And finally some good news from my family

Hi there guys, I thought I'd share a little bit of good news with you. My nephew got his A level results and he did extremely well. I'm not going to reveal his exact grades here as I don't want people to split hairs but let's just say he got the grades he needed to do the engineering course he wanted to do at NUS. He scored a B for economics - the subject I tutored him in and admittedly, I was pleasantly surprised as he had  even exceeded my most optimistic expectations. So in this post, I'm going to share with you some of my thoughts and feelings after having received this piece of good news. 

He's autistic, he's not stupid. 

My nephew does really remind me of what I was like when I was younger given that I'm autistic like him and have Asperger syndrome too. But like me, my nephew isn't stupid. He has proven that his good O level results were not a fluke, given that he has managed to follow up with equally good A level results. I remember something my mother said when we were talking about my nephew's autism: when I pointed out that I was autistic too, she said, "no you cannot be autistic, you were so good at school, you went to university, you're not stupid at all." Mind you, my mother is autistic too. In her head, she still thinks that being autistic is the same as being stupid; how do I even begin to untangle that? Both my nephew and I have high functioning autism - that means that we struggle with our social skills but there's essentially nothing wrong with our intellect and we can indeed go on to perform extremely well at school and get into university. People seem to think that autistic people are blessed with some kind of incredible talent in mathematics, music or languages (come to think of it, that's probably why I speak 25 languages) or they're so disabled they are sitting in the corner of the room staring at the wall whilst incapable of even holding eye contact for even a brief moment. But in real life, autism can manifest itself in so many ways and we need to talk about it rather than sweep it under the carpet. I think my mother's point is that even if I am autistic, I shouldn't admit to it, I shouldn't tell people about it as she would treat it like some shameful secret. But if you don't even talk about it - how are you supposed to start to address this issue then? 

My nephew still has poor social skills, even if he has aced his A level exams. 

I've met so many people who are autistic, have terrible social skills but are still capable of holding down a job. In a recent post, I've talked about a compliance officer I had worked with who used his photographic memory to memorize every single rule, law and regulation as stipulated by the UK government's department the Financial Conduct Authority. Whilst his knowledge was incredible, his total lack of social skills made him a total pain to deal with and he had few friends at work. I have no doubt that my nephew will go on to complete a degree and find a job in the future, but I don't want him to end up like one of these weird, autistic people who have no social skills and certainly no friends. If I could develop my social skills in my adult life to cope so much better, then that's what I would like for my nephew as well. So many Singaporean parents will not care or worry about their children's social skills as long as they do well in their exams and can get into a good university, but I do think that in my nephew's case, he needs to make so much more of an effort to develop his social skills - I don't think it is something that he will just 'figure out' without getting some help along the way. 

I'm very disappointed he's not going to study abroad. 

I talked to my family about what might happen if he doesn't earn himself a place at a good local university and I talked about a university in the UK ranked somewhere between 20th to 35th on the league tables as a respectable mid-tier university for him. I grew so much when I moved to the UK and really enjoyed my time at university, I wanted my nephew to have benefited from the same experiences that I had but sadly, I guess that's never going to happen now. Would he ever get a taste of life outside Singapore? I don't know. He's got to do NS, attend university in Singapore and then he'd probably get a job in Singapore after that. After all, that was exactly what my two sisters and my brother-in-law did, so if that is what my nephew wants for himself then that's fair enough; I hope that he has noted that uncle Alex didn't choose that path and he doesn't have to follow in his parents' footsteps. He will get a taste of independence when he starts his NS very soon but then, that is not quite the same as living in another country, a few time zones away from your parents. 

I hope he doesn't hang his pride upon his A level results. 

Whilst I want him to be proud of what he has achieved, I don't want him to be too obsessed with it - so let me give you an anecdote to explain my worry with this kind of Asian mindset. My mother has said plenty of extremely stupid crap over the years and this is just one such incident when she spouted more dumb bullshit. Years ago when I managed to get a really good job within the banking sector, she said that I got the job because my boss must have looked at my school results and noticed that I had done well for A level economics. I had to tell her that this wasn't the way things worked in the West: none of my employers have ever seen a copy of my degree, let alone any of the results relating to the education I had in Singapore. As if any employer would give someone a job based on their A level results, only a teacher can be that delusional - nobody gives a flying fuck about your A level results in the business world. The only time it matters is when you use those results to gain entry into a good university and once you have done that, maybe some employers might want to talk about your time at university but certainly not your A level results. My nephew would probably forget the vast majority of everything he had learnt at A levels in due course anyway - the purpose of education isn't to cram your head with facts, figures and knowledge. No, it is quite simply to teach you how to learn something new so that when you start a new job and encounter a steep learning curve as you have to learn all about the company's products, services and procedures, then your experience as a student would allow you to climb that steep learning curve.

I wonder how his classmates did? 

