I’m thinking about my pre-teen years. I’ve long felt that I was playing catch-up as far as social skills, for most or all of my youth. Like I was maybe a year behind other boys of my age, and at least 2 years behind the girls.
So now I’m wondering how the girls experienced those years.
Moved to IMHO (from GQ).
Pre-teen? While some children are relatively mature, I would hesitate to say any have what I would consider “social skills”.
If we’re talking teenagers then there’s more of a discussion to be had.
Not backward per se. But slow on the uptake at times, yes. That said. I’ve always felt great affection for and acceptance of males who fall on the Sheldon Cooper-Leonard Hofstadter spectrum.
I’m curious as to what you consider “social skills,” because I absolutely disagree that children can’t have them.
I’m really curious to hear from our lady Dopers about this. I felt like a complete clod when interacting with every girl my age in my school years. Strike that, I know I was a complete clod.
Gosh, no. I was way too socially backwards myself to notice whether the boys were or not.
I hung out with a lot of boys when I was a girl. I didn’t perceive them as socially backwards, but I did feel more mature than they were. This is partly because I had notions of love and they weren’t there yet. So every “relationship” I had was disappointing.
In Bob’s Burgers, Tina Belcher’s relationship to Jimmy Junior is spot on. She spends endless hours fantasizing about him and he maybe likes her a little, but he is just not in the headspace to be thinking about dating. The contrast is hilarious, but hits way too close to home. I remember those days.
Y’all have no idea how intensely a tween girl can love.
Ditto. But in retrospect I don’t think many of those girls were more socially advanced than the boys in any important way. The girls may have seemed more social in the sense of interacting with their words, but with no more substance than boys throwing things at each other.
I’m too far from it now, but I sense things are quite a bit different now from that old world I grew up in.
Seconding.
I had never heard of being ‘socially backwards’, but it certainly seemed to me that just about everybody was more popular and more accepted than I was. It didn’t occur to me to wonder whether gender made any difference.
I did not, but that’s probably because I was socially backwards.
I perceived most of them as assholes. That’s because most of them only saw me as someone to sexually harrass.
Fourthing me being the socially backwards one. I think I did perceive a difference, but not necessarily that the girls were more advanced. Just that girls and boys had slightly different interests.
No. Most of my friends were boys and I was awkward as hell so I thought however everyone acted was normal. I wasn’t trying to date or anything, either.
I was so completely socially backward, clueless, dumb, out of it, and did I mention clueless? that I was in no position to notice anyone else’s lack of social graces.
I’m reminded of a (possibly autobiographical) story about a white woman in India in colonial(?) times, commenting “14…why does everything (emotional) hurt so bad at age 14?”
even though I’m male I ve assumed 98 percent of the world was a mix aND MATCH of dumb uneducated uncouth slobby assholes … I’ve since lowered that estimation to 90-95 percent but the general sentiment still stands and there’s not much currently going on to change that view of society
That Jimmy Junior was me. I can recall girls showing interest in me, and my reaction was always to wonder ‘why in the world has she picked me of all boys?’ , and ‘what am I supposed to do with a girlfriend?’
I’m so sorry you had to deal with this. I suppose I should thank my older sisters for teaching me to respect girls/women.
As a first and second grader I was one of the few boys who let girls hug and kiss me. The older I got, the more of a problem being “different” became. I morphed into a sympathetic ear for my female friends. I would say that socially backward and very socially aware at the same time. I was backward when it came to the dating/mating dance, but at the same time I always had plenty of female friends. I’m curious to know how many women out there have known guys like this.