Is this a normal personality trait, and/or should I do something about this?

[Anonymous]

Dude, I am 43 and if a "bad" coach got hired by my friend's league - I'd tell her!

This is normal. People gossip, no matter what their age!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Your daughter, who had experience with Coach X, told her friend, who was about to have experience with Coach X, about her experience with Coach X, and you're wondering whether this is a deficit and/or something abnormal you should do something about?

I don't get it.

+1

+1 My kid has had coaches like Larlo. In the scenario, my kid and I would have been seriously glad for the heads up. We also would have kept our own counsel going forward.

Your daughter protected her friend. Who gives a crap about protecting someone with anger issues? I think you are forgetting that kids are actually people, too.


(wackadoo wackadoo wackadoo)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:So my DD is 13, and has a lot of great qualities--happy, excels in school and sports, is corny and fun and makes friends easily. She is very smart, but in a concrete way--will tell you facts and figures, how many hawks she saw in the sky that day, but doesn't want to get into long deep conversations about what's going on with people or in politics etc. She's also very independent, creates her own fun, and is not much trouble! It's fun to be her mom.

She has this one deficit, and I don't know what to call it, but I'm going to give you the latest example of it, in the hopes that someone here can

1) name what I'm talking about, and
2) tell me if it's just a normal variation, or developmentally normal, and
3) can it be improved, and if so, how.

The latest situation is this: DD is on a club team that replaced their coach, Coach Larlo, due to the coach not able to keep control of his temper. Coach Larlo ended up at a club team Astros and works under a person that also coaches the same sport at DD's school.

DD tells me that her school friend Judy told DD she joined Club Astros, and so DD told Judy about Coach Larlo. I asked what she said about Coach Larlo, and she says, "that our club owners had to fire him for yelling...." etc. She told a story or two, in a funny way.

This is not good on a number of levels:
First, when someone has already committed to a new club, it's not really cool to tell them negative things about the coach.
Second, this is sensitive stuff. Not really good payback for the coach, who has been good to her over time.
Third, it's foreseeable that Judy is probably going to tell her teammates, and her parents, who are going to then approach Coach Larlo's superior (again, who will be DDs school coach) to discuss what they heard.
Fourth, there's only one place that info could have come from--the gossip trail back to my DD is obvious. This is also foreseeable.


So I tried to talk to DD about this, but DD first said, "Well Judy is my friend!" and then, "FINE I shouldn't tell you anything!" Both of her responses were off-point.

What's bothering me is that this is just ONE example of this sort of blindness to the nuance of social situations.

I've just sort of thought this is a normal part of DDs different personality, as my other older DC has been attuned to social nuance since at least first grade.

But after this latest blunder, my DC said that "DDs (social mistake) is just so basic, and she's just so clueless about this stuff, it's an ongoing thing....I think she should get checked out; maybe she is on the spectrum, or maybe there is something that can be done about it, while she's still young."

So anyways, I'm not asking about the coach situation. I'm asking about what IS this blindness, and what if anything do I need to do about this?

Thank you in advance!

You need to tell your older daughter to get a grip. Seriously, she thinks her younger sister is on the spectrum because she told a friend that her coach was fired for yelling? Why are you even having this conversation with one kid about the other? Totally inappropriate.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You should give a better example than that. A coach got fired for anger management issues and you want to protect the coach, and you got mad at your daughter for not protecting a grown man whose behavior toward children was so bad he lost his job for it. I took what she did as warning her friend to watch out for a problematic, possibly abusive (verbally, emotionally) coach. I’ve seen some of the stuff coaches get away with so for someone to be fired for anger management issues sounds pretty bad.

I call what your dd did: looking out for a friend and warning her about a possible problem.

I call what you did: worrying about what other people think about you rather than caring about your dd and her friend.

OP here. I understand what you are saying, PP, and that makes me want to clarify/add information.

First, if she had done it to warn her friend, that would make sense. But it was to gossip/tell funny stories.

Second, nobody is in danger here, and the coach IS a yeller but it's arguable if he is too much of a yeller. For instance if he were coaching on a boys' team, I don't think there would be an issue. I think the owners wanted a different style, a more positive approach. Some parents/kids were relieved he was gone; some parents/kids went with him.