My nephew got a lot of help - I was probably the most dedicated economics tuition teacher you were going to find given that I would spend hours preparing for each lesson I had with him whilst his teacher at school simply didn't give a flying fuck. For his other subjects he also had some private tuition as well and that is completely normal for most Singaporean students. But you either need a lot of money to pay for all that help or you need to have caring family members - my nephew had both and was indeed very privileged in that sense. But what about his classmates from poorer families then? I didn't get any help with my A levels back in the day apart from the help that my teachers at school gave me, but then again to be fair, I was so lucky to have had excellent teachers whilst my nephew had the most fucking awful teachers in the whole country. If his classmates were reliant on those awful teachers and could not pay for any private tuition, then oh boy, they would have been unfairly set up to fail and that is just one of the reason why the poor stay poor. 

And as for the one exam he didn't do well in 

Oh we have to go back a very long way to his PSLE (primary school leaving examination) at the tender age of 12 when he delivered a below average exam performance. That was a costly error as it meant that he didn't get his first choice when it came to the pick of his secondary school but nonetheless, that didn't affect his ability to perform for his O level exams four years later. I suppose that at the age of 12, you are kinda young and immature - is it fair to subject kids to such an important exam at that young age? After all, the performance in that exam would depend a lot on the child having the maturity to adhere to a rigorous preparation process and the ones who do well in it are either those who have super pushy parents who will bludgeon their kids through that process or those who are lucky to be just naturally smart. 

Wait, so what are you saying - that your nephew isn't naturally smart? 

Allow me to clarify: the kids who can ace their PSLE without much or any preparation probably belong to the top 1% of their cohort, that's how smart they are and my nephew isn't in that top 1%. The reason why my nephew struggled with exams was because of his poor exam techniques rather than because he was just plain stupid, something I really tried very hard to address when I was tutoring him. It is not just about being clever per se, like having a high IQ but it is about knowing what to do in an exam situation. Allow me to give you an example of how he would go wrong. If I came across a question I didn't know the answer to, I would just skip that question and then come back to it later, I would spend a lot more time and effort focusing on the questions which I can answer confidently, make sure I score as many points as I can with those easier questions before coming back to that question I am confused about. If it means leaving that question unanswered, then that's a strategic decision I would make with the use of my time during an exam to maximize the number of points I can score. My nephew would be the opposite: he would try to guess the answer even if he didn't even understand the question on the off chance that he may stumble upon a relevant point and score something for that answer. Now personally, I wouldn't do that because your time is very limited in an exam and if you spend like ten minutes guessing the answer to that question you didn't understand, you're losing precious time that you could be spent answering questions you do know the answer to. Such is the nature of good exam techniques, you don't have to be a true genius to score a grade or two better than your peers - just knowing good exam techniques is actually so important. 

My nephew became a better listener when it came to exam techniques. 

I hate to judge him on mistakes he made when he was younger but allow me to flag up an example of how he has improved - when he was much younger, my parents would try to tell him where he went wrong in an exam and he wouldn't listen to them. For example, for both his English and Chinese essays, he would ignore the world limit and write something far longer than required in an exam situation - this wouldn't gain him any extra points or credit; he would be far better off crafting something within the word limit and offering the examiner quality, not quantity. Did he listen to my parents? Nope, he didn't. He's autistic, it is a challenge to try to get an autistic kid to respect your point of view because autistic people usually only see things from their own point of view. To be fair, that was the kind of autistic mistake that I have made when I was much younger as well. But the key difference for his A level exams is that my nephew actually started listening to me and following my instructions when it came to using much better, smarter exam techniques - such as passing on questions you didn't know the answers to and not making wild guesses on the off chance that you may get it right. His social skills have improved over the years so he became easier to teach, he had become far more responsive to my instructions on vital issues like that and that was what had contributed greatly to his good performance at the A level exams. So it isn't just about working hard, it is about responding to instructions. This may sound so obvious to you, but trying to get this autistic student to respond to instructions can be a far more complicated process than you imagine.

Was it simply a question of better exam techniques that got him his good grades? 

Allow me to explain: you need knowledge and a good understanding of the syllabus to perform well in an exam but even if you have that, poor exam techniques can really sabotage your performance in an exam. So if my nephew didn't understand a question, his logic was, "I may as well try to answer the question anyway since there's no penalty for giving a wrong answer. If I wrote nothing, I score nothing for this question but if I tried to write something, who knows, I may actually get a few marks if I am lucky." So what he would do is he would focus on one word that he recognized like 'inflation' or 'unemployment' and then he would just write down everything he knew about that topic - this was a terrible way to try to score any points because even if everything he somehow managed to regurgitate the entire chapter from the textbook on the topic like a photocopier, he would score no points at all if he wasn't answering the question - students are not being tested on their memory, the question isn't "write down everything you remember from chapter 7 in your textbook". Furthermore, he was penalizing himself when he did that because all the time spent trying to answer a question he didn't understand meant taking time away from questions that he did understand and could score many more points for. This sounds logical and obvious to you I'm sure but trying to get him to understand that simple logic took months; it was simply trying to get him to see things from my point of view instead of his own logic. By that token, this made him a very difficult student to teach, not because he was stupid (no he clearly isn't stupid) but because he is autistic and trying to get him to listen to me as a teacher was a massive challenge but we got there in the end eventually!

