For some reason NT's in my class always compete who finish teachers assignment first.
In real life it does not matter if you finish things few minutes or hours faster or slower as long as you do a good job esp in complex tasks like programming, so i always failed to understand why they race in school. Perhaps to look smarter than others.
I agree with you completely. The way I see it, the first issue is competition, and boys are more likely to want to compete and win. I think it is in our nature - games like "King of the hill", who runs home fastest, and even hitting something far away with a rock. They are all aggressive games. We even place bets on who can do it fastest, first, or better. Losers are laughed at. I accept these aspects of growing up because I believe they are natural to us. It's not just cultural. You are expected to compete, and you have to accept the loss if you are not the winner. As games, these are fun and innocent. The same spirit of competition goes into sports. For some reason, the world has to know who the best runner is, or who the best skier is. Nature wants us to try. If we never try, we don't develop. We even bring competition into beauty contests. Beauty, strength, and endurance are the result of nature. We have to rate them all. But as Nitro points out, the work world requires people who excel at certain skills. Competition has a purpose. Striving has a purpose. But for kids, especially ones on the spectrum, competition can be more challenging than it is for others. Is it fair? There is no fairness in nature. For us, ASD conditions can be like driving with the emergency brake on. We have to give more just to be average. I know, for myself, constant competition had a negative impact on my self-esteem. I wanted to be like everyone else, but I didn't have the skills to compete and win. The contributing factors are a list that is too long to reference here. I just continued to believe that I was deficient, so I never expected to win anything. I kept trying, but I always expected failure. Oddly, I am an optimist. Perhaps I used optimism to cover the pain of never achieving an admirable winning result. I'm still sifting through events in life to identify ripple effects from childhood experiences. I refuse to whine and I refuse to be a victim, but I had always been curious about the unexplainable successes and failures in my life. In my adult years, I won professional awards for productivity and even one for being the best manager. I strongly believe that my successes were directly related to being able to indulge my ASD attributes. I was happy, my head was clear, and I loved work - no upset, no interruptions, no confusion. I always loved absolute completion, and I was able to pursue it and achieve it. At the time, I didn't know anything about ASD. It was only by chance that my responsibilities were a direct correlation to my ASD traits and abilities. I was incredibly lucky but I never knew it. Today, I am wiser.
Kids with ASD need to understand how ASD plays out in their world. We have to know ourselves well and we have to be OK with our faults - not unlike anyone else. If you can identify the deficiencies that become a nuisance or have a detrimental impact on a kid, you can reasonably incorporate corrective measures to help a kid achieve where achievement is important. This means understanding that you don't have to be like the other kids who win prizes and awards for being the fastest or having the most impressive science project. We still want to win a prize, but it would make sense to use the ASD skills we possess to suit a realistic, achievable goal. I think that medical science is doing its best to help kids deal with their learning and concentration problems, but it isn't magic. It's just reducing the chaos that interrupts sound thinking and planning. Kids with ASD need a lot of guidance. I had none. That's why I see childhood ASD the way I do. Some of the concepts of learning disabilities can be tough for a child to understand. But if nothing is said or done, the kid is lost at sea. This is why our childhood experiences were difficult and frustrating. We never fit in anywhere, so we feel we have no direction or purpose.
We praise people who compete, even though there is no way the person can win. Competing is its own achievement. It means they are brave and have determination to try. Our society praises those qualities. If a kid can focus attention and training to achieve in some area, being well aware of the attributes that they possess or lack, the kid will benefit from the skills they need to perfect to get by in life. Sending a kid out for guaranteed failure and ridicule does not do much to enhance clear thinking and realistic expectations. The horrible reality for me in life is that I have 1,000 interests, so you can't give undivided attention to anything. We love to indulge our interests, but this can cause us to lose sight of important priorities that we might reject because they are difficult.
These kids who compete in school among one another to be the fastest have an advantage. They can work quickly and they are motivated by the thrill of winning. They don't get a cash prize or a new car. They just like winning. I would also add that trying to work quickly is a skill that anyone on the spectrum could benefit from. It's like training for the SAT exams. The objective is a high number of correct answers within a certain amount of time. The faster you work, the more time you have to ponder the difficult questions. Given my scholastic record and abilities, I never expected to do well on the SAT test. Consequently, I didn't try. I didn't think that trying mattered because I was used to failing anyway. That is a really bad attitude, and it is the result of continued difficulties in learning. We can compete, but we have to find the right objectives and methods to connect properly with our mental abilities.
I think we will always compare ourselves to others, even though it is unhealthy for some. We can use achievers as inspiration, but we have to accept and understand the reality of limitations. We all know we have limitations, but if you can't identify them or deal with them effectively, it's like falling into the same hole every day because you can't fill it in, so your only recourse is to avoid the hole. There is no shame in that. Why incur the upset.