Second, it's not about me; I don't get how you got there, PP. I'm worried about my DDs seemingly lack of ability to think three steps ahead in a social situation. She could have told her friend in a more serious manner, in concern about her, and I would have had no problem with this. But she was just shooting her mouth off, unaware of the ramifications to the coach's reputation and also to HER future working with the school coach. The circle is small enough that one has to have a little tact.

And I brought it up here only because my older DC said I need to question my own assumptions about if this is normal behavior, because DD is 13, not 7, and should know better by now, and it's not just a one-off "whoops" but a blind spot. If, as another PP said, cut her slack because she's 13 and it's normal, then fine. Maybe my DC is advanced on this issue, so to her, my DD looks to be lagging...I'm just not sure which way to look at it. My DC is very astute so I'm trying to look at it in a different way and that's why I'm asking.

I come back to--your DC thinks that her sister might have autism for doing a thing that pretty much everyone agrees is at worst totally normal and at best totally appropriate. I don't think she's as "astute" as you think, and she's certainly judgmental as hell.

[Anonymous]

I think your daughter was right to warn her friend. Since the coach took some kids with him, clearly he isn't "horrible" Just a yeller.

But I think you can use this as a teaching moment about gossip and how it can come back to you. There is some gossip that is innocuous and other gossip that can be damaging. The bigger problem with gossip is that it can get exaggerated, and suddenly this coach has an undeserved (and possibly untrue) reputation. If you discuss with your DD about why it can be damaging, possibly to her and certainly to others, it will make her more aware. This is developmentally normal and it is something most of us need to actually learn from others.

[Anonymous]

For the life of me I can’t figure out what was “off point” about this. Do you have other examples?

[Anonymous]

I think you need to teach your DC that it's inappropriate to start armchair diagnosing people for doing something a little bit immature and speculating that DD is "on the spectrum."

I have an older kid on the spectrum and a 13-y-o DD. The older kid wouldn't have thought about the connection between the yelling coach and the friend and thought to say anything, either in gossip (in which he does not engage, often maddeningly when I'm trying to find out something about a new friend or something) nor in warning. The 13-y-o would totally say something. Not on the spectrum.

Kids on the spectrum don't engage in theory of mind (or have a lot of trouble with it). In other words, they don't think ahead to make these connections and think that the friend should be warned or that it would be interesting to share the information. Of course some kids do, but not generally. My kid on the spectrum is very high functioning and verbal, for what it's worth. Just wouldn't make those connections.

Chill. 13-y-o girls are silly and like to gossip.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP again, ok, now I've read all the replies. There have been some really helpful ones and even the snarky ones are helpful. Thank you, PPs.

Going to google "social pragmatic communication" now, and also I am in the same boat as a PP who said that she shares more with one child than the other due to this difference in (personality).

I personally think the behavior is normal for a 13 y.o. and my older kid is just very nuanced on this issue. I'm not comparing DD to my older kid AS an older kid. My older kid would not have done this even when she was 8; that's the comparison I'm making.

Your older kid isn't nuanced. She sees her sibling through not-partocularly-kind glasses. I think if anything, your older one is kinda closed minded about anyone who approaches the world differently than she, but for reasons unknown you are more comfortable with her approach than the younger one's.

As for "never done this even when she was eight" - I might ask why she cared more about appearances than warning her friend about a minefield.

OP, perhaps projecting here, but I have a SIL that always "says and does the right thing" so that people feel good when she is talking to them and she comes off like a rose. In contrast, I am deeply kind but sometimes blunt. I would be the one to tell a friend she needed to brush her teeth before her next meeting (since it would be better to hear "your breath is off" from a dear friend than it would be to come off poorly somewhere important"), or in private, answer a question honestly about her new boyfriend, or say "yes, you should get that freckle checked out". And I don't gossip about my family to my family. I would rather be helpful and loving than seem "nice". If faced with this situation, my SIL would say "Wow, that's great about the new team. Have fun!" I would say that, but follow up with a quiet word about the coach's reputation and offer to say more if she wanted. Forewarned is forearmed.