I want to break the curse of autism.

This runs in my family and I'm determined to break that curse with my nephew. Let me give you an example of how my father refuse to acknowledge a new piece of information despite the fact that he has been told that he is wrong. My father claimed that Hainanese people can understand Vietnamese because Hainan island is very close to Northern Vietnam. That is not true and more to the point, my brother-in-law is Hainanese, he speaks Hainanese fluently and whilst we sat at the dinner table, I asked my brother-in-law if he could understand any Vietnamese as he has traveled to Vietnam several times before. He said no, I have to speak English to communicate with the locals there. So that should be enough to inform my father that his hypothesis is wrong, but does he let the truth get in the way? No, he keeps on repeating the claim about Hainanese and Vietnamese being mutually intelligible in spite of the fact that he was has been informed that this was not the case. In any case, Vietnamese is not a Sinitic language that means it is not related to Cantonese, Mandarin, Hokkien or any other Chinese language; so whilst it contains some loanwords from Mandarin and Cantonese, it is radically different from Hainanese and thus a Hainanese person would not be able to waltz into Hanoi and understand the locals. I explained all this to my father but to no avail: either my father is extremely forgetful (so he doesn't retain all this information about the Vietnamese language) or he is very stubborn (as he believes he is right and I am wrong). Such is the nature of dealing with very autistic people: they will argue that salt is sweet and the sun is icy cold, even if it is clear to the rest of the world that they have clearly ignored all the evidence that proves them so wrong. 

I wonder how my parents are taking this? 

You would have thought that my nephew's grandparents would be very happy with this outcome but it is never straightforward, is it? When my nephew was younger, my parents treated him as if he was retarded, totally incapable of even the most basic tasks. My mother would go out of her way to do everything for him from feeding him to brushing his teeth to getting dressed - she even once proudly declared to me that without her, my nephew wouldn't be able to get through the next 24 hours because he has become  completely dependent on her for everything. I have told her that she is not helping the situation at all because you have to let him do these things for himself or else he would never learn, but she didn't care - I think she just needed to feel useful: her own children have grown up, she has retired and quite frankly, she was just bored and needed a purpose in life. By pretending that her grandson was disabled to the point where he was completely dependent on her, she felt empowered. Thus I wonder what is going on in her head now, she is probably thinking her grandson is all grown up and doesn't need her anymore. Loads of grandparents out there know how to connect with their grandchildren after they grow up and become adults, but my mother doesn't even have any adult friends of her own - there was an element of simplicity in my mother's relationship with my nephew when he was very young. He would just let her do everything for him but he has pushed back against that ever since he has become a teenager. It is weird but I think my mother might be disappointed that he isn't that disabled after all. Or who knows, she might be claiming all the credit for his success - I've not spoken to her about it as I had been away in France on holiday.

Let's not make the mistake that many Asian parents make. 

Asian parents tend to use one's grades as a barometer to check if everything is alright. The logic is that if the child is sensible enough to do whatever it takes to produce good results, then everything must be alright. Of course, it is never that simple and that logic is very flawed. Whilst my nephew has clearly performed very well for his exams, there are still other areas in his life which still needs work such as his social and emotional development especially since he is about to begin his national service very soon. Let's see, I do hope NS will be a great learning experience for him: fingers crossed! 

So what next? 

He has his two years of NS to get through and then it will be four years at university. His academic journey will be so much easier from now because he will get to focus on the subjects he likes and avoid the ones he dislikes. Even at A levels, there were at least two subjects which he dreaded: economics and general paper (English) but that was the last time he would be forced to do a subject out of his comfort zone. Hopefully, university will be much better experience for him without being forced to do subjects outside his comfort zone but I see the value of being taken out of your comfort zone every now for the sake of learning. In my job, I may get tasked to manage a project that involves something that I know nothing or little about and I don't have the luxury to say, "I can't do this, make someone else do it"; no, I simply have to climb that learning curve very quickly and it is my education that has enabled me to do just that, so I can function well in a job with very complex demands; thus I'd like to still see my nephew challenged to go outside his comfort zone to solve problems at university, as this would be precisely the kind of situation he would find himself in when he starts working in just about five or six years. After all his education in Singapore has done nothing at all to prepare him for that. 

But the moral of the story is this

My nephew wanted to read engineering at NUS, he worked really hard for his A levels and achieved his goals in spite of all the obstacles he had encountered along the way. This goes far beyond me being proud of him for having done well in an exam, I hope he realizes that if he and when puts his mind to it, he can set himself ambitious goals and achieve them. I don't live in the same country as my nephew so I am not able to be there to help him when he needs me, what I want for him is to mature into an independent, resourceful and mature young man who is able to take are of himself. After all, I know what it is like to be that autistic boy growing up and I can't tell you just how happy I am to have seen him made so much progress over the years. Needless to say, he still has a long way to go in terms of improving his social skills but I think he deserves a lot of credit for having made it this far and I want to help him continue on this long journey. Okay and so that's it from me on this topic guys, what do you think? Leave a comment below please and many thanks for reading.