I had to put with up growing up with severely autistic parents. A normal person would have simply turned it into a question, "could you tell me please, how do you dry your clothes during the winter when the weather is so cold?" I would have been very happy to answer that question, but for my mother to adopt the stance that if she doesn't know the answer, then nobody would know the answer and in this case, if she didn't know how laundry is done in winter in Europe, then nobody is able to wash any clothes during winter. Good grief. Where do I even begin? It is this complete inability to consider the fact that others do know complex stuff you don't know about and try to see the world from another person's perspective. 

I get the same idiotic crap with my father as well, when he was here in London on that same trip, he tried to pick a shirt for my brother in law to buy and I had to tell him that he had picked a very casual shirt that was not business attire. If my brother in law were to wear that to the office, it would be considered somewhat inappropriate or at least it would reflect poorly on his taste in fashion. I then went on to describe how in the UK, the way you dress would reflect your class status and identity - that was why it was very important to dress appropriately at work to appear like a trusted professional rather than a clueless impostor who doesn't belong there. So we would look at little details on the design of the shirt to determine one's class identity, so without even saying a word, I have already judged you by the shirt you have worn to the meeting. My father than said something that made me roll my eyes in disbelief, he claimed that in this day and age, nobody cares about it anymore as people just want to dress comfortably and that you can't really tell the difference with modern fashion anyway. I pointed out to him that he may feel that way as a retired old man who no longer has to go into work everyday, but that is uniquely his point of view and he should not assume that other people would feel the same way on the matter. The fact is my father knows nothing about how one could instantly tell a man's social class simply by scrutinizing the clothes he is wearing, but just because it is something he doesn't know about doesn't mean that it doesn't exist. Oh it can be intensely frustrating dealing with autistic people who are instantly assume that their view of the world is the only valid opinion to the exclusion of all other points of views. I really don't want my nephew to be like my parents. My father is old - he can be as cranky and autistic as he likes, but my nephew has the rest of his adult life to go through. 

This begs the question, given that I am autistic as well, how did I avoid ending up like that? I tried to remember if I was ever once like that when I was younger and I remember being quite autistic when I was at school. Oh I struggled to form relationships with people around me and I opted for activities where I could work alone - that's what attracted me to the sport of gymnastics as I could ignore everyone else as I trained in the gym. It wasn't a team sport like volleyball, football or basketball where you had to work with others in your team. But it was gymnastics that taught me the basic principle that I had to abide by the rules that someone else has made - you see, gymnastics competitions work like this: each routine is judged by a panel of judges who all use the same rule book called 'the code of points'. So I couldn't just performed the skills I liked for the competitions, I had to make sure they would score well when appraised by the judges according to the rules. Then there was everything else I did at school - if I tried to give a personal response or opinion during a geography or economics assignment, I think the teacher would send me a stern note to redo the assignment or s/he would instantly fail me. Eventually I expressed my opinions through creative writing and I found that I was really good at it - I joined several competitions in the 1990s and even got published in 2000 in the UK. In short, I figured out when I simply must abide by someone else's rules (which is most of the time) and when I can express my own opinions. 

The one place where I really learnt to be aware of the opinions of other people was ironically the army  - oh yes, I did grow up a lot in the army but allow me to be very clear: I wasn't given any help whatsoever. I was merely placed in a very difficult situation and I figured out how to deal with difficult people on my own without any help. So it's not as if I am giving the system any credit for helping me grow up - hell no, I take full credit for being so fucking intelligent that I used a very difficult situation to grow into a better person. In such an environment, there is a very high price to pay if you fail to take into account the opinions of others and just assume that everyone agrees with you. I had gone from school where the environment was a lot more homogeneous in terms of our social backgrounds, in the army, I had to live and work with people like ex-convicts and former gang members - let's just say they were the kind of people you had to get along with and at the very least, you never want to offend. Within that kind of environment, you want to think twice before making any assumptions about those around you! Would it be overly optimistic for me to hope that my nephew will automatically figure this aspect of his social skills out next year when he serves in the army? He is going to have to serve regardless, that's a done deal but would it be the equivalent of simply pushing a non-swimmer off the ship into the sea with the advice, "if you can't swim, now is a very good time to learn because you're gonna drown otherwise - good luck!" Taking an approach like that does sound rather cruel if I put it like that of course - but hey, that was exactly what I went through. 

It's not that I haven't tried to point out this problem to my nephew - in fact, I am grateful I have the context of teaching him economics otherwise I fear I run the risk of being way too critical. I don't want to be the uncle who is always trying to find fault with his social skills, yet at the same time, somebody has got to help him in this aspect of his social skills. Ironically, I can see exactly what the problem is and what the cause of the problem is as well - I just don't know how to fix it. The fact it it is so easy to tell someone he has a problem - it's a lot harder to try to help them to find a solution to make things right. Simply telling him that he needs to analyze each situation from a whole range of perspectives rather than focus on his own hasn't been enough to get him to do that - it is something that is going to take a lot more training and I really don't know what else I could or should do in this case to help him. Like him, I too am autistic but somehow this was something I have managed to overcome. Thus I have tried hard to see how I solved this matter in my own life and there wasn't really an Eureka moment where I sat up and said, "aha! I have figured it out! I know the solution!" No, it was a very long learning process over many years where I slowly became wiser over time - I could see the way I had learnt a lot as a working adult. Perhaps I should just take a step back and allow my nephew to figure all this out in his own space and time; but would that be too passive a response to this situation? After all, I have chosen to intervene when it came to his preparations for his A level exams - I was not prepared to sit back and wait for him to figure it all out on his own and so instead I took a very hands-on approach to drag him kicking and screaming across the finish line with these tutorials. 

This is frustrating for me of course because I am the kind of guy who wants to help the people I care about. Allow me to finish by telling you what happened at the gym recently: I go to this adult gymnastics class in East London and I saw a beginner trying to do a back handspring but as an adult, he was making all kinds of mistakes. Instinctively, I walked over and asked if I could help - I wasn't even working or volunteering as a coach that day, I was only there to train but when I witnessed a situation whereby I could fix, naturally I jumped into action. I then spent about 15 minutes helping this guy with his back handspring until I felt I had really done something constructive to help the guy. He didn't ask me for help, I offered my help because I knew I was in a position to help and I felt good about being able to help that guy (and hey, I made a new friend that day). That's just me, when I see something wrong, my instinct is to try to fix the problem. Of course, I'm not trying to fix every single problem I come across - that would be ridiculous, I know when to turn a blind eye and tell myself when to mind my own business. However, this is my nephew we're talking about and my instinct to try to help is based on the fact that he is family. I don't think anyone in my family expected me to help, the same way that guy in the gym wasn't expecting me to come over and give him a free lesson. But if that's what I would do for a guy I have only met for the first time at my gym, I am willing to invest far more time, money and effort to help my nephew with this issue yet I must confess, I don't quite know what to do in this case and that is why I am humbly asking you for your help. 

I shall end on that note and turn this over to you, what do you think? How can I gently get my nephew into the habit of considering the perspectives of others? Can I do it within the context of teaching him economics or is this something that he needs to learn outside a formal academic environment? Is this really purpose of making students study subjects like economics at school? Are my expectations too unrealistic? Please leave a comment below and many thanks for reading.