Mea Culpa… I was wrong
By John Counsel
This page is a self-initiated acknowledgement of disappointment by me in my own conduct in a volatile situation; I should have handled it better than I did and I regret it. Several unintended consequences occurred that are now silent sentinels of self-reproach for me.
This acknowledgement is entirely at my own behest. Nobody has demanded or suggested it.
But I’m an advocate and educator and my example was not worthy of emulation. I failed my own 24-hour test: “Say nothing when stressed, but write my responses down and file them until 24 hours have passed, when I can re-read my comments after internal balance and objectivity have been restored/regained.”
The simple truth is that I’ve learned, from long experience, that more often than not those written responses have taken the steam out of the situation and I need do nothing more than delete them and move on.
Still, there are lessons to be learned from my mistakes, even at my expense, and I’m not about to compound my errors in judgement — and compromise my integrity — by ignoring my commitment to be open and honest in sharing those lessons with people who rely on me for both qualities of character.
Remember… integrity is not just another way to play the game.
It IS the game!
So what happened? And why?
What I’m about to write is intended as an explanation, not an excuse. It’s important to understand why things happen… but it’s also vital to recognise when they’re starting to happen so we can take pre-emptive action to prevent mistakes, misunderstandings and hurt feelings. And that’s where I “fumbled the ball”.
Sunday afternoons are usually relaxed in our Aspergers Help Australia Group, but last Sunday was unusually busy. Not just in the Group’s timeline/newsfeed, but also in private messages.
We had a sudden influx of new Member applications, and some of them were the result of invitations from other new Members who hadn’t done as requested — in the approval notifications sent to them via Messenger, in the comments on their welcome to the Group and in the Welcome Message and Reading List.
Okay… that happens. People are used to just joining Facebook Groups and starting to post without bothering to read the instructions.
Several applications were declined because the applicants had been invited to join using the wrong link. So they hadn’t completed the survey questions we use to better support Members, they hadn’t read our Group terms and conditions and so they were asked to go to the correct address (https://myaspieworld.home.blog/our-facebook-groups/), read the Group terms and conditions (including eligibility criteria) and request to join again.
While all this was going on, one of our grandsons fell ill with headache and earache and early cold symptoms and became distressed. Then a new member posted a list of her own techniques and recommendations for dealing with evening and morning routines for Aspie children — which sounded fine, but missed some crucial, usually “invisible” cause- and-effect interactions that underlie that kind of Aspie behaviour, in favour of ABA-style control and behaviour-modification techniques.
What I should have done was decline to approve her post and ask her to make acceptable changes to some of her uninformed conclusions and high-risk advice. Advice that could backfire badly on parents blindly following it — and potentially damage the parent’s relationship with the child, including perceptions of betrayal of trust and abuse of power, which is the downside risk in such techniques.
At the same time, one of the declined invitees took offence at my message, denied that she had requested to join, asserted that the inviter must have tried to add her to the Group (in breach of Group rules — which produces an entirely different notification from Facebook — and proceeded to pontificate on various matters involving her personal authority/status, the inviter’s authority/status and my motives, manners, etc.
I do not naturally respond well to such perceived arrogance/ignorance and self-importance, as some of the older Members know. I’m too old, too experienced, too unimpressed by fragle egos, especially when I’m juggling sick grandkids, moderating and administering a busy Group, dealing with well-meaning-but-inexperienced people making flawed recommendations… all at the same time!
I get stressed… and that can lead to curt responses, Aspie-style.
To make matters worse, both the would-be Member who didn’t ask to join and “had no interest in our Group” (but someone using her computer and Facebook account did ask!) and the new Member who seemed determined to be offended by the fact that I questioned some of her recommendations and insisted on defending them at all costs, persisted for several hours in pursuing their arguments, ad infinitum.
Unfortunately, I declined to accommodate them and ended up blocking the “disinterested” applicant/non-applicant — and the new Member “spat the dummy” and left the Group. I also removed the inviter, who had been warned at least twice for inviting people using the wrong link, and was a close personal friend of the blocked non-Member (another trigger for condemning my ignorance of how important and knowledgeable he was and what a profound loss the Group would suffer).
But, as I said at the start, I offended two people, neither of them familiar with me, this Group or our terms and conditions and standards of mature discussion, and I regret giving them offence.
Mind you, if anyone reading this decides to interpret it as an invitation to post inaccurate or misinformed content, or to initiate a spurious quarrel, may I suggest that you pick your time wisely?
I am, after all, an Aspie with a shorter fuse than normal when I’m juggling too many balls in the air, and fragile egos are no substitute for sound arguments/reasons.
The outcome will typically be a forgone conclusion under such circumstances, so I apologise in advance for any offence you may choose to take.
John Counsel
July 2019
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