Social skills 102: how to respond without 'giving advice'

Hello guys, just a short post from me on a matter that has irked me for a while but it is just a rant for me to get this off my chest. My sister has a habit that really irritates me and I know she's not doing it deliberately, it is simply a function of poor social skills. She does this thing when she tries to give good advice even though all she is doing is repeating what I've just told her back at me. So allow me to use a really simple example to illustrate how she does this, imagine if I've just given her a simple piece of narrative with some basic information. "I want to go to this museum this weekend but I found out the the museum is closed on Sunday." So it doesn't take a genius to figure out what to do under these circumstances, but my sister would point out to me that I had to go to the museum on Saturday to me in a way as if a) it's really sound and sage advice that she has come up with after carefully analyzing the situation and b) I wouldn't have worked that rather obvious conclusion out already on my own. I don't quite know how to respond because on one hand, I feel insulted that she thinks I couldn't have figured something so obvious out on my own. But on the other hand, I have to remind myself that she is doing this because of her rather poor social skills rather than because she is deliberately trying to insult or upset me. I do realize of course that she is totally oblivious to the fact that I feel so strongly about her response being inappropriate but this is something that she has been doing for so many years already and I just need to have my little rant here please. So in today's piece, I'm going to share with you some of my thoughts on this topic and discuss my reaction to the issue, just in case some of you also have to deal with such people with awful social skills in your life too.  

It's not like I'm trying to make excuses for my sister but I have a good idea why she reacts like that. My sister lives with my parents and my parents are severely autistic - they are so autistic to the point where I would consider them disabled. I feel like I'm speaking to a mentally disabled five year old child when I am speaking to my parents and that can be extremely frustrating. But what my sister would do is make sure they actually listened to what has been said previously, so they are not left out of the conversation. So quite often, she would literally repeat just what I have said to my mother, just in case my mother wasn't paying attention or didn't process that information the first time I said it. Now this is actually a process that is very necessary with my mother given how disabled she is, let me give you an example involving peanuts. My mother likes peanuts in her fried rice, so when she visited me in London, I made her fried rice with peanuts, just the way she liked it, with loads of peanuts both crushed and whole. My mother said to me at least three times throughout that meal, "you should have added peanuts to the fried rice." I would then ask her to look down at her plate and I would point out to the many peanuts on her plate, "so what do you think those are?" If she did that once (despite the fact that I have given her a lot of peanuts) then fair enough, but she did that three times and this suggests that she is probably becoming senile - that means she is unable to retain information as her short term memory is failing her to the point where she can ask the same question a few times over the course of a meal. Thus in order to cope with this kind of situation, my sister has gotten into the habit of repeating the information back to my mother and that is the kind of conversation that will happen 99+% of the time in our family home when both my parents have senile dementia already. 

But come on, I'm not going senile, I'm younger than my sister - why is my sister treating me the same way? Surely my sister would have the social skills to realize that you speak to different people in different ways. If she spoke like that to her colleagues in her office, I think they would be rather irritated to say the least. But I am reminded of another person who does speak like that and that is my nephew, he did this when I was tutoring him through his A level economics exam. So for example, when he was faced with a rather complex question like, "examine the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on inflation in Singapore". Well, he would latch onto something he finds familiar within that question and start recalling facts about what happened in Singapore during the pandemic. Whilst everything he says would be factually accurate of course, he wouldn't be answering the question which is about inflation, rather than "tell me everything you know about the pandemic." But when faced with such a complex question, some people simply are not trained to paused for a moment, analyze the complex situation before offering a cogent answer - they simply react in a knee jerk manner to parts of the information they recognize. Now I would berate my nephew for not answering the question during our tutorials because I was preparing him for his exams but what am I supposed to do if my sister is making that exact same mistake then? I'm afraid practically everyone in my family makes this same mistake but it doesn't make it normal or acceptable to the rest of the world, this is still a product of very poor social skills and sigh, it really sucks to be at the receiving end of it. 

Let's go back to the simple example we began with regarding the museum that was closed on Sundays - what would be the right response to that piece of information then? Instead of advising me that I would have to visit it on Saturday, the correct first step would be to give the other party the benefit of the doubt that s/he would have figured this out as it was so obvious: there are two days during the weekend, the museum is closed on Sundays so that leaves us with just one other day to visit the museum that weekend - Saturday. You really don't need to be Sherlock Holmes to work out something so obvious. But what I think my sister was trying to do was to participate in the conversation by demonstrating that she was listening to what I was saying and that she was interested in my story, but there is a far more eloquent way of responding to the information rather than pointing out the obvious. So for example, she could have asked if it was normal for museums to close at least one day a week and which day would that normally be? Or we can just jump to the part that I am going to visit the museum on a Saturday and she could have asked how long I intend to spend at the museum - if it would be a whole day or if it was going to be just half a day and if so, what I would do for the other half of the day? You don't need to know anything about this museum I'm going to visit, you could even ask open ended questions like, what are you looking forward to see there? Why did you want to visit this museum? Did you hear about this museum on social media and what are others saying about it? How much does it costs to visit this museum? Asking such questions would move the conversation along, whilst pointing out the obvious would stall or stop the conversation. 

For the record, I used the example of the museum that was closed on Sunday as a very simple example of how my sister reacts. I actually used a more complex example in my conversation with her (which I can't share on my blog given it involves confidential work plans). She asked me how I was doing at work and I explained, I have this complex problem I'm trying to solve and I have two options that I can try. I have tried the first option and it hasn't worked, so I am by default left with the second option and that's exactly what I'm using right now to solve this problem. So she then turned it around and used that tone of voice as if she was 'advising' me to use the second option to solve that problem I was facing at work, I was like, hang on a minute, you knew absolutely nothing about the second option until five minutes ago when I explained to you exactly what it was and how it was going to work, so no, you don't get to 'offer' it as a solution or suggestion to me like that. To be fair, my sister works in a totally different industry and whilst she is good at her job, I certainly don't expect her to understand anything about what I do for a living and therefore I wouldn't ever go to her for help when it comes to solving these complex problems I face at work. No, that would be barking up the wrong tree to say the least, but that shouldn't stop me from sharing with her what I go through in order to solve these problems for my clients - it would give her an interesting insight into my expertise and thus the next time someone asks her, "your brother works in London, what does he do for a living there?" She would be able to offer a far more insightful answer rather than, "something to do with banking, but I'm not sure what exactly." Thus all I wished to do is to share that information with her.

The thing is I know my sister is a caring person who wishes to keep me a part of her life, that's why she makes the effort to keep in touch with me and speak to me practically every weekend. She works such long hours and could have chosen to spend that time each weekend doing other things, yet she chooses to spend that time to keep in touch with me and of course, I appreciate that. However, I am comparing her to my other friends here in the UK who have much better social skills and that's why I feel this frustration when she says something like that. I come from the most autistic family in Singapore so it is no surprise that everyone in my family has poor social skills - I'm acutely aware of my own autism and that's why I make an effort when I engage people in conversations. Currently, I'm dealing with my client in Nairobi who has brought me a complicated problem which he needs solving - he doesn't want me to simply repeat back to him, "oh yes, I can see exactly why this situation would be problematic for you." Instead, I'm expected to analyse everything he has written carefully and my reply to him would begin with, "let me help, this is what needs to be done in order to solve the current situation." My client would require a constructive reply with a pragmatic solution and welcome to my world, that's exactly what I do at work on a daily basis for my clients. So not only did I offer him the solution he was looking for, I also pointed out another potential problem that he didn't mention in his email and practical steps we could take to make sure that we can avoid that other problem. This is all about using critical thinking and analysis to look at a situation and responding in a very pragmatic way using our problem solving skills, thus I do set the bar really quite high in this aspect. 

For the record, no I'm not going to confront my sister about this because I simply don't believe she can change. Such is the case with our family members, we get to choose our friends but not our family.  I think too many people feel like they have no right to complain about family members, many would have expected me to simply keep my mouth shut out of respect for my sister rather than wash dirty linen in public like that. Nonetheless, I really don't think we ought to suffer in complete silence either: I'm sure I do a ton of things that annoy my sister. I certainly don't expect her to put me on a pedestal and only talk about me as if I'm 100% perfect. No, she is totally free to complain to her friends about my faults too and I actually want her to do that because once she has vented her frustrations (be it to her friends or to me), she would find getting along with me a lot easier. I think the worst case scenario is for anyone to feel too afraid to talk about a difficult relationship with a family member because they don't believe that they have the social skills to resolve or cope with the situation, so they simply sweep it under the carpet but that approach doesn't make the problem go away. No, it just allows the problem to fester under the carpet for years, damaging the relationship until one day you realize that it has really damaged your relationship and you should have done something years ago to address the situation. So there you go, that's it from me on this issue. What do you think? Is there someone in your family who irks you with their poor social skills? Do you try to fix the problem or are you resigned to the fact that you're unable to fix their poor social skills? Have you met people like my sister who makes this social faux pas? Please leave a comment below, many thanks for reading.